7 Feature-Rich Affiliate Marketing Plugins
Affiliate marketing is one of the fastest growing advertising methods today. Since it is very cost effective, its popularity is on the constant rise.
If you are loyal to certain brands, products or services and like recommending them to other people, have some knowledge of online marketing and have your way with words, affiliate marketing can be quite lucrative. No one can guarantee you a fast profit, but if you play your cards right you can definitely earn some money without too much trouble. Plus, if you are a WordPress user, you have a good starting point for launching your affiliate marketing business and you’ll easily turn your website into affiliate marketing website thanks to a variety of quality WordPress themes for affiliate marketing.
So, what can an affiliate marketing plugin do for you? If you choose wisely, it should enable you to add affiliate links to your articles with ease, share them on social media, save and manage them and, of course, track your affiliate campaign’s performance.
Although it is a fact that an affiliate plugin will help you boost traffic and sales, in order to choose the perfect one, you should focus on what it is exactly that you want to achieve with your website, compare the products on the market, and then choose accordingly. To help you with that, we made this list of top affiliate plugins that are feature-rich and easy to use:
Pretty Links is a great free tracking tool that keeps track of each hit on your URL and gives you all the info about the hit – the number of clicks per link, unique clicks per link, click details such as IP address, remote host, browser, OS and referring site. The complete report awaits you in your WordPress admin dashboard. Adding links to your WordPress posts and social media is a piece of cake with this plugin. The autolinking feature that comes with it also enables you to automatically add affiliate links for certain keywords. Furthermore, it enables you to maximize your affiliate marketing business by providing you with the option to see which affiliate links are working best for you. Plus, it is great that you can have shortened links with your domain name which is a far better option compared to generic ones like bit.ly or tinyurl.com for many reasons but mainly because it generates more confidence among your customers and strengthens your brand.
Affiliate Manager is a plugin that offers a variety of great features. It allows manual adjustments and payouts, which is very convenient when sale is not your only reason to credit an affiliate, for example, when they reach a defined goal. Moreover, with the affiliate manager you can have unlimited number of affiliates, provide them with flat rate or percentage based payouts or set individual payout rates. It also enables you to add as many banners or text link ads as you find necessary, since it provides you with an unlimited number of creatives and adds for your affiliates. Tracking functionalities are impeccable, with real-time reporting functionality. It is good to know that this plugin is compatible with WooCommerce, Simple Shopping Cart and WP eCommerce. Furthermore, it is translation ready and to top it all, you can get it for free.
The Easy Affiliate Links plugin is an amazing tool that comes in free and premium versions. Simple yet effective, it is appreciated both among beginners and advanced affiliate marketers. The free version provides you with all the essentials for effective affiliate marketing campaigns. It enables you to easily manage cloaked short links as well as regular non-cloaked links. The link clicks get automatically tracked and you get a very detailed and neat report about it. This user-friendly plugin also allows you to import affiliate links from XML and CSV as well as to export your links to XML. Plus, it is compatible both with the Classic Editor and the new Gutenberg Block Editor. All in all, this is a great link organizer and the free version will satisfy most users. In case you need the complete click statistics and automatic notifications for broken links, you can always upgrade to the premium version.
If you need a powerful and insightful affiliate link management plugin, you will love ThirstyAffiliates. Apart from cloaking your affiliate links and inserting them easily into blog posts, it allows you to link your affiliate links automatically based on selected keywords. With it, you also have the option to uncloak links in order to make them compatible with Amazon’s terms of service. Thanks to its proactive link fixer feature, you can rest assured that your links are always up to date. Another thing you can also count on with this plugin are useful and very structured reports, plus regular admin email reports. The option to sort your links into categories and see the performance of each link makes this plugin extremely popular and one of the all-time favorites despite the fact that it only comes in the premium version.
Boosting your website traffic, growing your email list and your social media followers are important factors for a successful affiliate marketing campaign. That is why you will be delighted with the RafflePress plugin which is not a strictly affiliate tool but can definitely make your business easier and more effective. It provides you with plenty of options to create viral contests and giveaways and thus attract new prospects. Giveaway campaigns are a great way to promote specific affiliate products or services. Thanks to its drag & drop giveaway builder you don’t need to be a developer to create awesome giveaway campaigns in a couple of clicks and achieve great engagement. Viral giveaway templates can help you easily boost visitor engagement and traffic. It is good to know that this plugin is responsive and mobile-friendly which means it is equally effective on all your devices. Another great thing about this plugin is the tracking and retargeting functionality, which allows you to optimize your conversion rate and achieve your conversion goal. It is good to know that this tool is not free but it offers three pricing options so you can pick the one that works for your budget.
AffiliateWP is a great affiliate marketing plugin packed with some awesome features. After a quick setup, you will be able to easily manage your affiliates, track their referrals, pay them directly to their bank accounts and track affiliate-referred visits, referrals, earnings and affiliate registrations in real-time. Thanks to the built-in referral link generator, your affiliates will be able to generate their own referral links from the Affiliate Area. This plugin is a true gem among affiliate marketing solutions as it offers you a great number of hooks and templates to add custom features and functionalities. It is predesigned for WordPress and will fit perfectly any WP template. Even though it is not a free tool you get four pricing options to choose from so the cost shouldn’t make you change your mind if you feel this plugin is the one for you.
The key to success in any online business that relies on sales is the ability to turn your visitors into customers. The OptinMonster plugin was created with the goal to provide you the best tools to do just that. It comes packed with exit-intent technology which detects visitor behavior and allows you to keep them on your site by showing them a popup with a targeted marketing message just before they leave the page. Thanks to the advanced traffic redirection functionality you can direct traffic to important pages on your site. Another great feature of this plugin is that it offers the onsite retargeting and personalization functionality which enables you to show personalized offers based on the visitor type. Furthermore, your affiliate links can be added to lightbox popups, slide-in signup forms, sidebar forms, and floating bars. OptinMonster is definitely one of the most effective conversion optimization plugins you will come across. Although not free it is one the most affordable plugins out there.
In Conclusion
Bear in mind that managing affiliate links is neither simple nor easy as it seems, but with the right plugin it can be mastered fairly quickly. One of the essentials in this business is to stay true to yourself and promote only the products and/or services that you really like and use, since a bad referral can ruin you in just a few clicks. Maybe the safest way to begin, if you are new to this, is to build an Amazon affiliate store with WooCommerce.
So, set your goals, devise your affiliate marketing strategy and then pick the plugin that checks all the boxes for you.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
