Are you looking for the best WordPress affiliate plugins for your WordPress site?
Affiliate marketing can be an excellent way to create multiple streams of income. And while many online “gurus” will tell you how easy it is, the truth is that affiliate marketing can be tough–unless you have the right tools.
That’s why, in today’s post, we’re going to share our expert list of the best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers.
But first, let’s get clear on what affiliate marketing really is.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is when you promote another company’s products or services. Then, when someone from your audience makes a purchase, you receive a small commission.
Over time, you can generate income from hundreds (or thousands) of affiliate links across your site. And if your website has a good reputation with lots of traffic, you’re looking at huge earning potential.
Sounds simple, right? Well, it is!
But “simple” doesn’t always mean “easy,” which is where most people end up missing the mark. And one of the biggest problems affiliate marketers face is that they just don’t have the right tools for the job.
They build a website, produce tons of content with no strategy, insert their affiliate links wherever they can, and wonder why they’re not making any money.
But when you invest in the best affiliate marketing plugins, you can expect to see major growth in your affiliate profits.
So let’s turn our attention to the best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers so you can start making more money today!
Best WordPress Affiliate Marketing Plugins
These plugins will help you do everything from masking and promoting your affiliate links, collecting data, increasing traffic to your site, and more.
1. Pretty Links
Pretty Links is an awesome affiliate marketing plugin that turns your long affiliate links into something readable and easy to remember.
And shorter links really do make bigger impressions on your audience.
In addition to giving you better affiliate links, Pretty Links also gives you an easier way to manage server-side redirects, brand and advertise your links, monitor your links’ activity.
There’s also a cloaking feature to keep your affiliate links more secure. Sometimes hackers will find your raw affiliate links and replace them. That means the profits from all your hard work will actually go into someone else’s pocket.
Link cloaking makes sure this doesn’t happen.
Pretty Links is a must-have plugin for any serious affiliate marketer using WordPress.
Key Features:
- QR code generator
- Sales tracking
- Link management
Pricing: Pricing plans for Pretty Links start at $79/year.
2. ThirstyAffiliates
Thirsty Affiliates is another excellent resource for affiliate marketing on WordPress.
This plugin focuses on cloaking your affiliate links. This lets you turn your long, ugly affiliate links into shorter links that are more memorable.
That means it’s easier for you to keep track of all the links on your site and easier for your audience to share them.
Plus, as we discussed earlier, cloaking your links is one of the best ways to prevent your links from getting hacked.
Key Features:
- 3rd part link importing
- Analytics and link tracking
- Automatic 404 checker
Pricing: Thirsty Affiliates plans start at $49/year.
3. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a premium WordPress plugin that will help you promote your affiliate links. It’s also the best conversion optimization software on the market. That means this plugin’s the best at getting your site’s traffic to take the actions you want them to.
With OptinMonster’s drag and drop builder and stunning pre-built design templates, you can build eye-catching campaigns to promote your affiliate products.
You also have the choice of 6 different campaign types: popup, floating bar, fullscreen welcome mat, and more.
OptinMonster also has the market’s strongest targeting rules, so your campaigns are shown to the best audience at the best time.
Every time.
For example, you can tell OptinMonster to display your Amazon affiliate link for car seats to anyone that reads any post on your blog car seats.
Then, you can take it a step further by targeting people actively leaving your site with Exit-Intent® Technology. This lets you show a campaign at the exact moment users try to leave your website.
In fact, those are the exact display rules and triggers that power this adorable and eye-catching popup.
And that exact popup converts 17.31% of visitors for Top 6 Digital.
Get these results for your own affiliate links by signing up for OptinMonster today!
Key Features:
- Drag and drop builder
- A/B testing to find what campaigns work best for your audience
- Advanced targeting rules
Pricing: OptinMonster packages start at just $9/month.
4. MonsterInsights
MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics (GA) plugin on the market. It takes the power of GA and makes all the data more accessible, user-friendly, and intuitive to use.
Now, we know what you’re thinking, “What does a Google Analytics software plugin have to do with affiliate marketing?”
In a word, everything.
That’s because a large part of affiliate marketing is getting the highest conversions out of your traffic. But to do that, you need to know which pages and posts on your site are actually generating that traffic.
With MonsterInsights, you get your top posts right in your WordPress dashboard:
You can then go optimize those pages to get higher conversions for your affiliate links.
In other words, using an analytics plugin like MonsterInsights allows you to create a concrete strategy for generating the most revenue from your affiliate products.
Want to learn more about how MonsterInsights can help you grow your affiliate revenue? See this post: Monsterinsights Review: Is This Analytics Plugin Worth It?
Key Features:
- View analytics right in your WordPress dashboard
- Compliant with global privacy regulations
- Individual customer tracking
Pricing: MonsterInsights starts at $99.50/year.
5. SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing solution and the perfect tool for affiliate marketers.
One of the biggest benefits of using SEMrush is that you can keep better track of your competitors. You can even use their strategies to create a better plan for promoting your affiliate products.
That’s right, SEMrush lets you spy on other companies’ paid advertising campaigns. It shows you a lot of important things, like:
- Where competitors spend money on advertisements
- How those advertisements perform
- Ways you can tweak your affiliate marketing campaign
Not sure who your competitors are? No problem! SEMrush has a few other nifty tools which you can use to:
- Find and target potential competitors and customers
- Research high-quality keywords
- Identify patterns in your industry
You can also use SEMrush with keyword research. This will help you rank on popular search engines like Google and bring your site more traffic.
Not sure how to do keyword research? Read our in-depth guide, Keyword Research 101: How to Choose the Right Words for SEO.
If you’re looking to improve your SEO strategy or want to learn how to beat out your competitors, SEMrush is a tool worth investing in for your affiliate marketing plan.
Key Features:
- Keyword research
- Competitor analytics
- SEO auditing tools
Pricing: The pricing plans start at $5/month for up to 2,500 sessions!
6. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular research tool for tracking your competition. Ahrefs is also great for enhancing your own marketing strategy. It makes it easy to:
- Research new content used by top-performing brands
- Analyze backlinks
- Explore new link-building opportunities
Naturally, you want to strengthen your affiliate campaign. You can also use Ahref’s “Content Explorer” to find other brands and businesses in your niche.
Then you can reach out to them for future partnerships. This can help you create more backlinks, drive traffic through influencers mentioning your brand, or finding people to take part in your own affiliate program.
Ahrefs is an excellent tool for keeping better track of your competitors and growing your affiliate network.
Key Features:
- Site auditing tools
- Keyword research
- Rank trakers
Pricing: Ahrefs plans begin at $99/month.
7. All in One SEO
All in One SEO is an awesome WordPress SEO plugin that will help you create and attract the right traffic to your affiliate site.
You can choose focus keywords when you’re drafting your content, and All in One SEO handles all the technical SEO in the background. You’ll get a list of search engine optimization tips for your content that will help you improve your content, so it’s more attractive to search engines.
This will improve your rankings, which means you won’t just bring in more traffic, you’ll bring in the right kind of traffic.
And if you’ve optimized your site with OptinMonster’s high-converting campaigns, more traffic will inevitably mean more affiliate profits.
Key Features:
- Easy to use Setup Wizard
- Track SEO as you write your posts
- Site audit checklist
Pricing: AIOSEO plans start at $49.50/year.
8. AffiliateWP
AffiliateWP is a complete affiliate plugin for WordPress.
Note: Unlike the other plugins in this post, AffiliateWP is meant for businesses running their own affiliate program. This is not a plugin for affiliate marketers.
To monitor and manage your affiliate program, AffiliateWP comes with advanced tracking that seamlessly integrates with your WordPress site. You can reliably track real-time stats including affiliate-referred visits, earnings, affiliate registrations, affiliate coupons, and more.
AffiliateWP also offers unlimited affiliates and creatives so you have no limits on how you can promote your website, products, or services.
Plus, it comes packed with powerful features such as a built-in affiliate dashboard, referral link generator, and integrated payout services, just to name a few.
Key Features:
- Full dashboard to track your company’s affiliate program
- Integrated payout service
- Unlimited affiliates
Pricing: You can get started with AffiliateWP for $149.50/year.
And there you have it!
These are the best WordPress plugins for affiliate marketers.
We hope you enjoyed this post. If you did, you might want to check out these other resources:
- How to Improve Affiliate Sales With One Simple Strategy
- How to Start an Affiliate Program: Your Complete Step-by-Step Guide
- How to Cloak Affiliate Links in WordPress for More Sales
- Easy Affiliate Marketing Tips to Increase Your Income
These resources will help you level up your affiliate marketing game no matter where you are in the process!
Thanks for reading this article – I hope you found it helpful.
I wanted to let you know about our powerful Exit Intent® technology that converts abandoning website visitors into email subscribers and customers. Typically 70% of the people who visit your website will leave and never return, meaning all those marketing efforts to reach them have gone to waste.
OptinMonster’s Exit Intent® technology detects user behavior and prompts them with a targeted campaign at the precise moment they are about to leave.
You can unlock this powerful technology 100% free when you purchase our OptinMonster Pro plan.
Get started with OptinMonster today and see why 1,000,000+ choose OptinMonster to get more subscribers and customers.
Thomas Griffin
President of OptinMonster
Hi,
I am often confused about whether the paid advertising is allowed, or does it work for affiliate marketing. I mean, would it work if you create an ad on Google or Facebook that points to an affiliate product? I have read somewhere a few years back that it is not. But then again, there are many articles mentioning paid traffic.
I do get that many of the plugins mentioned on this page utilize SEO traffic. Is that the only way, the organic traffic? This article clearly states no SEO and no ads. How is it then possible to work at all?
Hey, David! The article you link appears to be an ad for a specific system of earning commissions that doesn’t involve SEO or paid ads. It even links to another site where you have to buy the details of the system for $9.95.
For affiliate marketing success, we recommend building a website filled with great content, growing your email list, and using a combination of SEO, email marketing, and paid ads (if you want) to promote your affiliates. We have a guide to getting started with affiliate marketing that you may find useful.
The bottom line is that, yes, you can use paid ads to promote affiliate products. However, many brands have specific words and phrases that you can’t use (usually, paid ads using the brand name are out). You’ll want to check the fine print to make sure that your paid ads aren’t going to go against the brand’s guidelines.
I hope this helps!
Thanks for this article. I like all the plugins but I specifically MonsterInsights, Yoast SEO, Affiliate Royale are really great.
Thanks for stopping by Mattew 🙂
I have a confusion can I earn from AdSense and Affiliate together or I have to only use one way for monetization ?
Hey and good question! You can use both together which can be good when you’re just starting out. That said, any ads unrelated to your affiliate products can distract readers and prevent them from clicking affiliate links. Whether or not using both is a good idea depends on your site’s traffic, reputation, and your niche. But, again, there’s nothing stopping you from using both 🙂