If you’re looking to monetize your WordPress site there are a lot of approaches you can take. However, one of the most effective routes, especially for beginners, is affiliate marketing.
With affiliate marketing you recommend products to your readers, and if they purchase a product through your link, then you’ll receive a commission. Succeeding with affiliate marketing is a lot more complex than that, but the basic idea remains the same.
One of the most popular ways to earn money as an affiliate is via the Amazon affiliate program.
Luckily WordPress and the Amazon affiliate program work really well together. There’s tons of plugins that’ll help you maximize your earnings and optimize your affiliate pages.
Below we dive into how the Amazon affiliate program works, and highlight the best WordPress affiliate marketing plugins that’ll help you generate more revenue and making your life as an affiliate much easier.
The Amazon Affiliate Marketing Program
If you’re running a WordPress site that’s getting decent traffic, then you’ll have a multitude of ways to start generating an income.
You could start selling your own products via an eCommerce store, sell your services as a freelancer, utilize display ads via a network like AdSense, or add affiliate links to your site and start making income via affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is one of the easier ways to start generating revenue from your website.
Essentially, you sign up for an affiliate program. In this case, you’d be signing up for the Amazon Affiliate program called Amazon Associates.
Once you’re approved, you’ll be able to start promoting products via Amazon and generating what is known as affiliate sales. Whenever you mention a product on your site, you’ll include a link to Amazon of the product you’re highlighting or reviewing.
These links will contain your unique tracking code, so whenever someone clicks the link from your site and purchases a product from Amazon you’ll get a percentage of the sale.
Entire websites are built around reviewing Amazon products, or you can add a link whenever it makes sense within your content.
The links that you’ll generate will be completely unique to you, so Amazon will be able to determine that it was you that sent that visitor to their site.
Benefits of Adding Affiliate Links to Your WordPress Site
There are tons of different affiliate programs you can sign up for. For example, if you want to become a hosting affiliate, you can sign up for the affiliate program right here at HostGator.
No matter what niche your website is in, you can find an affiliate program that matches up.
However, Amazon is one of the most widely used affiliate programs in the world for a good reason. Here are the most significant benefits you’ll receive when you start adding Amazon affiliate links to your WordPress site:
1. They’re a Trusted Marketplace
Amazon is one of the most trusted retailers on the planet. Making good money as an affiliate is all about trust, and Amazon already has that.
To make money as an affiliate people are going to need to buy the products you’re recommending.
Just clicking the link and browsing through the site isn’t enough. They need to either buy the product you’re suggesting, or in the case of Amazon, but something from the store while the cookie window is still active.
One of the biggest reasons people don’t follow through with their purchases is because they don’t trust the site. The typical scenario goes like this: A visitor comes to your website and likes the product you’re recommending, so they click your link and head over to the site. However, when they get there, they don’t fully trust the site with their valuable credit card information, so they end up not buying.
But, when you’re recommending Amazon products, you never have to worry about this. Most people already have their credit card information on file and have bought things from Amazon in the past. All they have to do is click a button.
2. The Amazon Marketplace is Massive
Amazon sells products in virtually every niche in the world. So, no matter the topic of your site, you can probably find a handful of products on Amazon that are worth promoting.
Whether you’re running a site about dog training, aerial drones, stress relief, meditation, kayaking, or any other topic you’ll be able to find a few highly rated products your readers are likely to buy.
This makes it easy to make money as an affiliate, no matter your niche.
3. Revenue From Total Sales
Unlike a lot of other affiliate programs, when someone heads over to Amazon via your affiliate link, you’ll receive a commission for any products they order for a 24 hour period.
So, if someone heads over to Amazon to check out a new blender from your affiliate link, but they also end up buying a new dishwasher, diapers, and some supplements, then you’ll receive a commission for that too.
This window also lasts for 24 hours, even if the person ends up leaving the site and coming back later that day to make a purchase.
There’s also an extended 90-day window for any products added to the cart, but aren’t immediately purchased. So, if someone visits Amazon via your link and adds a product to their cart, then they still have 90 days to buy that product–and you’ll still receive a commission.
Why You’ll Want to Use an Amazon Affiliate Plugin
If you have a WordPress site, you can get away without using an Amazon affiliate WordPress plugin. But using one will make your life a lot easier.
When you’re just starting, and you only include a single affiliate link here and there in your blog posts, you might not see the value in using a WordPress plugin. It’s easy enough to find the product on Amazon and copy and paste your link from your affiliate dashboard.
But, as you begin recommending more and more products, it can be difficult to decipher which links are making you money and which links are a total waste of time. By using some of the WordPress plugins,we’re going to highlight in the list below, you can better manage your Amazon affiliate links and even generate more revenue.
When you first start adding Amazon affiliate links to your WordPress site, it can be thrilling to get that first sale. But as your affiliate income grows, you’ll want measurable data that you can work from. This will help you better optimize your site and your content so that you can increase your affiliate income even further.
Using an Amazon affiliate plugin offers you all kinds of benefits like:
- Saving time by searching for products within your WordPress editor
- Create product comparison tables, so visitors can quickly see how products stack up
- Track your links and see what products are generating you the most revenue
- Automatically direct links to the correct Amazon storefront
- Keep your product listings up to date with automated updates
5 Best WordPress Plugins for Amazon Affiliates
As you start to search for Amazon affiliate plugins you’ll notice that there are a ton of different plugins available.
Below we highlight five of the best Amazon affiliate plugins for WordPress:
1. EasyAzon
EasyAzon helps you quickly create Amazon affiliate links from within your WordPress dashboard. This will save you a ton of time, since you don’t have to login to your Amazon Associates account and manually create an affiliate link.
You also have the ability to create image affiliate links, product blocks which showcase the features of your products, and call to action buttons.
If you want even more features, then you can upgrade to the premium version of the plugin, which gives you access to features like:
- Link cloaking, so your affiliate links don’t look like affiliate links
- Link localization, so your affiliate links will automatically send to the correct store, i.e., amazon.co.uk, instead of amazon.com.
- The ability to create and track multiple affiliate IDs, so you can see which links convert the best
2. AAWP (Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin)
AAWP is one of the most popular Amazon affiliate WordPress plugins. The goal of this plugin is to help you increase the total value of your Amazon affiliate pages.
This plugin achieves its goal by offering you different options to display your products, so they’re more enticing to your readers.
For example, you’ll be able to display your recommended products in the following ways:
- Comparison tables that show how different products stack up
- Product boxes that highlight product features and benefits
- Bestseller lists to showcase popular products
- Widgetized sections to add products throughout your site
Plus, all of the product information will be updated automatically to reflect the latest pricing and product information, because it pulls directly from Amazon.
3. Amazon Link Engine
Amazon Link Engine was created by the team behind the popular service, GeniusLink, the same link tracking and management service that’s used by writers like Ryan Holiday and companies like BMW and NBC.
The goal of this plugin is to help boost your sales and commissions by localizing all of your links. So, whenever someone clicks a link on your site they’ll be brought to the proper Amazon storefront.
This plugin takes care of the heavy lifting for you and all of your links are localized automatically. All you have to do is install and activate the plugin, then sync your Amazon Associates IDs.
This plugin functions differently than other link localization plugins, because it looks at more than just the product ID. This ensures that the traffic gets sent to the product they’re most likely to buy.
Here’s a quick run down of its feature set:
- Automatic link localization for all of your Amazon affiliate links
- Revenue maximization, since visitors won’t be sent to blank product pages
- Fast setup and configuration, just a couple of clicks
4. AmaLinks Pro
AmaLinks Pro is a relatively new WordPress plugin. It was built because the creators felt that the existing plugins weren’t delivering what they needed in a plugin. So, they built their own plugin that meets all their needs.
It’s since been endorsed by sites like Niche Pursuits and Human Proof Designs.
The goal of this plugin is to make integrating your WordPress site with Amazon as simple as possible. It’s equipped with features that allow you to:
- Search for products within your WordPress editor, so there’s no need to move back and forth between Amazon and your site.
- Quickly insert links into your content with a few clicks.
- Insert image links, so that your product pictures link out to Amazon too.
- Create a showcase box to highlight all the unique features of the product you’re promoting.
- Build comparison tables to help readers compare the differences between products.
5. AzonPress
AzonPress is an intuitive all-in-one plugin to integrate WordPress with Amazon. A lot of plugins equipped with a ton of different features can get overwhelming to use, but not this plugin. Think of it like a combination of all the above plugins highlighted on this list.
With this WordPress plugin you can do a lot of things. For example, you can create Amazon affiliate stores that function as if they were an eCommerce store. Let users browse through different products you’re highlighting and send them over to Amazon via an attractive “buy buttonâ€.
There are a variety of other different ways you can showcase your affiliate products as well, like:
- Product comparison tables, so your visitors can compare products quickly
- Responsive product tables that look good on every screen size
- Automated product updates, so you always have the latest product info
It’s also equipped with a built-in affiliate management dashboard, so you can easily see your earnings, view historical affiliate data, track which links are bringing you the most revenue, and a lot more.
By now you should have a better understanding of how the Amazon affiliate program works, and how you can best integrate it into your WordPress site.
You don’t have to install every plugin from the list above, but instead choose one or two that’ll help you achieve your goals. Ready to optimize your WordPress site for affiliate earnings? Check out these top WordPress themes for affiliate websites.
Kevin Wood writes about technology and human potential. You can find him at his virtual homes Wooden Writing and Counter Culturist.