Useful WordPress Plugins
If you can’t tell by now, I’m a big fan of using WordPress for affiliate sites. The price is right (it’s free), it’s a snap to install and use, and it lets you get up and running with affiliate marketing even if you barely know any HTML at all.
WordPress also has a lot of nifty plugins that people have created to make your life easier as an affiliate, too. Below are some of the free plugins that I currently use, all designed to shave off half a minute here, or a couple of minutes there, in the daily routine of working on content for assorted affiliate sites.
Adsense Deluxe: This is a very useful plugin that lets you manage Google Adsense ads throughout your site from the WordPress interface. You create the ads at Adsense but the plugin lets you quickly add them to certain pages but not others, run multiple ads simultaneously, and quickly swap out ad formats on the fly. The real value in this one is that you no longer have to manually go into templates or individual pages to swap out ads, as the plugin centralizes all of that work and lets you manage all of your Adsense ads from one location.
aLinks: This plugin allows you to quickly embed your affiliate links in your content, with a minimum of hassle. You basically tell it that you’d like the phrase “blue widgets” to always link to Widgets.com, with your affiliate link included in the link, so that when you type “blue widget” in WordPress, it automatically converts it to a hyperlink with your affiliate code attached. This seems like a small thing but it will literally save you many hours, as you routinely link to the same sorts of things, and this plugin allows you to do it on the fly.
SlimStats: This is a simple stats package that lets you quickly get website traffic stats on your WordPress dashboard. There are fancy stats plugins out there but this one is a snap to install and is designed to put very little load on your site, while giving you all of the basic stats and functionality that you need.
WP-Amazon: This one essentially pulls the Amazon catalog into the WordPress environment and makes it much easier to add links to specific titles and products in Amazon’s affiliate program.
Amazon Media Manager: Another plugin that speeds the process of adding Amazon products into your site.
Useful WordPress Plugins and related information can be found in Adsense, Affiliate Toolbox, Getting Started