Blogging is a fantastic fun activity in itself, however most of us love the additional challenge of earning some extra cash from our WordPress powered websites.
A popular way to do this is through affiliate links that earn us a small commission every time a sale is tracked back to our unique tracking code. Unfortunately these links are nearly always, long, ugly to look at and impossible to remember.
For example, Take this book listed on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0470568135?ie=UTF8&tag=jezza101-21&creativeASIN=0470568135
You’re never going to be able to tap that out from memory and looking up the link each time is a pain!
The challenge for any webmaster is to ensure that these tagged links are placed correctly within their site’s content – if the links aren’t formed correctly, you don’t earn the cash!
Problem: How can I quickly insert correctly tagged affiliate links into my WordPress blog?
Solution: The Simple Affiliate Links plugin allows you to add links into a central table and then easily reference these in any of your future posts.
How to Manage Affiliate Links in WordPress
The Simple Affiliate Links plugin is aimed at WordPress bloggers who typically promote a smaller number of products and will want to reference them specifically within their content.
For example, I often talk about WordPress here on my blog, and it is my belief that the best way to get started is to get yourself a good old fashioned book about WordPress.
Each time I want to recommend this book I don’t want to spend time looking up the right link and pasting into my post, and with this plugin, I don’t have to!
The link was generated by typing in the following:
[Redirect=wordpressbook]book about WordPress[/Redirect]
So all I have to remember is the “short name” that I associated with the link – in this case it was wordpressbook. It is also possible to set the plugin to automatically turn specific keywords, such as WordPress Book, into a link any time they appear.
You can see the link entry screen below:
And as an additional bonus, if I decide to promote a different book or find it on a cheaper site, I can update the link in my plugin’s Link Manager and instantly all references to the URL will be updated. Next time you click through, you’ll be taken to a different book or website.
Simple!
Want to try it yourself? Download the Simple Affiliate Links Plugin
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Jezza,
Saw that you worked for a large comparison site ;) Have you got expertise in PPC for them? We run niche comparison sites and could do with some experienced views on things ;)
Cheers
Jonathan
Hi Jonathan, I’m a data geek, and as part of my role I worked with the “search” team to automate the PPC bidding. We automated the extraction of keywords eg from search engine referrals (q= ), Webmaster tools, etc. The idea was to tie these to profitability to determine bid price or spot new terms that we could bid on.
However this was the culmination of a large BI project bringing together all of the company’s available data into a data warehouse to support these kinds of decisions. A great project, but expensive!
I wouldn’t know how to setup and administer a PPC campaign myself, I’ve always gone for organic search traffic in my personal projects.
PS if you want any links.