How To Get Started With WordPress Affiliate Marketing?

Want to earn extra income through your WordPress website? WordPress affiliate marketing is an excellent way to get started with this endeavor.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative ways to monetize your WordPress site. To get started with affiliate marketing in WordPress, all you need to do is – sign up for an affiliate program, select a niche, and choose a WordPress affiliate marketing plugin.

Yes, it is that simple!

So, let’s first check out what affiliate marketing means and learn about its benefits before we look at the steps to start affiliate marketing in WordPress.

Read: Best WordPress Affiliate Plugins

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

In simple words, affiliate marketing refers to the process of promoting another company’s products or services on your website. The website owner (you) would earn a commission (a fixed amount or a percentage of the product value) whenever a customer purchases through the affiliate link.

For example, Envato Market runs affiliate programs. If you were to promote Envato’s products, such as WordPress themes or plugins, on your website, you could earn a commission when a user clicks on the affiliate link and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing is a mutually-beneficial online marketing tactic wherein both parties make a profit. You can promote the company’s product or services by writing high-quality content such as reviews, comparison articles, v/s posts, etc. Or, you can add an affiliate link to an existing, relevant page or post on your website.

Read: How To Turn WordPress Side Hustle Into A Full-Time Business

Benefits Of WordPress Affiliate Marketing

Additional income is one of the top benefits of affiliate marketing. If you already have a WordPress website, just install and activate an affiliate marketing plugin. Other benefits of WordPress affiliate marketing include:

• Low costs and risk: For affiliate marketing, all you need is a functional website with a decent amount of traffic. Domain name and web hosting are likely the only two things to pay for. Likewise, since you don’t have to buy any products or services, there are no upfront costs, making it a low risk venture.

• Flexibility: As an affiliate marketer, you have the flexibility to choose your schedule. You don’t have to work full-time. You just need to create content for the products or services you are promoting. Depending on the niche, you can put in the required time and effort.

• Networking: Networking plays a huge role in affiliate marketing, and by signing up for different affiliate programs, you can build valuable partnerships. This could prove to be lucrative in the future if you plan to start a new venture.

• Brand Recognition: If you already have a website, affiliate marketing can help further enhance brand awareness through referral links. You would get targeted traffic to your website. Plus, it can help you generate more revenue with every click.

Read: Click-Through Rates

How To Get Started With WordPress Affiliate Marketing?

If you have a WordPress website, you can start with affiliate marketing in 3 simple steps: Sign up for an affiliate program ➜ Select a niche ➜ Choose a plugin.

Sign Up For An Affiliate Program

Depending on your website, you can sign up with any affiliate program. Affiliate sites provide complete guidelines about the commission, monthly/weekly payouts, and other terms & conditions. Make sure to read through the guidelines carefully. You can also contact the respective affiliate’s customer support team for more details.

Best Paying WordPress Affiliate Programs

WordPress Hosting: Since WordPress is the #1 CMS, the demand for WordPress hosting is at an all-time high. You can sign-up with any of the following WordPress hosting affiliate programs.

• GoDaddy Affiliate Program
• Bluehost Affiliate Program
• WP Engine Affiliate Program
• SiteGround Affiliate Program
• InMotion Hosting Affiliate Program
• DreamHost Affiliate Program

Read: Best Cloud Hosting Services

WordPress Themes: Another lucrative WordPress niche is WordPress templates and themes. Just like the Envato Market affiliate program, there are other programs that you can consider.

• ThemeIsle Affiliate Program
• Elegant Themes Affiliate Program
• MyThemeShop Affiliate Program
• GeneratePress Affiliate Program
• Astra Affiliate Program
• ShareASale (formerly StudioPress Affiliate Program)

Read: Best Elementor Templates For WordPress

WordPress Plugins: Once you build a WordPress website, plugins can help optimize your website, take website backup, increase website security, and much more. Some of the top plugins that have affiliate programs are:

• Sucuri Affiliate Program
• WP Rocket Affiliate Program
• UpdraftPlus Affiliate Program
• WPForms Affiliate Program
• iThemes Affiliate Program

Read: Best WordPress Backup Plugins

Best eCommerce Affiliate Programs

Below are the most trusted and top-paying eCommerce affiliate programs that you can sign-up for today! Through eCommerce affiliate programs, you can pick and promote different products – electronics, books, or computer accessories – depending on your niche.

• Amazon Associates
• eBay Partner Network
• Target Partners Program
• Etsy Affiliates
• Alibaba Affiliate Marketing Platform
• Walmart Affiliate Program

Read: How To Start An Online Store

Select Your Niche 

If you already have a website, pick a niche that will interest your website visitors. 

For instance, if you run a WordPress blog on the best Bluetooth products, signing up with any of the above eCommerce affiliate programs can help monetize your blog.

You can either promote the entire category of Bluetooth products (headphones, earphones, speakers, etc). Or, narrow down your niche and only promote Bluetooth headphones. Based on your niche, you can produce content that resonates with your website visitors. This will entice them to click and check out the affiliate links in the content, which could result in a purchase.

If you don’t have a website and want to start affiliate marketing, connect with a WordPress development company. They will help you create a WordPress website that is aligned with your desired niche.

Choose A WordPress Affiliate Marketing Plugin 

One of the advantages of choosing the WordPress CMS to build a website is the availability of plugins and add-ons. To start affiliate marketing in WordPress, you need an affiliate marketing plugin. There are many plugins available, but we have narrowed it down to the top five affiliate marketing plugins for beginners.

• Once you have selected a suitable plugin for your website, install and activate it.

• A new affiliate section will be visible on your dashboard. Browse through the features to understand all functionalities.

• You can add new affiliates and manage your existing customers. You can create creatives like promotional banners and referral links.

• The plugin will also help you create important web pages – homepage, about us, registration page, etc.

AffiliateWP

This is a #1 affiliate marketing plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce. It offers 1-click integration and comes with a custom affiliate dashboard. Its advanced affiliate tracking feature makes it easy to track referral links, custom landing pages, affiliate promo codes, cross-domain promotions, and more.

With the AffiliateWP plugin, you can create unique affiliate banners, QR codes, coupons, and referral links. It supports over 30 languages and offers a 1-click payout via PayPal and Stripe. What’s more, this plugin comes with smart fraud detection technology that helps prevent affiliate fraud.

Pricing: This plugin offers three packages, Personal ($149.50/year), Plus ($199.50/year), and Professional ($299.50/year).

Affiliates Manager

This is an excellent plugin for managing an affiliate program. With the Affiliates Manager plugin, you can manage affiliate recruitment and registration & log in directly from your WordPress dashboard. This plugin also easily integrates with WooCommerce.

Coming to its features, this plugin helps track referral on your website, provide real-time reporting, and allows you to create unlimited creatives. It helps manage and track unlimited affiliates. Furthermore, it is translation-ready and simple to install.

Pricing: Available in free and paid versions, the Affiliates Manager PRO version starts at $39 for a single website. Whereas, the developer license costs $97 (for unlimited websites).

Easy Affiliates

If you run a WordPress membership website or an eCommerce store, you can start a self-hosted affiliate program with this plugin. It offers seamless integration with WooCommerce, MemberPress, Easy Digital Downloads, and PayPal. Its custom dashboard provides a complete overview of payments, account activity, key metrics, and creative assets.

Easy Affiliates plugin alerts you to suspicious activity through its fraud detection technology. It offers a 1-click payout option along with real-time reports. The best part, it also allows easy integration with email marketing services, such MailChimp and ActiveCampaign.

Pricing: The plugin offers three plans; Basic (for a single site), Plus (up to 3 websites), and PRO (up to 5 websites). The basic plan starts at $99.50/year, and all plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee.

ThirstyAffiliates

This is an exceptional affiliate link-cloaking plugin for WordPress. To start affiliate marketing in WordPress, you can use this plugin to cloak affiliate links while providing an enhanced user experience. This plugin is compatible with different affiliate programs and provides smart features that will help elevate your affiliate campaign.

Features offered by the ThirstyAffiliates plugin include third-party link import, auto-linking keywords based on suggestions, geo-location linking, and proactive link checking for common WordPress errors. This plugin also provides Google Analytics integration and in-depth reports.

Pricing: The PRO plan starts at $79.50/year for a single website. The other two plans are Plus ($129.50/year) and Advanced ($199.50/year). All plans come with a 100% no-risk, 14-day money-back guarantee.

Amazon Auto Links

If you have signed up for the Amazon Associates affiliate program, this plugin can help you display Amazon affiliate links on your website with minimal effort. The plugin supports all Amazon Associates locales, and the tagged links can even work on JavaScript-disabled browsers. You can also display product images in a post by adding product URLs. No shortcode is required.

With the Amazon Auto Links plugin, you can insert ads as a widget. It offers geo-targeting and product filtering features. It offers customizable buttons, which can be used to replace hyperlink text. This plugin also supports different languages. It works on WordPress 3.4 version or higher and has 10k active installations.

Pricing: You can download this plugin for free to start affiliate marketing in WordPress.

Digital Marketing Strategies For WordPress Affiliate Marketing 

We have listed three internet marketing tactics to help you generate more revenue from your WordPress affiliate website. If you need help with any of them, connect with a white-label digital marketing company.

Content Marketing

In affiliate marketing, creating high-quality, relevant content is critical. Quality content will not only keep your audience engaged, but it will also entice them to click on the affiliate link and make a purchase. 

For instance, if you are promoting eCommerce products, you can write detailed product reviews, comparison articles, or v/s articles. Listicles also work beautifully. Other content types could be blog posts listing the benefits of a particular product or service, infographics (which could be used for link building), and how-to-videos, among others.

If you need help creating quality content, you could outsource this task to a professional content writing service provider. They can create SEO-friendly and conversion-optimized content to promote your affiliate products and services.

Related: Creative Ways To Give Your Content Efforts A Boost

Invest in SEO

Whether you are running a simple blog, an eCommerce website, or a WordPress affiliate marketing site, you need to optimize your website to get targeted traffic. By investing in SEO, you can drive organic traffic to your website. An optimized website also makes it easy for search engine robots to accurately index web pages and posts. In addition, it can help reduce bounce rates and fix common technical SEO issues.

You can follow an SEO checklist and implement the best SEO practices to optimize your site. This brief checklist, for instance, includes on-page and off-page SEO tactics. It can also help you with technical SEO and link building. Plus, it includes a content checklist that can help you SEO-optimize your site’s content.

You could also make use of managed SEO services to optimize your website. The expert SEO team can optimize every aspect of your website, thereby helping boost brand visibility on the search result. Improved brand visibility can drive targeted traffic to your website, which can help boost revenue.

Read: Guide To Niche SEO

Promote Your Site On Social Media

Social media is one of the cost-effective digital marketing strategies that can help promote your affiliate business. All websites, WordPress affiliate marketing websites including, should have a presence on social media. It provides legitimacy to your business and helps increase brand awareness.

Setting up social media accounts for your business is simple. Depending on your niche, you can create social media profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. If you create how-to videos to explain your affiliate products, you can also set up a YouTube channel.

There are various social media tools available that can help you manage your social accounts. Or you can hire a social media management and marketing company to handle the social part of your business. The social media team will help streamline your social campaigns while ensuring brand consistency across all platforms.

Read: Social Media Strategies For Your Small Business

Conclusion

WordPress affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to monetize your blog, website, or eCommerce store. Affiliate marketing provides many benefits, like networking opportunities, flexibility to work on your own schedule, and higher ROI. It is also a low-cost and almost no-risk online business venture.

Setting up affiliate marketing in WordPress is simple and can be done in three steps – sign up for an affiliate program, choose a niche, and activate an affiliate marketing plugin.

Next, create quality content for your website, which will help boost customer engagement and increase sales & revenue. Also, to improve brand visibility, drive targeted traffic, and generate potential leads that convert, use different digital marketing techniques, such as SEO and social media.