Most affiliate marketing tools and WordPress plugins are for paid customers only.
There isn’t much out there for the beginner or the low-budget affiliate who needs special tools to help convert traffic into sales and subscribers.
But you know what?
They’re around.
Yes. You don’t need to rely on plain old text to fill your content.
There are several quality plugins available in the WordPress plugin directory for the affiliate who can’t afford to spend the big bucks on big affiliate marketing tools.
And that is what I’m going to show you today…
5 Free Must-use Affiliate Marketing Tools (For WordPress)
There are a lot of free WordPress plugins out there that are made for affiliates.
A lot of them, however, are junk.
Some of them may even hurt your site…
There are plugins that can break your site because of how they’re coded.
There are even plugins that will slow your site down, which can lead to a loss in search rankings and user experience.
But the 5 plugins I have listed below, you will only be getting quality.
Let’s have a look…
Shortcodes Ultimate
Here’s a free plugin that’s given to us by Vladimir Anokhin.
Shortcodes Ultimate has are more than 50 shortcodes you’ll be able to play with here.
But the main reason why you need this is because of the button shortcode.
This is so you won’t need to upload button images to your blog, which will save you a ton of space. Those little 5kb uploads will add up, you know.
Shortcodes Ultimate has a very customizable button you could almost do anything with.
There are a lot of different shapes, sizes, colors, styles, and even those little badass icons.
So how can you put this to good use?
By creating mini strong call-to-actions within your content.
These buttons will grab your reader’s attention while they’re reading your content or reviews.
Because that’s our goal, right? To get your readers to your main review and the product’s sales/checkout page.
Shortcodes Ultimate’s Pros
- A very customizable button shortcode
- Over 50 shortcodes available
- Very easy to use
Great Alternative – WP Shortcode
SumoMe’s Tools
This plugin is amazing. Even for affiliates.
There are list building tools, social sharing tools, and a few other tools. And they’re all packed in one!
But the reasons why I’ve included in on this list is because of 4 apps:
- Share – which is a responsive floating share button sidebar;
- List Builder – which is a popup optin form;
- SmartBar – which is a little header bar which can be used for list building or to encourage social engagement;
- and Welcome Mat – which is another optin form tool.
Definitely a must-use for all affiliates.
This can get you a lot of social shares, both from desktop and mobile users, and email subscribers.
Why do you need email subscribers, you might be thinking…
People who optin to your list are people who like you, your site, and your content.
So that means that you can market to them every time you promote a new product or blog post.
Cool?
SumoMe’s Pros:
- Fine suite of marketing tools
- Easy to use
- Lightweight
Great Alternative – N/A
TablePress
This is a plugin by Tobias Bäthge. He created this plugin so that you can create and manage your own tables within your WordPress admin panel.
All you’d do to insert a table into a post or page is create a table using the easy-to-use creator, and then copy and pasting the shortcode into wherever you want the table to appear.
Sounds easy, right? It is.
And the reason why it’d be so good for an affiliate site is that you’d be able to set it up like a mini top X review.
Check out what I did with Tablepress:
Pretty sweet, huh?
You can even add images of the product into the table…
Awesome!
Tablepress’s Pros:
- Unlimited rows and columns
- Pagination support
- Image support
- Very easy to use
Great Alternative – N/A
ThirstyAffiliates
This is a plugin that makes your affiliate links look better. And it’s a must for the affiliate marketer.
You know how ugly affiliate links are, right?
“merchantswebsite.com?a_aid=a1c2d799”
Having a bunch of these within your posts would look weird. At least it is, to me.
But with this plugin, you can turn that ugly thing into something more professional. Like this:
“yourblogname.com/go/productname”
ThirstyAffiliates also lets you put your links in categories. This is great for better managing your links.
ThirstyAffiliates’ Pros:
- Affiliate link cloaker
- Link management with categories
- Easy to use and manage
- A lot of useful add-ons for paid customers
Great Alternative – Pretty Link
WP Product Review
Product reviews are very important for an affiliate site, right? They’ll get you traffic, leads, and sales.
So with a plugin like WP Product Review, you can make your reviews more attractive. Which would then lead to more click-throughs and commissions?
Here’s what this plugin can do for your posts and reviews:
Sick!
WP Product Review’s Pros:
- Advanced rating system
- Supports Pros and Cons
- Unlimited colors
- Supports the “buy” button
- Option to add affiliate link + image
- Fully responsive and lightweight
- Easy to use
Great Alternative – WP Review
Conclusion
Not using any website or marketing tools whatsoever is a huge mistake.
You can’t really rely on plain old blog posts to make all your affiliate commissions.
The 5 WordPress plugins listed above will surely help your affiliate site(s) convert traffic into affiliate sales and loyal subscribers.
Do you know of any WP plugin that might fit well on this list?
Let me know in the comments below.
And if you have any questions, I’m always here.