Are you looking for new ways to grow your affiliate marketing revenue?
There’s a lot of money to be made! In 2023, affiliate marketing made over $17 billion globally.
But while the average salary for an affiliate marketer is over $60,000, many people earn much less while a few earn much more. What makes the difference?
Here are 7 tips that will help you grow your affiliate marketing revenue.
Note: This is a guest post by Blair Williams, the founder of Pretty Links, a popular all-in-one affiliate link management plugin. We publish an expert column on WPBeginner every other Thursday. This is an invite-only column, meaning we don’t accept unsolicited guest post offers.
I will cover quite a few topics in this post. Here’s a handy list so you can jump to the section you are most interested in:
The first step in generating revenue from affiliate sales is to make sure you attract an audience that actually wants to try out the product or service you recommend.
Since over 70% of affiliate marketers get most of their traffic from search engines like Google, that makes SEO really important.
But SEO takes time, especially if you’re competing against other affiliate marketing sites for keywords with high search volume and high competition.
To earn the most commissions, I highly recommend targeting investigational keywords. Let me explain why.
Generally speaking, Google searches are performed with 4 different types of intent, and the best match for affiliate websites is investigational intent. Here’s a quick breakdown of the different kinds of search intent:
Users with navigational intent are trying to get to a particular website. Example: search on Google with the phrase www.wpbeginner.com
Users with informational intent are simply trying to find an answer to a question. Example: search on Google with the phrase who is the current US President.
Users with transactional intent have already made a decision and are ready to purchase or download the product they chose. Example: buy Apple iPhone 15 Pro
Finally, users with investigational intent are looking for information that may eventually lead to a purchase or transaction. Example: best student laptops, compare hp vs dell laptops, etc.
Users with investigational intent will want to read product reviews, showcases, and comparisons like yours before making a final purchasing decision. This means as an affiliate marketer, it’s your job to help your users find the right product and get them purchase it through your affiliate link.
They use investigational keywords in their search queries that include words like ‘best’, ‘review’, ‘compare’, and ‘alternative’.
Here are some examples of investigational intent keywords:
By targeting investigational keywords, you will drive the right audience to your site. I’ve found that means you won’t have to get as much traffic to make a decent affiliate income.
2. Publish High-Quality Content
Now that you know the investigational keywords that will bring potential customers to your site, your next job is to create high-quality content that ranks for those keywords.
That means writing in-depth product reviews, comparisons with pros and cons, video reviews, and more. Only 28% of affiliate marketers use blogs to promote their affiliate links, and I think that number should be much higher.
Not only will high-quality content bring in traffic to your WordPress website, but you will also benefit from long-term traffic that comes from your blog’s rankings.
Some of the most successful affiliates have become experts at using the product or service they are reviewing. In fact, demonstrating real-life experience in your reviews is more important now than ever.
In December 2022, Google added ‘experience’ to their E-E-A-T ranking criteria. Now, unless you show first-hand experience with the products you write about, Google may penalize you in the long run by giving your site a lower search ranking.
Darren Rowse’s Digital Photography School blog is a great example of what you should be doing. He shows excellent photos taken on Canon and Nikon SLR cameras and then mentions those cameras in posts and tutorials.
Not only does this improve his ‘experience’ score with Google, but when his visitors are inspired by the spectacular photos taken by the cameras he reviews, they will be more likely to purchase them using his affiliate links.
You can do the same by producing more content, such as detailed blog posts or YouTube videos, displaying your skills using the actual product or service. Just make sure you don’t just talk about a product’s features. You also need to show your audience how they can use those features to get great results.
3. Use a Centralized Affiliate Link Management System
The best way to add affiliate links to your website or blog is by using a plugin like Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates. Creating a centralized affiliate link management system in your WordPress dashboard can save you a lot of time.
For example, when one of your affiliate partners changes your link, you would normally need to find every post where the link appears and update the link manually.
But with an affiliate link plugin, you simply need to update it once, and it will update across your entire website.
These plugins will also let you cloak the affiliate links you promote on your website. Typically, affiliate links are long and ugly like this:
A cloaked affiliate link looks better and is easier to understand:
http://www.yoursite.com/refer/productname
Besides these benefits, an affiliate link manager lets you categorize your links, add notes, check for links that have stopped working, and much more. This means you can spend less time managing your affiliate links and more time creating high-quality content.
4. Enable Affiliate Link Tracking
Now that you’ve added affiliate links to your website, it’s essential to track how many times each one is being clicked.
This will help you see which affiliate products are performing well, and which of your blog posts are generating the most clicks.
This information will let you make improvements to your website that result in more revenue, and you can also use the metrics to negotiate with your partner companies for higher payouts. I’ll talk about this more later on.
Google Analytics can show how much traffic your links are sending to each affiliate product, but beginners can find it tricky to use.
Instead, I recommend using an analytics plugin like MonsterInsights because it makes your analytics easy to understand and supports affiliate link tracking out of the box.
Now that you know how much traffic you are sending to each affiliate link, you should compare it with the revenue you made. This will help you discover your highest-performing products, and focusing on them will boost your affiliate income.
5. Convert Up to 60% of Abandoning Visitors With an Affiliate Popup
We spoke earlier about how to increase your affiliate income by bringing more visitors to your website. It’s also important to think about the visitors leaving your site, or you will miss out on sales.
You need to grab the attention of abandoning visitors before they leave your site because 70% of them will never come back.
Nadi Lopez, a marketing specialist at Top 6 Digital, combats this using an exit-intent popup. It detects the user’s mouse movement and shows them an affiliate promotion when they’re about to leave.
He uses OptinMonster to display a popup that is customized for the content the reader is viewing at the time, like this:
The plan worked, and 17.31% of visitors who saw the popup above clicked the link.
As a result, Top 6 Digital’s affiliate revenue increased by 30%, and on some web pages, as many as 62% of abandoning visitors were converted.
Your visitors won’t click a link they don’t notice. You’ll get more clicks and revenue by highlighting the affiliate mentions in your articles.
You can try doing this in lots of different ways. Just make sure you track affiliate clicks to measure which methods are most effective on your blog and individual posts.
For example, you can highlight a link by simply bolding it or using colored text.
Or you can make a link more obvious by placing it in an affiliate product box or button. Some websites also use discreet icons like arrows or shopping carts next to the links to show they are affiliate links.
You could also create a call to action (CTA) where you mention the affiliate product or service. For best results, use persuasive language that encourages readers to learn more or click through.
7. Negotiate With Brands for a Higher Commission Tier
Finally, you can make more affiliate income by simply asking your partners for a higher commission percentage. This can potentially help you make the biggest gains in revenue.
Because you’ve already enabled link tracking, you will be able to gather the information you need to demonstrate the value you bring your affiliate partner.
Make sure you do your research first. Some affiliate plans may already offer a tiered structure that pays higher commission rates for higher sales volumes. Otherwise, you can speak to the affiliate manager about increasing the rates for your website.
Don’t become aggressive or demanding or you may damage your relationship with the company. Make sure you remain courteous and flexible and aim for a win-win outcome.
Are you wondering how to add affiliate links to your WordPress site?
Adding affiliate links for third-party products/services on your website is a great way to generate passive income. Every time someone buys something through one of your links, you will make a small commission.
In this article, we will show you how to easily add affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates. We will also share some tips to improve your affiliate marketing strategy.
Why Use ThirstyAffiliates for Affiliate Links in WordPress?
An affiliate link is a special type of link that you add to your online content. You can earn a commission if a visitor clicks on the link and then makes a purchase on the affiliated website.
If you have a WordPress blog, then affiliate marketing can add a steady income stream and improve your monetization strategy.
To add affiliate links in WordPress, you will need to use an affiliate link management plugin. This makes it easy to design custom affiliate links, track their performance, and more.
It even helps you create branded URLs, comes with a search form, and allows you to automatically replace keywords with affiliate links, making it a complete solution.
Note: We use ThirstyAffiliates on WPBeginner for affiliate link management.
Having said that, let’s see how to easily add affiliate links in WordPress with ThirstyAffiliates. You can use the quick links below to jump to different parts of our tutorial:
How to Install and Set Up the ThirstyAffiliates Plugin
First, you will need to visit the ThirstyAffiliates website and click on the ‘Pricing’ tab in the top right corner of the screen.
This will take you to the ‘Pricing’ page, where you have to select a subscription plan that suits your needs.
Once you have done that, you need to visit your WordPress website to install and activate the ThirstyAffiliates plugin. For detailed instructions, you may want to see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: ThirstyAffiliates also has a free version that you can use. However, we will be using the premium plugin to unlock more features.
Upon activation, visit the ThirstyAffiliates » Settings page from the WordPress admin sidebar and switch to the ‘License’ tab in the left column.
Here, simply paste your license key for the plugin and click the ‘Activate License Key’ button.
You can find this information in your account on the ThirstyAffiliates website.
Next, switch to the ‘Link Appearance’ tab from the sidebar on the left to configure some settings.
Once you are there, you can start by choosing a link prefix from the dropdown menu. This prefix will be used in your cloaked link before the link slug.
For example, if you choose the ‘Recommends’ option as the link prefix, then your affiliate links will look like this:
http://www.your-site.com/recommends/link-name
You can also create a custom link prefix by selecting the ‘Custom’ option from the ‘Link Prefix’ dropdown menu.
Once you’ve done that, simply type the link prefix of your choice into the ‘Custom Link Prefix’ field. In our example, we are using ‘refer’.
After that, you can also check the box next to the ‘Link Category in URL?’ option if you want to show the selected affiliate link category in the URL.
This will add a link category to the URL after the link prefix and before the link slug like this:
http://www.your-site.com/refer/category/link-name
Next, scroll down to the ‘Use nofollow on links?’ section and select the ‘Yes’ option from the dropdown menu.
This means that the nofollow attribute will now be added to all your affiliate links, which will tell the search engines not to pass a small portion of your authority to the other website.
We recommend using this option because it’s a general SEO best practice. For more details, you may want to see our step-by-step guide on how to add nofollow links in WordPress.
Once you’ve done that, you can also open all your affiliate links in new tabs by choosing ‘Yes’ next to the ‘Open links in a new window?’ option.
After that, you can leave the other settings as default or configure them as you like.
Finally, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom to store your settings.
How to Add Affiliate Links in WordPress Using ThirstyAffiliates
Now that you have set up the plugin, you need to head over to the ThirstyAffiliates » New Affiliate Link page from the WordPress dashboard.
Once you are there, you can start by typing a name for your affiliate link in the ‘Add Title’ field.
As this name will be used in the cloaked URL created by ThirstyAffiliates, we recommend using the product or service name as the link title.
Next, you have to add the full affiliate link with your affiliate ID in the ‘Destination URL’ field.
You can also attach an image to your affiliate link by clicking on the ‘Upload/Insert’ button under the ‘Attach Images’ section.
This will launch the media library on the screen, where you can upload an image of your choice.
We recommend using this setting if you want to display affiliate links in sidebars or have templates where links can be shown with images.
Now, scroll down to the ‘Autolink Keywords’ section and type the keywords that you want to automatically link to this particular affiliate link.
This will save you a lot of time when writing a blog post on your website, as the affiliate links will be automatically added once you type in a specific keyword.
Next, you can also set a limit for auto-linking in the ‘Limit (per keyword):’ option.
For example, if you type the number 3 in this field, then ThirstyAffiliates will automatically stop auto-linking the affiliate link with the specific keyword after the first three times.
After that, you can also sort your links into categories. To do this, simply click the ‘+ Add New Category’ link in the ‘Link Categories’ section on the right.
From here, type the category name that suits your affiliate link and click the ‘Add New Category’ button.
After that, scroll down to the ‘Link Options’ section in the right column and select if you want to add the nofollow attribute, open the link in a new tab, pass the query string to the destination URL, and even change the redirect type of your link.
You can also leave these settings as they are because they will already be configured according to the options that you picked when setting up the plugin.
Finally, click the ‘Save Link’ button at the top to store your settings and create your first affiliate link.
Adding Affiliate Links in WordPress Posts and Pages
Aside from using the auto-linker, sometimes you may want to manually add affiliate links to your WordPress posts and pages.
To do this, open a post/page in the block editor from the WordPress admin sidebar.
Once you are there, you will notice that ThirstyAffiliates has added an ‘Affiliate Link’ button in the toolbar at the top of your blocks.
Now, to manually add an affiliate link to your WordPress post or page, simply select the anchor text for the link (the words you want to put the link on) and click the ‘TA’ icon in the block toolbar at the top.
This will open a search form on the screen where you have to type the name of the affiliate link that you created.
Once the link appears in the search results, simply click on it to add it to the anchor text.
After that, don’t forget to click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button at the top to store your settings.
You have now successfully added an affiliate link to your WordPress page/post.
Managing Affiliate Links in ThirstyAffiliates
ThirstyAffiliates uses built-in WordPress functionality to manage links. Links added via the ThirstyAffiliates plugin are added into a custom post type, which makes it really simple to add, edit, or delete them.
To manage your affiliate links, simply visit the ThirstyAffiliates » Affiliate Links page from the admin area.
Here, you can click on the ‘Edit’ link under the affiliate link of your choice to make some changes or click on the ‘Trash’ link to delete it.
You can also use the ‘Filters’ option at the top to filter all your affiliate links according to categories.
If you have the statistics add-on activated, then it will also show you the number of clicks for each link broken down into daily, weekly, and monthly clicks.
To view the full statistics report, just visit the ThirstyAffiliates » Reports page from the WordPress admin sidebar.
From here, you can easily get a statistics report for your affiliate link performance over the last year, month, or week. You can even set a custom date for your report.
This can help you show which link categories are performing better, which links are getting more clicks and fewer sign-ups, and which ones are getting fewer clicks and more signups.
You can then improve your content strategy to maximize your earning potential.
Bonus Tips for Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a super easy way to earn money online. If you are new to affiliate marketing, then the first step is to find a product or company that you are passionate about and would like to promote.
Once you’ve done that, you can partner with that company by asking to join their affiliate program and then using the affiliate ID provided by them to sell their products on your website.
You can typically find an affiliate program by searching for an ‘Affiliates’ page on a company’s website.
When choosing an affiliate program, it is important to pick a reputable company and recommend a product that you personally use and trust.
In addition, try to find affiliate programs that are relevant to your audience and sell products/services that your visitors may need.
For example, if you run a food blog, then you might want to endorse kitchen appliances, cookbooks, or food-related merchandise that your users may already be interested in.
Moreover, don’t try to overstuff your content with irrelevant affiliate links, as the key to driving traffic to your website and affiliate products is to create quality content.
Are you looking for the best affiliate link management plugin for your website?
The right affiliate URL management plugin will help you add relevant links to your site, so you never miss a chance to make money. They’ll also make it easier to monitor, update, and fine-tune your links to get as many sales as possible.
In this article, we will compare Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates, to help you decide which affiliate plugin is right for your website.
Why Use an Affiliate Link Management Plugin?
Affiliate marketing is where you earn a commission every time someone buys a product using your unique referral link. It’s a great way to make money online without having to create and sell your own digital downloads or physical products.
However, it’s not enough to simply add affiliate links to your site. To get sales, you need to place those links in the right place and show them to the right people.
It’s also important to monitor the number of click-throughs and conversions, identify any broken links, update outdated URLs, and much more.
This can take a lot of time and effort, which is why so many marketers use an affiliate link management plugin. The right plugin can help you better manage your affiliate links, and even help automate certain processes like contextual linking.
In this Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates guide, we’re comparing two of the most popular affiliate plugins to see which is right for your website. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the feature you want to compare.
An effective link management plugin is a must-have for any affiliate marketer. With that being said, let’s start with an overview of these two popular link management plugins.
ThirstyAffiliates – Overview
ThirstyAffiliates is an affiliate management plugin that allows you to replace ugly affiliate URLs with branded links.
It has everything you need to make money online blogging with WordPress including link scheduling, Google Analytics integration, automatic keyword linking, geolocation specific links, and an automatic 404 checker.
You can also organize your links into categories, so it’s easier to work with lots of different affiliate partners.
Note: We have been using ThirstyAffiliates on our own websites including WPBeginner for over 5 years.
Pretty Links – Overview
Pretty Links is also a popular affiliate link management plugin for WordPress that’s trusted by over 200,000 websites.
You can use Pretty Links to replace long and complicated affiliate URLs with cleaner, more memorable alternatives. These links are easier to post on social media, podcasts, forums, and many other platforms.
You can even create links that originate from your domain name, so they seem more trustworthy to security-conscious shoppers.
In addition to link cloaking, Pretty Links is a complete affiliate link management tool that has tons of advanced features including automatically adding links to your site and detailed conversion reports.
Affiliate Link Management
Affiliate links are a great way to monetize your WordPress blog or website. However, maintaining those links can take a lot of time and effort, especially if you’re a small team. If you don’t manage your links effectively, then you may miss opportunities to make money.
Here’s a look at how these plugins can help you manage your affiliate URLs.
ThirstyAffiliates – Affiliate Link Management
ThirstyAffiliates allows you to manage your links from a single location in your WordPress dashboard. This can save you a ton of time if you ever need to update those URLs.
For example, if an affiliate partner changes a link, then you can simply edit the URL once in the WordPress dashboard, and ThirstyAffiliates will automatically redirect to the new URL across your entire WordPress website.
ThirstyAffiliates’ also support categories, which work in a similar way to post and page categories in WordPress.
This helps to keep your links organized, no matter how many affiliate partners you work with.
However, there’s no way to add tags to your links.
Pretty Links – Affiliate Link Management
Just like ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links provides a single location where you can manage all your affiliate links.
Again, this means you can edit an affiliate link once, and Pretty Links will apply the change across your entire WordPress website.
Although Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates handle link management in a very similar way, Pretty Links does have some extra features. To start, you can add both categories and tags to your affiliate links.
It even has a separate section where you can manage all your affiliate tags.
This can be particularly useful if you have lots of different affiliate partners or a ton of links that you need to keep organized.
Pretty Links also has a ‘Notes’ section for each link where you can leave reminders for yourself, or even notes for other people.
In this way, you can communicate with clients, guest bloggers, partners, and anyone else who shares the WordPress dashboard with you.
Winner – Pretty Links
If you’re looking for a tool to help you perform essential link management, then both plugins are a great choice.
Both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates will save you a ton of time with link management, no matter how many URLs you add to your online store, blog, or website. However, Pretty Links has a few extra features that can help you organize your links, so it has a slight edge over ThirstyAffiliates in this area.
Link Checker
Broken links are bad news for any website, but 404 errors cost affiliate marketers money.
When a visitor clicks on an affiliate link, it typically means they’re thinking about buying the product. If they get a 404 error, then you’ve missed out on a potential sale.
As an affiliate marketer, you need a link management plugin that helps you fix broken links before they start costing you money. Here’s what both plugins have to offer.
ThirstyAffiliates – Link Checker
ThirstyAffiliates has an Automatic 404 Checker that scans your site and then reports any problems. It will show information about each link in the ‘404 checker’ area of the WordPress dashboard.
You can check for broken links by visiting this tab, but ThirstyAffiliates will also notify your site admin about any broken URLs it discovers. However, there’s no option to send these email notifications to a different email address, which may be a problem if you share the WordPress dashboard with other people.
The Automatic 404 Checker also isn’t enabled by default, so you’ll need to go into the plugin’s settings to activate it.
ThirstyAffiliates also allows you to check the health of specific links as you’re adding them to your online marketplace or website.
This allows you to verify that a link works before publishing it.
Pretty Links – Link Checker
Pretty Links has a Link Health feature that scans your site and creates weekly reports about any broken links it discovers.
However, just like ThirstyAffiliates, you will need to go into the plugins’s settings to enable this feature, as it doesn’t run by default.
Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links prioritizes the links that get you the most conversions, by scanning your best-performing links first. This feature is particularly useful for large sites that have hundreds or even thousands of affiliate URLs.
You can see the Link Health report in the WordPress dashboard, but Pretty Links can also notify you about broken links via email. By default, Pretty Links will email your site admin but you can change this to any other address in the plugin’s settings.
Winner – ThirstyAffiliates
Both of these plugins allow you to identify and fix broken links without having to manually track 404 pages in WordPress.
However, ThirstyAffiliates lets you check that a link is working before publishing it, simply by clicking a button. This is a quick way to avoid 404 errors happening in the first place, which gives this plugin a slight advantage over Pretty Links.
Link Scheduling
Scheduling helps you create automated workflows for your affiliate website. This is important for busy website owners who don’t have time to enable and disable affiliate URLs manually.
It’s also useful if your affiliate partners run sales and other time-sensitive promotions, as you can organize your campaigns in advance.
Let’s see how these plugins compare when it comes to link scheduling.
ThirstyAffiliates – Link Scheduling
With ThirstyAffiliates, you can set the date and time when your affiliate URLs will go live.
You can also create redirects for any visitors who click your affiliate URLs before they’re active, or after they’ve expired.
For example, you might show a custom landing page explaining the promotion has ended, and suggesting some alternatives affiliate products visitors may want to buy instead.
In this way, you can improve the user experience and possibly even turn 404 errors into sales.
Pretty Links – Link Scheduling
Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links doesn’t allow you to schedule when your links will go live. However, you can set links to expire automatically on a specific date or after a certain number of clicks. This is perfect if you want to use FOMO to increase conversions.
Similar to ThirstyAffiliates, you can automatically redirect visitors after a link has expired. For example, you might use a page builder plugin to design a custom Sorry page, or you can forward them to an alternative affiliate product.
Winner – Tie
If you like to plan your affiliate campaigns in advance, then this is a good reason to choose ThirstyAffiliates over Pretty Links. However, if you want your links to expire automatically after a certain number of clicks, then this is very easy to set up using Pretty Links.
URL Cloaking
Link cloaking is where you replace complicated affiliate URLs with user-friendly links that have your own branding. This makes the links look more trustworthy, which encourages shoppers to click on them.
Cloaked links are often shorter, so they’re also easier to share on social media. In addition, link cloaking hides your affiliate ID, so it’s more difficult for malicious third parties to hijack your links and steal your commissions.
Since it’s such an important feature, let’s compare how ThirstyAffiliates and Pretty Links handle affiliate URL cloaking.
Pretty Links – URL Cloaking
Every time you add a link to Pretty Links, you have the option to set up link cloaking. Simply type in the original link and the cloaked URL that you want to use instead.
You can then choose between various redirection types, including 301 redirects, 307, and JavaScript redirection.
You can then mark the links as no-follow or sponsored, so you’re in complete control of your WordPress SEO.
‘Sponsored’ tells search engines that the URL is a paid placement or advertisement. Although no-follow and sponsored links are similar, ‘sponsored’ helps search engines understand this is an affiliate URL, so it’s a great example of Pretty Links paying attention to the finer details.
Sometimes you may need to pass a parameter to the target URL, such as a coupon code or customer ID. With Pretty Links, this is as simple as checking a box.
ThirstyAffiliates – URL Cloaking
Similar to Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates makes it easy to cloak your affiliate URLs. In fact, the process is practically identical as you simply type in the original link and the URL you want to use instead.
You can also easily change whether the cloaked link opens in a new tab, mark URLs as nofollow, and pass query strings to the destination URL.
However, ThirstyAffiliates only allows you to set up 301, 302, and 307 redirects, so you have fewer options compared to Pretty Links.
If you want to mark affiliate links as sponsored, then you’ll need to add this as an additional rel attribute tag in the plugin’s settings.
This is much more difficult than how Pretty Links handles sponsored links.
On the plus side, ThirstyAffiliates has a unique smart uncloaking feature that helps you follow Amazon’s terms and conditions. The Amazon Associates Program forbids using any kind of redirection including link cloaking. If you ignore this rule, then you may get banned from their affiliate program.
Even better, if you add all your Amazon links to the same category, then you can enable automatic clink uncloaking for that entire category.
Now, any Amazon links you add to your website will be uncloaked by default. This is something that Pretty Links doesn’t offer, and it’s a very attractive feature for anyone who uses Amazon affiliate links.
Winner – ThirstyAffiliates
No matter whether you choose Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates, you’ll get advanced link cloaking features.
For the typical affiliate marketer, ThirstyAffiliates and Pretty Links have everything you need to create more shareable, user-friendly, and safe links. However, if you plan to use lots of Amazon links, then ThirstyAffiliates’ automatic link uncloaking is a must-have feature.
Automatic Keyword Linking
It’s easy to overlook an opportunity to add affiliate links to your blog posts. This becomes a bigger problem if you run a multi-author WordPress blog or have guest bloggers.
Both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates can scan your site for specific keywords and phrases and then convert them into affiliate links automatically. Let’s take a closer look at how both plugins handle automatic keyword linking.
Pretty Links –Automatic Keyword Linking
When you add a new URL, you can type in an unlimited number of keywords and phrases. Every time you use these words in your posts and pages, Pretty Links will insert the affiliate link automatically.
Even better, Pretty Links will scan your older content for these keywords and phrases. If you’ve already published some content, then you can start earning money from your back catalog without having to manually update any posts.
Pretty Links also has a settings tab where you can control exactly how this auto-linking works on your site.
This includes setting a limit for the number of affiliate URLs that Pretty Links can add to a single page, so the links don’t distract from your content or annoy your visitors.
Pretty Links can also add a disclosure to every page where it auto-inserts an affiliate URL.
Undisclosed links can create a legal nightmare, so Pretty Links can earn you extra income without risking any fines or damaging your reputation.
ThirstyAffiliates – Automatic Keyword Linking
ThirstyAffiliates works in a very similar way, as you can add keywords every time you create a link. ThirstyAffiliates will then automatically add the link to every page or post that features that word.
Just like Pretty Links, ThirstyAffiliates lets you limit how many affiliate links it will add to a single page or post.
However, unlike Pretty Links it allows you to set a global limit in the plugin’s settings and a limit for a specific affiliate link.
In the plugin’s general settings, you can also disable auto-linking on your homepage and archive pages. You can also disable auto-linking for your pages or posts.
Often, sales pages and landing pages have their own clear call to action. Affiliate URLs can distract from that CTA, so this is an easy way to disable them across all your pages.
These extra settings give you much more control over how auto-linking is used on your WordPress website.
Once you’ve set up auto-linking, it can be difficult to keep track of all the affiliate URLs across your website. With that in mind, you may want to look at the Link Inserted Scanner, as it lists every page and post that uses a particular affiliate link.
This is a simple but effective way to keep track of your URLs, even when using the auto-linking feature.
Winner – Tie
Auto-linking can help you earn extra commission so it’s a must-have feature for all affiliate marketers. Although ThirstyAffiliates has some extra settings, both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates have everything you need to automatically add affiliate URLs to your content, while still keeping control over your links.
Affiliate Marketing Reports
It’s important to monitor how your affiliate links are performing. In this way, you can see what’s working and not working, and then adjust your affiliate marketing activities to get the best results.
Let’s see how ThirstyAffiliates vs Pretty Links stack up in terms of affiliate marketing reports.
ThirstyAffiliates – Affiliate Marketing Reports
ThirstyAffiliates has a reporting dashboard that spans multiple tabs. Here, you can see the total clicks on your different affiliate links and identify your top-performing URLs.
Some links may get more engagement from certain geographical locations. To help you spot these trends, ThirstyAffiliates has a Geolocation Report that tracks link clicks based on the visitor’s location.
Depending on the data, you might decide to show different content to users, based on their geographical location.
For more detailed information, we recommend pairing ThirstyAffiliates and Google Analytics. After making this connection, ThirstyAffiliates will send all its data to your Google Analytics profile.
You can even cross-match the information against your Google Analytics data. In this way, you can get a detailed insight into the people who convert, including the devices and operating systems they’re using, and how they arrived at your site.
This is how we use ThirstyAffiliates on WPBeginner to get maximum insights.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool, but it can be difficult to set up. For that reason, we recommend using MonsterInsights. It is the best analytics solution for WordPress users and can show all your ThirstyAffiliates and Google Analytics data inside the WordPress dashboard.
Pretty Links – Affiliate Marketing Reports
Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, Pretty Links doesn’t show you data automatically in a reporting dashboard. Instead, you’ll need to generate custom reports by selecting the links you want to analyze. You can start by generating standard reports, which show the total clicks and unique clicks on each affiliate link.
This is useful to know, but clicks don’t necessarily mean sales and affiliate revenue. With that in mind, you can also create conversion reports, which show the total conversions and the conversion rate for each link.
Unlike ThirstyAffiliates, there’s no way to explore your data based on geographical location by default. However, Pretty Links does integrate with MonsterInsights and Google Analytics.
This allows you to take the built-in Pretty Links reports to the next level and access more detailed information, including where visitors are located.
MonsterInsights will even send real-time data to Google Analytics, so you can track clicks as they’re happening.
Pretty Links also has a unique auto-trim clicks feature that automatically filters known robots and unidentifiable browser clients from your click data, stats, and reports. This can greatly improve the accuracy and quality of your reports.
Winner – Pretty Links
Both of these plugins provide easy access to all the information you need to make decisions based on real data, especially if you’re using a plugin such as MonsterInsights. However, Pretty Links’ auto-trimming feature can significantly improve the accuracy of this information, so it’s our top pick when it comes to affiliate reports.
Professional and Community Support
Both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates are easy to use. However, even experienced affiliate marketers need help from time to time, so let’s compare their support options.
Pretty Links – Professional and Community Support
If you prefer to find answers yourself, then Pretty Links has detailed online documentation and a blog where you’ll find step-by-step guides covering everything from how to use specific Pretty Links features, to general advice on running a successful affiliate site.
If you want one-on-one support, then you can submit a ticket to their Premium Support Request page.
According to Pretty Links, you can typically expect a response within 1-2 business days.
If you don’t have a support license, then Pretty Links encourages you to reach out using their contact form or post to their support forum on the official WordPress repository.
The Pretty Links team members are very active on the free forum and respond quickly to user questions. If you plan to join the conversion, then we recommend reading our guide on how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it.
ThirstyAffiliates – Community and Professional Support
If you choose ThirstyAffiliates, then you’ll have access to a huge knowledge base covering both the free and premium versions of the plugin. There’s also a blog where they regularly post affiliate marketing tips, along with step-by-step guides on how to use ThirstyAffiliates.
Similar to Pretty Links, this may be all the information and resources you need to answer your questions and solve any problems you have.
When it comes to one-to-one support, premium customers can submit a ticket and get a response within 24-48 hours. Again, this is very similar to the level of support we see from Pretty Links.
If you have the free plugin then you can use the ThirstyAffiliates contact form, or post to the ThirstyAffiliates support forum. The ThirstyAffiliates team actively monitors this forum and responds to questions quickly, so this is a great resource for anyone using the free plugin.
Winner – Tie
When it comes to support, both plugins offer plenty of options. After comparing and contrasting all of the free and premium support, we’re confident you’ll have no problems getting the help you need, no matter whether you choose Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates.
Price Comparison
To help you build a successful affiliate marketing business, it’s important to find a plugin that fits your budget. Let’s see which plugin offers the best value for money.
Pretty Links – Price Comparison
Pretty Links has three pricing plans, which seem to target beginners, affiliate marketers with multiple websites, and established marketers who have up to 5 websites.
If you’re a new marketer with a single WordPress website, then the Beginner plan ($99.50 per year) has everything you need to get started. In fact, the only difference between Beginner and the more expensive plans is the number of websites you can use Pretty Links on.
If you have multiple websites, then you’ll need to upgrade to Marketer, which allows you to use Pretty Links on two websites for $149.50 a year.
If you own more than two websites, then Super Affiliate is the most expensive plan ($199.50 per year) and allows you to use Pretty Links on up to 5 websites.
ThirstyAffiliates – Price Comparison
Just like Pretty Links, the only difference between the different ThirstyAffiliates plans is how many sites you can use the plugin on.
If you’re a new affiliate marketer with a single website, then the Basic plan should have everything you need, for $79.50 per year.
If you have multiple websites, then ThirstyAffiliates does represent better value for money. Their Plus plan allows you to use ThirstyAffiliates on up to 5 websites, for $129.50 per year.
If you have more than 5 websites, then the most expensive ThirstyAffiliates plan is priced at $199.50 per year, but you can use it on up to 10 websites.
By comparison, Pretty Links’ most expensive plan is also priced at $199.50 per year, and you can only install the plugin on 5 websites.
Winner – ThirstyAffiliates
If you own a single website, then both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates offer similar features, for a similar amount of money. However, if you own more than 2 websites, then ThirstyAffiliates seems to offer the best value for money.
In fact, if you have more than 5 websites, then you’ll almost certainly need to use the ThirstyAffiliates plugin.
Pretty Links vs ThirstyAffiliates – Which is Right for Your Site?
If you’re looking for an affiliate link management plugin with advanced auto-linking features, then both Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates are great choices.
Both plugins can help you unlock extra revenue while saving you a ton of time. By allowing you to auto-link keywords and manage your links from a single location, Pretty Links and ThirstyAffiliates make affiliate marketing easy, no matter whether you’re a hobby blogger or an experienced business owner.
The affiliate marketing plugin that’s right for you will vary depending on your website, your affiliate partners, and the specific features you need.
With that being said, each plugin has its own strengths and drawbacks. If you want to schedule links in advance, then we recommend using ThirstyAffiliates. If Amazon is your main affiliate partner, then ThirstyAffiliates’ smart link uncloaking is a must-have feature that can help you comply with Amazon’s terms and conditions.
If you’re worried about bots or malicious third parties affecting the accuracy of your data, then the auto-trimming feature in Pretty Links is perfect. We’ve seen this feature significantly improve the accuracy of affiliate reports, so it’s a must-have if you want precise data.
Notice that some HTML attributes have been added to the link, rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer". These attributes are added to address a security vulnerability.
The problem is that JavaScript code can be used to allow a new tab to get control of its referring window. If you link to an external website affected by the malicious code, then that website can use the window.opener property in JavaScript to change the original page (your website) to steal information and spread malicious code.
WordPress adds rel="noopener" to prevent the new tab from taking advantage of this JavaScript feature. Similarly, the rel="noreferrer" attribute prevents passing the referrer information onto the new tab.
How Does rel=”noopener” Affect Your WordPress SEO?
It doesn’t.
Even though the rel="noopener" attribute improves WordPress security, some users avoid using it because they think it will impact their WordPress SEO.
What’s the Difference Between “noopener” and “nofollow”?
It’s easy to confuse rel="noopener" with rel="nofollow". However, they are completely separate attributes.
The noopener attribute prevents your website from cross-site hacking and improves WordPress security.
On the other hand, the nofollow attribute prevents your website from passing on SEO link-juice to the linked website.
Search engines look for and consider the nofollow attribute when following a link on your website. However, they do not give any consideration to the noopener tag.
By default, WordPress does not allow you to add nofollow to your external links. If you want to add nofollow in WordPress, then you will need to use a plugin.
Does rel=”noreferrer” Affect Affiliate Links in WordPress?
The rel="noreferrer" does not affect affiliate links in WordPress. Some users believe that it does because rel="noreferrer" prevents the referrer information passing to the new tab.
However, most affiliate programs provide you with a unique URL that has your affiliate ID. This means your affiliate ID is passed along as a URL parameter for the other website to track.
Secondly, most affiliate marketers use a link cloaking plugin for their affiliate links.
With link cloaking, the affiliate link that your users click on is actually your website’s own URL, which then redirects users to the destination URL.
How Do You Disable rel=”noopener” in WordPress?
There is no need to remove rel="noopener" from links on your website. It is good for your website’s security and has no performance or SEO impact on your website.
Simply copy the following code into a new PHP snippet:
add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init','wpb_disable_noopener');
function wpb_disable_noopener( $mceInit ) {
$mceInit['allow_unsafe_link_target']=true;
return $mceInit;
}
Make sure you change the ‘Active’ toggle on and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.
This will stop WordPress from adding rel="noopener" to new links. You will also need to manually edit any old links to remove the attribute.
Want even more control over which rel attributes get added to your links in WordPress? We recommend using the AIOSEO plugin because it lets you add title, nofollow, and other link attributes right inside the WordPress editor.
If you are looking to start an online business by mastering affiliate marketing, than this is the right article for you. What is actually Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is the process of making money online...
