Auto add affiliate links to your website
I currently run several websites and also help some friends to run theirs. Most of the websites I run are content based: articles and stories on certain topics, mainly about computers. Content websites are simply to maintain, they don’t require too advanced skills but they still take a lot of time.
When it comes to get something out of your blog, it is not so easy. The most spread way to monetizeĀ is ad display but we both know how bad it is for content websites. People come, read the text and then go away. I tried many methods to display ads, in-text ads but no one seems to work so far.
What works for cntent websites is affiliate marketing. I recommend a lot of tools or software to be used for the topic I’m writing about and some of these tools are paid and most of them offer me the possibility to post an affiliate link that will earn me a comission when a sale occurs. From time to time I recommend a product and post my affiliate link into it. And this works well for content driven websites.
Lately, I was looking for new ways to take advantage of affiliate products and to improve the earnings of my websites. When the content is written I reference products or tools where I don’t post the affiliate link. I focus a lot on the content and I forget to add an affiliate link to every word where it is possible.
The most common thing I heard from my friends is that their website got popular but they are failing to monetize it. The solution I propose is to add affiliate links to articles, both new and old ones, but they are not following my advice because it is pretty hard to edit 300 articles and add few links that may generate a commission to every one.
I come with the solution for these. In past few days I developed a WordPress plugin that will automatically parse the content and add affiliate link to keywords chosen by you.
How it works: After you install the plugin, go to “Manage Affiliate Links” in your Settings menu, and there you can add any link and some keyphrases ( separated by comma ) where to add it. When your content is shown, the plugin will search trough the content for the keyphrase you entered and will add the link over it.
I called the plugin: WP Auto Affiliate Links. If you want to give it a try go and get the plugin.
The plugin is still in an initial development phase and I’m still working to add new features and fix bugs, so if you have any suggestion or any bug you found please report it to me asap so I can fix it soon. I appreciate your help.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission
January 17th, 2011 at 4:03 pm
This plug in is going to be a hit as it would reduce the manual work for adding affiliate links.
January 18th, 2011 at 7:06 am
I just tried this plug in and it works perfectly. and just thought it would be good it had the feature to restrict the no of affiliate links in one post, for example If i have targeted keyword 10 times in my post but i would just want affiliate link to be added to only 1 or 2 occurring of keyword. plus it adds the affiliate links to the existing post, if one can have a option weather blogger wants to add it to existing one or just to new one.
January 18th, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Thank you for your suggestions, I noted them down. Right now I’m working to an improved engine that will smarly decide where links should be placed.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:39 am
Did notice another issue, for testing i added 3 keyword for 3 different links first one was “SEO” and second one was “online articles” and 3rd one was “Marketing” it worked for only “SEO” and not work other two keywords
January 19th, 2011 at 9:00 pm
Thank you for your feedback. I will look into this issue and I will try to see what is happening. As I said in previous comment, I am working at a new engine to add links and there will be a drastic change in the way links are added.
January 24th, 2011 at 10:31 am
Great concept. I haven’t downloaded a copy yet but I can see the potential this plug-in has. I get tired of editing all the keywords over and over again.
I’m off to download a copy. Keep up the development, this will be a great time saver!
January 24th, 2011 at 10:47 am
Just tried it and have some feedback. Again this is a great plug-in. First time I setup a keyword I had html code appear where the keywords were on the site. However I tested it with my own site that had the same keywords already linked somewhere else so maybe it conflicted. Second was I tested a word that was all CAPS and when I added a keyword in lower case it modified the word to lowercase on the page. In this case you may have both lowercase and uppercase situation. In my case I need the formatting to stay as intended.
Just a heads up to help in the dev.
January 24th, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Thank you for the feedback. I noted your toughts and I will be careful in the next release development.
January 25th, 2011 at 5:37 am
Hi Lucian,
When I activate WP Auto Affiliate Links it stops my
owagu_clickbank_footer from working. If you click to
display a single post a Clickbank ad is supposed to
display at the bottom of the page. This has been working
OK but with your plugin active it displays the script code
instead of the script result. If I deactivate your plugin it
works normally again.
You can see the error here:
http://onlinebizweekly.com/time-management-courses
Thanks and regards,
Kerry McNally
Sydney, Australia
January 25th, 2011 at 9:52 pm
Thank you for the feedback and help with the development. I am aware of this issue, it was reported several times and I’m working hard to provide an update that will fix it very soon.
January 25th, 2011 at 10:12 pm
I’ve released a new version with a quick fix that I hope will solve your issue until the new version with a smarted engine will be released.
January 27th, 2011 at 11:37 pm
Hi Lucian,
What fixes does the new release resolve?
Thanks in advance….
January 29th, 2011 at 7:02 am
As stated in the changelog of the plugin: fixed some situations where the links are accidentally added where they should not, and the bug where all keywords were decapitalized when link was added.
February 1st, 2011 at 3:30 pm
I noticed the plugin does not allow keyphrases to work, only single keywords. I also would like to see a reduced number of keyword hyperlinking per post … it seems to just grab all of the instances and hyperlinks them. Fix these and I think this will be one heck of a plugin!
February 2nd, 2011 at 8:51 am
The keyphrases should work, I use the plugin with keyphrases on some of my blogs. The issue to place fewer links is the first on my list and I’m currently working to solve it.
February 8th, 2011 at 5:21 am
Wonderful plugin. Here are the little issues I have. If a keyword on the page has a period after it, it will not be linked nor if the word is bolded. Example: http://jdsportsonline.com/projects/blog/blogging-day-23.html
The phrase is rake back and in the 1st paragraph, I talk about your plugin and discuss these little issues.
Is there a way to make it work with bolded words. I don’t mind the period issue.
Thanks for a great plugin.
February 9th, 2011 at 10:27 pm
Thank you for your suggestions. The rationament behind the plugin was this: if a keyphrase is bolded, h1,h2,h3,h4 or any other enhancement it means it is very important and it should remain at it is.
I will think about it an maybe I will let the user to choose what tags they will allow links to appear for.
February 10th, 2011 at 9:59 am
I just had to disable the plugin. For some reason it wouldn’t let me delete posts or comments or anything. I am not sure when this started as I rarely have to do this. I disabled all my plugins and turned them on one by one and it was this one that was the issue. Of course I just deactivate it, delete what I need deleted and then reactivate it.
Oh and thanks for thinking about allowing users to choose tags, I know I would like the bold option.
Have a wonderful day.
February 11th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
I’m sorry for the problems created. I will recheck the plugin behaviour with your described settings. Thank you.
March 12th, 2011 at 2:12 am
Hey Lucian, you did a great job in fixing a lot of bugs however I’m still having an issue with the plug-in interfering with tagged/linked images. It throws my code outta whack on internal pages (not my home page as that’s inserted html, not css driven) I wish I could give an example but I’m using it on a live ecommerce site that’s active. Any ideas or are you aware of this type of issue?
Thanks in advance. I know you’re busy!
March 12th, 2011 at 8:25 am
Thank you for reporting this issue. I analyzed the situation and it seems that there is something that I’ve missed. I will try to provide a quick fix in a matter of days.
October 8th, 2011 at 8:08 pm
Great news for everyone, I’ve worked on the replacing engine and now it is working way much better. I would appreciate any feedback received on the new version. Please note that there were very few changes on the UI side.
November 30th, 2011 at 4:56 am
Hi Lucian
Fabulously easy plugin to use. I am in need of something different though and wondered if you can help.
I am using ‘ucan post’ when users submit a post I would like them to add a URL and then that URL have my affiliate link appended to it when they click a ‘go to url’ button
any ideas how this can be achieved?
many thanks
December 8th, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Hello. I cannot think of an easy way to accomplish this. It is not complex, but you need a programmer to code it.