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If you’ve registered for Amazon’s affiliate program, you probably realized pretty quickly that Amazon doesn’t exactly make it easy to promote their products.
Manually going over to their website and grabbing their link is a tedious process.
Then – if you actually play by the rules, you aren’t even allowed to download the pictures from the listing. You have to fetch them from the API, which can take even more time.
It’s a huge hassle.
Fortunately, developers have recognized the need to simplify this process, and have developed a number of WordPress plugins for Amazon affiliates to use.
Truth be told, they can save a lot of time and make it even easier to promote products within your content – among a number of other useful features!
In this article, I will be covering the top Amazon affiliate plugins for WordPress, including both free and paid options.
Note that only plugins specifically designed for Amazon’s affiliate program will be mentioned. Link cloaking plugins for example – which are good for other affiliate marketing channels, aren’t allowed by Amazon, so they won’t be mentioned.
Let’s get to it!
1. AAWP (Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin)
If I had to pick a single plugin that I would recommend for Amazon affiliates, it would probably be this one. In fact, this is the one I’m currently using across my network of websites.
Other plugins have unique features that may stand out to you, and I will discuss those later. However, as a single overall solution, I couldn’t find anything that would be better for most bloggers than AAWP.
Here are some useful features that really stand out to me:
- Generating links – including image links, is quick and simple.
- A surprisingly large amount of information can be pulled from the API, and embedded into your website. Price, star reviews, bullet points, product attributes etc.
- Bestseller lists. When you don’t have a specific product in mind you want to direct people to, you can display a box showcasing the bestselling products instead – then let people choose whichever one looks best to them. This is particularly useful for affiliates promoting low-priced commodity products within informational articles.
- Geotargeting, changing links for international traffic. This is useful even if you have OneLink enabled.
- Sidebar widgets. Personally, I only find this useful if you’re running an extremely specific niche site, but the feature is there if you want it.
The other primary feature I’d like to draw attention to is the tables. AAWP has my favorite table designer / inserter out of every plugin I’ve tried. For example:
- You can quickly compare several products next to each other, creating separate rows with different attributes. The tables created by AAWP look fantastic – they draw attention, without looking pushy.
- You can have Amazon pre-fill the rows of these tables with available data, or fill them out yourself. For example, you could make your own pros and cons list when comparing multiple products.
- Highlight specific product columns. For example, out of 4 products, you might highlight one product as the ‘best value’ and another as your ‘top recommendation.’
Here’s an example:
Pricing starts at 39 euros for a one-site license.
Learn more about AAWP by clicking here!
2. EasyAzon (Paid Edition)
Next up, we have EazyAzon, which claims to be the most convenient way to add Amazon Affiliate links to your website.
One thing’s for certain – it’s definitely convenient! Links – including image links, can be added to articles in seconds without leaving the WordPress editor.
There are two key features that I think EazyAzon implements very well.
The first is ‘Add To Cart’ buttons – buttons encouraging readers to actually add the item to their Amazon cart straight from your website. The benefit of this is that when somebody adds an item to their cart using your affiliate link, the cookie duration for that item is set to 90 days rather than only 1 – giving you a much longer window for that reader to actually convert.
This is something you’ll need to split-test though. Although the cookie duration is longer, it’s also a much bigger commitment by readers to add something to their cart rather than simply visit the product page, and this may actually hurt earnings rather than help them.
The second neat feature is is pop-up links. You can see an example from their website here:
Essentially, when a buyer hovers over the link, a small pop-up box appears showing the picture / price, as well as a button encouraging the reader to buy.
EazyAzon has many other common features as well, including link localization and the ability to pull data from the API.
Pricing for EazyAzon starts at $47 for unlimited use on your own websites, and $67 if you also want to use it on client websites.
Learn more about EazyAzon by clicking here!
3. Amazon Auto Links
If you’re looking for a free solution, my best recommendation would be Amazon Auto Links. It is a little more complicated to use than the other plugins here, but considering that it’s completely free, you really can’t go wrong.
Amazon Auto Links does have a number of useful features:
- If promoting a single product, you only need to drop your link into the editor to create a box containing a photo + product information. This can save you a lot of time.
- Insert multiple products together into your page using shortcodes.
- Insert categories of products – i.e the top 5 bestselling mouse pads. Note that you can only import based off actual categories on Amazon, but not search queries like you can with something like AAWP. This means that while you can pull the best selling mouse pads for example, you can’t pull the bestselling results for queries like ‘black mouse pads’ or ‘mouse pads for gamers.’
- Automatic link conversion – any Amazon links on your website can be converted to Amazon affiliate links, including links left by commenters or guest authors.
Learn more about Amazon Auto Links by clicking here!
4. AMALinks Pro
The next plugin I’d like to mention is AMALinks Pro – which would probably be my 2nd choice after AAWP.
As a matter of fact, if you don’t have access to the Amazon API, I would actually recommend AMALinks Pro over AAWP, as AMALinks Pro has a built-in feature specifically for affiliates who don’t yet have access to Amazon’s API. If you aren’t sure whether or not you have it, the requirements for access is that you’ve generated at least 3 sales using Amazon affiliate links in the past.
That being said, it is much quicker and easier to use AMALinks Pro if you do have access to the API, as their workaround features are a bit cumbersome to use.
Other features that AMALinks pro has over AAWP is the add-to-cart feature, which is also present in EasyAzon. If you skipped over that section, you’re granted a 90-day cookie for any items added directly to a shopper’s cart, which has the possibility (but not guarantee) to increase earnings.
Additionally, AMALinks Pro allows you to insert custom call-to-action buttons with your affiliate links – changing size, color, and text. AAWP is much more limited in this regard.
To be honest, you can’t really go wrong with either of them – I simply consider AAWP to have better overall design, which is why I use it over AMALinks Pro personally. Still, this plugin is a great one, and is definitely worth consideration!
Pricing for AMALinks Pro starts at $67 yearly for a 1 site license.
Learn more about AMALinks Pro by clicking here!
5. Geniuslink
If you’re looking to monetize through multiple retailers, Geniuslink is perhaps the best choice.
Although it’s not an Amazon affiliate plugin on its own, it supports Amazon’s associates program – as well as the affiliate programs of many other retailers such as Target, Walmart, Best Buy, etc. It also connects with Skimlinks and Sovrn Commerce, allowing you to auto create affiliate links for other programs even if they aren’t officially integrated.
The way it works is this – after clicking an affiliate link, the visitor is able to choose which retailer they’d like to be sent to.
This is particularly useful in a few industries, where brands other than Amazon may be a more desirable choice. Music, technology and photography all come to mind, and there are certainly others as well.
Customers benefit from being able to order from a company that they trust more, and you benefit from higher commissions.
Some have argued that the extra step required to choose a retailer can lead to lower click-throughs. While I don’t have any data to back this up, I think it should be said that those who aren’t motivated to even click through, probably weren’t going to become buyers anyway.
Geniuslink will also route people to their local marketplace for international traffic, and notify you when product pages 404 or go out of stock on Amazon.
If you’re going to monetize through multiple retailers, it’s worth checking Geniuslink out.
Pricing for Geninuslink starts at $5 a month for up to 2,000 clicks per month, then $2 per additional 1,000 clicks after that.
Learn more about Geniuslink by clicking here!
Conclusion
It is almost certainly worth using one of these plugins to boost your Amazon Associates revenue, especially if you do a lot of product comparison articles, or regularly pull things like photos or prices from Amazon pages.
Not only can the plugins save you a lot of time, they’re also able to create nice looking tables and boxes that aid in conversion, while simultaneously providing a better experience to your readers.
If you want to maximize your Amazon Affiliate revenue further, I highly recommend picking up my Amazon Affiliate Blueprint, which goes into detail about all the advanced strategies I use to maximize earnings with Amazon’s affiliate program. You can learn more about it by visiting my products page.
Finally, I’d love to hear which plugin you decided to go with – as mentioned earlier, you really can’t go wrong with any of them!
To your success,
– James McAllister
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