Create an Affiliate Program with WordPress and AffiliateWP
Since anyone reading this post is probably looking to create an affiliate program for their WordPress powered website, I don’t really need to go into great detail on what affiliate marketing is. Just to introduce it for anyone not familiar with it, affiliate marketing is a great tool for many websites who have a product to promote. Rather than direct advertising with high out-of-pocket costs due before any results are delivered, you outsource the work of promoting your product to others and pay ONLY when they deliver sales. When a customer arrives at your website via an affiliate’s unique affiliate link and that customer purchases something, your affiliate will earn a percentage of that sale. Pretty awesome.
AffiliateWP is a new plugin from celebrity WP developer Pippin Williamson that lets WordPress users create an affiliate system for their website. Bottom line, it’s amazing! Here’s why:
The Developers
Any avid WordPress user knows who Pippin is and some of his work (i.e. Easy Digital Downloads). He’s a boss developer and produces quality plugins. Right off the bat, we know AffiliateWP will be coded well and greatly documented/supported because it’s a “Pippin’s plugin”.
AffiliateWP is also developed by Andrew Munro, another awesome WordPress developer who’s done some great work with Easy Digital Downloads.
Integrations
The first thing most people will need to know is what AffiliateWP integrates with. There are other affiliate plugins available for WordPress but none of them have so many integrations as AffiliateWP. Here’s a list of current integrations:
- MemberMouse – A feature-packed membership platform for WordPress. Only drawback is its price (expensive and monthly subscription required).
- Jigoshop – eCommerce plugin
- Easy Digital Downloads – Another one of Pippin Williamson’s awesome plugins. Used for selling digital products such as ebooks and WordPress themes and plugins.
- WooCommerce – One of the most popular eCommerce plugins available for WordPress.
- iThemes Exchange – A newer kid on the WordPress eCommerce block but very extendable and promising.
- WP e-Commerce – Along with WooCommerce, WP e-Commerce is one of the most widely used eCommerce plugins for WordPress (I recommend WooCommerce).
- Shopp – Yet another eCommerce solution for WordPress.
- Restrict Content Pro – Pippin’s membership plugin. Simple but powerful.
- Wishlist Member – Yet another popular membership plugin.
- Gravity Forms – The standard for creating forms (any kind!) in WordPress. Simply amazing and, in my opinion, the most useful WordPress plugin on the market.
- Paid Memberships Pro – Yet another popular membership plugin.
Some other main features of AffiliateWP include custom affiliate rates, affiliate account dashboards for your affiliates to review their performances and obtain links/banners, manual and automatic affiliate registration, and much more. Since the plugin is so new, Pipppin and Andrew are continuing to add new features and addons. I can see AffiliateWP becoming the top affiliate plugin for WordPress very quickly.
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