If you don't use WordPress then nothing in this article will be of interest to you. This is not about Affiliate Marketing...it's bout using Plugins to leverage the power of the WordPress Platform for affiliate marketing purposes.

Do you use WordPress for Affiliate Marketing? Are you an Affiliate Marketer who loves blogging about products? Then you may want to take the time to read about, investigate, and install these plugins on your own site. Some are free some are not.

I’m an affiliate marketer and internet consultant. My primary job is to evaluate and write about products and services. I’ve been at this for almost 10 years now full time. Along the way I learned to use a whole slew of programs including Dreamweaver, XsitePro, Microsoft FrontPage, CMS made Simple, Joomla, and WordPress. I currently do nearly all my development in WordPress. Why? Because it’s so easy to implement and create beautiful looking high ranking user friendly CMS based websites.

I’ve gained a lot of experience with WordPress Plugins and I’m about to share some of my favorites with you and why I like them.

Hanna Code Insert

This was a real find, a terrific little gem. I needed a way to insert some complex java code within one of my sites. WordPress kept changing the code when I saved the pages. So I went to WordPress.org and began searching. Fortunately I came across the Hanna Code Insert Plugin.

Hanna Code Insert is free, and so simple to use. Installation is very straightforward… same basic procedure as with all basic WordPress plugins. Once uploaded you activate the plugin normally. To create the code to insert into your pages… just paste in your javascript.. Hanna will create a snippet that looks something like this:

"[hana-code-insertname='...' /]"

which you paste directly into the html on your WordPress Page. This is a great way to insert Adsense into specific places on your page for testing.

Link: Learn more about Hanna Code Insert

All in One SEO

Most of you who are already using WordPress are probably already using this free plugin. Take the time to learn about how it works and incorporate the features automatically for your whole site, and specifically for the most important pages you want to rank online.

Link: Learn More about All in One SEO

WP Spam Free

I do not use Askimet. I use only this plugin and it is amazingly effective. Since I began using WP Spam Free I have eliminated all the bot spam. I set my comments to moderates and that’s it. And if the spam features were not enough, it also includes a killer little bonus. Simply cut and paste a small piece of code and it will generate a contact form for you so you never get any email spam from bots!

Here is how you create the contact page: In the WordPress Administrator Dash Board click on Pages, then “add new”, then click on the HTML tab. Next insert this one line of code:

“<!--spamfree-contact-->”

Don’t use the “ “ I’ve included it here so the Hubpages software won’t see it as a comment tag.

Once you’ve done that you have a spam free contact form for your visitors.

Link: Learn More about Wp Spam Free

Ninja Affiliate

This is the most amazing plugin I have ever come across for affiliate marketing on the WordPress Platform. Simple, Elegant, and Amazingly powerful! Ninja Affiliate does a lot of things and all of them well. Ninja Affiliate shortens the URL of your affiliate link giving you an option to cloak the link as well. This is powerful for two reasons… it makes your links look better, but it also allows you to incorporate a useful keyword into your url.

Let me give you and example. Say your affiliate URL from Clickbank looked like this:

“http://cfeec9l4phm8kw43t5zwdr8new.hop.clickbank.net/”

That’s long and ugly! With Ninja Affiliate you can easily make it look like this:

“http://www.yoursite.com/RelationshipDoctor”

Which makes more sense to your visitor? FYI this is a real ClickBank product but I Inserted “NickName” into the Clickbank field. This is NOT one of my affiliate links so click away if you wish!

Here is another amazingly powerful benefit… lets say that you place 10 of these links on your Dating Site. Then one day you find out the Relationship Doctor Affiliate program is kaput! Gone! No longer in existence? What do you do? You could take down all the links… or you could with a few simple mouse clicks open up Affiliate Ninja and insert one line of Clickbank code for a new program and all your links will be fixed automatically! Sweet isn’t it. Imagine none of your affiliate links ever going bad in the Search Engines because you can change from program to program… and the URL STAYS THE SAME!

Automatically link Keywords to Affiliate LInks! Are you familiar with Kontera? You know the program where keywords on you pages are automatically underlined and when you click on them they open up an advertisement? Well Kontera is just one of many programs that do this. And with Ninja Affiliate you can do this with your own affiliate links. Affiliate Ninja can change any keywords you want to affiliate links automatically! And you can select how many occurrences of each keyword link per page! So you don’t have to even insert affiliate links into your blog. All you have to do is write, then assign the keywords and everywhere those keywords appear an affiliate link will automatically be placed. But it gets even better!!! You can assign the links to open in a new window and to be automatically encoded with a nofollow attribute if you would like! I can not recommend this plugin enough for any Affiliate Marketer using WordPress.

And one more killer feature that makes Ninja Affiliate Irresistible for Affiliate Marketers that will make you wish you had learned about this plugin when you started using WordPress… REPORTING!!! Ninja Affiliate keeps track of how many time each keyword was clicked on including sub tracking and referrals. You’ll know exactly which of your Affiliate Campaigns are working who where your traffic is coming from.

This is a premium plugin and it’s worth every penny. I have saved so much time and effort I wish I would have known about it a long time ago!

Link: Learn More about Ninja Affiliate

My Category Order

If WordPress has a flaw it’s that you can not easily manipulate categories and posts. My Category Order fixes one of these flaws… it allows you to very easily rearrange your Category Order! This is important for Affiliate Marketing because it allows you to arrange your content in order of importance not the WordPress Defaults. This plug in may require a little bit of code tweaking for some templates.

Link: Learn More about My Category Order

I hope you find these plugins useful in your own affiliate marketing campaigns with WordPress. If you are a business or an individual who needs help implementing a WordPress Blog send me an email… my fees are very reasonable.