Affiliate marketing is a popular way for bloggers and website owners to monetize their content. One of the more popular content management systems (CMS) is WordPress, and there are many plugins available that can help you optimize your site for affiliate marketing.
However, managing affiliate links, tracking clicks, and creating engaging affiliate content can be time-consuming and challenging. Fortunately, there are supportive plugins that can help to streamline your affiliate marketing efforts and make the most out of your website’s earning potential.
Below you will find what I consider the best WordPress affiliate plugins to either directly manage your affiliate links or indirectly support your affiliate marketing efforts.
Throughout this article keep in mind that ranking higher on Google’s search engine is key to getting traffic and traffic is what feeds the affiliate marketer.
How do I rank higher on Google’s search engine?
Here are 9 items to help rank higher:
- Optimize your website for search engines by including keywords in your content and meta tags
- Build high-quality backlinks to your website from reputable sources
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and has a fast loading speed
- Use structured data (h1, h2, h3, etc…) and schema markup to help search engines understand the content on your website
- Use alt tags to describe images and other media on your website
- Create high-quality, unique, and engaging content that provides value to users
- Make sure your website is easy to navigate and has a clear hierarchy
- Regularly update your website with fresh content
- Ensure that your website is accessible to people with disabilities by adding alt tags and using a clear font.
Do my website loading times matter to Google?
Yes, website speed is a factor that can affect your search engine rankings. Google and other search engines want to provide their users with the best possible experience, and that includes fast-loading websites.
It’s worth noting that Google uses a metric called “Core Web Vitals” to determine the website speed. This metric includes Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) which are used to measure the page loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. So, it’s important to check and improve those metrics to rank higher on Google.
Now, here are the best WordPress affiliate plugins of 2023.
GeneratePress
GeneratePress is a lightweight and highly customizable WordPress theme that is perfect for bloggers, businesses, and online stores alike. With its clean design and powerful features, GeneratePress makes it easy to create a professional-looking website that is optimized for speed and performance.
One of the key benefits of GeneratePress is its flexibility. It is fully responsive and adapts to any screen size, ensuring that your website looks great on any device. It also includes a variety of pre-designed templates and layouts, making it easy to create a beautiful and unique website without any coding experience. Additionally, it offers a wide range of customization options, allowing you to make your website truly your own. From custom colors and fonts to layout options and widgets, GeneratePress gives you the power to create a website that is uniquely tailored to your brand. Plus, the theme is highly performant, lightweight, and SEO-friendly. With GeneratePress, you can create a professional-looking website that stands out from the crowd, and that is optimized for speed and performance.
From my experience after using various themes, they always scored low on the speed test. When switching to GeneratePress I started to score between 98 – 100 (loading times vary due to hosting performance). This is what I consider a supportive WordPress affiliate plugin, speed times are a factor in Google’s eyes when ranking.
GenerateBlocks
GenerateBlocks is a powerful collection of lightweight blocks for the WordPress block editor that allows you to easily create custom and unique designs for your website. With GenerateBlocks, you can take full advantage of the block editor and create professional-looking pages and posts with ease.
This is an essential WordPress plugin for affiliate marketers because of its ability to customize just about any design you’d like while maintaining its fast loading times.
Simplicity is core to this plugin. The blocks are intuitive and easy to use, making it easy to create custom designs without any coding experience. The blocks include features like containers, grids, buttons, headings, spacers, and more. Plus, it’s lightweight and designed to work seamlessly with the GeneratePress theme. This means that you can take full advantage of the theme’s performance benefits, resulting in faster page loads and an improved user experience for your visitors.
It also includes responsive design options, allowing you to create designs that look great on any device. With GenerateBlocks, you can easily create custom designs that stand out from the crowd, and that is optimized for speed and performance.
No matter what affiliate program you sign up for. You’ll be able to create what you need to promote. This goes down into that supportive affiliate plugins category.
WP Rocket
If you want to speed up your WordPress website and enhance user experience, WP Rocket may be worth considering. It’s a caching plugin designed to optimize your code and reduce server requests for faster page load times, leading to better engagement and conversions. WP Rocket also offers other performance optimization features like lazy loading for images and videos, HTML/CSS/JavaScript minification, and browser caching.
The speed boost from turning this on was dramatic and definitely noticeable. Again, this falls into that supportive WordPress affiliate plugins category. But it does come with a cost.
LiteSpeed Cache
LiteSpeed Cache may be an option to consider. This plugin is designed to work with the LiteSpeed web server, which is known for its fast performance. This usually comes installed on your WordPress sites. 
LiteSpeed Cache offers various performance optimization features such as page/post/custom post type caching, HTML/CSS/JavaScript minification, and integration with Cloudflare CDN. It also has an image optimization feature that reduces file size without sacrificing quality, leading to faster page loads. The plugin has a user-friendly interface, making it easy to customize to meet your needs. With LiteSpeed Cache, you can ensure your website performs optimally, leading to increased engagement and conversions.
This can be a free option as well as paid, I find the free is perfectly fine to get your site off the ground. This falls into that supportive WordPress affiliate plugins category.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer
Optimizing your images to improve the loading speed of your website is important but how do you do it effectively? ShortPixel Image Optimizer is the solution you need. This powerful plugin uses advanced compression techniques to reduce the file size of your images without sacrificing quality, resulting in faster page loads and an improved user experience for your visitors. From my personal experience, they give you free uses every month and if you need to scale up there is an option to buy credits.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer is incredibly easy to use, with a simple setup process that can be completed in just a few minutes. It supports a wide range of image formats, including JPEG, PNG, GIF, and PDF, and can optimize images on the fly, without the need for manual compression. It also provides a bulk optimization feature, which allows you to optimize all images in your media library with just a few clicks. Additionally, the plugin provides detailed statistics on the optimization process, allowing you to monitor the progress and see the savings in terms of bytes and loading time.
The size reduction is massive. I’ve seen over 90% drop in size on basic images (similar colors). This falls under the supportive WordPress affiliate plugins category.
ThirstyAffiliates
ThirstyAffiliates is an affiliate link management tool that is a must-have for all your affiliate links on your WordPress site. It’s easy to create, manage, and track affiliate links. In addition, it will take your ugly affiliate links and make them pretty links. Having nice-looking affiliate links adds that extra little touch to help with user confidence. It’s one of the best affiliate plugins in my lineup.
This WordPress affiliate plugin is incredibly easy to set up and use, just click the new affiliate link button and fill in the title and the destination URL and it will generate a unique URL you can use on your site. This is one of those affiliate marketing plugins you just have to have. No technical experience is necessary and with a few clicks, it will allow you to organize your links by category here are some examples:
- Affiliate partners
- Affiliate programs
- Amazon affiliate links by type (tech, kitchen, etc..)
- Paid/Unpaid referral links
- If affiliate registration was approved
- Name of any affiliate campaigns
It’s worth noting that the cloak affiliate links feature makes them less likely to be blocked by ad blockers. You can also use the plugin to track your clicks, earnings, and conversions, so you can see which links are performing the best and optimize your affiliate strategy accordingly.
ThirstyAffiliates also offers a variety of advanced features (paid) such as link scheduling, link expiration, and import/export feature, making it easy to manage your affiliate links and optimize your affiliate marketing strategy. With ThirstyAffiliates, you can easily manage and track your affiliate links, and maximize your earning potential from affiliate marketing.
This is a direct WordPress affiliate plugin. Its free version is perfectly fine when starting out.
Easy Table of Contents
Easy Table of Contents is a simple plugin that allows you to easily create and customize tables of contents for your WordPress posts and pages. With this plugin, you can improve the user experience for your readers by helping them easily navigate through your content and find the information they’re looking for.
Flexibility is one of the key features. The plugin allows you to customize the appearance and placement of your table of contents, giving you full control over how it looks and where it appears on your page. You can choose from a variety of different styles and layouts, and even set custom colors and fonts to match your brand. Additionally, the plugin automatically generates the table of contents based on the headings in your post, making it easy to create and update your table of contents as your content changes. And with the option to show a table of contents only on certain pages, it is a perfect solution for long-form content or multi-page articles. With Easy Table of Contents, you can improve the user experience for your readers by making it easy for them to navigate your content and find the information they’re looking for. 
This is a nice addition to any long-form content articles. This is one of the best WordPress affiliate plugins because of its popularity with bloggers. Easy way to get your structured content in a consumable way so the user can drill right down to the affiliate link they were looking for. This falls into the supportive WordPress affiliate plugin category.
Fixed Widget
Fixed Widget is a nice addition to the WordPress plugin suite that allows you to create a fixed widget on your website, ensuring that it’s always visible to your visitors as they scroll down the page. This can be especially useful for promoting a specific product, service, or call-to-action, as it ensures that it stays in front of your visitors at all times. If you are promoting an affiliate link and you want your right-hand sidebar to stay on the page to maximize click potential then this should be part of your WordPress affiliate plugin list. 
Fixed Widget is also highly flexible, you can choose the widget that you want to make fixed, and you can even set the position of the fixed widget, so it will be visible on the left or right side of the screen. It’s also mobile responsive, so it will look great on any device.
I use it to allow the disclaimer about my affiliate links to scroll up and away while fixing the table of contents to make the user’s experience easier to navigate to important sections. Especially when the content is long.
This falls into the supportive affiliate plugins category.
Wordfence Security
Wordfence Security is a powerful WordPress security plugin that helps protect your website from malware, hackers, and other security threats. With Wordfence, you can secure your website from malicious attacks, and keep your data and your visitors’ data safe.
When driving traffic is the business model you will attract unsavory characters/bots. In addition, all the plugins for WordPress also add additional attack potential. All the more reason to protect your site/money maker.
One of the key benefits of Wordfence Security is its comprehensive security features. The plugin includes a firewall that blocks malicious traffic, malware scanning that detects and removes malware, and login security that helps prevent brute-force attacks. Additionally, it also offers a real-time threat defense feed that keeps you updated with the latest security threats. Wordfence also includes a two-factor authentication feature, which adds an extra layer of security to your login process, making it even more difficult for hackers to gain access to your website.
Wordfence Security also provides detailed security reports that allow you to see which areas of your website need the most attention and take action accordingly. It also includes a country blocking feature which can help to block unwanted traffic from specific countries. With Wordfence Security, you can secure your website from malware, hackers, and other security threats, and keep your data and your visitors’ data safe.
This falls into the supportive affiliate plugins category or “keep the lights on”.
Admin Column
Admin Columns may not strike you as important but as you install various WordPress plugins they take over your WordPress dashboard admin area post/page layout making it impossible to read, essentially breaking/slowing down the content creation process. This simple yet powerful WordPress plugin makes it easy to customize and organize the columns in your admin area, helping you to manage your website more efficiently. With Admin Columns, you can easily control which columns are displayed in your admin area, and how they’re organized, making it simple to find the information you need quickly and easily.
The plugin allows you to customize the columns in your admin area to suit your specific needs, whether you’re running a blog, an e-commerce store, or a portfolio website. You can choose which columns to display, and even create custom columns for things like custom fields and taxonomies. Additionally, you can also sort and filter your columns, making it easy to find the information you need quickly and easily.
Admin Columns also offers advanced features such as inline editing, which allows you to edit your posts and pages directly from the admin area, without having to go into the post editor. It also offers a feature to export and import your column setup, which can save you time when you’re working with multiple websites. With Admin Columns, you can easily customize and organize the columns in your admin area, helping you to manage your website more efficiently.
This is not one of the best WordPress affiliate plugins but it certainly helps clean up your WordPress dashboard. Not essential by any means but simple enough to install and fix things up.
Easy Custom Sidebars
Easy Custom Sidebars can easily create custom sidebars and widget areas for your website. With Easy Custom Sidebars, you can easily create unique sidebars and widget areas for different pages, posts, categories, and custom post types, providing a more tailored and personalized experience for your visitors. 
Create custom sidebars and widget areas for different pages, posts, categories, and custom post types, giving you the ability to control the widgets that are displayed on each area of your website. This allows you to create a more tailored and personalized experience for your visitors, and increase conversions by displaying relevant content in the sidebars.
Easy Custom Sidebars also offers a feature that allows you to clone existing sidebars, which saves you time when you are creating new sidebars for your site. The plugin also offers a feature to export and import your sidebar settings, which can save you time when you are working with multiple websites. With Easy Custom Sidebars, you can easily create custom sidebars and widget areas for your website, providing a more tailored and personalized experience for your visitors.
Link Whisper Free
Optimize your internal linking structure, helping you to improve your website’s SEO and user experience. With Link Whisper, you can easily identify and fix broken links, create internal links that boost your SEO, and improve the user experience for your visitors.
SurferSEO
You may be thinking that SuferSEO is a platform for writing search-engine-optimized content and not a WordPress plugin. Though it is a platform, it can be integrated using this WordPress plugin. The SuferSEO plugin allows you to write your content within the WordPress dashboard and get those same benefits and you don’t need to copy & paste the content all around just to get the article published.
SuferSEO deserves the title of one of the best WordPress affiliate plugin because it helps you rank. No matter what affiliate program you join, given enough domain authority and SEO and back-linking you’ll be sure to pull in some commissions.
Originality.AI
The Originality.AI WordPress extension is designed to enhance your blogging experience by ensuring the uniqueness of your content. With this tool, you can simplify your content creation process, and safeguard your SEO rankings by avoiding duplicate content. The AI-powered algorithm effectively analyzes your text against billions of web pages, ensuring that your content stands out with its originality. This reliable tool quickly identifies any potential plagiarism, saving you time and preventing copyright issues. Above all, it preserves the integrity of your content and helps in fortifying your online reputation. Therefore, if you’re striving to create unique and high-quality content, the Originality.AI extension is the perfect tool for your WordPress blog.
They also created a free content optimizer as an alternative to SuferSEO.
Popup Maker
Popup Maker is a tool for creating powerful, effective, and engaging popups for your website. With a user-friendly interface and powerful features, you can easily create popups that will help you increase conversions, grow your email list, and boost your reach.
Affiliate marketers have a few streams to grab eyes and email is certainly one of those top 
streams. Having a user enter their name/email on your WordPress site is one of the popular/less expensive ways in growing your email list.
Popup Maker offers a wide range of customization options, allowing you to create popups that are perfectly tailored to your business and audience. You can choose from a variety of templates, customize the design and layout, and add any elements you need to make your popups truly effective.
Popup Maker also offers advanced targeting options, so you can display your popups to the right audience at the right time. You can choose to show popups on specific pages, after a certain amount of time, or when a user is about to leave your website.
In addition, with the analytics feature of Popup Maker, you can track the performance of your popups in real time and make data-driven decisions to improve their performance.
Popup Maker is a cost-effective (free) and efficient way to increase conversions and grow your business.
Responsive Menu
Responsive Menu is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easy to create and manage responsive menus on your website. With Responsive Menu, you can easily create mobile-friendly menus that look great on any device, including smartphones and tablets. The plugin offers a wide range of customization options, allowing you to create menus that are tailored to 
your specific needs and goals.
One of the key benefits of the Responsive Menu is its flexibility. The plugin offers a wide range of customization options, including the ability to create multiple menus, customize the menu colors and styles, and choose from a variety of different menu layouts. This allows you to create menus that are tailored to your specific needs and goals, and that is more likely to provide a great user experience for your visitors.
Responsive Menu also offers a wide range of accessibility options, including the ability to add skip links, keyboard navigation, and support for screen readers. These features make it easy for visitors to navigate your website, regardless of their device or ability. The plugin also has a built-in analytics feature which helps you see how visitors are interacting with your menu and make adjustments accordingly. With Responsive Menu, you can easily create and manage responsive menus on your website, helping you to improve user experience and increase engagement.
Simple Custom CSS and JS
Simple Custom CSS and JS is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easy to add custom CSS and JavaScript to your website. With Simple Custom CSS and JS, you can easily customize the look and functionality of your website without having to worry about editing your theme’s code. The plugin offers a simple and user-friendly interface, making it easy for anyone to use, even if you don’t have any coding experience.
One of the key benefits of Simple Custom CSS and JS is that it allows you to make changes to your website without affecting your theme’s code. This means that you can make changes to your website without having to worry about losing your customizations when you update your theme. Additionally, this plugin also allows you to add custom CSS and JavaScript to specific pages and posts, giving you more control over the look and functionality of your website.
Simple Custom CSS and JS also offer a wide range of options for adding custom code, including the ability to add code to the head or footer of your website, as well as the ability to add code to specific pages or posts. This feature allows you to create highly targeted customizations that are more likely to improve the look and functionality of your website. The plugin also has a built-in analytics feature which helps you see how visitors are interacting with your website and make adjustments accordingly. With Simple Custom CSS and JS, you can easily add custom CSS and JavaScript to your website, helping you to improve the look and functionality of your website.
WPCode Lite
WPCode Lite is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easy to add custom code to your website. With WPCode Lite, you can easily customize the look and functionality of your website without having to worry about editing your theme’s code. The plugin offers a simple and user-friendly interface, making it easy for anyone to use, even if you don’t have any coding experience.
One of the key benefits of WPCode Lite is that it allows you to make changes to your website without affecting your theme’s code. This means that you can make changes to your website without having to worry about losing your customizations when you update your theme. Additionally, this plugin also allows you to add custom code to specific pages and posts, giving you more control over the look and functionality of your website.
WPCode Lite also offers a wide range of options for adding custom code, including the ability to add code to the head or footer of your website, as well as the ability to add code to specific pages or posts. This feature allows you to create highly targeted customizations that are more likely to improve the look and functionality of your website. The plugin also has a built-in analytics feature which helps you see how visitors are interacting with your website and make adjustments accordingly. With WPCode Lite, you can easily add custom code to your website, helping you to improve the look and functionality of your website.
This was helpful for me to add the Google analytics code to my pages. It also falls into the best affiliate plugins category.
WP Last Modified Info
WP Last Modified Info is a powerful WordPress plugin that makes it easy to display the last modified date and time for your posts and pages. With this plugin, you can easily let your visitors know when a post or page was last updated, helping them to quickly identify new and updated content on your website. 
One of the key benefits of WP Last Modified Info is that it helps to improve the user experience on your website by providing your visitors with important information about the content they are reading. Additionally, this plugin also helps to improve the SEO of your website by making it clear to search engines when a post or page was last updated, helping to increase the chances of your content being found and indexed by search engines.
The plugin is lightweight, easy to install, and easy to customize. You can choose to show the last modified date and time for all post types or choose to show it for specific post types only. You can also choose to show the last modified date and time in different formats. With WP Last Modified Info, you can easily add a last modified date and time to your website, helping to improve the user experience and SEO of your website.
WP Mail SMTP
WP Mail SMTP is a must-have plugin for any WordPress website. It ensures that your emails are delivered to your recipients by configuring your website to use a reliable SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) provider. This is important because, by default, some hosting providers may not properly send emails from your website, resulting in missed notifications, lost contact form submissions, and other important communications.
One of the key benefits of WP Mail SMTP is that it offers a range of options for configuring your website to use a reliable SMTP provider. You can choose to use popular providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook or use your SMTP server. Additionally, the plugin also offers a range of customization options, allowing you to set the “From” name and email address, test email sending, and more.
With WP Mail SMTP, you can rest easy knowing that your emails will be delivered to your recipients. It also allows you to test your email sending and it has built-in troubleshooting options so you can quickly diagnose and resolve any issues with email delivery. This plugin is essential for any website to ensure that important communications are not lost in the digital abyss.
This is a personal favorite and goes into the best WordPress affiliate plugin category. It has been very effective for me no matter what affiliate program I join this has helped me in my sales funnel pipeline.
WP Super Minify
If you’re looking to speed up your website, WP Super Minify is the perfect plugin for you. It minifies and combines all your website’s CSS and JavaScript files, reducing their size and number of HTTP requests, which can significantly improve your website’s load time.
One of the great things about WP Super Minify is that it’s incredibly easy to use. Simply install the plugin and activate it, and it will automatically minify your website’s CSS and JavaScript files. There are no complicated settings to configure, making it accessible for anyone to use. 
In addition to improving your website’s load time, WP Super Minify also helps to improve your website’s SEO by reducing the size of your pages, making them faster to load and more easily indexed by search engines.
The plugin is lightweight, easy to install, and easy to use. It is compatible with most themes and plugins and allows you to minify inline JavaScript and CSS. With WP Super Minify, you can easily speed up your website, improve your website’s SEO and enhance user experience.
This falls into that supportive affiliate plugin category.
WPForms Lite
If you’re looking for a user-friendly and powerful forms plugin for your WordPress website, WPForms Lite is a perfect choice. It’s an easy-to-use drag-and-drop form builder that allows you to create and manage forms on your website without any coding skills.
One of the main advantages of WPForms Lite is its ease of use. With its intuitive interface, you can quickly create forms, add fields, and customize them to your needs. You can also use pre-built form templates to save time and ensure your forms are professional-looking.
In addition, WPForms Lite also offers a variety of features that will help you to get the most out of your forms. For example, you can add form validation to make sure that users enter the correct information, and you can also set up form notifications to receive an email when someone submits a form. 
The plugin is also mobile-friendly, which means that forms will look and work great on any device. You can also easily add reCAPTCHA to your forms to prevent spam submissions.
Overall, WPForms Lite is an easy-to-use, powerful, and feature-rich form plugin that will help you to create and manage forms on your website with ease. It’s the perfect solution for anyone looking to add forms to their website without any coding skills.
This falls into that supportive affiliate plugin category.
WPFront Scroll Top
If you’re looking for a simple and effective way to add a “back to top” button to your website, WPFront Scroll Top is the perfect plugin for you. It allows your visitors to easily scroll back to the top of your webpage with the click of a button, improving the overall user experience on your website.
One of the best things about WPFront Scroll Top is its customization options. You can choose from a variety of button styles and colors, and even upload your custom button image. You can also set the button’s position, and decide when the button should appear on your webpage.
The plugin also has a responsive design which makes it compatible with all devices and screen sizes, making it easy for users to navigate through your website from any device. 
Additionally, WPFront Scroll Top is lightweight and easy to install, making it compatible with any WordPress theme. It also comes with detailed documentation and support, ensuring that you have all the resources you need to get the most out of this plugin.
In conclusion, WPFront Scroll Top is a user-friendly, customizable, and lightweight plugin that can improve the overall user experience on your website. It’s a great solution for anyone looking to add a “back to top” button to their website without any coding skills. This falls into that supportive affiliate plugin category.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a must-have plugin for any WordPress website looking to improve its search engine optimization. It’s an all-in-one SEO solution that helps you to optimize your website for search engines and improve your visibility in search results.
One of the main advantages of Yoast SEO is its user-friendly interface. It guides you through the process of optimizing your website with step-by-step instructions, making it easy for anyone to improve their SEO, even if they have no prior experience.
Yoast SEO also offers a variety of features that will help you to get the most out of your website. For example, it will analyze your content and provide you with suggestions for improving readability, keywords, and meta tags. You can also use it to create and submit sitemaps, and to verify your website with Google and Bing.
In addition, Yoast SEO also helps you to improve your website’s social media integration. It allows you to add social media tags, and preview how your website will look when shared on social media.
The plugin is also regularly updated and compatible with the latest version of WordPress, ensuring that you are always using the most up-to-date version of the plugin.
Yoast SEO is a comprehensive, user-friendly, and feature-rich plugin that will help you improve your website’s search engine optimization and social media integration. It’s the perfect solution for improving their website’s visibility in search results and increasing their online presence.
This in combination with google analytics is a great combo to help you rank better. Certainly falls into a supportive affiliate marketing plugin category.
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a great way to monetize your website and earn passive income. However, it can be challenging to manage affiliate links, track clicks, and create engaging affiliate content. Fortunately, WordPress has a wide range of plugins that can help you streamline your affiliate marketing efforts and make the most of your website’s earning potential. I hope my list of the best WordPress affiliate plugins will help simplify the process of affiliate marketing and maximize your earning potential.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can compensate me at no cost to you if you decide to purchase. This site is not intended to provide financial advice and is for entertainment only. You can read our affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.
