It is no secret that content is still king, and bloggers know this like no one else. Regularly updated blogs help achieve amazing SEO results in a matter of seconds; and nearly every successful affiliate I know of blogs at least several times a week.
Since WordPress remains to be one of the most popular blogging platforms today — not only among smaller bloggers, but also major news outlets (e.g.: CNN, Forbes, Reuters), Fortune 500 companies (e.g.: GM, UPS, eBay, Sony), and such famous blogs as Mashable and Boing Boing [more here] — I’d like to turn to plugins that help affiliates manage banners in their blogs.
Here are the five that seem to be worth your attention (descriptions taken from what each plugin’s developer provided the WP Plugin Directory with) if you’re looking for an effective way to manage your affiliate banners, as well as AdSense units:
- Ad Squares Widget — This widget makes it possible for you to display 125×125 ad squares ( or some other configurable size ) into a widget-ready bar for WordPress. You can have just 2 squares, or as many as 8 running together. It also supports multi-widget options. So technically you could have even more than 8 if you add it to a bar more than once. Each ad square accepts any HTML/JavaScript code, so it will work with standard affiliate ads, or even with ad network codes. You can also configure the widget to shuffle the positioning of your squares if you like. The Ad Squares widget supports embedded PHP code too.
- Random / Rotating Ads V2 — The Datafeedr Random Ads V2 plugin allows you to simply and easily show random, rotating ads anywhere on your site by adding a template tag to your theme’s template files or using widgets.You can show any type of ad: Google Adsense, affiliate ads, banners, images, flash, text, etc… There’s no limit to the number of ads you can put into rotation for an ad spot.
- Ad Injection — Injects any kind of advert (e.g. Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, ClickBank, TradeDoubler, etc) into the existing content of your WordPress posts and pages. You can control the number of adverts based on the post length, and it can restrict who sees adverts by post age, visitor referrer and IP address. Adverts can be configured in the post (random, top, and bottom positions) or in any widget/sidebar area. There’s support for A:B split testing / ad rotation. And the dynamic restrictions (by IP and referrer) work with WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache and WP Cache.
- Adwit Banner Manager — Insert ad spots into your blog and sidebar in one click. You just drag and drop to indicate where you want to place ads on your blog. There is nothing to modify, no HTML knowledge required, no template to edit, nothing to integrate. Everything is done in a minute! It’s that easy. Adwit Banner Manager will place your favorite advertising programs in the right location, without placement errors (wrong ad size, wrong display zone, special template…). Just let the system optimize the ad rotations and find the best random banner to maximize your revenues.
- Banner Wizz — Gives you the possibility to add contextual banner ads at the beginning or the end of every post of your blog , based on keywords occurrences. Because your blog will have a relevant banner ad on every post ,the plugin will help you maximize your conversions with affiliate programs, products, services or sites you promote on your blog. How does it work? For every banner you add through the admin interface you will need to set some keywords that describe the banner. The plugin counts the keywords in a post and for each post displays the banner with most keywords occurrences. If no keywords are entered, the plugin will act as a banner rotator and it will display a random banner in each post.
If I have missed a plugin which you enjoy using, please do chime in, and mention it through the “Comments” below.
Hello Mr. Prussakov,
Thank you for this article. I’ve been searching for something like this. FootballFanatics.com referred me to your information.
Thanks again,
Jim Piatt
Jim, I’m glad to be of help.
Once you’ve tried these and arrived at the one you like best, if you could post here which one it is, I’d appreciate it. Many thanks in advance (then I won’t remove your link… wink-wink).
Great list, Geno. I’m using one called AdRotate that works really well: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/adrotate/
Hope to see you in New York in a couple of weeks!
Daniel, AdRotate looks like a very good one. I’ll play with it in a few days too.
Yes, I too am looking forward to seeing you again at Affiliate Summit!
Hey! These are great plugins for those involved with affiliate marketing. Thanks for sharing the information.
I believe that one of the best of this is Ad Injection. If the developers develop an option to manage a bounch of Click Bank banners probably will be the best. At this moment you can only insert 10 banners by section, but in a marketplaces of clickbank you can find a lot of interesting products.
Thank you sooo much, very much appreciated! There is so much choice out there, too much! You helped me narrowing down to a few options!