The first time I came to know how affiliate marketers make money through blogging I was just blown away. Nearly every action that you take on their blog sites, can actually earn them a load of cash. And I am talking about professional affiliate marketers who have a large audience for their blogs. So how do they do it? One of their strategies is to put affiliate links on the content of their posts. One such plugin that can do this is the 123LinkIt plugin. You can earn extra cash too for your blog or website with the 123LinkIt plugin. It’s quite easy to use once you have added the plugin to your WordPress website. This WordPress plugin boasts of the following features:
- Easy WordPress setup
- Transform keywords into affiliate links
- Affiliate cloaking
- Links include no-follow tags
- Stats and reporting
- Access to Commission Junction’s advertisers
It has quite an impressive set of features so I decided to use this in one of my blog. After activating the plugin you should have a 123LinkIt Configuration item in the Settings panel. Upon selecting this items you will be ask to enter a public and a private key.
In order to get a public and private key, you need to go to the 123LinkIt website and sgn up. When signing up, you will have to provide the URL of your website. (If you want to provide another website later down the track, you can always login and go to Manage Account and click on New Blog). You also have to provide a category that your website caters to (i.e. Books/Media). After signing up, you will be given ther post key. Copy and paste the values to your WordPress 123LinkIt Configuration screen and save.
After saving, go to your posts and click on one post. You should be able to see a panel called the Advertise Post below your editor.
You’ll just see the first line of the panel. To expand just click the link Add Affiliate Links. This expands the panel to what you see above. At this point the plugin searches your post and see if it matches any of its advertisers keyword. If it cannot find any then it will tell you so. Otherwise, it will display the keywords that it has found a match and tags it. You should also notice that the keywords in your blogpost are underlined and are in blue fonts. These are the plugins targeted words. If you’re happy wth everything click on the button Add Checked Links and then click on the Update button to update your post.
Some questions come to mind though when using this plugin. Since a category has been selected for the website entered during signup, is the keyword search limited to the category chosen? If that’s the case then using this for a general blog may not earn you as much. But for blog that’s covering a specific industry (i.e. computers, books, etc.) then this may be the plugin for you.
Related Posts:
How to install a WordPress plugin
Tags: affiliate marketing
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Hi there,
Thanks so much for trying our tool and for the great write-up! To follow up on your questions, the category field is really for us more than anything. It allows us to see what verticals our bloggers are in so we can add more advertisers in those areas. It also helps us devise blog post recommendations which we send out monthly to active users. These are ideas corresponding with their niche as well as the hottest trends in the space and are created to be more likely to convert into affiliate revenue.
Thanks again for the write-up. A couple of last notes – we’re automating a lot of the signup process. E.g. we’re working on integrating the API keys automatically it’s easier to signup and we’re also allowing future users to sign in with their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Finally, the plugin will be a lot more automated in the upcoming release. It’s going to add affiliate links automatically, switch out expired/non-performing links right away, and a lot more.
I’d love to hear your feedback on how we can make it better – feel free to email me or reach me anytime at yasmine[at]123linkit[dot]com or @123LinkIt.
Have a great day!
Yasmine, Founder of 123LinkIt
It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for filling in the gaps.