• Jesse Lakes

    Jesse is a Native Montanan and the co-founder and CEO of Geniuslink - or, as he likes to say, head cheerleader. Before Jesse co-founded Geniuslink, he was a whitewater rafting guide, worked at a sushi restaurant, a skate/snowboard shop, was a professional student, and then became the first Global Manager at Apple for the iTunes Affiliate Program.

Contents

Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin Review

  • Jesse Lakes

    Jesse is a Native Montanan and the co-founder and CEO of Geniuslink - or, as he likes to say, head cheerleader. Before Jesse co-founded Geniuslink, he was a whitewater rafting guide, worked at a sushi restaurant, a skate/snowboard shop, was a professional student, and then became the first Global Manager at Apple for the iTunes Affiliate Program.

Contents
AAWP

There must be hundreds of WordPress Amazon Affiliate plugins!

They’re not all created equal and their use cases are broad and seemingly endless.

Whether you’re generating product links from within the WordPress text editor or assembling bold product ads with ‘buy now’ buttons, it’s likely that you’ll find at least one solution.

Now, plenty of affiliates use Amazon’s offered solutions, such as Amazon Native Shopping Ads, Text + Image Links, Carousel Links, and so on.

These are all okay…

It’s called AAWP, it was built in Germany by a friendly entrepreneur named Florian, and it’s the bee’s knees. 

Let there be no confusion – AAWP stands for Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin.

It can do quite a number of things very well but what it does best is enable you to create striking, customizable product listings. Check out this proud specimen here:

What is AAWP?

AAWP

The Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin is a premium tool with multiple tiers for pricing, each determining how many sites you can install the plugin on. License keys are valid for a year.

After that time, you may voluntarily renew the license (no subscription) to get continued access to automatic updates and support. License renewals are further rewarded with a 50% discount.

If you decide not to renew, the plugin will continue to work – you just won’t get any new features or support. They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied!

AAWP Pricing

AAWP Pricing

Adding Your Product Advertising Key

One thing you’ll need in order to use the Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin is an Amazon Associates Product Advertising API key. This is made available to most Amazon Associates, and you can find it in your Associates dashboard by navigating to (Associates Central > Tools > Product Advertising API). AAWP even provides a page you can use to test your PA API keys so you can rest assured that everything will work before you make the purchase.

Once you’ve signed up and purchased the tier you want, you’ll arrive at some instructions for installing the plugin and adding your Amazon API keys. Once that’s taken care of, you’re all set to start generating Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin links!

Using Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin to Build Links

Inside the WordPress editor, just drop “[amazon = ASIN]” into a text box, replacing ‘ASIN’ with the Amazon product code for the item you’re linking to (B01GKC8CG0, for example).

Using different shortcodes, you can build simple Text links (but you’re reading this because you’re after something more colorful!), Box links (my favorite, shown above), Bestseller lists, Widgets, and Comparison Tables (below).

All the product data, price information, ratings, and images are pulled in directly from Amazon’s PA API. This is great because whenever you provide images or price information next to Amazon Affiliate links, the informationmust be served up dynamically in this way.

Amazon requires this to ensure that you’re always displaying the most up-to-date product information. Failing to do this is a violation of their Operating Agreement and could result in getting your Associates account banned.

As a side note, building Comparison Tables is a bit more involved. First, you assemble them inside the AAWP settings, then embed them on your page later using the [table “” not found /]


shortcode.

That’s all you need to know right now for building links. It’s a breeze!

Combining Geniuslink and AAWP for World Monetization

So, now you’ve got a world-class product listing, but does it cater to a worldwide audience?

By adding Geniuslink to the mix, you provide an optimal shopping experience for people around the globe.

When it comes to implementation, you’ve got some options. We’ll call them the simple path and the path of control.

The Simple Path

The simple path is to simply run our plugin on the page, alongside AAWP. The links generated by the Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin are exactly the right food (aka link format) for our hungry little Amazon Link Engine.

You provide an ASIN, AAWP builds out an engaging product ad box, then our plugin converts the link on the button into our localized affiliate links.

People click, they get sent to the product in their local storefront, and you earn commissions from their purchases. This is the easiest integration if you’ve already got an established affiliate site and are looking to convert your links auto-magically.

However, there are situations where our plugin doesn’t give you the whole enchilada.

You can learn more in our Manual vs. Programmatic comparison guide, but many of our supplementary features aren’t applicable to the long-form “buy.geni.us” links produced by our plugin.

Clicks through these links are reported in our dashboard in bulk, meaning that you won’t see per-link reporting stats. Additionally, if you want to provide custom destinations for particular geolocations, you’ll need to replace a buy.geni.us link with a geni.us short link.

AAWP Features

1. Automatic Amazon API Disclaimers

Amazon requires that you disclaim your affiliate links, as well as give them credit when you’re pulling in pricing data or a product image using their API. Thankfully, AAWP makes that simple.

With the click of a checkbox, Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin will provide brief disclaimers for affiliate links and product images, including when they were last updated. This helps to reduce any chances that you’ll get audited by Amazon!

2. Customizable Buttons

I’m quite fond of how you can customize buttons by shape, color, and logo to reinforce your websites’ own branding. Adjustable ‘Buy on Amazon’ buttons make it easy to stay compliant with Amazon’s Operating Agreement while using our globalized links. They’re also great for sending a message:

3. Built-in Click Tracking with Google Analytics

AAWP provides a solution for click tracking, which will tag all outbound clicks and report them into Google Analytics.

If you’re using our WordPress plugin (the simple path) this allows you to get per-link reporting in a roundabout way. If you’ve already got the Google Analytics tracking code installed on your site, you don’t need to do a thing. Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin will detect it automatically and start tracking events for you!

4. AMP Compatibility

Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin offers a simple toggle for AMP support, which, once configured (by enabling the allow_url_fopen setting in PHP) builds the box links and pulls in product data from Amazon’s API without using Javascript, thus becoming AMP compliant. This setting works best with the path of control (more info in the Limitations section below).

5. Alternative Rating Icons

And finally, in my very serious research, I came across an Easter Egg feature. It appears that the Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin partnered with Wurst App Your Life at some point. If you’re not familiar, WAYL is a recipe app for sausage enthusiasts, built by one of Florian’s friends. What this integration means for you is that you have another very important decision to make: are you going to continue to rate products with stars, like everyone else? Or will you disrupt the affiliate marketing space by rating products with weiners? The choice is yours, but I’d like to suggest an, at the very least! #datadriven

AAWP Limitations

I’d like to briefly touch on some of the finer details about how to combine our service with AAWP (and what flat-out won’t work), so you have all the information you’ll need before committing.

The Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin offers an opt-in localization feature, which shouldn’t be relied upon if you’re using our service. Technically you don’t need to make any changes – this feature is disabled by default, so be sure to leave it off and there won’t be any conflicts.

Finally, AAWP’s AMP Support makes their plugin work its magic through the PHP side, which is wonderful. However, our plugin does not yet have this same functionality. If you’re a magician, you could write a custom PHP function to apply our quick build format to your links (this is exactly what our WP plugin does, but using JS). 

Wrapping it up

Integrating the Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin with Genius Link is both straightforward and rewarding!

AAWP is a great plugin for easily generating appealing ads that programmatically populate pricing data, Amazon buttons, product images, and more.

When paired with our service, you end up with engaging product listings that are also optimized for international traffic.

Whether you’re interested in converting your existing affiliate links into something snappy and localized, or if you’re just getting started and looking for some structure, this plugin deserves your consideration.

Do you have experience combining Genius Link technology with other WordPress plugins to easily serve up product images, or perhaps do something else entirely?

We’d love to hear about your setup! Please, share your dynamic duos of product promotion with us in the comments below!

Author

  • Jesse Lakes

    Jesse is a Native Montanan and the co-founder and CEO of Geniuslink - or, as he likes to say, head cheerleader. Before Jesse co-founded Geniuslink, he was a whitewater rafting guide, worked at a sushi restaurant, a skate/snowboard shop, was a professional student, and then became the first Global Manager at Apple for the iTunes Affiliate Program.

Author

  • Jesse Lakes

    Jesse is a Native Montanan and the co-founder and CEO of Geniuslink - or, as he likes to say, head cheerleader. Before Jesse co-founded Geniuslink, he was a whitewater rafting guide, worked at a sushi restaurant, a skate/snowboard shop, was a professional student, and then became the first Global Manager at Apple for the iTunes Affiliate Program.

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