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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

Less than a week ago in an intro to this post, I blogged how pleasing to my (and I’m sure every affiliate marketer’s) eye it is to see new developments at different affiliate networks. Now, in addition to ShareASale, Google Affiliate Network and LinkShare, we have AvantLink with their February news!

Yesterday they announced their very own (and a very robust one too) WordPress plugin. So immediately I have reached out to them to get a better idea of how it works, and how bloggers can/will benefit from this launch. This is how this post was born…

The AvantLink plugin for WordPress basically allows quick and simple integration with a number of the network’s integrated Affiliate tools & scripts. Once the plugin is installed and activated, there are several things to note within your WordPress admin panel.

1. Plugin users will see a “AvantLink WP” link in the admin sidebar, under the “Settings” section. Clicking that link opens the “AvantLink WP Plugin Settings” page, which includes four tabs that allow the configuration of several functions, including a product search engine via the AvantLink API (see image below).

2. Plugin users will see an AvantLink icon in their post editor’s kitchen sink. Clicking the icon will open a dialog box that allows affiliates to select any pre-configured ad type/unit (banner, text, video, etc.), from any merchant the affiliate is active with. It will also allow affiliates to create custom tracking links to any merchant URL they choose (see the two screengrabs below)

3. Plugin users will notice several new AvantLink WP widgets in the “Appearance” area of their WordPress admin. These include

• • AvantLink Product Ad Widget – Easy integration of any AvantLink Product Ad Widget (PAW) subscription that has been configured and saved.
  • AvantLink Product Search Form – Quickly enable an on site product search engine, using data from AvantLink merchants.
  • AvantLink Related Products – Display related products from AvantLink merchants driven by custom keyword searches.

It’s important to note that once the AvantLink WP plugin is installed and activated, an Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE) subscription is enabled by default on a site-wide basis. The ALE uses JavaScript to convert direct-to-merchant links to affiliate-tracking links on the fly, and within the end user’s browser. This of course can be deactivated via the settings page, if that’s preferred.

Several integrated tools and scripts from AvantLink offer unique and exclusive functionality free of charge to qualified affiliates, and now WordPress CMS affiliates can easily utilize these ad tools and subscriptions with simple, easy to configure widgets. Very nice development!

As the year draws to a close, and I’m looking into ways of improving my readers’ experience with my blog, I see that the numbers of those who access it via mobile devices has greatly increased since 2009 (as many of you probably know, I started blogging daily on 1/1/2009; so it is good/right to compare 2010 to 2009 now).

Here’s a vivid example: comparing the period of 10/27-12/26/2010 to the same period in 2009 we see a 746.15% increase in traffic this year:

However, as it is obvious from the above data, the considerable traffic increase hasn’t been coupled with significant improvements in the ways this traffic used/read the blog:

• Number of pages viewed per visit has gone up only by 7.23% (from 1.21 to 1.30)
• Average time on site increased just by about 17% (from 56 sec to 1 min 6 sec)
• Bounce rate has dropped only by about 11% (from 89.35% to 79.65%)

The lack of serious improvements is easy to explain: due to a fairly low traffic volume from mobile devices in 2009 nothing has been done to improve the mobile user’s experience with the blog in 2010 — nothing whatsoever.

However, now that I have already had over 4,100 visitors access my blog via their mobile devices in 2010 [see graph below], it is time to change something!

Yesterday morning I have installed WordPress PDA & iPhone plugin, and I’m already registering some improvement. The time on site of iPhone users (the most popular device people use to access my blog) has already more than doubled increasing from 00:38 to 01:29. Of course, it is too preliminary to make any conclusions, and I still have to see if there are better WordPress plugins available out there (WPtouch looks promising), but it is always good to register a quick improvement.

Is your blog mobile-friendly yet? If so, please share your tips on how you’ve achieved it (in the “Comments” area blow). I am certain that many people (myself in the first row!) will benefit from any additional tips.

Having looked at the blogging platform options for affiliates, it is only logical to continue the topic by looking at the top affiliate plugins and WordPress-friendly tools.

Below you will find my list of plugins and tools that affiliates use, and rate highly. The order is merely topical (network-offered plugins, plugins related to the import of data feeds, etc), and does not represent any sort of ranking.

Top 20 WordPress Tools and Plugins for Affiliates

1. Affiliate Link Encoder from AvantLink – Detects and changes direct links into affiliate tracking links for the merchants that are in the AvantLink network.
2. Commission Junction Product Search – Creates Commission Junction product listings within blog posts and pages.
3. Clickbank Widget – Adds targeted ads for Clickbank products to your blog’s sidebar.
4. LinkShare RSS DealFeed – Automatically populates your WordPress blog with deals and other promotional content.
5. LinkShare AdMix – Helps integrate RSS content ads from LinkShare advertisers with your blog posts.
6. PopShops Affiliate Store Plugin – Helps add products to your WP blog from any of the major affiliate networks (LinkShare, Commission Junction, ShareASale, buy.at, Google Affiliate Network, LinkConnector, WebGains, and even in-house based programs like that of Amazon).
7. DatafeedR – They call it a “Factory where you build, modify and download your stores, as well as customer support, community forums, and video tutorials.”
8. DataFeedFile.com Featured Product Plugin – Helps you add a product of your choice, or allows your blog’s visitors to compare prices across different merchants without leaving your blog.
9. Skimlinks Affiliate Marketing Tool – Allows you to “instantly monetize untapped links on your blog.”
10. 123Linkit Affiliate Marketing Tool – Transforming keywords into affiliate links.
11. Pretty Link – Allows you to “shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website” creating shortlinks “coming from your own domain.” Each hit is tracked with details “of where the hit came from, the browser, OS and host.”
12. Affiliate Link – Another tool to shorten your affiliate links using your own domain name (and not any of the URL-shortening services). Tracking also provided.
13. Ad Squares Widget – Helps you display and manage 125×125 ad square banners (and other sizes). Works “with standard affiliate ads, or even with ad network codes.”
14. WP125 – A robust and popular ad management plugin for WordPress.
15. Amazon Autoposter – Allows users to post products from Amazon.com in their own blogs (automatically, based on keyword match).
16. Amazon Product In a Post Plugin – Help you “quickly add a formatted Amazon Product/Item to a post or page by using just the Amazon product ASIN (also known as the ISBN-10).”
17. Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer – “Automatically changes any Amazon link on your site to use your affiliate ID” and “also changes the link to point to the user’s local (i.e. country-specific) Amazon store.”
18. Amazon Store – Helps you quickly create your own Amazon affiliate store.
19. Amazon Post Purchase – Based on the above-quoted Product In a Post plugin, but works with sidebars “in themes that support dynamic sidebars.”
20. Amazon Product Link Widget – Another sidebar widget for Amazon product links/ads.

Have I missed your favorite plugin? Please post it about it below!

If I were asked which WordPress plugins I would recommend to bloggers that use this popular platform, and want to enhance the usability component, I would list the following five:

1. Akismet [plugin's site] by Matt Mullenweg – Checks comments posted in your blog against their own database and places suspicious ones into a Spam folder. It does a great job, filtering all of the spam in your blog (hence, making it look much cleaner that it would’ve looked without this plugin), as well as makes your job of comment moderation much easier. Keep in mind though that occasionally (as often is the case with email spam filters too) a totally kosher comment may land in that Spam folder. So you want to look through the comments stored in this folder every once in a while (to whitelist the good readers).

2. Subscribe To Comments [plugin's site] by Mark Jaquith – Adds a check box that a commenting reader may tick if they want to be notified of replies to their comment(s). A must have if you want to really engage your audience, which is important not only for your blog’s popularity to grow, but also because some of the most important thoughts and conclusions are born in discussions.

3. WordPress Popular Posts [plugin's site] by Héctor Cabrera – Excellent plugin that sorts your previous blog posts by popularity. Popularity is defined by you. It can either mean “most comments” or “most views”. Regardless of the determinant that you choose, each post can still show both the number of views, and the number of comments (it is all easily customizable). I chose to use this plugin in combination with the Most Popular Posts plugin (which ranks posts by the number of comments one), and have one display posts in order of most views (giving a “Most Viewed Posts” header to this ranking), and the other – by most comments.

4. SexyBookmarks [plugin's site] by Josh Jones and Norman Yung – One really sexy plugin that allows for an array of social bookmarking options to be placed under each of your posts. See it in action right under this post.

5. Seesmic WordPress [plugin's site] by Seesmic Inc – Great plugin for adding video comments (recording them right within your own blog using Seesmic’s platform). Truly adds a new dimension of online communication and brings a blog alive. Even if your readers never use it, use it yourself!

I have arranged the above plugins in order of priority (you can live without video comments, but can’t without filtering those spam comments effectively). I use all of the above.

If I haven’t listed a plugin that in your opinion can greatly improve a WordPress blog’s usability, and enhance user engagement, please write about it in the comments area below. I am open to suggestions, ideas, and always eager to learn from the experience of others.