Best Comparison Plugins for Affiliate Marketing

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If you’re monetizing your site through affiliate marketing, you’re maybe promoting products using review or comparison style type posts. If you’re simply writing posts that contain long blocks of boring text with affiliate text links, they’re unlikely to prove very successful and you’re not going to make many affiliate sales.

In order to maximize your chances of being successful, you need to display product comparison posts in an eye-catching manner. This will allow you to improve your click-through-rates (CTR) and conversions which most importantly means increased affiliate earnings.

The best way to display reviews is by using product comparison plugins. Such plugins will allow you to create visually appealing comparison tables, product boxes and widgets with clear calls-to-action that grab the attention of your visitors and which help entice them to click on your affiliate links.

In this post, we will cover some of the best WordPress product comparison plugins for affiliate marketers. Whether you’re using Amazon Associates on your site or whether you’re recommending products from other affiliate programs there are plugins here suitable for everyone’s needs.  

AAWP

If you’re using Amazon Associates to monetize your site, you should definitely consider using the Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin (AAWP).

AAWP will allow you to easily create eye-catching bestseller lists, new release lists, product boxes as well as text links that will definitely help to increase your CTR. All widgets are responsive and mobile friendly and support accelerated mobile pages (AMP).

The plugin pulls the data directly from Amazon’s API which means you never need to worry about breaking Amazon’s terms of service. You can specify an update period which means prices will update automatically and will allow you to avoid showing stale product prices.

It supports a number of Amazon partner networks including the USA, Canada, UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico and India. It also provides geo-targeting functionality which means it automatically redirects your visitors to the correct Amazon store depending on where they are visiting from, meaning you will never lose out on commission.

Generated widgets can easily be inserted into your posts using shortcodes and affiliate links are automatically generated with the correct Amazon tracking ID. Product information is cached so it reduces the number of API requests that the plugin has to make which means faster load times.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you will need to enter the license key that you received after purchasing the plugin. In order to connect the plugin with your Amazon Associate account, you will need to enter your Amazon API and secret key credentials as well as the tracking ids for the relevant stores that you have signed-up to.

If you need to modify any settings relating to such things as the caching duration this can all be done from the General tab. If you like to perform any customization, this can be performed from the Output tab. Customization options include such things as how the product titles, descriptions and buttons appear. The output can also be customized using CSS.

If you’re reviewing or talking about a specific product, you can create product boxes where you can display such information as the title, description availability, price, relevant discounts and call-to-action buttons which can then be included within your blog posts.

Comparison tables can easily be set-up and will allow your visitors to easily compare features between different products and thus help them with their buying decisions which should help with conversions.

If you’re in a particular niche that has regular releases, you can display a new release list widget allowing you to promote recently launched products to your audience.

Bestselling products within a particular category/keyword can also be displayed as lists. These can be configured to display a certain number of products, i.e. Top 5, Top 10 etc.

The plugin provides another feature which allows you to set-up data fields to show particular product information (image, title, description, price etc).

AAWP Personal – €39 • Single site license • Core features included • 1 year of updates and support AAWP Plus – €99 • Can be used on up to 3 sites • Core features included • 1 year of updates and support AAWP Pro – €199 • Can be used on up to 10 sites • Core features included • 1 year of updates and support AAWP Ultimate – €299 • Can be used on up to 25 sites • Core features included • 1 year of updates and support

WP Review

A great way to increase your click-through-rate on your product reviews as well as increase your affiliate earnings is to use rich snippets.

If you don’t know what rich snippets are, it’s what appears in the search results and which provides a brief summary of a particular web page. With rich snippets, review ratings, price, images, availability of products and other details can also be displayed within the snippet.

Here’s an example:

The top search result is just a standard snippet, while the bottom one is a rich snippet. As you can see, the rich one displays more detailed information including the recipe rating, as well as the cooking time and calories.

I’m sure you will agree, the rich snippet certainly stands out more than the standard one and no doubt you would be more likely to click on it. Rich snippets can therefore help to increase your page’s click-through-rate especially as it helps users know immediately what your contents is about. It can also help Google understand what your content is all about which can help with your organic search rankings.

In order to show additional information within rich snippets, you need to use a schema mark-up plugin such as WP Review.

Whether you have a site reviewing books, computer games or even one that reviews hotels, you will be able to display rich snippets with this freemium plugin. The plugin provides support for up to 14 rich snippet types including (the free version of the plugin comes with one rich snippet as standard):

• Product
• Software Application
• Article
• Book
• Game
• Movie
• Music
• Painting
• Place
• Recipe
• Restaurant
• Store
• TV Series
• Website

The premium version of the plugin comes with 16 pre-made templates, while the free version comes with 2 predefined templates. Each template provides a number of useful sections where you can list key things such as product features, pros and cons. They can also be customized (colors, fonts, heading, border and background) to match your site’s look and feel.

Here’s some example templates:

You can choose between 5 review rating systems including, percentages, points, stars, circles (pro version only) and thumbs up (pro version only). Custom images can also be used for ratings which will allow you to stand out from competitor sites.

Using the plugin couldn’t be simpler. Once you have installed and activated the plugin, simply select Posts > Create New Post. Scroll down to the bottom and you should see a Review section, here you can select the review type (star, percentage, points, circle, thumbs up) that you want to create. Now under the Review Item, enter the relevant review features for the product and add the relevant ratings.

Now scroll to the Review Description section, here you can add a detailed review. In this section you can also enable/disable user commenting. If enabled, it will allow your visitors to submit their own ratings as well rate other user’s comments as helpful or not which is a great feature to keep your audience engaged.

You can choose where your review widgets appear within your posts. For example, you can set it to appear at the beginning or end of your posts or you can use a shortcode to manually positon the widget anywhere within your contents.

If you’re comparing a number of products, you can create great looking comparison tables that will allow your visitors to easily compare products.

You never need to worry about compatibility issues as it’s compatible with all WordPress themes and it’s been optimized for speed so it won’t slow your site down. It’s also mobile friendly so your users won’t experience any issues reading your reviews on mobile devices.

In order to grab your audience’s attention, WP Review has implemented pop-ups and notification features. These are useful additions to the pro plugin as it allows you to promote related reviews with the exit popup. The notification bar can be used to display a summary of the review as well as a call to action. It also provides the ability to overlay the rating on the post’s thumbnail which should help encourage users to click through to the post to read the full review.

If you’re already using a schema mark-up plugin, but you’re thinking of moving over to using WP Review but you’re worried that you might not be able to migrate your reviews over, don’t worry. The plugin provides an import feature which will allow you to import your reviews and settings over.

WP Review – $0 • 3 review types included (star, percentage, point) • Supports Google Rich Snippet WP Review Pro – $67 • 5 review types included (percentages, points, stars, circles, thumbs up) • 16 pre-defined templates • Unlimited color options • Related reviews pop-up • Notification bar with reviews • Google Place Reviews, Facebook Page Reviews, Yelp Business Reviews • Comparison table • WP multisite and multiuser compatible • Review as an author or a company • Show total rating on post thumbnail • Allows users to rate • Includes pros & cons section • 10 custom widgets • WooCommerce integration • Import feature

WP Product Review

Just like WP Review, WP Product Review is another rich snippet review plugin that can help to grab your visitor’s attention directly from the organic search engine listings.

WP Product Review allows you to create a number of review widgets which you can display within your review posts. For example, you can create a review box where you can display the overall product rating score, the individual rating criteria, the main pros and cons, the product image and price as well as a call-to-action button.

WP Product Review provides an additional 2 templates that be used as shown below:

Review widgets are fully customizable. You can alter the colors, fonts, widths, borders and you can even create custom icons for your ratings.

Comparison tables can also be created and they can be automatically generated from existing reviews.

Creating reviews with the plugin is straightforward. Once you have installed and activated the plugin, select Reviews > Add New from the WordPress dashboard.

From the Add New Review screen, enter the blog post title as well as the review. Now scroll down to the Product Review Extra Settings and enter details about the product i.e. product image and price, affiliate link etc. Next, enter the relevant rating features for the product and add the pros and cons and finally click on Publish.

Review widgets can be placed either at the start or end of the review post, if you want to display them within your contents this can be done using shortcodes. In regards to user commenting, this feature is available just like with the WP Review plugin and can be enabled or disabled as required.

One of the downsides of WP Product Review is it only supports one type of rich snippet unlike with the WP Review Pro plugin where it supports a total of 14 different schema types. It does have an advantage over WP Review Pro though in regards to Amazon integration (available with the Developer plan only).

For the Amazon integration feature to work, you will need to enter your Amazon Associate Amazon API and secret key credentials as well as the tracking id. This can be done by clicking on the Pro Amazon tab after selecting Product Review from the WordPress dashboard.

Once it’s connected to your Amazon Associate account, in order to automatically import Amazon product information, you simply need to enter the relevant product’s ID as shown below. It will pull in the product’s name, image, price, affiliate link with your tracking code. As the price is pulled in using the API, you won’t be in breach of Amazon’s terms of service.

WP Product Review is a freemuim plugin. The free version provides support for rich snippet and will allow you to create simple product reviews. If you require additional features such as custom icons, shortocodes, preloading functionality, comparison tables, amazon integration etc you will have to go for the PRO version.

WP Product Review Lite – £0 • Create basic review boxes (no comparison tables) • Limited styling options • Rich snippet WP Product Review (Personal) – £58 • Single-site license • Rich snippet • Comparison table • Custom rating icons • Pros/cons • Shortcodes • Import reviews • 1 year support and updates WP Product Review (Developer) – £147 • 3 site license • Rich snippet • Comparison table • Custom rating icons • Pros/cons • Shortcodes • Import reviews • 1 year priority support • 1 year updates • Amazon integration

Content Egg

If you want to add price comparison functionality to your review posts then Content Egg is the perfect plugin for this.

The easy to use affiliate plugin allows you to quickly add product prices/offers from a number of affiliate networks/programs and display these within your blog posts.

Let’s say, you’ve written a review on the “Bosch Tassimo” coffee machine. You would like to display prices from a number of merchants which you’re an affiliate for where visitors can purchase the coffee machine from. In order to do this with the plugin, you would perform the following steps:

1. Enter a keyword relating to the product, in this case “Bosch Tassimo Vivy 2” and click on “Search”.
2. The plugin will now search for relevant merchants that you have enabled in the plugin and it will list ones where the coffee machine is available from.
3. You now simply need to select the appropriate merchants and these will be displayed in your post. It will take care of adding the appropriate affiliate id’s to links and prices will be updated automatically as per the schedule that has been set-up.

Not only can you display product price content, the plugin also has content modules which will allow you to display images, videos, news and tweets that are related to your products (as shown below).

Content Egg is a freemium plugin. The free version supports the following modules: Amazon, Skimlinks, Commission Junction, Pixabay, Youtube, RSS Fetcher and Related Keywords.

While the pro version supports over 25 shops and most of the popular affiliate networks including Clickbank, ImpactRaduis, Rakuten LinkShare, Sharesale, Viglink. It also offers a number of additional content modules such as Bing Images, Google Images, Google Books, Google News, Pixabay Images, Twitter etc.

The plugin is responsive which means it will work on any device as well as any theme and it works on AMP pages and is compatible with WooCommerce. It also allows you to filter your searches by different criteria such as price range, discount, merchants, CC license etc.

Product widgets can be inserted automatically at the beginning or end of your posts as well as manually throughout your contents by using shortcodes.

There are a number of templates that can be used to display products as well as deals, these include:

Product Card

Product Grid

Product List

Product Offers

Price Comparison

The price history of a product can also be displayed and users can even create price alerts so they get notified when the price drops to a particular level. This is a great feature and will mean your visitors will be more likely to purchase from your site as they will be automatically informed when the price of the product that they are interested in drops.

Before using the plugin, you will need to configure the plugin modules, this involves adding the API keys for the relevant Affiliate networks as well as enabling the content modules you’re looking to use.

In order to speed up your content creation, the plugin allows you to add additional content such as pricing, images, videos, pictures and other content to your posts on autopilot. All you need to do is enter a related keyword and it will add the relevant content to your posts automatically which is definitely a handy time saving feature.

Content Egg – $0 • Supports the following modules: Amazon, Pixabay, Youtube, Commission Junction Links, Skimlinks Coupons, Related Keywords, RSS Fetcher and GdeSlon, Offer. Content Egg Pro – $55 • Single site license • All Pro features included • Supports the following additional modules: Admitad (coupons only), Aliexpress (multicurrency), Amazon (all locales), Avantlink, Bol.com (NL,BE), CityAds.com, CJ.com (products & links), Clickbank, Ebay (all locales), Envato (Themeforest, Codecanyon,…), Flipkart, Impactradius, Kelkoogroup, Rakuten LinkShare, Linkwise, Lomadee.com (products and coupons), Optimisemedia, Ozon, Paytm.com, Pepperjam, Shareasale, Skimlinks (coupons only), Tradedoubler (products and coupons), Tradetracker (products and coupons), Udemy, Viglink (+search by URL feature), Walmart, Bing Images, Flickr Images, Google Books, Google Images, Google News, Qwant Images • 1 Year free support and updates

TablePress

If you’re looking for a simple and free way to create product comparison tables then Table Press is the perfect plugin for your needs.

The plugin allows you to easily create simple tables which you can embed within your posts with shortcodes. Tables support all types of data including text, images, links as well as HTML and JavaScript. Styling for tables can be customized by using custom CSS. Tables allow for sorting and filtering as well. Tables can also be imported and exported to and from CSV, Excel, HTML and JSON files.

In order to create tables with the plugin after installing and activating it, simply perform the following steps:

1. Select TablePress > Add New Table from the WordPress dashboard.

2. Next, enter a name for the table and an optional description and enter the number of rows and columns and click on the Add Table button.

3. Populate the table with the relevant data.

4. Now you can select the relevant styling for your table by scrolling down to the Table Options section. Tick and untick the relevant options to enable and disable the relevant ones.

5. Once the table is complete, click on the Preview button in order to view it. If the table looks good, click on the Save Changes button.

6. Make a note of the shortcode which has been generated for the table. Open the relevant post and navigate to the section within the post where you want to add the table and enter the relevant shortcode.

TablePress – $0 • Create and manage tables from the WordPress dashboard • Show tables in post or pages using shortcodes • Tables support text, numbers, images, links, HTML or JavaScript • Links or images can be added to your table • Styling of tables can be customized via CSS • Import tables (Excel (.xls, .xlsx), CSV, HTML, JSON format

Wrapping Up

Whatever comparison plugin you decide to use, remember, creating enticing and visually appealing product comparison posts is vital in order to maximise your site’s earning potential.

As an affiliate marketer, your aim apart from creating engaging content, is to maximise your click-through-rate on your affiliate links. Using comparison tables and other product widgets within your posts with clear calls-to-actions can definitely help with this.

If you want to maximize your chances of being successful with affiliate marketing, please check out our post which covers common mistakes that affiliate marketers make and how you can avoid these.