How to Add Affiliate Links to Your Blog Posts

This tutorial is an easy step-by-step guide that will show you exactly how to add affiliate links to your blog posts. You can use these same steps for sharing your affiliate links anywhere online.

HOW TO ADD AFFILIATE LINKS

There are 3 easy steps to this process. We’ll walk through each one of them and show you screenshots of how to do them. 

Quick note: an affiliate link is a unique tracking link that you use to earn commissions from a company that you are associated with/partnering with.

Note: This article may contain affiliate links. Full disclosure here. }}

STEP ONE: FIND YOUR AFFILIATE LINK

The first step for adding affiliate links to your blog is gaining access to that link.

You can find your unique affiliate link within your dashboard of any affiliate account you have.

In this article, we’ll use the Amazon affiliate program and the Share-a-Sale affiliate network to show you where you can find your affiliate links.

If you’re using a different program or network, you’ll need to login to your dashboard and search for the area where affiliate links are located.

FINDING YOUR AFFILIATE LINK ON AMAZON

For Amazon associates, you’ll login to your Amazon Associates account, search for any product that you want to promote. When that product page is open, you’ll locate the tab at the top of your account that says ‘Text’.

Click that tab and then highlight the long string of text in the box (this is your trackable affiliate link). When the entire string of letters and numbers is highlighted yellow, click CTRL C to copy the text.

Now you have your affiliate link and you’re ready to add it to your latest blog post!

FINDING YOUR AFFILIATE LINK IN SHAREASALE

If you’re using an affiliate network, like Share-a-Sale, the process will be similar.

Login to Share-a-Sale or set up your account for the first time right here (it’s free)!

Once you are logged in, hover over the LINKS tab and click on ‘Get a Link/Banner’.

Looks like this:

Use the Search box to find the name of the Merchant (Affiliate Program) you want to promote.

Click on the Merchant name to see a list of promotional links and banners you can use.

If you’re just looking for a plain text URL to share in your blog post, make sure you’re on the ‘Text Links’ page. Then hit the link that says ‘Get HTML Code’ from the list below. 

Looks like this:

Each of these HTML links lead to a different product page from the company you’re promoting. 

You can scroll through the list, find the product or promotion you want to link to, and then hit the ‘Get HTML code’ link next to that option.

For example, if you wanted to promote the Sticker Subscription below, you’d click on this link:

Once you click the HTML link, a long string of text will pop up with two buttons below it. The buttons say ‘Select All’ and ‘Select URL Only’.

Click on ‘Select URL Only’. 

Then highlight the URL text and hit CTRL C to copy it.

Now you have your affiliate link copied and you’re ready to add it to your blog post.

STEP TWO: PASTE YOUR AFFILIATE LINK

Whether you use Amazon, Share-a-Sale, or some other affiliate program, you should have your affiliate link copied and ready to paste within your blog post.

You can also share your affiliate links on social media or anywhere else that you have specified/agreed upon with the affiliate company.

Now, go into your WordPress post editor where your blog post will be published.

If you’re using the Gutenberg editor on WordPress, you’ll highlight the words that you want to attach your affiliate link to. Once the words are highlighted, hit the little link icon that pops up.

Then paste your affiliate link into the link box (if you copied it following step one in this article, you can hit CTRL V to paste it into the box).

If you’re using the Classic editor, the process is similar, but the link icon is probably in a different spot. 

Highlight the text that you want to attach to your affiliate link, then locate and click on the link icon, and paste the link in the link box.

Now you have an affiliate link attached to the text within your blog post! If anyone clicks on that affiliate link and makes a purchase, you’ll earn a commission from it.

One last step!

STEP THREE: LABEL YOUR AFFILIATE LINK

Before publishing your blog post, you’ll need to label your affiliate link with the appropriate tag, so that search engines recognize it as an affiliate link. 

It is your legal responsibility to label your affiliate links properly, so don’t skip this step.

If you’re using the Gutenberg editor, you’ll just toggle on the button that says ‘This is a sponsored link or advert’. 

When you do this, it automatically marks your link as ‘sponsored’ and ‘nofollow’. You can also toggle on the button to open the link in a new tab (but this is not a requirement).

If you’re using the classic WordPress editor, there are a few more steps for marking your link as nofollow. You can follow the steps in this tutorial to do that.

Once your affiliate links are properly labeled, you are done!

You can optimize your article, add your images, hit publish, and start promoting the blog post.

Side note: if publishing your affiliate links on social media, you are required to disclose that you’re sharing an affiliate link. This ‘sponsored’ label is not required on social media posts.

Boom: that’s how to add affiliate links to your blog posts in WordPress!

Here are some great affiliate programs that you can join and start earning from today:

• Food Affiliate Programs
• Homeschool Affiliate Programs
• Beauty Affiliate Programs
• Coffee Affiliate Programs
• Motherhood Affiliate Programs

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