A referral or affiliate system is very helpful if you are selling products or services in a WordPress blog. All the popular WordPress products and services sites have a powerful affiliate system in place. When it comes to third-party affiliate system, I would recommend Share a sale. You can learn more about the advantages of ShareaSale affiliate network from this post.
However, if a third-party affiliate network doesn’t fit in your budget, then you can try an affordable solution by using a WordPress plugin. In this post, I will discuss about a WordPress plugin which you can use for adding a full-fledged affiliate system in your blog. You can use this plugin with WooCommerce, Jigoshop BuddyPress, WP e-Commerce, or any with any other WordPress plugin.
Here are the features of this plugin:
1) Real-time reports: The most important aspect of a referral system is the reporting. This plugin provides real-time reporting and you can check the reports from the plugin settings page. You can also view reports of each user separately.
2) Shortcodes: Users can put referral banners in their site by using shortcodes.
3) Set cookie life: You have the option to enter the cookie life in plugin settings. Cookie life is used for storing the click tracking information for a pre-defined time duration. For Example, if you set cookie life for 60 days, that means, if a user clicks on the affiliate link and does not buy a product instantly and arrives on the site even after 59 days and purchases the product, then it would be counted as a referral sale.