There's a good chance that you have been noticing shop pages on your favorite blogs lately. The shop page is usually a grid of products with a product image, title and a button to buy now. A nice shop page looks just like an eCommerce store, but it acts a little different.
Most of these shop pages aren’t actual eCommerce stores where the blogger is selling their own products. They are really just affiliate shops where they link off to a separate store where the purchase is made, like Amazon.
Why you want an affiliate shop page
An affiliate shop page on your blog gives you a space to showcase the products you love and want to recommend to your readers. When someone clicks and makes a purchase from your link, you can earn a commission from that purchase.
It's a win-win because you get to recommend great products that your readers are interested in; and you get to make a few bucks in return. It's a great addition to your blog's income strategy, because every income stream helps add to your bottom line.
Examples of Blog Shop Pages
Below are a few examples of blog shop pages, just in case you aren't sure what I'm talking about.
- SaltPepperSkillet.com (this site)
- 101 Cooking For Two
- Up Close & Tasty
- Passport Delicious
- Pinch of Yum
Options for Creating Your Affiliate Shop Page
It can seem a little daunting to set a shop page on your site, and I know this from experience of building my first shop page. You might not know where to begin, or what the best solution is. Well, that’s what the purpose of this post is. To help you figure out the best solution to most quickly and easily add a shop page to your blog and start making some extra affiliate income.
Below are three options to help you decide. Spoiler alert: Number 3 is most likely the best solution for you (and I am proud to say that I created it).
Option 1. Build it manually
Not recommended
One option is to build out your shop page manually by creating a grid within your WordPress Theme. It can take a lot of time to build the page, along with making changes and adding new products can be cumbersome. It's a very manual process that isn't scaleable an can get a little technical.
Option 2. WooCommerce
Not recommended
A second option is to use a WordPress plugin called WooCommerce to create a shop page. WooCommerce is a good option if you yourself will be selling your own physical products from your site, and aren't just going to be linking to affiliate products.
I see bloggers try to use WooCommerce all the time to setup a basic shop page on their sites. Truthfully, it's way overkill for what most people need and it is quite heavy and can slow your site down. There is a LOT of setup that has to be done, which can be technical and take a lot of time. There are also frequent upgrades to WooCommerce, which have to be made carefully. It's just not the best solution for a simple shop page.
Option 3. Shop Page WP
The best option
This is the no brainer best choice, because it is a solution built for exactly what you want. This free WordPress plugin was designed and built to easily create an affiliate shop on your site. It is extremely simple and lightweight; meaning it won’t slow your site down. There is almost no setup involved and you can start adding products right away.
Full disclosure: Shop Page WP is a free WordPress plugin that I designed and developed to create a solution for myself, along with everyone else who wants an easy to use shop page on their blog as well.
Shop Page WP has all 5-Star ratings and currently has over 1,000 active installations.
Setting Up Shop Page WP
Setting up Shop Page WP is extremely easy, and you can have your new shop page ready to launch in under an hour. The part that takes the longest is putting together your product images.
Get the full detailed instructions over at the Shop Page WP Documentation page.
Affiliate Programs to Join
In order to really get the benefit from your shop page, you will need to join an affiliate program that will generate links to products you want to link to.
The most popular and easy to use affiliate program (and a great place to start) is the Amazon Affiliate Program. After you have your Amazon Associates account setup, you can start looking for other affiliate programs to join. If something is sold online, there's a good chance that there is an affiliate program that you can join to earn a commission from your shop page or in-content links.
Get Started Today
There’s no reason why you can’t get an Affiliate Shop up on your blog today. Just install the Shop Page WP plugin, follow the instructions and start earning commissions from the products you love.
If you have any questions or suggestions, I’m happy to help. Leave them in the comments or send me an email from the contact page.
Good luck!
Jhon Pace says
I have my own blog page and for a long time I want to create a shop page here but I couldn't find any clue for creating a shop. Your article is really great. I study your article properly, it helps me to know more about how to create a shop page.
Mona says
Hi Justin - I know this post is older, but hopefully you will see this comment. I love this plugin and just started using it last night. I can't seem to re-order my products and I was wondering if there was a way to do it that I am missing. I did a little research and found the recommendation for Intuitive Custom Post Order, but saw that the developer left it a year ago and it has not been tested with newer versions of WP. So I'm hesitant to install it. Is there a different way to reorder inside the plugin? Thank you so much for your help! Mona
justin says
Hi Mona - I still have Custom Post Order installed and it does still work for me (didn't know it is no longer being maintained). Just did a quick search and found two other options you can check out. Both have a lot of downloads, so you should be good with either but I haven't personally tested them.
Post Types Order
Simple Custom Post Order
Let me know if you do end up using one. We should probably update our documentation in the plugin to recommend a different one.
Thanks!
Prince says
Hello. i want to know if the plugin is for only affiliates. I want to add a shop page with my own products and affiliate product.
justin says
Hi Prince,
The plugin is only for linking to 3rd party sites and not really for selling your own. To do that, you would need to use something like woocommerce which does get a lot more complicated.
Vijay says
Show me some example sites using shop wp plugin. Can you make a site similar to shopstyle.com with this plugin? Which allows for direct click to sellers site.
justin says
Hi Vijay,
The site you are on right now uses it - https://saltpepperskillet.com/shop/
I don't think you could really do something similar to shopstyle. You might need to use Woocommerce to that.
Chelsea says
Hi! I can't seem to access the documentation page with instructions.
justin says
Hi Chelsea,
Seems like the site was down for some reason. It's back up now.
Gordon says
Thanks for given information.
Kim says
Thanks for this pos!t I've been looking for information about this but couldn't really find what I was looking for.
Elle Williams says
I currently have a shoe blog built on WP. But I now want to start selling shoes w/o making a separate website. Is it still possible to use this plug in if I’m not using affiliate links? & if so can I put the store first & the blog behind it?
justin says
Hi Elle,
You could use it to link to products, but it's not an e-commerce plugin for selling your own products. For that, you might want to check out Woocommerce.
Best,
Justin
Brandi says
I notice above you said in reference to images from Amazon, " you will need to read up on Amazon’s terms about the legalities of this." above in response to one of the questions, but the images on your shop page on this site are Amazon images. Are you referring to something different? Every shop I see on a bloggers shop page has the images above "buy Now" that are directly from Amazon. Are you referring to adding them manually in featured image or do we just add our affiliate link and the small image just automatically pops up from amazon in the shop? I want to make sure I do this correctly. Thanks.
TJ says
It would be helpful if you addressed this issue. Downloading Amazon product images and/or taking screenshots is violating copyright. It would be better if you offered the option to link via URL to the image on Amazon.
justin says
Hi TJ. Totally agree. It's something that we will be releasing in a new version at some point. What it will do is display the product image via the image embed code that is pasted in from Amazon (or you will still be able to upload one manually). We just haven't been able to work on this plugin in a while to finish it up. Hopefully sometime this year. Cheers!
Estelle says
I literally just did a Jim Carrey “YES!!” because I have searched for this so many times and come up blank. I’ve realized that WordPress tutorials can be difficult in that if you don’t know exactly what something is called, it’s very hard to find out how to get it on your site. I love that this plugin is free and I can’t wait to set it up!!!
justin says
So awesome, Estelle! I'd love to see it when you have your shop page live. Let me know if you have any questions.
ELISAUDO says
Great post. Will help me a lot in my business.
justin says
Glad to hear it. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback for the plugin! Cheers.
Judith says
Nice one. Please how can i add my affiliate products on a my blog post.
justin says
Hi Judith,
You could add a gutenberg block and include a specific product category to only appear on your blog post. We will be working on a premium version that has a "shop this post" widget for inserting specific products into a blog post. 🙂
Prabakaran Palaniandy says
Hi,
I am searching for a method to start a shopping page on my website. I am an Amazon affiliate. Does this plugin is automated to display a particular category of items to be displayed on the shopping page?
Thank you for a useful article.
justin says
Hi Prabakaran,
The plugin is not automated. You manually add products including the title, affiliate URL, image and optional description.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Cheers,
Justin
justin says
Hello! You can specify the product category that will display in that particular shop page grid. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Betty Shepard says
Hello and thank you for the helpful information! I am new to both website building and blogging. I appreciate the insight into WooCommerce being better for my personal products, however, I use the Divi them... is your plugin compatible with Divi? I would like to use the plugin for creating my separate affiliate Shop page. I look forward to hearing your reply!
Thanks again,
Betty
justin says
Hi Betty,
I haven't personally tested it with Divi, but it should work great with it.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Cheers,
Justin
Shelley Whittaker - Wander & Luxe says
Thanks for the great article - I have downloaded the widget so wish me luck in setting up my 'Shop the Blog' Page!
Flora says
Hello. Im thinking of starting an affiliate shop and I don’t know if you can answer this questions, but if you can I would really appreciate it.
Normally on affiliate shops you link to different products, Right? You click on a product picture that takes you away from the site and to amazon, eBay or another store.
But is there a way where you could stay on my site? To shop different products, on one and the same site ( My site) Yet still obviously shopping from the different stores.
Or maybe there is a way to sort of collect all the products you want onto a list. A shopping list. Then you go to that list and the list is split into the different brands / Stores you have shopped at. Then from there you can click on each store and then that takes you to the stores direct to the shop-listlist/Bag/checkout and there the products you ordered are already there and ready to buy. Then you go back to my site and do that again with all the other products from ever separate store/brand you added to your list on my website.
I didn’t quite know how to explain it is maybe you didn’t quite understand what I meant but I hope you did.
I just want a way where you can sort of shop (yet still obviously shop from each separate sites I have affiliates with) on one site only. Or at least a way to collect all the products you are planning on shopping and then going to each different store (if the thinks you where planning on buying come from different stores)
Is there a way of coding That? Or is there a program that could help you with that?
English is not my first language so I’m sorry if this email is bit of a mess.
Thanks in advance.
Dani says
I have a quick question. I just downloaded your widget and am working on setting up my shop page. It says to upload the product image to display on the shop page. Where do you get the image for the product?! Sorry if this is a silly question! Thanks!
justin says
Hi Dani,
No problem. It's up to you to decide what product image you want to use. You can sometimes source them from the manufacturer or take it yourself. Some people use Amazon product images, but you will need to read up on Amazon's terms about the legalities of this.
Cheers,
Justin
Jere Cassidy says
I do love your shop page. How do you make the separate categories, it makes it easy to find products.