15 Great WordPress Plugins to Help You Make Money Online

With over 30,000 plugins to choose from in the Wordpress Plugin Directory alone, and thousands premium plugins available in marketplaces such as CodeCanyon, finding the right plugin can be a bit overwhelming.

Even if you are new to working online, there is one thing I am sure you have realised by now: Making money through the internet takes time. It also takes a lot of hard work. This is particularly true if you are just starting out. There are, however, ways to get the ball rolling faster that will make your life a whole lot easier.

In this article, I have listed some fifteen free and premium plugins that I recommend checking out if you are aspiring to make money from your online ventures.

1. ManageWP Dashboard and Plugin – FREE / Premium

Whether you’re a freelance web designer, affiliate marketer or own multiple blogs, I can promise that you’ll love ManageWP.

Overview/Features:

ManageWP is free to use for up to five websites. Standard plans then start from only $0.80 per additional website. Simply add your website(s) through the ManageWP dashboard and then install the plugin through your WordPress admin area. You will then be able to access all your website dashboards from the one control panel in Manage WP. This eliminates the need to track down your passwords and then manually login into to each individual websites Admin Dashboard.

From this single panel, you can update all your plugins and themes. You can also clear your overhead and add new content. Other features include the ability to link your Google Drive or Dropbox accounts for backups, security checks, web site performance overview reviews and website cloning.

How To Use It To Make Money:

There are a couple ways that you could make money from ManageWP. If you are a freelance web designer, you could use this plugin to lead to an upsell for potential clients and previous clients. This will keep them coming back to you.

For example, let’s say you build and design a web site for a client. Now what? How do you turn a one time customer into recurring revenue without sounding like you’re begging for their money?

All you have to do is explain the importance of keeping their new website safe and secure. For a small monthly fee, you can maintain their website and reduce the risk of their website being hacked.

Many clients will jump at this opportunity, so you could make great money with very little work. Those of you who run multiple websites will appreciate how much of a time saver this plugin is – and time is money, right?

2. Jetpack for WordPress.com – FREE

I am sure you have heard a lot about the Jetpack plugin from WordPress developers Automattic. It is a plugin that will add a huge amount of functionality to your website.

Features include the ability to automatically publish your posts to your chosen social media servoces. It also offers website monitororing and a picture content delivery network (CDN) called Photon that can help boost site speed.

How To Use It To Make Money:

Jetpack can be used to help you make money in a lot of indirect ways. It will help boost your social media rankings, help you monitor traffic, encourage more comments and encourage people to stay on your website longer due to related posts.

3. WooCommerce Plugin – FREE

Originally developed as a fork of JigoShop, the WooCommerce eCommerce plugin gained popularity amongst WordPress users very quickly. It allows you to set up an online store. Physical and digital products can be sold. You could therefore use it to sell products such as e-books and affiliate products.

The plugin is free to download and is updated frequently, however you will probably have to purchase one of the many WooCommerce extensions to be able to get the most out of the plugin.

How To Use It To Make Money:

This plugin can be used in a couple different ways. You can use it sell your own products or affiliate products directly from your website. Alternatively, if you spend the time to master WooCommerce Documentation, you could develop online shops for clients. You can also use that avenue to paid every month to maintain the store on a monthly basis.

4. WooCommerce Subscriptions – Premium

WooCommerce Subscriptions is an extension of the WooCommerce Plugin that allows you to add a subscription product to your store.

How To Use It To Make Money:

With Subscriptions, you can create a recurring product. They work in a similar way to regular products except except customers need to pay a fee every so often; whether it be daily, weekly, monthly or yearly.

For example, if you have a weekly or monthly podcast about how to make money as an Amazon Affiliate, you can set up a subscription that allows customers who want to download the audio file.

5. Membership – FREE / Premium

Membership is a great plugin for WordPress that allows you to extend the WordPress user system into a fully functioning membership website. Both the lite and the premium version are worth taking a look at if you are wanting to make money online.

The free version supports two membership levels and two subscription levels, whilst the premium version allows you to create unlimited membership and subscription levels.

How To Use It To Make Money:

There are a variety of ways to make money from membership websites. One way is to sell premium memberships and give members access to premium content, digital files, a private support forum, and much more.

Even if you build free membership over a premium service, there are still ways in which you can profit from a membership website. For example, you could offer basic content free and charge for additional features and permissions.

6. Child Themify – FREE

WordPress experts always suggesting using a child theme, however you find the process difficult unless you are using a WordPress framework.

A child theme inherits all the features of its parent theme. However, when you update the parent design, you will not lose the customizations applied to the child theme. Child Themify simplifies the whole process by letting you create a child theme for a design at the click of a button.

How To Use It To Make Money:

If you’re looking to put some quick cash in your pocket, you could use this plugin to earn a few extra bucks. For example, you can sign up for sites like Fiverr and offer basic child themes for $5. You will therefore earn $5 for literally working around five Minutes. Five dollars might not sound like a lot of money, but if you can complete the job five minutes, you are actually billing at $60 an hour!

7. Wordpress SEO by Yoast – FREE

Search Engine Optimization is a vital part of marketing a website online. Search engines are constantly changing what ranks and what does not, however SEO is not dead.

Wordpress SEO is the definitive search engine solution. It offers page analysis, meta information and social media integration. It can also be used to build an XML sitemap for your website.

How To Use It To Make Money:

WordPress SEO can help you rank higher by analysing your pages and adding additional SEO functionality to your website such as breadcrumbs. This additional traffic should help increase your income; whether you are selling products, services or advertising banners.

8. Mailchimp for Wordpress – FREE

I have to admit, I really like Mailchimp’s cuddly mascot, but there are more reasons to love the email marketing service than just a smiling chimp.

The software is free to use up to 2,000 subscribers. It is also easy to integrate into any Wordpress website, which is one reason why many choose it for their email campaigns. After you have setup your free account, simply download the plugin and start collecting subscribers from your website.

How To Use It To Make Money:

Every marketer will tell you that the most effective way to promote a product or service on the internet is email marketing. It is hard to beat the immediate traffic that an email campaign can deliver. That is the power of delivering your message directly to someone’s inbox.

Email marketing is not going to make you a lot of money right away. It takes time to build up a list of followers, but once you do, you are in a position to make a lot of money.

9. Contact Form 7 with MailChimp Add On – FREE

Contact Form 7 is my go to plugin for contact forms. Its design is simple and it is easy to use.

I recently discovered an extension for the plugin that integrates MailChimp with your forms. Once both plugins are activated, you can automatically add people who contact you to your email list.

How To Use It To Make Money:

If you receive a lot of emails, this set up could be a great way of adding more subscribers to your email marketing list.

For example, if you are a web designer and you have people contacting you through the Contact Form 7 form on your website, you could use the MailChimp extension to add potential clients to a targeted client list. You can then market your services directly to those people.

10. Foobar – $14

Foobar is a notification bar that floats at the top of your website. The plugin is highly customizable. It can be used to display social media profile buttons, custom messages, Twitter updates, RSS updates, newsletter subscription boxes and more.

How To Use It To Make Money:

There are a variety ways in which Foobar can be used to increase income on your website. You can add a custom message to display a link to your email newsletter, reviews section, or even a direct affiliate link to a product you are promoting.

11. Google Authorship Plugin – FREE

Since its launch, Google has been integrating Google Authorship heavily into its ecosystem. It allows your Google+ profile and photo to be attached to all of your articles and websites.

It has been proven that people are more likely to click on a post that shows someones face then they are to click one that does not. If you haven’t already started utilizing Google Authorship, I recommend you start today.

There are many ways to get your picture to show up alongside your post. Some themes have it so that you can easily connect your profile and even Wordpress allows you to add your Google Profile to your Wordpress one. However, I have found that the Google Authorship Plugin is the easiest way to integrate authorship into your website.

How To Use It To Make Money:

Adding Google Authorship to your website should encourage more clicks to your pages through Google. As we have already discussed, all things considered equal, more traffic usually signifies higher income.

12. WP125 – FREE

WP125 is a great way to rotate 125 by 125 pixel banner ads on your website. It allows ads to be displayed in one or two columns.

How To Use It To Make Money:

The idea behind making money with this is pretty simple. You can either find some affiliate ads that you want to promote and add them to your site via the plugin, or offer the space to advertisers and sell it for a monthly/yearly rate. You can do both as the plugin will track clicks and can be set to expire after a defined number of days.

13. Facebook Popup Like Box – FREE / Premium

Facebook is the second most popular website on the internet and the most popular social media website by far. Despite Facebook reducing the reach of pages over the last two years, Facebook remains a great way of getting targeted traffic.

How To Use It To Make Money:

Some people get a little intimidated when asked to Subscribe to content on your site but for some reason, liking a Facebook page is easier for them do. Facebook Popup Like Box is a great way of promoting your Facebook page as it will pop up in front of your content. It works in the same way as newsletter pop up messages that many websites use.

Perhaps it’s the fact that they can get the same content through social media without giving away their email address, but a pop up box is a great way to capture your audience. Think of it as one-click subscriptions and remember, the more followers you have, the more referral traffic you will receive from Facebook.

14. Google Publisher Plugin – FREE

In January 2014, Google released a new plugin specifically for people who have a Wordpress site and who want to display Google Adsense on their website. It also helps you integrate your website with Google’s Webmaster Tools in just one click.

Once the plugin has been installed, you can use a visual editor to add Google Adsense advertisements to your website. All you have to do is ensure your Adsense ID is entered in the settings area.

How To Use It To Make Money:

There are other plugins that integrate Google Adsense into your website, however this is the first official plugin that has been released by Google for publishers. The current release is in beta. It will take some time for them to work out the kinks but it is still perfectly usable.

Adsense is a good way to make money through your website if you have a lot of content. This is particularly true if your website cannot be monetized in other ways.

15. Pretty Link – FREE / PREMIUM

Pretty Link allows you to create short and brandable links for your website. It can be used to track and manage links. Links can also be assigned to groups to make link management easier.

The premium version offers many more features such as Google Analytics tracking, split testing, and import and export functionality. It also offers several redirection options.

How To Use It To Make Money:

Affiliate marketers use plugins such as Pretty Link to mask their affiliate URL’s. This allows them to use short URL’s instead of the ugly URL’s that are usually associated with affiliate links. Doing this has the added benefit of tracking the number of clicks that a link has received.

By using Pretty Link, you can track the performance of all of your affiliate links and help see what links are getting the most attention.

That was my top fifteen plugins for earning more money online. I hope it helps you guys in your online adventures.

What WordPress plugin do you use to help make you money?

Ariel