Rotate Market Leverage Banners with the WordPress Affiliate Manager

I recently learned about Market Leverage from a friend, who has done reasonably well with their affiliate program. I decided to join, and upon joining decided to put together a WordPress plugin to help manage and rotate campaign banners. And thus the Affiliate Manager plugin was born.

Market Leverage offers many different products, for which you can display advertisements on your blog. When people click on the links and order the products, you receive a commission. These transactions are referred to as CPA (Cost per Action). If the products are relevant to the information on your blog, such programs can be even more profitable than CPC (Cost per Click) advertising, such as AdWords.

To install the Affiliate Manager plugin:

• Join Market Leverage if you are not already a member.
• Download the Affiliate Manager Plugin, install, and activate it.
• Go to the Affiliate Manager options page under Tools, in the WordPress adminstration.
• Enter your Market Leverage email and password.



• Add new keywords to import ads that are relevant to your blog.



• You can either display ads by placing PHP code within your template, using widgets, or both.

There are three functions you can use for displaying ads in your template.

affiliate_manager_random_banner(size)

This function will display a banner for any keyword of the appropriate size. Just replace size with the size you wish to display in quotes. Example:
<?php affiliate_manager_random_banner("120x600"); ?>

affiliate_manager_by_keyword(keyword, size)

This function will display a banner for a specified keyword of the appropriate size. Replace keyword with the keyword for the banner, and replace size with the size you wish to display. Both parameters should be in quotes. Example:
<?php affiliate_manager_by_keyword("mortgage", "120x600"); ?>

affiliate_manager_displayAd(id)

This function will display a specific banner, according to the ad ID. Replace id with the id of the banner. This parameter should not be in quotes. Example:
<?php affiliate_manager_displayAd(15); ?>

To display banners within widgets:

1. Go to Appearance > Widgets in WordPress.
2. Select the section where you want the widget to appear and click Show.
3. Click the Add button next to the Affiliate Manager Widget widget.
4. Select the keyword for the banners displayed in the widget.
5. Select the size of the banners to be displayed in the widget.
6. Click Done in the widget options.
7. Click Save Changes to add the widget to your pages.

I used a somewhat generic name for the plugin with the intention of eventually adding other affiliates. I’ve also done my best to write the code so that I can later incorporate others. If you have any affiliates you would like me to add, just suggest them in a comment here. Please also free to make any suggestions that you think may help to make the Affiliate Manager plugin even better.