How To Insert Shop The Look In Blog Without Affiliate

how to create a shop page on wordpress blog

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!