For every affiliate marketer, there are a lot of things to do before s/he can set up shop. From talking to hundreds of people, connecting with thousands on LinkedIn and blindly shooting emails to a plethora of affiliate managers, publishers, advertisers, and account handlers, it is quite a task on its own.Due to the complex nature of this task, affiliate marketing tools are of utmost important for anyone at this position to make his/her life easier. And it’s not like it always has to be relating to affiliate marketing platforms— this affiliate marketing toolkit has everything that’s necessitous.
Let’s go through the list of 30 tools that every affiliate marketer should use to escalate the business on astronomical levels. Be it simply writing an email to a platform for support or posting updates on social media, everything matters when it comes to this intricate field.
Note:Affiliate marketing is an intricate procedure and involves lots of things to do on the back-end. Many of the tools given in the list are to be integrated with WordPress and hence, they might interfere with the operations of your website(s). It is advisable to proceed with caution in case of those tools.
We can’t help but overlook the effect that WordPress has on the e-world. This behemoth of blogging software and content management system does wonders in a very simplistic way. Here’s a fun fact: One in every three websites on the internet is built on WordPress.
Let’s put that into perspective. Not only does it signify that more than 33% of websites made on planet Earth (and probably beyond!) are based on WordPress! As for the other 77%, the biggest share after WordPress is with Joomla– and it’s not even a whole 3% of the total.
Speaking from a website perspective, WordPress is the home to some of the biggest websites in every corner of the industry and supports all the plugins that are made. It is surely the platform on which your website should be crafted.
Often recognized as a website trading forum, there’s much more to Flippa from a marketer’s perspective than that. Affiliate marketing is all about increasing your website’s authority and making it look better than what it is on all fronts. As it is a trading forum that has lots of websites with good domain authority, that’s what we aim for.
Affiliate marketers can capitalize on Flippa as a medium form where they can but websites with inflated domain authorities and perusing it in such ways that it strengthens the technical aspects of their own website(s). There has to be some caution though.
When you are buying websites that way though, you’ve got to be careful. Run a full-fledged backlink audit and leave no stone unturned– you don’t want to land in trouble by purchasing a website that’s part of a Private Blog Network (PBN). These websites do some shady stuff that’s considered a Black Hat SEO technique. Thus, a wrong choice can backfire.
Here’s a helpful resource for you that tells how PBN Backlinks is a “kiss of death”.
We’ve already talked about this before and we know a lot of stuff about it. But if you haven’t been using Google Analytics and you’re running a website, then you’re surely not serious about it. This one’s a must-have affiliate marketing tool for all the businesses and not just the affiliate kind.
Take your website mechanics to another level by integrating it with Google Analytics. You can track the flow of your website, the behaviour of consumers, demographic indicators and everything that your mind can think of. The best part? You can check the flow of links to double-cross your clicks and conversions report.
The fact that it’s a Google tool speaks volumes about its immaculate prowess in tracking and high levels of security. Surely, Google Analytics is one such tool that nobody can miss, let alone affiliate marketers.
For anyone starting into the affiliate marketing business, CJ Affiliate must surely be on the list. One of the pioneers in the list of best affiliate marketing platforms in the market, CJ Affiliate Network, earlier known as Commission Junction, is quite a way to go for when you’re new to this game.
The best part is that the connections and networking between publishers and advertisers get off to a flyer. For new affiliates trying to break ground, it is a great place to start as there are many offers from where you can get paid per lead.
Although it is a general notion that approaching organizations directly for affiliate marketing is better, going through a platform might be of help for newbies.
It’s famous, it’s fab, & its SEMRush– one of the best digital marketing tools in the biz is something that you, as an affiliate marketer, do need to keep your biz in shape. Every online business requires keyword analysis and research while crafting content and deciding the importance of verticals in which it shall show its presence.
SEMRush is generally recognized as a keyword research tool, but its website tracking prowess in case of both competitors and websites of your own, you can scrutinize as to how well you’re dwelling with the competition.
Also, you get a lot of help with SEMRush and its website SEO Audits which give an intrinsic guide as to what can be done to make your website better and stronger. It isn’t free, but it surely is worth the money.
In the world of digital marketing, there’s a lot of prominence given to the way one sells the services. The best way to give a crisp explanation of what you’ve got to offer is, well, a headline. Your content will be sold by how a user feels when s/he reads the first line, word, or even the way your website’s font looks.
With CoSchedule, you get the best content calender and scheduler in the market. All you got to do is schedule your social media posts in the ways that it works (CoSchedule will tell you what’s the time it works best) and after that, it gets things up and running.
Now that the importance of social media marketing is growing astronomically, it is important to analyze the content’s headline that goes with your social media. For that, CoSchedule also offers a headline analyzer tool, which is beneficial for deciding on which headlines work best for different social media mediums.
We are back at another Google service. With Google search console aka Webmaster, it is simple to analyze organic traffic and monitoring it is an easy streak too. The best thing to do? Get on board! The search console is easy to set up and it really walks you through the whole process till you’re up and running.
Keyword analyzers are an affiliate marketer’s favorite tools because it is traffic that converts into a revenue stream if done right. Ahrefs is on the same page as SEMRush and it kind of does a whole lot of things similarly, except one very important thing.
While the likes of SEMRush focus on On-Page SEO, Ahrefs has everything that one needs to concentrate on backlinks and link building opportunities. Backlinks are an indispensable part of a website for it works on escalating a website’s prominence. That’s why Ahrefs makes it a whole lot simpler.
Also, affiliate marketing is all about keeping an eye on the competition and with Ahrefs, one can easily stalk content that’s faring well for the competition. It gives a huge perspective in decisions that are to be made for the future.
Multimedia content is the future in every vertical that exists and video content is on the wheel. In times like these, no business, let alone affiliate marketers, take their foot of the gas when it comes to making multimedia content. That’s why we’ve put CamTasia here, and it’s one of the best photo and video photo editing tools in the market.
This has to be the first thing that you should add to your website. Yoast SEO actually gives you the way to edit the meta tag and customizing it just the way you need it. All you have to do is input the keyword (you can put 1 keyword for free and it’s got a paid version for adding more) and after that, the links and meta tags can be customized.
There’s also a very simple way through which you can go through the process of sitemap creation with Yoast SEO only! It’s free and it can be easily integrated with WordPress. If you own a website, you should have Yoast SEO on it. That’s how good it is.
The concept of link creation is not as simple as it sounds. Once a wrong link has been created and the page, blog, or website goes live, it is impossible to change it without deploying a mind shattering blow to that page’s domain prominence. That’s why thirsty affiliate takes matters into its own hands and makes link creation easier than what it is.
When it comes to affiliate links, they come in all shapes and sizes and some of them just look disastrously ran out. With the thirsty affiliates plugin, you can simply cloak the link into something shorter, meaningful and much more simpler. This is a special affiliate marketing tool that makes links look simple rather than absurd.
Funny story: people believe that Grammarly is a writer’s favorite tool.
Reality: People who are connoisseurs of writing don’t put their hands on Grammarly at all! Grammarly is one such tool that is a personal choice for anyone who’s looking to write a book, or some layman who’s writing an email that has to be sent to an advertiser or publisher.
Content is often published regularly on websites and it definitely shouldn’t go wrong. Grammarly makes sure that it doesn’t and the best part is that its free version is all that you’d need. From spell checks, synonyms and grammatical suggestions to syntax fixes of complex variety, all can be taken care of with this very tool.
Do you know what’s the worst thing that can happen to a website? If the content on it is stolen, copied, or plagiarized. Plagiarism isn’t an issue if the people you’re in contact with are good at what they do, but as an affiliate marketer, you can’t risk the dangerous mistake of content being plagiarized.
With affiliate marketing websites needing content on a daily basis, it is crucial that you check it for plagiarism and Duplichecker is a simplistic software that makes it a cakewalk. It has to be a must-have for people who work with writers and bloggers, so as to ensure that it’s not their website that takes the hit.
The prominence of a website will horribly go crashing in case there’s an instance found where the content on the website is plagiarized. It’s best to make sure that it never comes down to it. Duplichecker is the most no-nonsense plagiarism checker in the market.
If there could be an email marketing platform that could talk wonders and walk that talk at the same time, MailChimp would be it. The world of affiliate marketing almost fully runs on email marketing as a channel. Most of the offers that you might find at affiliate marketing platforms are especially for email marketing only.
But to set the right email marketing campaign, MailChimp might be the answer. Not only did we pick MailChimp because of its strong points in email marketing, but also because it is a full-fledged marketing platform. So if you give it a try, you might get the gist of other services too.
Some call it a dirty-but-clean, while some say that it’s sweeping under the rug– but SpinBot definitely is one such tool that helps in crafting content. Many a time, we’ve got to think of ways to rewrite content in more than one ways and that’s when SpinBot came into the picture.
A content rewriting tool that does a great job in rewriting small (and even big!) chunks of content, SpinBot can prove to be a great starting point for people who don’t have a writing flair but have to rewrite stuff. Personally, we feel that it screws the grammar to the core, but gives something new to work upon. The fact that it’s free makes it a whole lot interesting.
You must’ve heard about Canva while hunting for slideshow presentations and whatnot. But Canva is not just related to that. It is proudly a design platform where you can “design anything you want” and it’s as simple as one thinks it can be.
In the case of affiliate marketing shenanigans, there are always times when you’ve got to design banners, creatives, and images. That is when Canva can lend a hand and help you out. Canva makes it easy to craft content for social media posts too in the form of images and interactive videos. The basic version is free, but paid one comes with a lot of alluring features.
Did you know that sometimes, the readers get into a tumble when they are reading and all of a sudden they see a complex word like comestible? Named after the renowned Earnest Hemingway, the Hemingway website and extension simplifies the most complex of sentences and makes the content much more snackable to the masses.
It’s not just limited to tough words, however, as it also works on ultra-twisted use of passive voice and adverbs to make it simpler for readers. Because let’s face it– if we want to write fancy, we need to find an audience that loves fancy. And it’s not like every audience would love to read fancy stuff. That is why Hemingway can be the one to save the day.
A true affiliate marketer knows how important it is to exploit all the channels at bay in order to get lucrative returns. But to ace in a channel of marketing, you’ve got to understand what the top players are doing in that very market. Adplexity is one such affiliate marketing tool that’d tell you what’s hot in each and every channel.
With Adplexity, you have a chance to track each and every channel and you can scrutinize as to what the competitors are doing in that very field. Platforms like Adplexity are also referred to as “Spy Tools” and that’s because with these tools you can spy on the performance of existing campaigns that are being run by competitors.
It works for native ads, email campaigns, SMS and push notifications. So if you wish to understand what has to be done in order to get your hands dirty, we suggest that you subscribe to Adplexity as it is worth the greens.
Every email marketing campaign begins with a list of prospective leads who shall be our prime email audience. This list often referred to as “email list” takes a whole lot of dough to build if done manually. However, with Sumo, even the beginners can have a go at this email marketing platform from where a list can be built in no time and you can continue your email operations as smoothly as possible.
There’s hardly a person out there who hasn’t heard about Google AdSense and that it is quite a way for developing a secondary revenue stream on the website(s). Google AdSense has to be utilized efficiently and it’ll give out incredible results altogether. Being a secondary revenue stream, all you have to do is set up your ad campaigns and you’ll get paid by the ad.
Now there are two types of ways through which you can earn money with Google AdSense.
There’s CPM i.e. Cost Per Mille, where you get paid per 1000 impressions;
There’s CPC, i.e. Cost Per Click in which you get paid for every click; varies on CTR (Click Through Rate). Google AdSense can really be of help in monetizing pages which have lots and lots of traffic with no promise. And in the case of affiliate marketing platforms, the traffic comes in like a hoard of people, which means you can earn a lot if you sell your Ad Spaces right.
Speaking of an Ad Platform that monetizes your website(s), AdThrive is one such app that totally optimizes your ads in a very holistic manner. How, you might ask? The advertisements in there are optimized according to your audience preferences so that your audience gets to see. Furthermore, this escalates the revenue stream as well.
One of the best social media tracking tools in the business, BuzzSumo is that one platform that is as crucial as air. Affiliate marketers are very well equipped with a social media prowess and it is one such platform that can get them business like no other. As affiliate marketing is all about connections, social media makes it simple to connect with like-minded people who are from the same business stream.
Now that the new generation of “influencer marketing” is very much in sync to the masses, BuzzSumo makes it easy to connect with influencers of each and every niche. If you have a dedicated social media team, this suite is a must-have. It’s not free, but it’s definitely worth the price.
If you are wondering why did we mark website hosting services in the list of affiliate marketing tools, then you should understand that a hosting service is something that we often forget about. Whenever an affiliate marketer builds one/many websites, the hosting is one factor that is left in the hands of the person taking care of the website.
But in reality, website hosting is one such thing that should be pondered upon more seriously. The place where you host your website has volumes to say about its speed, security and load time. If you don’t know where your website is hosted, we suggest that you have a look.
This plugin is a WordPress classic and it can make your content look hot, sizzling and fresh.
Like, literally.
With the Last Modified Timestamp, edit the publish time of your website’s content to showcase a much recent date. In many instances where your search engine rankings are high and rising, the problem arises when the last modified timestamp shows a date that’s a year or months old.
Due to this reason, the users don’t open those blogs. Updating the publish date wouldn’t cause this problem in the first place.
Another spying tool making into the list, SpyPush would give you an idea of what’s hot and trending in the market by spying on competitor’s campaigns. This one’s exclusively for push notifications and if you’re hot on the push notifications block, this tool would be a great help.
Now that push notifications are the future, it is important to smoothly cannonball into this channel rather than diving head-first without any knowledge about it.
For the programmer inside of you, you always wish to get small bits and pieces of work done with HTML Shortcodes, right? Well, the Shortcodes Ultimate website and plugin is a simple way for you to pep up your website with lots of things including widgets, boxes and the most complex of things.
Next time you’d want some small “technical” work to be done on your website, don’t run after the developer. Simply look it up on Shortcodes Ultimate and do it yourself.
Did you know that you can rate your website content in the Meta box? Yes! All you have to do is integrate it with WP Post Ratings and your content’s ratings will be displayed in the Meta box. Not only does this give your content a sense of reliability, but the users find content with ratings way more trustworthy.
If there was an affiliate marketing tools handbook, then Voluum would definitely be in there. This cloud-hosted ad tracking tool assists the affiliate marketers in keeping tabs on campaign performance. It doesn’t stop there, however, as you can also optimize your campaigns from head to toe to ensure that they perform better. With Voluum, your affiliate marketing prowess actually comes out in full flair.
It is also called a newbie’s first weapon in the game of affiliate marketing as it is very handy for people who don’t know a lot about practically using affiliate marketing platforms. Tracking and setting up campaigns in Voluum is super-simple and they assist on every step so as to make it an easy experience even for someone who’s unknown to affiliate marketing basics.
Split testing a campaign or a set of campaigns is very crucial and Voluum gives you easy tracking analytics to pick out which one fared better than the other and on what factors. Voluum is indeed a cloud-based service and that means more security to the platform. It is definitely worth a try for budding affiliate marketer in you.
You must’ve heard about how a low bounce rate is a good sign while a high bounce rate can be fatal for a website. In fact, many digital marketing experts say that for every time your website takes 2 more seconds to load than the usual, the bounce rate increases by a staggering 50%! The biggest party to this crime? Heavy images.
With TinyPNG, you can compress your images that go on the banner, blog page or inside the blog before uploading them on WordPress. TinyPNG started as a website where you can easily upload the image to compress it but now it’s also a WordPress plugin.
From a pro’s rulebook, EverFlow is an affiliate marketing tool that is built for marketers of today. It is a fully packed performance marketing bazooka that comes with all the firepower that a marketer needs. Along with offering the best available solutions for affiliate tracking and management, it is a superb tool for email and newsletter communication.
There is no pre-set size of business that should or shouldn’t use EverFlow, for it is used by businesses of all shapes and sizes– from the behemoth ones to small ones with huge aspirations. One problem with affiliate marketing is a fraudulent waste of efforts due to bot clicks and other factors.
EverFlow fixes it up with a SmartSwitch and it’s you who decides how much of frauds you wish to stop. It has a very reliable 24×7 support which can get you out of any problem straight on call. Real-time affiliate analytics make tracking very lucid and that’s how you can decide what works and whatnot.
These tools are simply unmissable for affiliate marketers in his/her pursuit of success in this very field. Do note that affiliate marketing is not just about clicks and conversions and dashboards– there’s a lot to do with your content’s quality and the way that product or service is being sold. Good luck on your expedition!
