Just like a handyman or a doctor, your main aim as an affiliate marketer is to help out people.
To do that in the best possible way, you must have certain tools at your disposal.
Being equipped with the best tools will definitely make your job easier, faster, and more effective as well as improve the overall quality of your online business.
The result? More money!
In this article, I am going to let you know about the 11 best tools that every affiliate marketer should have.
I have been using every single one of those tools since day one and their combined action has helped me a ton into scaling my affiliate marketing business.
If you are a beginner you’ll definitely find tools of great use in here.
If you are a more advanced affiliate marketer your toolbox might be way better and more complete than mine so let me know all about it in the comments below.
P.S. This list is going to be constantly updated so make sure that you come back to it once in a while to check for new mandatory tools for your online business.
Let’s get this party started!
The 11 Best Affiliate Marketing Tools All Beginners Should Have
The affiliate marketing tools that I will be talking about are as follows
- A website
- Content management system
- Grammarly
- Pic Pick
- Full page screen capture
- Social Warfare
- Image compressor
- Google Analytics
- Google Search Console
- Yoast SEO plugin
- Wealthy Affiliate
FYI, I’ve saved the best for last.
Best Affiliate Marketing Courses
Best Affiliate Courses
1/ A Website
It is fairly obvious that to start making money as an affiliate marketer you need a medium to reach your audience.
For most affiliates, this medium is a website.
Building a website might sound scary and like a lot of work, isn’t it right?
Wrong!
Nowadays, there are platforms and tools that enable even those who have no previous experience with such matters create their websites amazingly fast and almost effortlessly.
Back in the day, people had to code their websites for months before getting them up and running and would kill to have tools like those.
One of those tools is SiteRubix.
With SiteRubix you get everything needed to get your website up and running such as
- Website builder
- Domain name
- Hosting
Did I mention that you can have all of that for free?
Check out How To Create A Blog From Scratch For Free In 5 Simple Steps Using SiteRubix yourself.
All of my websites up until now have been created with and are being hosted on SiteRubix.
2/ Content Management System
Just getting your website up and running is not enough to start making money as an affiliate though.
You have to keep customizing and scaling your website by adding content, plugins, social media buttons, images, menus, etc.
To do that you need a content management system.
WordPress, Joomla, and Wix are some examples.
SiteRubix is a WordPress-based platform so if you build your website with it, you’ll get to manage your content through WordPress, which actually powers more than 25% of all the currently existing websites.
3/ Grammarly
Grammarly is a browser extension which highlights grammatical and spelling errors in your text and gives you suggestions on how to correct them.
This tool has greatly helped me improve my writing confidence, quality, and speed.
It is highly recommended especially for people whose native language is not English just like me.
You can download and install Grammarly on your browser in less than 10 seconds right here.
4/ Pic Pick
Pic Pick is a screen capture tool(an image capture, not a video capture).
For those who are running blogs and are not that comfortable with getting in front of a camera or recording a voice-over video, just like me, capturing images is the next best thing.
Images make your content more visual and engaging while decreasing the likelihood of your readers to get bored or tired of reading just huge chunks of text.
I am actually using a lot of captured images for my tutorials and product reviews and PicPick has truly untied my hands.
Some of the things you can do with PicPick are
- Take screenshots of your entire screen, an active window or a specific region of your screen
- Add effects, text, arrows, shapes, numbers on your image captures
- and much more
Pic Pick is maybe one of the most useful tools that I’ve come across until now.
You can download PicPick for free right here.
5/ Full Page Screen Capture add-on
This is yet another screen capture tool which is used to capture images of the full length of scrolling windows.
PicPick actually has a similar option but most of the time it does not really work for me so I had to look elsewhere.
To install this extension for your browser, go ahead and search in Google “Full Page Screen Capture add-on for Google Chrome or Firefox, or whatever browser you are using”.
You can find the extension for Google Chrome right here.
6/ Social Warfare Plugin
Social Warfare is one of the best social sharing plugins that I have tried so far.
As I am browsing the internet, I am coming across more and more websites which are actually using it.
The plugin is light, fast, minimal, and very easy to install, set up, and use, with lots of scalability and customization options to fit every need.
On the very left of the screen, you can see the floating buttons of the plugin in action.
You can take a look at my Social Warfare review over here.
7/ Image Compressor
Compressing all the images that you are about to use in your articles or basically anywhere on your website in general, dramatically decreases the loading time of your website.
Fast loading websites are actually ranked higher in the search engines and experience
- increased conversion, click-through, and time-on-page rates
- decreased abandon and bounce rates
To compress their images automatically many people are using plugins like Ewww Image Optimizer. In my experience, such plugins are not that effective(mostly because they are not compressing images enough to actually make a difference).
This is why I am compressing my images manually online using the CompressPng and CompressJpeg tools.
Those tools can compress your image up to 70% without any loss in quality whatsoever. It just takes a little more time compared to having a plugin automatically compress any image you upload on your website because you have to actually upload and download the images yourself.
However, the end result is definitely worth the trouble.
FYI, You can test the loading speed of your website using Google PageSpeed Insights.
8/ Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a website traffic monitoring tool.
It monitors all aspects of your traffic such as
- How many visitors are coming to your website per day/week/month
- The source that they came from(social media, search engine query, another website, etc)
- For how long they stayed on your site
- On what page they landed and on what page they went next
- Their country
- The device they are using
- Demographics(age, gender, etc)
- and many more
9/ Google Search Console
Unlike Google Analytics, Google Search Console monitors only traffic which comes from Google search queries and it lets you know
- For which keyword search queries your website shows in the search results
- How many times has your website appeared in the search results for any given keyword
- On what position
- How many people have visited your website and which keyword they used to find it
- Links from other websites to yours
- Page URL errors
- Google indexing status
- Mobile usability
- and much more
The stats that you will be getting both from Google Analytics and Google Search Console can be used not just to monitor your progress but also to attain a deeper understanding of your customers and so make improvements to serve them in a better way and thus increase your revenue.
Both Google Analytics and Google Search Console are completely free to join and use.
You can install both of them on your website by adding pieces of code manually or by using plugins.
Below you can find two video walkthroughs for installing Google Analytics and Google Search Console on your WordPress website.
10/ Yoast SEO Plugin
Yoast is a search engine optimization(SEO) WordPress plugin.
Just as its name states, this plugin’s job is to help you optimize your website for the search engines.
An optimized website has better chances of getting more of its content show up in the search engine results as well as in higher positions.
Moreover, it has a very useful built-in tool which lets you know about the readability of your articles and offers you suggestions on how to improve it.
You can download Yoast SEO for your WordPress website right here.
11/ Wealthy Affiliate
Just like I told you, I’ve saved the best for last!
Wealthy Affiliate is an affiliate marketing training platform and the place where every aspiring affiliate marketer should be.
Wealthy Affiliate is where I started my very first affiliate marketing business back in 2016 and I definitely couldn’t have gone that far without it.
Everything about it is state of the art… From its training modules to the tools, live chat, tech support, and webinars… Everything!
One of the most used of Wealthy Affiliate’s tools is its keyword research tool, Jaaxy.
Jaaxy mainly helps you determine the average searches a keyword receives in Google per month, the number of visitors you will be getting if you rank on the first page of Google for this keyword, as well as how many websites are currently ranking in Google under the keyword(competition).
Based on those results, you can determine the keywords that you should use to build your articles around.
To find out everything about Wealthy Affiliate’s features and tools, go ahead and check my Wealthy Affiliate: A Full Platform Review (2018 Update).
Affiliate marketing FAQs
Affiliate marketing is an online business model that involves promoting products or services created and distributed by third-party online merchants in exchange for getting paid a commission for each sale you refer.
In layman’s terms, affiliate marketing is the process of being compensated for helping businesses sell to more customers.
Here’s a bird’s eye view of how affiliate marketing works.
- You join a merchant’s affiliate program
- The merchant gives you a unique affiliate link that points to their e-shop
- You promote your unique affiliate link online (blog, forums, social media, paid ads, etc.)
- Every time someone clicks on your unique affiliate link and makes a purchase on the merchant’s e-shop, the merchant pays you a commission
There are thousands of successful affiliate marketers all around the world. Some of the most well-known ones are:
- Pat Flynn
- Matt Diggity
- Matthew Woodward
- Doug Cunnington
- & more
You can check out a roundup of my 17 favorite examples of affiliate success and their backstories right here.
- Billion-dollar industry
- Very low startup & operational expenses
- Huge income potential
- Flexible & versatile
- Passive income
- Simple to implement
- No technical background
- No customer support
- No physical setup
Affiliate marketers can be divided into five main income groups:
- Total beginners: $0 – $20,000 per year
- Low-level affiliates: $20,000 – $50,000 per year
- Intermediate affiliates: $50,000 – $100,000 per year
- High-level affiliates: $100,000 – $500,000 per year
- Super affiliates: $500,000+ per year
According to PayScale, the average annual income for affiliate marketers in the US is over $54,000 per year. Statistics reveal that 13% of affiliates earn more than $75,000 per year.
Some of the factors that influence how much you earn as an affiliate marketer include:
- seniority
- target niche
- available resources
- previous experience
- marketing efforts
- & overall mindset
Here’s a rough income growth timeline of a typical affiliate marketing business:
- months (0-3): no earnings
- months (3-6): first affiliate sale
- months (6-12): $100-$500 monthly
- months (12-18): $1000 monthly
- months (18-24): $3000+ monthly
This timeline isn’t a guarantee of future performance but rather a mere approximation of the income growth of an average affiliate business. Your own timeline could be shorter or longer than projected.
Over the years, I’ve seen aspiring affiliates striking a gold vein just a few months into the industry. On the other hand, I personally know people who’ve been struggling to grow their affiliate revenue to $1000 per month for several years.
Affiliate marketing is one of the most affordable money-making models out there.
Here’s a breakdown of everything you need to get started as an affiliate marketer along with their associated costs:
- web hosting & domain name: $2.95/month (Bluehost)
- keyword research tool: $49/month (Jaaxy)
- expert guidance: $49/month (Wealthy Affiliate)
- email autoresponder: Free for up to 1000 subs (MailerLite)
Please note that on top of expert guidance, Wealthy Affiliate also provides free access to hosting and a keyword research tool so you don’t have to purchase them separately.
Yes, you can do affiliate marketing without a website by promoting your affiliate links on other marketing channels, such as:
- Social Media
- Paid Ads
- YouTube
- Podcast
- etc.
The process of getting started with affiliate marketing can be broken down into the following four simple steps:
- Pick a niche
- Launch a blog
- Build an audience
- Promote affiliate products
No, you don’t.
Affiliate marketing is very simple to get started with by virtually anyone regardless of age, education, background, available capital, tech-savviness, professional network, etc.
In fact, most 6-figure affiliate marketers were no more experienced than you currently are when they first ventured into the affiliate marketing industry.
Nonetheless, being knowledgeable in fields like marketing, sales, content production, business management, etc., could help you reach your financial goals somewhat faster.
Conclusion
Just like you, there are thousands of people trying to become successful affiliate marketers and get their hands on the money.
To take the advantage over them, you need to become the best and there is no way to achieve that if the tools that you are using are not the best.
As an affiliate marketer, having the best tools at your disposal is definitely going to increase the scale and speed of your success dramatically.
Which tools are you using as an affiliate marketer? Which of those tools is helping you the most?
Please let me know in the comments section below.
If you have any questions or need any further help or guidance from me, I encourage you to leave a comment below or email me at harry@dearboss-iquit.com.
You could also contact me through a PM on my Wealthy Affiliate Profile.
Whatever the case, I will get back to you as soon as possible.
My best regards to you,
Harry,
dearboss-iquit.com
