There is no shortage of ways to make money online. And if you’re in the affiliate marketing business, these opportunities are numerous and diverse.
But there’s a difference between wanting to make “quick cash” VS starting and maintaining a substantial, consistent, long-term income.
That’s right. It’s called building a business!
An important part of ANY business is having and using the right tools. Without these (or worse, the WRONG ONES), you could end up feeling like you’re pulling a wagon up a hill when instead you could have used a horse.
Here are the affiliate marketing tools that will help you build your online business with confidence, less effort and time, without sacrificing your sanity along the way.
Affiliate Marketing Tools
Anyone in affiliate marketing will agree that what you want is to reduce the overwhelm and workload when driving traffic to your website and promotions.
When it comes to the available online tools out there for marketers, there is no shortage of options to choose from.
This makes it very important to understand what kinds of tools and software are important in order to be effective as an affiliate marketer.
Hope you love the services we’ve carefully selected to recommend. Awaken Your Income is reader-supported and we may earn an affiliate commission from qualifying purchases from the shared product links.
Here are my 15 essential affiliate marketing tools for running a business:
Domain Registration
Set up your domain through a reputable domain registrar, rather that using a hosting company.
A reliable domain registrar can save you fees in the long-term especially if you ever need to transfer your domain name.
Plus, many offer additional services like private whois protection, customer support, ICANN Accreditation and SSL certification.
It’s usually better to go with a company that specialises in this area and has been around for a long time.
1. Namecheap
We use Namecheap. It’s one of the most reputable and long-standing domain registrars with discounted domains starting from just $0.98.
They give free WhoisGuard on many new domains and have additional features such as trusted SSL certificates and private email support.
Hosting
You may have heard you don’t need a website to earn money as an affiliate marketer…
And while this is possible, it’s not a long-term strategy.
Whether it’s a blog, an email list building page or any other presence online, if you want an online business you MUST HAVE reliable hosting.
And yet there are SOOO many options, many of which aren’t the reliable solution you need…
Then, there are the prices… which can be WAY too much especially when starting out.
2. Interserver
Interserver is a company that’s been providing hosting to people like us since 1999!
They’re super reliable, have great support AND the cheapest I’ve EVER seen.
If you don’t have hosting, or you’re paying more than $4 a month for it, I’d totally recommend you to set up with these guys for your hosting needs.
Click here to grab the EXCLUSIVE offer of $.01 for your 1st month.
Website
Building a functional and aesthetically pleasing website has never been easier.
The key is choosing a website builder that’s easy to get started with and make changes to when you want.
3. WordPress
WordPress – our favourite CMS platform for building a scalable website and blog.
It’s still one of the most full-stack solutions for those of us who want to avoid dealing with backend tech.
Landing Page Builders
While your website is meant to give visitors a general overview, landing pages serve a specific purpose.
When you want a specific action to be taken, use a landing page.
4. Thrive Suite
Thrive Architect is a visual page builder that integrates with WordPress. You can get access to Thrive Architect as part of the Thrive Suite.
Thrive Architect is built with an obsessive focus on being as fast as possible to use, removing every possible barrier between the business idea in your head and a professional presence of that business on your website.
What makes them different:
- Built with speed in mind: With instant drag and drop editing.
- Landing page templates: No design or coding skills needed.
- Pre-built conversion elements: So you can grow your business.
Click here to try this landing page builder, which is part of the Thrive Suite.
Tracking & Analytics Tools
Tracking the performance of your campaigns in terms of traffic, clicks and user behavior are all important ingredients in the affiliate marketing cookbook.
Without strong tracking, you can’t determine which channels are performing, and which are not.
Here are some tools to consider for your business.
5. ClickMagick
Especially if you are an affiliate marketer, it’s your ‘job’ to send traffic to people’s products in the hope of making sales and getting compensate.
But there’s always that something that separates elite marketers from everybody else, ensuring they get better results… and that’s the art of scientifically tracking and optimizing all their marketing, in one place/platform.
ClickMagick is THE GO-TO platform, where your marketing can be optimized to get more leads, conversions and revenues from the same traffic you’re already getting.
Here’s just some of what you can do with it:
- Track your entire funnel, no matter how complex.
- Bot filtering & click fraud protection.
- Automated & scientific split testing.
- Link cloaking & click rotators.
- Geotargeting & mobile optimization.
- Add retargeting pixels to any click.
- Add pop-ups and countdown timers to any page.
- Integrate with affiliate networks in seconds.
It works everywhere you advertise, and ClickMagick’s Fanatical 1-Hour support is amazing. When you need help, they respond in less than 1 hour!
There’s nothing else like this out there.
Click here to try ClickMagick Free for 14 days.
6. Google Analytics
Data can be a very daunting task, which is why marketers don’t normally look at it because it can be too much to look at and understand.
But with the right training and necessary tools, you can begin to make truly data-driven decisions to make smart business decisions.
There are a lot of traffic sources that can come into your website. Google Analytics does a really good job in helping you parse through this.
Autoresponder
As you may know, as an online business you must (yes, MUST) be building an email list: it’s one of the best ways to monetize your business over the long-term.
This means you need an email service provider – and there are tons of these around.
Some don’t even charge you, but DON’T risk your business’s #1 asset (your list) by putting trust in free autoresponder tools that may be here today, and gone tomorrow. It isn’t worth it!
7. Aweber
Whilst there are several great solutions, our top recommendation is this:
Aweber – Industry leaders, affordable, modern, next-gen, powerfully-simple features designed to make it easy and fun for you to connect with people!
Click here to get started for FREE with today.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the bread and butter of any affiliate who relies on organic traffic for clicks and revenue.
The funny thing about SEO is that it can either be as complicated or as simple as you need it to be.
All you really need is a good SEO plugin for your site and keyword research tool.
8. Yoast SEO
This is the first SEO plugin that we add to any WordPress site that we work on. This is a free plugin but also has a paid version.
Yoast SEO provides advanced SEO functionality to every page, including:
- Title tag and meta description customization.
- Canonical link customization.
- Sitemap creation and customization.
- Meta robots customization.
9. Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free keyword research tool owned by Neil Patel.
It provides you with all the essential data on your (or your competitors’) domain, keyword research, and even gives content ideas.
This is a free alternative to well known (and expensive) SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs.
Content Creation and Design
Hiring a graphic designer or subscribing to a stock photo service can be expensive when you are trying to keep your running cost down.
10. Canva
Canva is the ultimate design tool for non-designers. It’s easy to use software where you can create:
- Images for your blog using the stock images and layout templates provided.
- Social Media images.
- Video thumbnails.
- Logos.
- Presentations.
- Etc.
Canva’s user-friendly and the free version gives you access to most features.
11. Grammarly
Grammarly is a must-have for those who are regularly publishing content.
This writing-enhancement tool will keep track of your grammar, style, and tone of voice. In short, Grammarly is your average spell-checker on steroids.
We use the free version of this tool. However, the paid version offers much more comprehensive content review features.
Try Grammarly now to enjoy the results immediately!
P.S. We recommend downloading the desktop app as well as the Chrome browser extension.
Security
There are 2 ways to think about security when it comes to your business online:
- Access protection: e.g. usernames and passwords, 2FA, etc.
- Assets protection: e.g. protecting your website from hackers, software vulnerabilities, malware, etc.
12. Last Pass
Password managers make the tedious but necessary work of creating complex passwords (which are considered secure) that you need to help protect your various online accounts.
LastPass is a password manager with free and paid options.
Apart from storing and managing your passwords, it allows you to securely share sensitive information (such a social media logins, etc.).
13. WebArx
In Q4 of 2017, SiteLock released a report after analysing 6 million websites which showed the average website is attacked 44 times per day. (source)
While you can’t prevent hackers and cybercriminals from attempting to attack your website, you can stop them from being successful. Prevention is the best protection.
But website security is no simple task, and this is where WebARX comes in.
If your website platform is on WordPress, PHP, Magento, Drupal or Joomla, their website security platform is a great protection solution.
Social Media
Finally, let’s talk about the social media management tools.
Affiliates marketers (both individuals and businesses) must now maintain an active presence on multiple social media platforms in order to be engaging and have an omnipresence effect.
This creates the challenge of scheduling daily content and keeping track of engagement.
14. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a one-stop platform for managing multiple social media profiles without much time investment.
It allows you to find, schedule, manage, and report on social media content easier:
- Schedule: Save time by scheduling your social posts.
- Content curation: Manage social content with ease.
- Social analytics: Track and improve social ROI.
- Monitoring: Surface the conversations that matter.
15. Tailwind
Tailwind focuses on being the scheduling tool for Pinterest and Instagram.
This tool makes posting images and videos to Pinterest and Instagram a lot less work.
Plus, it offers very functional and time saving features like:
- Schedule: You can schedule as many pins as you want in advance.
- Smart Schedule: Allows you to only post your content at the best possible times.
- Smart Loop: Add your pins to SmartLoop once and Tailwind will re-circulate them for you – indefinitely.
- Tailwind Tribes: Grow your reach and team up with other influencers to share quality content.
And yes, they do offer a free trial.
