8 Essential Affiliate Marketing Tools
Plus 5 More that I Use Every Day
Affiliate Marketing Resources
When you are first starting out, you are going to need all the guidance and support you can find – and these are the 8 Essential Affiliate Marketing Tools you will absolutely need, and you will use them every day from now on!
Each and every one these Affiliate Marketing Tools are used by me in my everyday life, all recommendations are based on my own personal experience, and I couldn’t get by without them.
But FIRST - You Need Your Own Website!
The very first thing you are going to need is a website – to not only create and promote your content but to connect your Affiliate Marketing sellers with buyers of their products.
You really want to have full flexibility over the design and portability of your website – and for this reason, you need a WordPress site.
WordPress can be totally customized to your needs without any coding required – and there are literally thousands of free WordPress website templates (themes) to choose from for just about every kind of website imaginable.
Beware of hosts that offer “site builders” because they use their own unique page building system, and that means you can’t easily take the structure and content of your website away with you.
You are more or less stuck with that host forever unless you want to completely rebuild your site from scratch.
WordPress on the other hand is completely design-flexible and can be simply moved from host to host if you decide to change. There are thousands of themes and plugins available for WordPress to make your site as useful and beautiful as you want it!
Essential Tools:
1. Website Hosting: SiteRubix
- Worpress Optimized Servers
- Secure SSL Hosting
- 24/7 Monitoring
- Site Health
- Email & Forwards
Hosting with SiteRubix
SiteRubix offers both Website hosting and WordPress site building services. You can build your very own WordPress website in just a few minutes without coding anything.
SiteRubix hosting includes some cool free tools you won’t get elsewhere too like SiteSpeed (for optimization), SiteSSL (Site Security) and SiteProtection (anti-spam).
Site SSL is usually something you have to pay extra for on most hosts so this saving alone is a great reason to go with SiteRubix.
With SiteRubix you can create 2 free sub-domains forever, so it’s great for testing out – and you can move those to your own registered domain when you are ready with just a few clicks. SiteRubix is a world class hosting platform developed by Wealthy Affiliate so as an extra bonus when you create your sites, you automatically get a free starter membership you can keep too.
2. Training and Support: Wealthy Affiliate
Learning and Community
Wealthy Affiliate is where it all started for me and where I learned everything about Affiliate Marketing and what got me on the road. I am an active Premium Member of Wealthy Affiliate and have been since February 2017.
Wealthy Affiliate will not only teach you everything you need to get started, it is also a strong community of genuine people to connect with and learn from their experience too!
I can’t possibly list all the benefits of Wealthy Affiliate membership here – so I really urge you to try the Free Starter Membership to see for yourself!
And you can read my story here!
3. Keyword Research Tool: Jaaxy
To understand what keywords to use for your content and your site, you MUST have a keyword research tool.
Keywords are what you will be using to get RANKED in Google and ALL other search engines and you MUST understand them and your keywords competition.
If you join Wealthy Affiliate, you will get a Jaaxy LITE account free included in your membership, but if you are starting out on you own, Jaaxy is THE most comprehensive keyword research tool you will EVER need.
As an alternative, Google Keywords Planner is completely free – BUT to access that you will need a Google Adsense account, and you will need to start a Google adsense campaign AND it is nowhere near as detailed or useful as Jaaxy!
4. Affiliate Marketing Programs
You will find that just about any well established online retailer will have an affiliate program for you to join.
Joining or signing up is free and can be direct with the seller or via an Affiliate Marketing Network.
How it works is that you place links to the seller’s products in the content of your blog, or by using banners on your website, or via social media channels. When your reader clicks those links and purchases a product from the seller – you make a commission!
Affiliate Networks like Rakuten, ShareAsale & Commission Junction represent thousands of sellers so you only need to join the network to gain access to a massive number of affiliate programs!
5. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is an absolute must once you have your website up and running!
You will use it every day to monitor the traffic (number of users) to your website and use the analysis of the data to see which pages are performing the best, where your users come from, and from what channels your site is being accessed.
There are thousands of sites and videos with instructions on how to set up Google Analytics so my recommendation is to Google that!
6. Google Search Console
Goole Search Console is what Google uses to understand your website structure and the content you have created.
It is Google Search Console that indexes your pages, finds keywords in your content, and works out your rankings in search results.
You will definetly need to add your site to Google Search Console to get your site properly indexed and found in searches!
Some of the data in Google Analytics also comes from Google Search Console – for example, you can see the search terms that people use that are finding your site in Google Search results.
7. Free Images
You’re going to need good quality images to include on your website to make your content stand out and get your reader’s attention.
Many images that can be found online are subject to copyright and you want to be sure you aren’t breaching that.
There are a lot of free sites where you can download and use stock images totally free and my favourites are:
8. Canva
Canva is FREE to use – and is the easiest graphic design tool you could ever want to create beautiful graphics for your website or social media channels.
There are hundreds of templates and free photos you can use to create stunning images.
Even if you know nothing at all about graphic design, Canva will transform your web images and social media posts.
Canva can be used online or via an iOs or Android mobile app – either way it is a fantastic tool and you should definitely be using it!