From writing content and SEO to social media promotion and web design, you need to cover a lot of bases as an affiliate marketer.

That’s why leveraging the right tools is pivotal to your success.

Affiliate marketing tools can help you to get more done in less time, gain valuable insights into your audience and your competitors, and make more money with your affiliate promotion.

There are a bunch of tools out there, but some have a steep learning curve, and some offer much more value than others.

To save you time and money, we’ve compiled a list of the best affiliate marketing tools...

… All of these tools can help you to attract more visitors and grow your affiliate business. And some of them are entirely free to use.

Let’s get into it.

Here are the best tools to add to your affiliate marketing stack.

Lessons Contents  

Keyword Research Tools

Keyword research is the backbone of your affiliate website.

Identifying the search terms that your target audience is using and creating content around those keywords is the most effective and cost-efficient way to drive traffic to your website and your affiliate links.

There are some great tools out there to help you with this process.

KWfinder

KWFinder helps you to identify longtail keyword opportunities in your niche.

It shows you a monthly search volume estimate, and an SEO difficulty rating to help you determine how competitive the keyword is.

It’s a beginner-friendly keyword research tool, but there’s also a bunch of features for more advanced users.

Pricing: From $29.90 per month

Ubersuggest

Neil Patel’s free keyword research tool is a great way to find keyword suggestions and ideas for content.

The interface is clean and user-friendly, and even without creating an account, you can see the SEO difficulty and estimated search volume for keywords.

Pricing: Free

Google Keyword Planner

For PPC campaigns, Google Keyword Planner is the best tool to use.

It helps you to identify affordable search terms and shows you the monthly search volume.

You want your webpage to be the last page people visit before making a purchase, so you need to focus on buyer intent keywords where the searcher is actively looking for advice to help them make a purchase.

It’s designed for Google Ads campaigns, but you can also use this excellent tool to help you identify keyword opportunities for your content strategy.

Pricing: Free

Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a free keyword research tool that helps you to find questions, comparisons, and search queries related to a specific topic.

Simply enter a seed keyword, and Answer the Public will return a page of related search query questions in a visual graphic.

You can also download and export this data.

Pricing: Free

Competitor Analysis Tools

Keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing is a great way to learn what works, avoid mistakes, and identify opportunities you might have missed.

Competitor analysis tools enable you to see the statistics of your rivals.

From email and PPC campaigns to keyword strategy and backlinks, you can get an inside look by utilizing the following tools.

AdSpy

When it comes to PPC, AdSpy is the number one spy tool.

It’s a powerful tool for spying on competitor’s Facebook Ads…

...And it’s very helpful as an affiliate for figuring out how to nail it when it comes to promoting a product well, in a compliant manner, over a consistent period of time.

You can see over 80 million ads from over 13 million different advertisers.

There’s a bunch of helpful search filters that help you get a precise look at your competitor’s campaigns.

You can even filter your search by affiliate network, affiliate offer ID, and affiliate ID, giving you exceptional access to your competitor’s ads, sales funnels, and landing pages.

Pricing: $149 per month

SpyFu

SpyFu enables you to get a look at what your competitor’s SEO strategy and Google Ads placements.

It shows you the keywords that websites are buying on Google Ads, so you can see exactly which search terms your competitors are bidding on.

You can also see which search terms they are ranking for in the search results and which backlinks are bringing them traffic.

You can use this information to inform your backlinks and keyword strategy.

Pricing: From $33.00 per month

Owletter

Do you want to know more about your competitor’s email marketing strategy?

Owletter enables you to save and analyze the emails sent from your competitor’s website. You can see:

  • Email sending schedule
  • Seasonal email promotion strategy
  • Recurring email topics
  • If your competitor has a spam email reputation

All this information is great for learning what is working for your competitors and informing your email strategy.

Pricing: From $19.00 per month

Serpstat

Serpstat is a comprehensive SEO tool that can provide insights into your competitor’s website.

You can identify the keywords your competitors are ranking for, analyze their backlinks, and monitor their position in the search rankings.

You can see what Serpstat has to offer by taking advantage of the free trial, but you’ll need to pay to access the more advanced features and use the tool long-term.

Pricing: From $69.00 per month

SimilarWeb

This is a tool for the serious affiliate marketers with multiple sites.

SimilarWeb is a premium competitor analysis tool that allows you to see the traffic of your competitors, analyze their backlinks, and compare multiple sites to inform your strategy.

SimilarWeb processes vast amounts of data and presents it in easily understandable visual reports.

You can access some data for free, but you’ll need to pay for a premium plan if you want to benchmark your website and identify ways to boost your online profile and search ranking.

Pricing: From $199 per month

Domain Registration

Once you’ve decided on a niche and come up with a domain name, choosing a reputable domain registrar is the next step.

There are hundreds of different companies offering this service, but it’s a good idea to choose a reliable provider that has a proven track record and a solid reputation with webmasters.

Namecheap

Namecheap has been around for years and has an excellent reputation for affordable domains and additional services.

You can register your domain for less than ten dollars, and you’ll receive free WhoisGuard to protect your identity online.

They also offer SSL certificates to secure your website.

Pricing: From $6.00

Domain.com

Founded in 2000, Domain.com has become one of the leading domain registrars in the world.

They offer affordable domain registration, including free WhoisGuard protection, alongside additional services like bulk registration, straightforward domain transfers, DNS management, and even web hosting.

Pricing: From $9.99

Hosting

Just like choosing a domain registrar, it’s important to purchase hosting from a reliable provider.

You want to go with a hosting company that has an excellent reputation for customer service, the option to include additional features, and of course, reliable hosting.

The following companies all have an excellent track record, with different plans available depending on your website needs.

Bluehost

Bluehost offers affordable and dependable web hosting. It has a reputation as one of the best hosting providers for WordPress websites.

You can choose from three different types of web hosting, and they offer a bunch of additional services.

You get a free SSL certificate and a free domain name for the first year of all hosting packages.

Pricing: From $2.75 per month

Hostgator

HostGator is another big name in web hosting, with affordable packages starting from just a few dollars a month.

You’ll get shared hosting for a budget package, but you can upgrade to VPS hosting or a dedicated server if you have the budget and want to make your website as fast as possible.

Pricing: From $2.75 per month

GoDaddy

GoDaddy has an easy to use website where you can purchase and set up your hosting in minutes.

You can buy a basic plan and scale up your package when you need to.

There’s 24/7 customer support, and you get a free domain name for the first year.

They also offer a free website builder, but I wouldn’t recommend using it as you’ll soon find yourself restricted and unable to export your site.

Pricing: From $2.99 per month

Site Building Tools

Creating a WordPress website used to be a time consuming and frustrating experience for even experienced affiliate marketers.

Using a website builder like Wix or Squarespace is an option, but this can cause some problems later if you want to migrate your website or if you want to tweak source code.

Thankfully, there are now some great WordPress page builders.

Using these tools, you can create a professional-looking website in no time...

...We’ve also included a couple of free plug-ins in this section to help you optimize your site.

Oxygen

Oxygen is the best visual WordPress website builder.

It produces the cleanest code, leading to faster load speeds than the other drag and drop builders.

Web pages that load within two seconds have an average bounce rate of 9%. When the loading time increases to five seconds, the average bounce rate jumps up to 38%.

Oxygen entirely does away with your WordPress theme, replacing it with a dynamic drag-and-drop builder.

There’s a bunch of templates you can choose from, but you have the complete creative freedom to change every element of your website.

Pricing: From $99.00

Elementor Pro

If you want to speed up the process of creating your website with an easy to use content builder, Elementor Pro is a good option.

You can drag-and-drop elements onto your page to create professional-looking web pages and blog posts.

It’s easy to use and regularly updated, making it an excellent tool for affiliate marketers.

Pricing: From $49.00 per year

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is a drag-and-drop WordPress page builder that offers a high level of creative control.

You choose a template and then drag and drop elements to create your page.

It’s super easy and intuitive, with a high-speed interface, and next to no learning curve.

There’s a free version, but you’ll need to upgrade to access the most useful features.

Pricing: From $99.00 per year

PB SEO Friendly Images

If you’ve ever created a website before, you’ll know how time-consuming it can be adding alt text to every image.

PB SEO Friendly Images is a free plug-in that does the job for you.

The filename of the image generates the alt text, so you don’t need to spend hours manually entering alt text for every image.

Pricing: Free

TinyPNG

Page speed is pivotal to your bounce rate, which impacts your search ranking, and how much free traffic you get from Google.

The longer it takes for your website to load, the less likely people are to stick around and see what your site has to offer.

This helpful free plug-in speeds up your site by compressing your images.

It eliminates excess pixels, reducing the file size for your images, but still maintaining image quality.

Pricing: Free

If you want to attract organic traffic from search engines, you’ll need to keep on top of your SEO.

These tools make it easy to identify keyword opportunities, analyze the SEO strategy of your competitors, fix technical SEO errors, and optimize your site to attract more visitors.

SEMRush

SEMRush is a great, all-in-one SEO tool.

You can see the strategy of your competitors, with detailed insights on their SEO, Social Media, PPC, and content…

...As well as in-depth analysis of your website.

The interface is easy to use, and there are heaps of helpful articles and guides to help you make the most of the tool and improve your SEO performance.

Pricing: From $99.95 per month

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most popular and most comprehensive marketing tools out there.

Just like SEMRush, you can get detailed insights into your competition and their traffic.

You can see the exact keyword phrases that your competitors rank for, and how much traffic they generate from their backlinks.

You can use this information to inform your content strategy and link building strategy.

Pricing: From $99.00 per month

Screaming Frog

For technical SEO, Screaming Frog is the best tool out there.

This website crawler can help you to identify any errors and technical issues holding back your website.

It’s also a great tool to gain insight into your competitor’s site and content strategy.

There’s also a completely free limited version you can download.

Pricing: Free with option of paid license

Google Advanced Search

You can use Google’s advanced search options to identify link building and keyword opportunities.

By using the intitle operator, you can filter search results to include specific phrases and keywords.

For example, if you’re looking for link building opportunities in your niche, you can include “write for us” in a search for a keyword related to your niche to identify relevant websites that accept guest posts.

Pricing: Free

Social Media Marketing Tools

By 2023, it’s estimated that 3.43 billion people around the world will be social media users.

Social media is a great platform to grow your audience and expand your reach.

However, setting up accounts, regularly posting, and analyzing what works can be a massive drain on your time resources.

If you use the right tools, you can claw back some of your time, gain valuable social audience insights, and automate some of the repetitive tasks.

Buffer

If you’ve ever tried publishing on multiple social media accounts, you’ll know how frustrating it can be signing in and publishing on each platform.

Buffer makes the process much more comfortable by bringing all of your accounts into one interface.

You can create posts that are customized to the format of each social media platform.

The publishing schedule tool is a great time-saver, automatically publishing your posts at the times when your audience is most receptive.

If you’re using social media to grow your audience, you should seriously consider using Buffer.

Pricing: From $15.00 per month

MeetEdgar

MeetEdgar is a similar tool to Buffer, helping you to create and publish posts across all of your social media accounts.

It brings all of your accounts into a single interface…

… Supporting posting on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

There’s currently no option for Pinterest.

Pricing: From $19.00 per month

Tailwind

Tailwind doesn’t support the range of platforms that Buffer and MeetEdgar do, but it’s a great tool if you use Pinterest and Instagram.

Pinterest is an essential channel if you are targeting the baby/parenting niche, with 80% of mothers in the US using the platform.

This tool enables you to automate your posting on Instagram and Pinterest, and the “SmartSchedule” feature helps you to identify the best times to post to maximize engagement. You can also use the free trial to test out the tool and see if it’s right for you.

Pricing: From $9.99 per month

Content Research & Writing Tools

Creating high-quality content that your audience will find interesting is essential for every affiliate website.

There’s more competition than ever, and standing out from the sea of content published every day isn’t an easy task.

From identifying hot topics in your niche to making sure your content is engaging and error-free, these tools will help you make a success of your content creation.

Grammarly

Grammarly should be an essential part of your content creation process.

It checks for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and helps you to improve the readability of your text.

Not only will Grammarly pull up any wayward commas, but it will also help you to improve the flow, clarity, and engagement of your content.

There’s a completely free version, but you should consider upgrading to the premium plan to access the more advanced features.

Pricing: Free with option of paid plan

Hemingway App

Hemingway App is an excellent tool for ensuring your writing is more ‘readable’ and appealing to a wider audience.

Taking its name from the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, it helps you to keep your sentences and choice of words clear and easy to understand.

 

Internet users are impatient. They won’t wait around waiting for you to get to the point.

The more fluff in your writing, the more likely they are to lose interest and leave your site.

 

This tool highlights run-on sentences, complex words that can be replaced with a simpler alternative, and passive voice...

 

… You should aim to keep most of your content easily readable for a 6th-grade level.

 

Pricing: Free

Copyscape

If you outsource to a freelance writer, you should always run your content through a plagiarism checker like Copyscape before you publish it on your website.

Once you’ve been working with a freelancer for a while, you can trust them more…

...But for projects with a new writer, you should always check your content using Copyscape.

Pricing: From $0.03 per search

Buzzsumo

Coming up with ideas for content that your audience will love is no easy task.

BuzzSumo makes it a whole lot easier.

It’s an excellent tool for researching content in your niche and identifying hot topics.

Enter a keyword or topic into BuzzSumo, and it will return a breakdown of the top-performing related content, with a detailed analysis of backlinks, social shares, and an evergreen rating.

Pricing: From $99.00 per month

Google Docs

Google Docs is a vital tool for content marketing.

It’s where you put in all the work before you publish your content on your site.

You can easily collaborate with writers, leave comments, add images, and more.

It’s completely free, easy to use, and every decent freelance writer has used it before…

… You can even use Wordable.io to upload your Google Docs directly to your WordPress site.

Pricing: Free

Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but it’s still one of the most effective ways to generate sales and commission as an affiliate marketer.

According to the Data & Marketing Association, for every $1 spent on email marketing, you can expect to earn $42 in return.

There are lots of different email marketing tools out there, and we’ve compiled the best three below.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit is the go-to email marketing tool for a huge number of affiliates…

… It’s beginner-friendly, with a simple and intuitive interface.

 

You can access all the features you need to grow your list and convert subscribers into customers and commission.

 

It’s super easy to set up a welcome sequence and automate your emails for new subscribers…

… You can also send out blast emails whenever you want to promote a new affiliate product.

 

ConvertKit offers a 14-day free trial, so you see what it has to offer before you purchase a plan.

 

Pricing: From $29.00 per month

ActiveCampaign

This tool makes it easy for complete beginners to get started with email marketing...

… Its low learning curve and affordability make it a great option for affiliate marketers.

ActiveCampaign enables you to create compelling automated email sequences using the visual automation feature.

You can quickly put together a sequence that engages new subscribers and encourages them to check your affiliate products.

It’s an affordable and easy to use email marketing tool that offers some great tools to help you monetize your list...

… You can even take advantage of a free 14-day trial without entering any payment details.

Pricing: From $9.00 per month

Aweber

AWeber is one of the most established email marketing tools…

… With over 150 email templates to help you engage your list of subscribers.

It has everything you need to create an engaging email marketing sequence.

The interface is clean and easy to use, and the AI Smart Designer to help you create appealing branded emails is a great feature.

AWeber also has excellent customer support to help you get the most out of the tool.

You can try out AWeber for 30 days before you commit to a monthly plan.

Pricing: From $19.00 per month

Sender

If you want a free tool that enables you to track your emails, see who pressed open and clicked on your link, Sender is a great option.

It offers excellent analytics, but it’s not just an email tracking tool.

You can use the email templates to create dynamic newsletters without any HTML experience, personalize each email to the recipient, and more.

Sender is a great free option for affiliate marketers.

Pricing: Free

Mailchimp

Founded in 2001, Mailchimp has become one of the most popular email marketing tools in the world.

You can use the free version to create and automate email sending, but the paid version enables you to access detailed analytics and recommendations.

Mailchimp’s smart recommendations help you to optimize your emails and boost your conversions to earn more money from your subscriber list.

Pricing: From $9.99 per month

EmailOctopus

EmaiOctopus doesn’t offer as many advanced features as some of the other leading email marketing tools, but the free version is much less restricted.

You can send out an unlimited number of emails, and from an unlimited number of email addresses...

...This means you can run the email campaigns for all of your affiliate websites from a single interface.

You can also integrate the tool with WordPress, making it easy to exchange details about your list of subscribers.

Pricing: From $20.00 per month

Design Tools

Design tools have come a long way since the days of ClipArt and Microsoft Paint.

There’s a range of free and paid options to make your content and social media posts more dynamic and appealing to your audience.

If you use Twitter, including an image in your tweet can result in 18% more click-throughs, 150% more retweets, and 89% more likes.

Here are the top three design tools for affiliate marketers.

Canva

Canva is the most popular design in the world, with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that makes it super easy to create compelling images.

You can choose a pre-built template, customize image size for each social media platform, change fonts, and much more.

It’s a great tool that enables somebody with zero design experience to create appealing custom images.

Pricing: Free with option of paid plan

LightShot

If you need to create a tutorial or guide with screenshots, LightShot should be your go-to tool.

Once you’ve captured your screenshot, you can easily crop the part of the image you need, add arrows, blur sections of the image, and more.

It’s a great free tool to capture and annotate screenshots in a few clicks.

Pricing: Free

Easel.ly

Easel.ly helps you to visualize information and create appealing infographics.

Research shows that adding infographics to your website could boost your traffic by 12%.

You can choose a pre-built template and customize using the intuitive drag-and-drop editor, or you can start from scratch and build a completely unique infographic.

Easel.ly is a free and fast way to make shareable infographics for your website and social channels.

Pricing: Free with option of paid plan

Conversion Optimization Tools

Conversions will define the success or failure of your affiliate website.

Which tools can help you to boost your conversions and make more money?

These four tools will help you to boost your email subscriber list, generate more clicks of your affiliate links, and identify issues with your website that are causing you to leak traffic and miss out on sales.

HelloBar

HelloBar helps you to boost conversions by displaying pop ups to your website visitors.

You can add a lead capture form to build your email list, promote an affiliate product, or encourage visitors to follow your social accounts.

There’s a free version that enables you to create one pop up and display it to 10% of your website visitors...

… You’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan to access more call-to-action features and increase the popup frequency.

Pricing: Free with option of paid plan

Crazy Egg

Do you want to see which parts of your webpage receive the most attention from visitors?

Crazy Egg provides heat maps to visualize how effective your content is and identify any weak spots that cause your visitors to leave.

You can track user clicks, and even segment your traffic by source to see which of your channels is bringing in the most engaged visitors.

Pricing: From $24.00 per month

Sumo

Sumo is an all-in-one conversion suite, with a bunch of tools designed to help you convert and track your visitors.

You can create a pop up to capture more email subscribers, add a scroll-triggered promotional box, and more.

Alongside conversion tools, Sumo offers detailed analytics with insights into how engaging your content is, and recommendations to increase its effectiveness.

Pricing: From $39.00 per month

AAWP

Making sure your affiliate content is up to date and relevant is vital for conversions…

… If you tell a visitor that a product will cost $50, and they click through and discover the price has gone up to $65, the chances of them completing the purchase is slim.

The Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin (AAWP), integrates with Amazon to ensure that your product reviews and comparisons feature the correct pricing, images, product descriptions, and titles.

You can also create a list of bestsellers within a few clicks...

...If you’re promoting Amazon products, you’ll want to use AAWP.

Pricing: From $45 per year

Web Analytics Tools

Tracking the performance of your content and promotional efforts is an essential part of being an affiliate marketer...

… Without measuring your traffic, clicks, bounce rate, etc., you’re operating in the dark.

You don’t know what’s working and what needs improvement.

These tools will help you to measure your performance, and some completely free to use.

Google Analytics

Every affiliate marketer with a website should be using Google Analytics.

It helps you to understand how many people visit your website, which channels and backlinks attract them, how long they stick around, and much more.

It’s completely free, and it’s one of the best analytics tools around.

If you haven’t already, sign up now.

Pricing: Free

Hotjar

If you want to get a deep understanding of your visitors and how they interact with your website, you might need to go a step further than Google Analytics.

Hotjar enables you to take a deep dive into user behavior, with heatmaps, mouse movements, web page recording, and more.

With this information, you can optimize layouts, CTAs, and other elements on your site to maximize conversions and increase the click-through rate of your affiliate links.

Pricing: Free with option of paid plan

Clicky

Clicky offers similar in-depth information to Google Analytics, but with a much more accessible and intuitive interface.

If you struggle to make sense of Google Analytics and want a tool that makes information clearer and easier to understand, Clicky could be the ideal solution.

It tracks all of the user data points you need but also offers a real-time breakdown of individual user’s actions on your website.

The heat maps for each unique user is a great feature, and the interface is fully optimized for mobile devices - so you can access your website analytics on the go.

Pricing: Free with option of paid pricing

Networking & Learning Materials

Affiliate marketing is continually evolving.

To be successful and keep growing your affiliate business, you need to maintain a thirst for knowledge, keep up with the latest marketing trends, and strive to keep improving.

Here at Affilorama, we make every effort to create up to date resources and learning materials to help you succeed…

… But you can also seek advice from other affiliates and people in the industry.

Here are three places you can find additional help and useful information to help you make money online.

Account Managers

When you sign up for an affiliate program, you will usually be assigned an account manager…

… These people can be a great source of information and advice.

They can help you find the best selling products, optimize your content, and eliminate mistakes that are costing you conversions.

Account managers are there to help, but try to be as specific as possible when you reach out.

Instead of asking a generic question like “which are the best products?” ask a specific question like, “what’s the best performing self-improvement product in the US, according to EPC?”

Affilorama Forum

If you want some advice or have a question you need answering, head over to the Affilorama forum to connect with other affiliates.

You can learn from successful affiliates with years of experience, find out the common mistakes beginner affiliates make (and how to avoid them), and keep up with the latest trends in affiliate marketing.

Affilorama Resources

You can access loads of free resources here at Affilorama.

We can walk you through everything from signing up to affiliate programs and keyword research to social media tactics and link building....

… We also offer a downloadable Roadmap to Success that guides you through the process of becoming an affiliate marketer step by step.

If you need some help pointing you in the right direction, we offer 120 actionable video lessons to show you how to make money as an affiliate marketer one step at a time.

Conclusion

You need to juggle lots of different tasks to be a successful affiliate marketer…

… It’s not as easy as setting up a website and waiting for traffic and commission to pour in.

It requires time and dedication, but you can speed things up and make the process a whole lot easier if you use the right tools.

If you utilize the tools we’ve listed above, you can kick start your affiliate career.

You’ll have all the resources you need to make the journey to becoming a successful affiliate as smooth and as fast as possible.

 

 

 

Market Research for Affiliate Marketers