Depending on the path or route you decide to follow, affiliate marketing can be difficult and even time consuming at times. From keyword research, creating decent looking videos or producing eye catching images to entice new readers or followers.
Fortunately, there are a number of tools that can reduce that hard work, and on occasion remove it all together. Today I will go through some of the essential tools for entrepreneurs and affiliate marketers that can really help boost your income or even help with launching your own product.
Some of these 'tools' will be awesome platforms, products or services that make life easier, and also some software that could help you become that super affiliate.
Content Samurai - Easily Create Videos
Running blogs and constantly creating content can be a nightmare, especially when it comes to videos.
If you are like me, and hate being on camera (Seriously, I can't stand it, it's why there are very few videos of me!) there is a great way of transforming your blog posts or articles into ranking videos.
Content Samurai works by taking existing blog posts, or scripts and transforming them into videos. It will match videos and pictures that it feels fits in with the script (usually picking up on key words). You can then update the images and videos to fit in with what you want to see on the screen. It's kind of like a much quicker and slicker slide show!
It's great for adding a little extra SEO for your site and gives an extra reason to chuck a few links about.
KeySearch.Co - Easy Key Word Research & Rank Tracking
Most bloggers or marketers will promote or recommend that every affiliate marketer must use tools such as Ahrefs when it comes to keyword research, and I have always said that unless you are a full time SEO consultant or a marketing agency, you don't need to shell $100+ a month.
KeySearch is a multi tooled platform, designed to help affiliate marketers to both keep track of multiple keywords to see where they rank, as well as provide decent data on how easy it might be to rank, what other competition may exist or even variations of keywords you may want to try.
Coming in at nearly 10% of the cost of Ahrefs per month, KeySearch really is a budget friendly keyword research tool, without having that cheap or budget feeling.
Read Review | Start Using KeySearch
Canva - Create Social Media Posts With Ease
A personal favourite of mine, Canva is a free tool that allows you to create logos, social media posts, social media banners and even newsletters or eBooks all with ease.
With hundreds of templates to choose from, with what seems like an endless supply of photos, icons and images, you can create professional looking images without spending a small fortune.
They do also offer paid for templates that are usually a little more 'professional' but there is nothing forcing you to take them!
ClickFunnels - The Ultimate Sales Funnel Creator
ClickFunnels is well known these days due to their brilliant advertisement campaigns and their ingenious share funnels that allows the everyday joe to quickly build or edit amazing funnels with ease.
If you are serious about promoting affiliate products, or even running your own funnels, then ClickFunnels is a great place to do so.
With drag and drop builders, ready made templates and the ability to run your own membership site or even affiliate offers, they really do offer a lot.
Their pricier tiers will open up more opportunities such as the ability to have your own affiliates for your products, an inbuilt email auto-responder and more.
Check Out The Review | Try ClickFunnels For 14 Days Free
BuilderAll - The All In One Platform
For the aspiring entrepreneur who wants a little more bang for their buck, then BuilderAll is a great place to start, or even start utilising.
BuilderAll is essentially a marketers secret dream that they don't want the other half to know about.
It's packed with;
- Drag & Drop Funnel Builder
- Website Builder (think Wix, but better)
- SEO Report Creator
- Facebook Chat Messenger (Seriously, click the one on the right hand side of this page to find out more)
- In built social proof tools
- An in-house Auto-responder (the basic tier gives you access to 10k subscribers... my standard auto-responder charges me $50+ a month for that privilege (sadly Mailboss doesn't work with other providers without a lot of fancy plugins and work!)
- Video & Photo tools
- And so much more...
BuilderAll also offers a 2 tier affiliate marketing system, so if you love sharing tools or software or you have a list that LOVES this kind of product, then BuilderAll may be the one for you!
The amount of tools you are given as part of your BuilderAll membership, it's insane and well worth the money.
Check Out The Review | Try It Out For 7 Days
Pretty Link - Cloak And Track Your Links
If you are not tracking your affiliate links, or sales links...how are you working out what is successful or not?
If you use things like Solo ads, or ad exchanges, then it's vital to know if you are actually getting your moneys worth, or if the number of visitors is truly unique!
This is where PrettyLink comes into force.
Designed to allow you to create extensions to your own domain, it tracks the links to show you the number of clicks, where they are from, if it's a unique IP and what browser they might be using.
I use it a lot when sharing links online via YouTube or when giving people answers on sites like Quora.
It's free to install and is easy to set up on any WordPress site.
ClickMagick - Like PrettyLinks..but a bit more robust!
ClickMagick works a lot like Pretty links, but it's not tied to a domain, it's run through their own platform.
It's designed as a true way of tracking your links.
PrettyLinks is good it can essentially use Google data to tell you who is arriving on your site, what browser etc, but it can't tell if that 'user' is a bot, if they are a traffic exchange or any number of other things that can actually be damaging for your landing pages or links.
This is where ClickMagick steps up, it's sole purpose in life is to provide you with that data.
It can be a powerful tool if you feel that certain providers *cough $10 solo ads* are not really giving you the traffic that they say they are or if the traffic and clicks they are providing are real. Yep, that has happened.
Clickagicks start plan only costs $17 a month (or $12 if you fancy paying yearly) so hardly breaks the bank and they do offer training on how to use it effectively (my big issue with is, it that its really annoying trying to get up funnel links etc)
Check Out ClickMagick | Check Out The Guide
GetResponse - Emails Equals Money
A well versed mantra that Affiliate Marketers give and Entrepreneurs should also start singing along too, is that the money is in the email list.
Any course you buy, find, download or get given, should tell you to capture emails.
If someone has bother to find your website, blog or even YouTube channel, it means that they care about whatever you are potentially talking about.
This list allows you to build a long term relationship with that audience.
You can send them new product offers, new videos, freshly penned articles or even just a friendly hello every now and then.
GetResponse has been my go to auto-responder and list builder for a while, they recently upped their game by offering their own version of sales funnels, but for me, it's the automation flows that make me smile.
You can create complex and long email chains that span months or years and have multiple ways set up to enter those email chains, allowing you to set and forget after people get things like free ebooks or cheat sheets.
Thrive Architect - Easy Drag And Drop Website Builder
If you are using WordPress to build your blogs (most people do, because it's beginner friendly and pretty much anyone and their Grandma can get a blog set up on WordPress these days in a matter of minutes) then you probably know about their latest update, the drag and drop block builder.
This isn't a new concept and has been around for a few years, with a number of plugins or themes giving you the option to create nicely laid out pages or posts with ease, one of them being Thrive.
Thrive is made up of a number of different elements, the one we care about is Thrive Architect.
Thrive Architect pulls in a number of different elements that personally make it amazing for creating stunning looking blogs.
It offers you the ability to;
- Create visually appealing lead pages
- Import or instantly build landing pages designed to sell
- Add lead generation sections without much hassle
- Build and design well laid out and visually appealing articles
Every page on this blog proudly uses Thrive Architect to build it, including lead pages and squeeze pages that I use to funnel people towards affiliate offers or free stuff.
Check The Thrive Architect Review | Get Thrive Architect
Monzo - Cheeky UK Account
This bank account and app is currently only open to UK residents (Sorry to those on the other side of the pond or elsewhere)
This is going to be a curve ball for most people, because affiliate marketers or even entrepreneurs rarely think about cash flow, or even understanding about where their money goes each month.
I recently signed up and moved some of my bills associated with the blog and even the company as a whole onto a Monzo account.
Why?
Simple, it allows me to easily track when and where money is going, but also tells me when I am being paid by different platforms.
Some platforms will take days to pay you, ClickBank for example provide you with a rough date in the future when they feel their automated billing system pays out.
It's never accurate. So I don't know on a daily basis if I have been paid by them without having to check constantly, which just isn't fun.
Monzo takes care of that, by setting them up as my bank account to get the funds they tell me the minute it hits the account.
I can then mark this against other costs such as advertisement, tools or software licences that I pay for, and lets me run a 'lite accounting' eye over it.
It's not as good as full accounting software and it's not currently available in the US (it's coming though!) but it does at least give you an idea while you are building up your affiliate empire.
Join Monzo (You get £5 when you join!)
Essential Tools For Affiliate Marketers - Conclusion
Well, there you have it , a few platforms, tools and even a cheeky bank account that can help you on your affiliate journey, and are some of what I call the essential tools for affiliate marketers and entrepreneurs!
Do you have any more that you think are worth sharing? Then share them below!
I started this blog around 2017, after realising that I wanted to let people know about all the different ways someone could make money online. From DropShipping, Affiliate Marketing, Network Marketing and more.
This blog has now grown to review and explain a variety of different tools and platforms, in the bid to help you.
This blog contains affiliate links, and I will get a commission for purchases made through these links. It doesn’t change anything for you and will on occasion save you money! Enjoy, James.