Essential Affiliate Marketing Tools for Beginners

Affiliate Marketing is a great way of earning income online.  Getting started can seem a bit daunting without the right help and support, but I want to offer you that right now with this post.

There will be many posts out there trying to sell you a load of tools that promise success by handing over a load of money, then you realise that you still need to invest a load of time and effort and you would have been better off just doing it properly in the first place…

I want to share with you my essential affiliate marketing tools for beginners, many are free and aid me in my affiliate marketing business.  There are a couple of paid ones, but I will be clear and upfront – I will also tell you why I paid for them and the benefits they gave me.

Depending on where you are with your affiliate marketing adventure, the most important ingredient is a website.

AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE

One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools and offer help and advice to my audience is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links – in fact in some cases you will even receive a discount. If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated!  Learn more here.

Website & Hosting – Get the Right One!

Search the internet and you will stumble on many free website builders, this is an option but not necessarily the right option. Let me explain why.

One of the key factors you are trying to build with a reader is TRUST.  But many of these free website builders give you a minimal website with their branding all over it – and when you actually want to start adding features to it, you need to pay.  I have found that WordPress is a great option for affiliate marketing, it is really easy to use and is customisable through plugins to get the look and feel for your website.

My personal recommendation for hosting is SiteRubix. The guys behind Wealthy Affiliate (I’ll get onto this in a moment) have built SiteRubix into a great hosting option for WordPress website owners. I host all of my websites on their hosting, as it comes with some great benefits.

Full Domain Websites hosted on Wealthy Affiliate’s SiteRubix benefit from:

• Free SSL Certificates (usually $100 per website)
• Site Speed – Their hosting allows websites to be 20x the speed of usual websites
• Site Protect – Instead of using a plugin to stop spam, they do it at the server, meaning it doesn’t slow your website down
• Site Security – Suite of website security features to stop hacking, malware and bot-nets.
• They always run 2 versions of your site to ensure it doesn’t go down.

Now I do pay for Wealthy Affiliate as a Premium Member and I get these benefits on up to 25 full domains and 25 subdomains.  So, I could have 25 full domain websites with SSL (which could cost $2500 a year) for $49/month or $359/year. All I pay on top is the domain name, which is usual anywhere.

Now, I know you might be thinking “I am just starting out, that is expensive”. I do appreciate that, but there is much more to Wealthy Affiliate and I am not expecting you to spend a dime. Their Starter Membership is designed to let you make your own decision about their platform but let me share with you what else they offer:

• Step-by-Step Guides on all elements of Affiliate Marketing, Online Business, Search Engines, Social Engagement & Media, Website Building & Design, Getting Free Traffic, Creating Content, Google Analytics & Webmaster, Bing Webmaster, Email Marketing, Video Marketing and much more
• WordPress Website Builder with Hosting included
• Keyword Research Tool
• Website Engagement Tools
• Expert Help & Support

It is a community of internet entrepreneurs all with a similar vision of building an online business within affiliate marketing.  Networking is really key online, and we offer our help and support at all times. The training is great for beginners to ensure they achieve their goals without paying some of the silly prices out there on “Push Button Systems”.

Their free starter membership is great for you to see if you would benefit yourself.

Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool

Keyword research is so important nowadays.  Just writing content will not do the trick, you need to know that you can rank for a given keyword. If you are unsure what a keyword is, I will explain.  When you typed something into google today “Affiliate Marketing Tools” that is the keyword.  It doesn’t have to be one word, it can be a phrase.  When you create content for your website you want to target a low competition keyword as you are just starting out.  If you pick a keyword with too much competition, it will be impossible for you to achieve the first page on the search engines.  There is no point if you cannot get on the first page, as people will not typically see your website (post).

The keyword research tool I use is Jaaxy.  It has some great features and was built by the people behind Wealthy Affiliate.  As well as keyword research, it also includes tools to do:

• Track your website rankings for keywords
• Search Analysis – analyse your competition and SEO trends
• Alphabet Soup – Uncover millions of niches and keywords
• Brainstorm HQ – find trending, popular and lucrative ideas
• Affiliate Programs – search and find relevant affiliate programs in your niche

Jaaxy is actually included in a premium Wealthy Affiliate membership, give me full access to this great research tool.

If you would like to try Jaaxy and see if it is right for you, they offer a free version which will allow you to do 30 searches.  They would prefer you make your own decision about their platform before spending any money.

Start your free searches here

I benefit every day from Wealthy Affiliate and Jaaxy, but there are also some other Tools I find really useful and integral to my business.  They are free tools, but are great to use.

Google Suite

Google have a suite of useful free tools to help you monitor your website and its traffic. To use these tools, you will require a google account. Once signed up you can use this for a number of different features:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great tool all around how the visitors to your website behave.  Do they engage with your website, do they stay on your posts or leave straightaway? You can monitor:

• Demographics and Age ranges of your visitors
• Content Engagement
• New Users vs recurring users
• Real Time Users

I’ll be doing a more detailed post on google analytics shortly, but it is a powerful tool that you need to use to understand how your website is going.

Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console)

Google is great at finding new content, but this allows you to connect your site (via a sitemap) to google to ensure they know when you have created content and get it ranked. It also allows you to explore where your content is ranking, how many impressions (people have seen it but not clicked on it) you have. It is another great feature Google offer.

Google Alerts

Keep up to date with the latest news in your niche straight to your inbox. It is impossible to find everything related to your niche without a little help.

Canva – Logos, Graphics, Infographics

Canva is a great online tool for graphics.  We are not all graphic designers, but this website gives you a lot of functionality even on the free version.  I used it for my logo, each of my featured images is designed on it.  Infographics are easy to design on it.  It is an essential tool for your website.

Lumen5 – Video Creator

Not everyone is great in front of the camera, and yet video is so important these days.  Youtube has become the second biggest search engine after Google (who own Youtube).  Lumen5 is a great little tool that creates videos from your content, example of this post is below.

The free version does have limitations, but I have not come into a situation where I wasn’t happy with the results.

Conclusion

There are many tools, don’t get it wrong there are many paid tools out there that do seem to be a real benefit, but without a foundation (website) and traffic (readers) there is no point investing money in them yet.  There is no “push button system’ where you will instantly earn money.  Many that promise it are scams, the others seem unreliable.  The only system I do recommend is Wealthy Affiliate due to the benefits I have gained from them.

The starter membership allows people to make their own decision and many starter members earn from it and then upgrade later on. But with a great website builder, great hosting, awesome training on all aspects of an online business, Jaaxy keyword tool – they help people get online the right way.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post, if you have any questions about affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing tools or Wealthy Affiliate – please leave me a comment below and I promise to get back to you.