{"id":6482,"date":"2021-08-27T09:02:15","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T16:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/besttech2earnonline.com\/clone-of-the-15-best-drawing-software-programs-of-2021-ranked-by-the-pros\/"},"modified":"2024-04-05T19:59:55","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T02:59:55","slug":"affiliate-marketing-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/besttech2earnonline.com\/affiliate-marketing-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"115 Best Tools for Affiliate Marketing of 2024 (A Guide for Beginners)"},"content":{"rendered":"
While affiliate businesses<\/a> have many moving parts, a key for their success is the selection of the right affiliate marketing tools \u2014 from web hosting to high-converting WordPress themes to email marketing platforms to opt-in popups, landing pages and sales funnels.<\/p>\n In this article, you’re going to find the best 115 tools for affiliate marketers<\/strong> in 23 categories<\/strong> covering all three required tech stacks:<\/p>\n In other words, you\u2019re going to find the solution for every possible technological need<\/strong> you may encounter as an affiliate marketer.<\/p>\n To make your selection 100% worry-free, each category will show you the top 5 tools on the market right now.<\/p>\n What Are the Best Tools for Affiliate Marketers<\/span>?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Disclosure<\/span><\/strong>: Although I receive affiliate compensation at no additional cost to you to support this site that compensation in no way influences my recommendations, which are strictly informed by my 10+ years of online business experience consulting for clients large and small. My aim is to always recommend tools that offer the best return for your investment (for more details, read my <\/span><\/em>Affiliate Disclosure<\/span><\/em><\/a>). <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Bulk email services are a key component of a well-oiled affiliate marketing engine. <\/p>\n A properly executed email campaign will turbo charge your online revenue \u2014 in fact, over time your growing email list will become a marketing asset that can easily replace the income from a day job. <\/p>\n Now, there are lots of mass email services competing for your attention, yet many are missing key features that are critical for your success.<\/p>\n The best bulk email services will allow you to track, trace, measure and act on virtually anything your subscribers do online.<\/p>\n For example, you want to be able to:<\/p>\n So, without further ado, here are the best solutions for your bulk emailing needs:<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform that allows you to build email lists and send email campaigns based on pre-programmed logic.<\/p>\n You can target specific groups, customize your content based on user behavior in the campaign, set up drip campaigns for nurturing customers through their journey and more.<\/p>\n The Mailchimp platform lets users create an unlimited number of lead magnets with drag-and-drop tools as well as design templates \u2014 perfect for affiliate marketers who want to use personalization but don’t have time or expertise designing complex HTML-based emails.<\/p>\n You’ll also find some great features like A\/B testing which help you improve your open rates and your conversions.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n AWeber<\/a> is the original innovator that brought us the autoresponder over 20 years ago, a central feature in the world of email marketing.<\/p>\n Being one of the oldest services in the field, they have impeccable email deliverability stats, possibly the best in the industry for mass email delivery.<\/p>\n Another benefit of longevity is that AWeber<\/a> boasts one of the largest sets of templates and several hundred integrations with other platforms including WordPress as well as website builders like Wix.<\/p>\n But where they really shine is in their customer support. AWeber<\/a> has been the recipient of multiple customer-service awards with its phone support, 24\/7 live chat, and high email response rates.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Although this bulk email service is newer than the above, they have been able to develop a loyal following that swears by them.<\/p>\n One of their distinguishing features is that in a relatively short amount of time, they\u2019ve been able to develop best-in-class email deliverability stats.<\/p>\n Another distinguishing feature is the freshness of their UI and its ease of use for beginners. Their form and landing page editor is consistently rated as one of the best out there.<\/p>\n Like AWeber, they also have a great support team with friendly staff manning their phone lines and live chat tool.<\/p>\n This bulk email service has the most generous free tier in the space, with high deliverability and 200+ responsive email templates.<\/p>\n For example, You may host an unlimited number of contacts and even run unlimited automations for up to 2,000 subscribers for free. The downside is that you can only send out a maximum of 300 emails per day in this tier.<\/p>\n You also have access to a great drag and drop email editor, A\/B testing, email segmentation and even marketing automation. And just for fun, they even offer a basic CRM (although it\u2019s fairly limited in functionality).<\/p>\n All in all, a good choice if you just want to get your feet wet with email marketing and don\u2019t want to commit $$ until you\u2019re sure it works for you.<\/p>\n Over the past few years, GetResponse has been out-innovating its competitors. This reasonably priced tool is jam-packed with email marketing features others charge you a lot more for.<\/p>\n For example, it allows you to score your email content using a spam index to make sure you minimize the chances of your emails ending up in spam folders.<\/p>\n It even packs a conversion funnel feature usually found in much more expensive packages and a landing page editor, plus you can even host live and on demand webinars right from within the platform.<\/p>\n \u200bWhile technically not a pure email automation \u200bplatform, ContactOut is a great tool to have in your \u200baffiliate marketing arsenal, especially if you\u2019re prospecting for emails on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n \u200bContactOut will help you find the email addresses and phone numbers of your prospects \u200bwith just one click.<\/p>\n This is useful \u200bin order to reach out and connect with \u200baffiliate managers so you can begin building a relation\u200bship before you apply for acceptance into their programs.<\/p>\n \u200bOnce you’ve compiled your list of prospects for your outreach campaign, \u200bContactOut \u200bwill help \u200byou schedule your emails and track who’s opening \u200bthem.<\/p>\n Developing a growing and thriving email list of followers is key to earning sustained online income. What\u2019s not clear to many is the true reason why this happens. <\/p>\n Many people think that the money lies in the size of your email list \u2014 the bigger your list, the more money you’ll make.<\/p>\n In reality, many huge lists generate pennies on the dollar while there are small lists that generates thousands of dollars every month.<\/p>\n Why is that? Because the money is not on the email list itself, but in the relationship of trust that you develop with your subscribers. <\/p>\n And in order to build this relationship in a way that can scale your affiliate income, you\u2019ll need to arm yourself with marketing automation tools<\/a> like the ones recommended below.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to offering the best set of marketing automation features for affiliate marketers<\/a> building a profitable online side hustle, Drip wins the race by a long shot.<\/p>\n Aside from easy integration to the most popular platforms used to generate online income and a proven record of email deliverability, Drip offers advanced marketing automation tools at a very reasonable cost.<\/p>\n Drip’s powerful marketing automation allow you to intuitively program the tool to implement a virtually unlimited number of lead qualifying, nurturing and conversion strategies that can quickly multiply your online income.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Active Campaign<\/a> has a terrific graphical workflow automation interface that\u2019s super flexible and it\u2019s as feature rich as Drip’s when it comes to what\u2019s essential if you want to create a profitable online side hustle.<\/p>\n Like Drip, it is a solid, easy to use solution for email marketing, advanced marketing automation, behavioral automation, tagging and audience segmentation, and more.<\/p>\n Their graphical workflow automation interface is user-friendly and they offer an extensive library of pre-built workflow automations to get you going quickly.<\/p>\n Active Campaign<\/a> also offers lead scoring as well as A\/B testing at the workflow level.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In addition to offering bulk email services, GetResponse is also a great marketing automation tool that’s very reasonably priced.<\/p>\n In fact, their graphical workflow automation feature is pretty close to what you get with a much more expensive enterprise system.<\/p>\n This feature allows you to nurture your subscribers based on actions that they take online, from visiting your money posts, to navigating your affiliate website to clicking specific links in your nurturing emails.<\/p>\n Although not as sophisticated as the above two choices, GetResponse is a powerful yet reasonably priced marketing automation tool that allows you perform most lead nurturing tasks you’ll need in a fully automated way.<\/p>\n MailerLite<\/a> offers some of the same powerful features Drip uses to qualify and nurture your leads, but with a more limited choice of triggers.<\/p>\n For example, Drip offers 15 internal triggers to launch your automations, where MailerLite<\/a> only has 6. Drip has 19 actions you can take where MailerLite<\/a> has only 6.<\/p>\n This is not meant to discourage you from using it because it\u2019s a great product with many devoted fans. Just be aware that you’ll pay less but also get less choice.<\/p>\n However, what they do provide will be sufficient to support your affiliate marketing business with more than adequate lead nurturing capabilities when you\u2019re just getting started.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re just starting and don\u2019t want to commit to a monthly charge from the get go, Omnisend<\/a> allows you to start for free with a cap of 15,000 emails per month (no cap on the size of your email list).<\/p>\n Now, as they say, there\u2019s no free lunch. For this \u201cfree\u201d introductory rate, you don\u2019t have access to email automations, A\/B testing, you\u2019re limited to five subscriber segments and you have to pay for any third-party platform integrations.<\/p>\n But at least, you can get your feet wet at no cost so that you can test out your messaging. If you want to upgrade to the first paid tier in order to have access to workflow automations, your cost will be slightly lower than Drip\u2019s, but you\u2019ll have to add a separate monthly fee to pay for your integrations.<\/p>\n One of the most effective ways to monetize your affiliate website visitors is through the creation of landing pages using funnel software tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n A funnel is a marketing device that’s used to guide visitors through a series of pages with sales copy intended to convert prospects into customers. <\/p>\n Unlike an opt-in page, where your goal is to exchange your visitor’s email address for your lead magnet, a funnel is structured to convince your visitor why this is the perfect time to take action to purchase your product by making an offer they can\u2019t refuse.<\/p>\n Below, you find the best tools on the market for online affiliate marketers.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Leadpages<\/a> is the #1 funnel page and landing page builder for online marketers.<\/p>\n It boasts over 150 high-quality templates that produce fully customizable funnels with one-click upsells, downsells and order bumps.<\/p>\n Also, all of their funnel page templates are mobile responsive and offer a handy wizard to get you going if you\u2019re a beginner and feel a bit lost with so much choice.<\/p>\n They have their own checkout feature to collect payments that works with Stripe and PayPal, but also allow you to integrate with third-party checkout tools and eCommerce sites if that’s your preference.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Thrive Leads is the most cost-effective and flexible option for creating high-converting funnels, but it\u2019s limited to WordPress and it does require a minimum level of technical proficiency since you\u2019ll need to integrate it with an eCommerce engine to process payments.<\/p>\n But once you\u2019ve done that, it\u2019ll produce fully customizable funnels with one-click upsells, downsells and order bumps.<\/p>\n In the not too distant past, you had to be locked into pretty pricey third-party services to do all of the above, and if you stopped your subscriptions, you would have to walk away from all your hard work.<\/p>\n With Thrive Leads, you can now own and control your entire funnel stack right from within your site.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n A properly set-up online funnel system has many moving parts: it needs to integrate its landing page creator with a checkout page, a payment processor and an email marketing platform, and all pieces must communicate seamlessly for the funnel to operate.<\/p>\n While all this integration work will be easy to implement if you\u2019re technically savvy, it\u2019ll be problematic if you\u2019re not.<\/p>\n This is where Click Funnels comes in. This tool was designed from the ground up for users who are not technically inclined and want a simple solution that does it all.<\/p>\n They have an easy to use page builder with an intuitive drag and drop editor that allows you to create simple or complex funnels using a graphical interface, without having to master complex marketing technologies.<\/p>\n This is a great WordPress plugin that’s designed to piggyback on WooCommerce to produce a powerful funnel creation tool with one-click upsells, downsells and order bumps.<\/p>\n Cartflows<\/a> allows you to create an unlimited number of funnel pages, upsell pages and downsell pages plus it has a powerful A\/B testing feature where you can have two versions of every page in your funnel to find out which one converts better.<\/p>\n However, note that while you can create funnels that can take payments with the free version (in conjunction with the free version of WooCommerce), you’ll need the paid version of CartFlows<\/a> to add one-click upsell, downsell and order bump functionality.<\/p>\n CartFlows<\/a> has many high-quality templates to choose from so you don\u2019t have to build your funnel pages from scratch.<\/p>\n And the best part is that unlike many of its competitors, you get to build, host, control, customize and fully own the entire funnel stack from your WordPress server.<\/p>\n OptinMonster is very easy to use, allowing you to create beautiful landing page funnels from scratch or from templates that can be structured to seamlessly fit into your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n They also offer great A\/B test functionality, where you can compare two versions of the same funnel page, or even test one type (say, a welcome mat) vs. another (say, a lightbox).<\/p>\n Finally, OptinMonster is a cloud application that links to your WordPress site via plugin, so if you manage multiple affiliate websites you can access all your funnel designs and analytics through a single portal.<\/p>\n Getting traffic to your affiliate website is half the battle. The other half is monetizing it with lead generation software<\/a>.<\/p>\n Once you get a steady stream of visitors you’ll need to entice them to become leads, and there are no better tools to do that than landing page and opt-in builders. <\/p>\n These lead generation tools allow you to present visitors with landing pages or opt-in popups that entice them with the offer of a free lead magnet in exchange for their email address. <\/p>\n What’s a lead magnet? It could be anything that’s low cost and high value, from a free eBook, a white paper, a valuable checklist, and so on.<\/p>\n Once visitors request your lead magnet, they\u2019ll be entered into a campaign in your bulk email service or marketing automation platform as a new lead. Your job then will be to send them regular emails with more valuable free information in order to build a relationship of trust.<\/p>\n Once your leads get to know you, like you and trust you, they\u2019ll be ready to buy from you as well, and you\u2019ll be ready to move on to your monetization strategies.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Leadpages<\/a> is the #1 funnel page and landing page builder for affiliate marketers.<\/p>\n It boasts over 150 high-quality templates that produce fully customizable funnels with one-click upsells, downsells and order bumps.<\/p>\n Also, all of their funnel page templates are mobile responsive and offer a handy wizard to get you going if you\u2019re a beginner and feel a bit lost with so much choice.<\/p>\n They have their own checkout feature to collect payments that works with Stripe and PayPal, but also allow you to integrate with third-party checkout tools and eCommerce sites if that’s your preference.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Thrive Leads is one of the best opt-in building solutions for WordPress, allowing you to create and support unlimited opt-ins for a one-time plugin cost.<\/p>\n Thrive leads offers:<\/p>\n Thrive Leads lets own and control all your opt-in pages right from within your site.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Unbounce<\/a> has one of most intuitive and flexible landing page builders in the industry, giving you graphic control of your design down to the pixel level while offering mobile responsive pages and unlimited A\/B testing.<\/p>\n They’re also fully compliant with GDPR rules right out of the box, so you won’t need to purchase an external plugin.<\/p>\n Unbounce<\/a> offers a 30-day free trial so you can kick the tires, but it caps traffic and conversions during the trial. So to create landing pages that work in a production environment you\u2019ll need to upgrade to the paid product.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for a free lead generation tool, this WordPress plugin definitely punches above its weight.<\/p>\n Although not nearly as sophisticated and feature-rich as its paid cousins, it\u2019s good enough for simple opt-in conversion applications.<\/p>\n The choice of templates is minimal, but you can still create useful opt-ins that integrate with many popular email marketing platforms.<\/p>\n OptinMonster is very easy to use, allowing you to create beautiful opt-in forms from scratch or from templates that can be structured to seamlessly fit into your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n For example, you can display opt-in forms as a:<\/p>\n With so much flexibility, OptinMonster will definitely become a great tool in your affiliate monetization strategy.<\/p>\n When it comes to SEO advice, you’ll likely be bombarded with a thousand and one suggestions that you should follow to succeed at the search engine game \u2014 from fine tuning the tiniest of details (e.g. the length of your meta title) to the macro level (e.g. doing a full site audit). <\/p>\n But at the end of the day, there’s only one thing that really matters in SEO: having your affiliate posts appear on the first page of search results.<\/p>\n Below, you\u2019ll find the best SEO tools<\/a> to help you get there quickly, skipping all the bells and whistles.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This is the most advanced and easy to use on-page SEO tool currently available, in my opinion.<\/p>\n While there are other tools that do some of what Surfer SEO<\/a> does, they don\u2019t come even close to the way this tool manages to reverse engineer Google\u2019s search algorithm when it comes to on-page optimization.<\/p>\n Surfer SEO<\/a> allows you to audit your page against your competitors in the first page of search results for your chosen keyword, and shows you how you compare through the lens of over 500 signals that Google\u2019s algorithm uses to rank your page on search results.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n SEMRush<\/a> is the leading all-in-one SEO tool. Now I didn\u2019t place it as #1 because its focus is on general SEO and its on-page SEO tool pales in comparison to the power of Surfer SEO<\/a>.<\/p>\n But what it lacks in on-page SEO sophistication, it more than makes up with the massive dataset of competitive information they\u2019ve managed to compile over time, including:<\/p>\n In addition to competitive analysis, you can also do excellent backlink analysis and keyword research.<\/p>\n SEMRush<\/a> has an excellent site audit tool to help you correct any errors that may be impacting your overall ranking, and it also has a rank tracker so that you can assess your progress over time as you optimize your website.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Ahrefs is a powerful piece of SEO software for affiliate marketers. It can give you a deep understanding of your competition, their backlinks and the keywords they rank for in search engines and all in a matter of minutes.<\/p>\n It offers a comprehensive suite of tools that will help you do keyword research, analyze the search volume and competition level for keywords on Google SERPs, find affiliate products to promote to your audience, track competitor websites’ backlinks with ease and more.<\/p>\n It also provides detailed reports about every site’s traffic levels in terms of visitors per month as well as how much revenue it could potentially be making from affiliate sources each month.<\/p>\n This budget SEO tool doesn’t have the ability to do on-page optimization, but it does have an excellent site audit feature that packs as much punch as other tools that cost two or three times more.<\/p>\n Ubersuggest is backed by Neil Patel, one of the industry\u2019s most prolific SEO bloggers and a large agency owner. He has a tremendous amount of experience helping clients rank high on search engine results and has automated much of his knowledge in this powerful tool.<\/p>\n By simply entering your domain name into the tool and running a site audit, Ubersuggest will crawl all of your pages in real time no matter the size of your site and show you site audit results against a 44-point SEO checklist, broken down into critical errors, warnings and recommendations.<\/p>\n If you are absolutely on a tight budget and are looking for the best, most reliable \u2014 and free \u2014 SEO solution, this free browser extension brought to you by none other than the folks at SEMRush<\/a>, packs a lot of power.<\/p>\n Since the data is served by SEMRush, you can count on its reliability and accuracy.<\/p>\n Now, being free to use, you\u2019re not going to find the range of features you’ll find in any of the above tools. However, the on-page and domain SEO information it\u2019s able to unearth is quite impressive.<\/p>\n Once installed on your browser, all you have to do is to visit a page (yours or your competitor’s), click on its browser extension icon on the top menu bar and you\u2019ll immediately see a wealth of SEO information.<\/p>\n It is estimated that there are 4.5 billion Google searches every day. <\/p>\n In order to monetize your affiliate site, your goal is to appear on the first page of search results as much as possible for any searches that are relevant to your business. <\/p>\n Here\u2019s the problem: in order to land on the first page of search results you\u2019ll need to knock someone else off it, and the chances of knocking out someone who’s been busy blogging for years when you’re just starting out are next to nil. <\/p>\n However, with billions of daily searches, there are bound to be search terms that are missed by experienced bloggers (these are called \u201ccontent gaps\u201d) and the great news is: there are millions of them that can land new affiliate marketers like yourself on the first page of results!<\/p>\n Your job is to find them and that\u2019s exactly what the keyword research tools<\/a> recommended below will help you achieve.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n KWFinder<\/a> is a simple yet powerful keyword research tool that beats its competitors for one simple reason: all they do is keyword research and they do it better than everybody else, who tend to clutter you with additional data you don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n In fact, KWFinder<\/a> provides exactly the information that you need to succeed without taking you on twelve different tangents.<\/p>\n Once you enter a group of seed keywords, KWFinder<\/a> will generate a large list of suggestions, autocomplete keywords (harvested from Google\u2019s autocomplete feature) and keywords phrased as a question (harvested from Google’s \u201cPeople also ask\u201d section).<\/p>\n Then, KWFinder will show you the three critical pieces of information you need to land you on page one of search results: the monthly search volume, the organic keyword difficulty and the paid difficulty.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n In addition to helping you with SEO, Ubersuggest is also an excellent keyword research tool that helps you generate long-tail keyword phrases for affiliate marketing.<\/p>\n With Ubersuggest, you can enter a seed word and it will show you hundreds of semantically related keywords to target in your content and campaigns.<\/p>\n In addition, it generates new keyword ideas plus it offers suggestions based on Google autocomplete and People Also Ask questions.<\/p>\n You can even export your list of long tail keywords as a spreadsheet for further sorting.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n SEMRush is a great keyword research tool that is very popular with many affiliate marketers.<\/p>\n It is very easy to use, and it quickly identifies information on low competition keywords that have high ad spend potential, which is great for identifying affiliate marketing opportunities.<\/p>\n They boast one of the largest keyword datasets in the industry so that you can find more opportunities for affiliate marketing revenue generation.<\/p>\n If you’re looking for a 100% free tool to help you do a reasonable job with your keyword research, look no further than KW Surfer<\/a>, from the developers of the top of the line on-page SEO Surfer SEO.<\/p>\n KW Surfer<\/a> is a free Chrome browser extension that taps into Surfer SEO’s database of keywords to serve keyword suggestions whenever you do a search on Chrome.<\/p>\n Now, keep in mind that being a free extension you’ll only be able to obtain the monthly search volume for each keyword but you’ll be missing the organic keyword difficulty and paid difficulty numbers.<\/p>\n But at least, you’ll have a good set of keyword ideas to work with as a base. Beyond that, you’ll have to use an alternate mechanism to figure out the difficulty metrics.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re working on a budget, SpyFu is the perfect solution for you. While not as feature-rich as SE Ranking<\/a>, it still manages to punch above its weight.<\/p>\n One of the features that makes it stand out is that even though it provides you with a smaller data set, it doesn\u2019t cap your searches.<\/p>\n For example, you can spy on an unlimited number of domains, keywords and backlinks and you can export unlimited data as well. In contrast, many competitors impose monthly caps.<\/p>\n While more pricey competitors tend to offer a more complete approach to SEO (along the lines of an SEO “Swiss army knife”), SpyFu specializes just in competitive analysis SEO.<\/p>\n If you want to host an online business that will scale with your revenue, you\u2019ll need total freedom.<\/p>\n The freedom to increase your traffic without hitting artificially imposed caps or experiencing a degradation in performance as you grow (these are common issues with website builders). <\/p>\n The freedom to constantly add new functionality to your site to multiply your revenue streams, and the freedom to integrate with any third-party system under the sun that can funnel more cash into your bank account.<\/p>\n In short, what you need is the technology that powers 35% of the Internet: a self-hosted WordPress<\/a> website.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n When it comes to self-hosting your affiliate website, performance is key: search engines are known for penalizing slow websites because of their poor user experience.<\/p>\n Although most self-hosted platforms have good page loading speeds, there\u2019s one that always manages to come up at the top of most benchmarks: A2 Hosting<\/a>.<\/p>\n This platform consistently delivers the fastest WordPress websites, and is one of the few that have a published uptime guarantee (99.9%).<\/p>\n It\u2019s also one of the few that offers real-time 24\/7 support via live chat or phone call with reasonably short waiting times (although the pandemic has caused some extra delays).<\/p>\n The base plans are already screaming fast, powered by 100% solid state drives, but the higher end packages take speed to the next level (up to 20 times faster) using industry-leading NVME drive arrays (non-volatile memory express) which approximate the insane speeds of flash memory.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This self-hosting service is great if you\u2019re budget conscious. While it\u2019s not as complete or fast as A2 Hosting<\/a>, it\u2019s still great value for the money.<\/p>\n This is a great budget option for websites that are more informational in nature, without a lot of complexity that demands expensive add-ons.<\/p>\n In fact, the main reason that iPage<\/a> can keep its costs so low is by removing free add-ons and charging you for them instead. So, as long as you don\u2019t require a lot of additional functionality, you\u2019ll be able to keep costs to a minimum.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Bluehost is a web hosting service that offers shared hosting, dedicated servers and WordPress-optimized hosts.<\/p>\n Bluehost is a solid option for affiliate marketers that are not super tech savvy because of its ease-of-use.<\/p>\n Setting up WordPress sites from scratch can be quite overwhelming for beginners and they’ve done a great job simplifying the end-to-end set up process, allowing you to go live quickly without drama.<\/p>\n If you need more firepower, they also offer virtual private servers so you don’t have to timeshare server resources with any other sites.<\/p>\n Like A2 Hosting<\/a>, DreamHost<\/a> is also screaming fast. In fact, they always score just a few positions below A2 Hosting in speed tests.<\/p>\n They offer unlimited bandwidth and live customer support via chat, allowing affiliate marketers to focus on developing their business instead of wasting time trying to troubleshooting technical issues on their own.<\/p>\n DreamHost<\/a> has a generous (and rather peculiar) money-back guarantee: instead of the typical 30-day period, theirs is 97 days!<\/p>\n Hostinger is another one of the leading web hosting providers, which although not as fast as A2 Hosting or DreamHost<\/a>, offers competitive prices and reliable hosting services for affiliate marketing sites.<\/p>\n They offer a number of affordable plan options ranging from shared hosting to dedicated servers as well as domain registration for one-stop shopping.<\/p>\n Without a doubt, the transition to a digitalized consumer world, where people search for product information and then make purchases online, has accelerated exponentially over the last several years. <\/p>\n An affiliate website can definitely become your gateway to this profitable multi-trillion dollar world.<\/p>\n But what if you\u2019re not tech savvy and you don\u2019t have the funds to hire an expert to help you with the technical issues related to hosting your own website?<\/p>\n This is a problem that has a very elegant, practical and cost-effective solution: Website Builders<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Wix is the most widely used website builder in the world, with over 180 million users in 190 countries.<\/p>\n With size come some benefits (e.g. lots of resources to constantly develop better and cooler features) and some limitations (e.g. lack of real-time support except for their most expensive package).<\/p>\n Wix offers the largest variety of website templates available out there, with over 800 designer-made templates supporting a multitude of industries and niches.<\/p>\n Another differentiating feature that’s a direct consequence of Wix’s size is the vast number of apps in their app store (250+). You\u2019ll pretty much find an app for every possible affiliate marketing need.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This website builder offers a great solution for those who are budget conscious. Weebly is owned by Square, the merchant services giant (both for eCommerce and brick-and-mortar stores).<\/p>\n While it doesn\u2019t have the number of templates available from Wix, it does have great perks, like unlimited bandwidth and file storage for all plans.<\/p>\n Weebly has by far the most user friendly and intuitive graphical editor of all the big players, although this ease of use comes with a trade off \u2014 it’s not as flexible as Wix\u2019s.<\/p>\n Weebly is also membership friendly, allowing you to offer paid subscribers with access to exclusive pages protected by a login screen.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Squarespace is renowned for having the most stunningly beautiful templates in the industry right out of the box.<\/p>\n Although it doesn’t have as many as Wix (Squarespace has 100+ templates compared to 800+), it claims to prioritize quality over quantity.<\/p>\n If you want your website to visually impress (say you’re a photographer or a visual artist) you can\u2019t go wrong with Squarespace.<\/p>\n This builder also comes with a decent eCommerce engine that works quite well for most simple applications.<\/p>\n Squarespace also has built a reputation for being the ideal website builder for bloggers. It boasts the most complete set of blogging features and tools outside WordPress.org (a self-hosted, more technically demanding solution).<\/p>\n If you\u2019re bootstrapping and want to get started with a fremium approach, Webnode<\/a> is the website builder for you. While it’s not as feature rich as the above three, it\u2019s perfectly good for most simple applications.<\/p>\n Once you cut your teeth with Webnode<\/a>, you can always move up to a more developed builder.<\/p>\n While it doesn\u2019t offer advanced eCommerce functionality, it does have the ability to create a simple online store.<\/p>\n It also supports paid memberships with member-only access to exclusive username and password protected areas of your website.<\/p>\n Shopify is a web builder that’s optimized for ecommerce.<\/p>\n It is built around an easy to use drag and drop interface that makes it really easy to set up an affiliate website that looks professional from the get go with just a few clicks.<\/p>\n If you want to add a strong ecommerce component to your affiliate site, Shopify is definitely the way to go.<\/p>\n WordPress is without a doubt the most popular content management system (CMS) in use right now, estimated to power 35% of all websites worldwide.<\/p>\n But having a place to manage your content is just the beginning, you also need the means to display it, be it through pages, blog posts, headers, footers, sidebars, widgets, a search page, a 404 page, and so on.<\/p>\n In short, you need to create all the bits and pieces that make an affiliate website look professional. And if you\u2019re like most of us (i.e. not IT pros) you’ll want to achieve all of the above without having to write a single line of code.<\/p>\n This is where WordPress themes come to the rescue<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Without a doubt, the current reigning champion of WordPress themes is Thrive Themes<\/a> (e.g. this website was built using this theme).<\/p>\n In the past, Elegant Themes<\/a> (#2 on the list) was in the lead, but since the launch of the Thrive Theme Builder in March 2020, they managed to leap-frog their way to the top.<\/p>\n What makes Thrive Themes<\/a> unique is that it\u2019s not just a theme, it\u2019s an entire conversion-driven ecosystem that includes a:<\/p>\n With all this functionality under one roof, you’re getting all your really need to develop and launch a solid affiliate site very cost-effectively.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This is a powerful theme that has been adopted broadly in the WordPress community. Elegant\u2019s top product is the Divi theme with its Divi page builder (similar to Thrive Architect). They also have a secondary theme called Extra, geared to online magazines and news sites.In terms of customization and flexible design, Divi is comparable to Thrive. Elegant Themes<\/a> currently offers 3 plugins as part of their product mix: Divi Builder, Bloom Email Opt-in and Monark Social Media.Both Divi’s and Extra’s website templates are high quality. They currently offer 100+ complete website packs that can be imported into WordPress to get you going fast.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re on a budget, Astra<\/a> may be the best WordPress theme for you. Designed with simplicity in mind\u2014perfect for beginners\u2014this theme is also lightweight and super fast to load.Astra<\/a> is designed to seamlessly integrate with popular page builders such as Elementor<\/a> and Beaver Builder<\/a>, to bring you a high level of customization down to the pixel level.While Astra<\/a> is ideal for beginners, it\u2019s fully customizable if you’re more experienced in WordPress. You can customize colors, page layouts, footers, headers, backgrounds, fonts, etc. and its designs are responsive for mobile devices.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for a free WordPress theme that’s actually worth installing, look no further than Customify.<\/p>\n Although they do have a paid version, if you have a simple website and you don\u2019t require advanced marketing conversion functionality, Customify punches way above their weight.<\/p>\n This flexible theme is fully compatible with the most popular page builders, like Thrive Architect, Elementor<\/a> and Beaver Builder<\/a>, and has a responsive design, which makes it mobile friendly.<\/p>\n In addition, the free version is WooCommerce compatible and has social linking included, which usually requires a separate plugin.<\/p>\n OceanWP is an intuitive WordPress theme that’s designed to help you build a slick affiliate website quickly. It\u2019s also very light, which makes it blazing fast.<\/p>\n It’s designed for those who want to develop an affiliate site that looks professional and modern without a lot of bells and whistles.<\/p>\n When it comes to security, the Internet is like the wild west.<\/p>\n The arteries of the World Wide Web are jam packed with bad actors with malicious intent, whether it’s to commandeer your server and your email to spread spam to unsuspecting visitors, inject malware on their computers, steal your affiliate links, or anything else under the sun that has malicious intent.<\/p>\n A website firewall is a utility that helps to protect your affiliate site from these intruders. It provides a level of protection that is a must for affiliate marketers sites, where your income depends on the health of your site.<\/p>\n Firewall tools<\/a> do their job by scanning incoming requests for suspicious activity like port scans, probing packets and brute force login attempts before allowing those connections through to the site.<\/p>\n They can also block outbound traffic generated by malicious programs that managed to infect your site (say, through a vulnerable plugin update).<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Sucuri<\/a> is the best globally-recognized security outfit for WordPress, and for good reason.<\/p>\n For a very reasonable price, they will protect your website with a unique approach: they will route the entirety of your traffic to themselves, making it go through a cloudproxy firewall first.<\/p>\n This acts as a digital sieve that filters out all the bad actors before they even reach your server, sending your way only legitimate visitors.<\/p>\n In doing so, not only do they protect your website, but also they increase the speed and performance of your server because it no longer has to handle spurious traffic.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Wordfence is one of the most popular online security and firewall tools on the market today.<\/p>\n It’s a WordPress plugin that blocks malicious bots, spambots, login attacks, brute-force attempts as well as provides general protection for your site against malware infections.<\/p>\n Wordfence also contains a malware scanner that can check your entire WordPress site and all files on your server.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Jetpack is a website security plugin that is owned by WordPress.com and is one of the most popular security plugins for WordPress sites as it comes pre-installed with many hosting services.<\/p>\n It’s a great alternative to other website security plugins and also offers other important features, like site backup services, virus scanning and a CDN (Content Delivery Network.)<\/p>\n Jetpack is free when first signing up with WordPress but it offers paid upgrades with premium features that may become necessary as your needs change over time.<\/p>\n This service is very popular with bloggers and small businesses because they offer both a firewall as well as a content delivery network.<\/p>\n Security features include protection from DDoS attacks, malware and powerful spam filtering, plus they offer live phone and chat support to quickly restore your site if you become a victim of a hacker intrusion.<\/p>\n Stackpath<\/a> is another great security solution plus CDN, offering an easy to use interface, full integration into WordPress and excellent 24\/7 live support.<\/p>\n In order to make it easier to evaluate they offer a 30-day free trial, which surprisingly includes their live support.<\/p>\n Like Sucuri<\/a>, they also filter your traffic through their servers before it\u2019s forwarded to your affiliate site, reducing your server load.<\/p>\n Once you get your WordPress website up and running and you begin to get traffic, you\u2019ll soon come to the realization that the Internet is infested with spam-bots clogging the arteries of engagement with visitors, specifically:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s is a list of the most popular anti spam plugins<\/a> for affiliate marketers:<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n CleanTalk<\/a> Anti Spam does away with the need for captchas by using sophisticated algorithms to filter spammy user-supplied information on the fly against a massive database of spambots that they keep on the cloud.<\/p>\n They also use this algorithm to filter manually inputted spam based on aggregated information from the almost half a million client websites.<\/p>\n CleanTalk<\/a> offers a 7-day free trial and claims 100% protection against spambots.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Akismet is the most popular anti-spam plugin on the market, likely because it\u2019s owned by the folks that created WordPress, so it always shows up first on plugin searches.<\/p>\n They claim to block 99% of comment and contact form spam and only throw a small amount of false positives compared to their competitors.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Antispam Bee is a free anti-spam WordPress plugin that’s very easy to configure, so if you are looking for affiliate marketing tools that don’t add to your ongoing tech costs this could be a good choice.<\/p>\n The installation process takes less than 30 seconds and most settings have default values that make it very powerful right out of the box. You can also configure the plugin manually through the WordPress admin panel.<\/p>\n Titan Antispam is another popular WordPress plugin for preventing spam in your comments section. It is easy to use and has a wide range of features that prevent the most common spamming techniques.<\/p>\n Titan Antispam’s developers update the plugin regularly to make sure they stay ahead of new spambot techniques while still maintaining ease of use so you don\u2019t have to mess around with its settings.<\/p>\n WP Bruiser is another free anti-spam WordPress plugin that helps you to eliminate spam comments and contact form submissions with the need to use a captcha riddle or check.<\/p>\n Although not as sophisticated as its above competitors, it’s still a good solution overall (and certainly better than no protection at all.)<\/p>\n Page caching plugins allow you to cache (or \u201cstore\u201d) a static version of your content so that users can load your pages quicker without having to connect repeatedly with your server.<\/p>\n This reduces your page loading times dramatically, which is an important search engine ranking signal.<\/p>\n Here are the most popular choices for caching plugins<\/a> for WordPress:<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n WP Rocket is one of the fastest caching plugins on the market. They also have one of the most intuitive user interfaces making it beginner friendly.<\/p>\n They achieve top loading speeds with minimal user input by pre-configuring their settings to make them work right out of the box.<\/p>\n Many of its competitors have screen fulls of settings that must be manually configured by the user before they become as effective, making WP Rocket a top choice among affiliate marketers.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n W3 Total Cache is a great option to speed up your WordPress website, with more than 1 million active installations.<\/p>\n It not only maximizes the performance of your web pages but also offers a content delivery network, which distributes static versions of your content to multiple data centers around the world.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n WP Super Cache is a competitive WordPress caching plugin that stores pages of your site in an effort to reduce load time<\/a> for your website visitors.<\/p>\n While WP Super Cache is not as fast as WP Rocket, it offers a free plan that\u2019s quite excellent for most affiliate websites (Unfortunately, WP Rocket has no free version available.)<\/p>\n WP Fastest Cache is another caching plugin that offers a free version, which is a great choice for affiliate marketers on a budget.<\/p>\n It offers defaults values for most settings but also allows you to customize all settings manually so you can have full control over every aspect of page caching, from image compression settings to code minification.<\/p>\n Finally, Hyper cache is a caching plugin for WordPress that enhances site performance by caching and compressing the pages you have on your affiliate website.<\/p>\n Hyper Cache manages to punch well above its weight in speed delivery and yet it\u2019s completely free. Definitely worth trying if you’re on a tight budget. <\/p>\n Page loading speeds is one of the most important search ranking signals for affiliate websites (we covered that in the caching section above).<\/p>\n But if you\u2019re hosting your website from the U.S., it may load fast for visitors in North America, but it\u2019ll be slow as molasses for visitors in Australia, and your caching plugin won’t be able to help them much if at all.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the solution? Signing up with a Content Delivery Network<\/a> that can cache your pages across multiple data centers distributed around the world.<\/p>\n Let’s look at the best CDN choices for affiliate marketers:<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n This service is great for first-time affiliate sites because they have a free-forever tier that doesn’t force you to upgrade to their paid plans.<\/p>\n In fact, Cloudflare’s free tier offers you the same great performance as their paid plans, including unlimited bandwidth.<\/p>\n The trade off is that you don\u2019t get security features in the free plan (e.g. DDoS, malware and spam protection). What you do get is great performance in line with their paid counterparts.<\/p>\n Cloudflare offers the best free plan in the CDN industry and it’s perfect if you have no budget set aside for performance improvements.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Stackpath<\/a> is the most popular WordPress CDN on the market. With lightning fast speeds, 45 data centers around the world and an affordable monthly charge, this is the go-to service for a lot of online earners.<\/p>\n With an easy to use interface, full integration into WordPress and excellent 24\/7 live support, you can\u2019t go wrong with this CDN.<\/p>\n They also offer a free shared SSL certificate so you have secure HTTPS access to your website from anywhere around the world.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n KeyCDN<\/a> offers some of the lowest costs in the industry with its pay-as-you-go business model.<\/p>\n This is a great solution if you\u2019re just starting up and your traffic is low to medium. However, KeyCDN<\/a> can get pricey if your traffic begins to spike.<\/p>\n KeyCDN<\/a> integrates nicely with WordPress, it\u2019s easy to set up and it includes DDoS protection and free SSL security.<\/p>\n In addition to having one of the most complete security suites for WordPress users, Sucuri<\/a> also offers CDN services.<\/p>\n The advantage of this solution is that you get the increased performance of a worldwide CDN plus the benefits of enhanced security features, like protection against DDoS attacks, protection against malware injections and protection against spammers.<\/p>\n CloudFront is the content delivery network offered by Amazon AWS. In fact, it is the CDN of choice for many cost-conscious affiliate marketers due to its great pricing model.<\/p>\n The only caveat is that you’ll need to first set up your affiliate site with AWS, which can be challenging if you’re not technically proficient.<\/p>\n A data backup WordPress plugin will generate, save and store backups of your entire affiliate site across different locations, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, AWS, etc. in addition to local copies on your own server.<\/p>\n This tool is a must-have to protect your site from catastrophic failure should your files be deleted by accident or corrupted when upgrading various plugins or even WordPress itself.<\/p>\n Here are the best choices of data backup plugins<\/a> for affiliates marketers:<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Your affiliate website is your primary online asset and doing regular scheduled backups of all your files and databases automatically is like taking out an insurance policy.<\/p>\n If something catastrophic happens to your affiliate site, UpdraftPlus<\/a> will have you covered, and best of all, they offer a generous free version that’ll take care of most of your needs.<\/p>\n\n
The Marketing Stack<\/span>:<\/span><\/h2>\n
Bulk Email Services<\/h3>\n
\n
1. MailChimp<\/h4>\n
2. AWeber<\/h4>\n
3. ConvertKit<\/h4>\n
4. Sendinblue<\/h4>\n
5. GetResponse<\/h4>\n
\u200b6. \u200bContactOut<\/h4>\n
Marketing Automation Tools<\/h3>\n
1. Drip<\/h4>\n
2. Active Campaign<\/h4>\n
3. GetResponse<\/h4>\n
4. Mailerlite<\/h4>\n
5. Omnisend<\/h4>\n
Marketing Funnel Software<\/h3>\n
1. Leadpages<\/h4>\n
2. Thrive Leads<\/h4>\n
3. Click Funnels<\/h4>\n
4. Cartflows<\/h4>\n
5. OptinMonster<\/h4>\n
Lead Generation Tools<\/h3>\n
1. Leadpages<\/h4>\n
2. Thrive Leads<\/h4>\n
\n
3. Unbounce<\/h4>\n
4. Hustle<\/h4>\n
5. OptinMonster<\/h4>\n
\n
SEO Tools<\/h3>\n
1. Surfer SEO<\/h4>\n
2. Semrush<\/h4>\n
\n
3. Ahrefs<\/h4>\n
4. Ubersuggest<\/h4>\n
5. SEO Quake<\/h4>\n
Keyword Research Tools<\/h3>\n
1. KWFinder<\/h4>\n
2. Ubersuggest<\/h4>\n
3. Semrush<\/h4>\n
4. KWSurfer<\/h4>\n
5. SpyFu<\/h4>\n
The Website Stack<\/span>:<\/span><\/h2>\n
Web Hosting platforms<\/h3>\n
1. A2 Hosting<\/h4>\n
2. iPage<\/h4>\n
3. Bluehost<\/h4>\n
4. DreamHost<\/h4>\n
5. Hostinger<\/h4>\n
Website Builders<\/h3>\n
1. Wix<\/h4>\n
2. Weebly<\/h4>\n
3. Squarespace<\/h4>\n
4. Webnode<\/h4>\n
5. Shopify<\/h4>\n
WordPress Themes<\/h3>\n
1. Thrive Themes<\/h4>\n
\n
2. Elegant Themes<\/h4>\n
3. Astra<\/h4>\n
4. Customify<\/h4>\n
5. OceanWP<\/h4>\n
Website Security\/Firewall<\/h3>\n
1. Sucuri<\/h4>\n
2. Wordfence<\/h4>\n
3. Jetpack<\/h4>\n
4. Cloudflare<\/h4>\n
5. Stackpath<\/h4>\n
Anti-Spam Tools<\/h3>\n
\n
1. CleanTalk<\/h4>\n
2. Akismet<\/h4>\n
3. AntiSpam Bee<\/h4>\n
4. Titan Anti Spam<\/h4>\n
5. WP Bruiser<\/h4>\n
Page Caching Tools<\/h3>\n
1. WP Rocket<\/h4>\n
2. W3 Total Cache<\/h4>\n
3.WP Super Cache<\/h4>\n
4. WP Fastest Cache<\/h4>\n
5. Hyper Cache<\/h4>\n
Content Delivery Networks<\/h3>\n
1. Cloudflare<\/h4>\n
2. Stackpath<\/h4>\n
3. KeyCDN<\/h4>\n
4. Sucuri<\/h4>\n
5. CloudFront<\/h4>\n
Data Backup Tools<\/h3>\n
1. UpdraftPlus<\/h4>\n