In today’s digital world, many entrepreneurial-minded people are finding ways to operate a side hustle and generate revenue online outside of their 9-5 job. Having the right tools for affiliate marketers can help you get started today.
This takes a lot of forms, including things like teaching online classes and, data entry. As well as organization, business consulting, drop-shipping, and other activities.
One of the most popular and most lucrative options, however, is affiliate marketing for products and services.
With so many people working from home these days, lots of people are taking on affiliate marketing. Thus many are making a lot of money doing so. Working remotely allows for a level of freedom to set your own schedule.
Hence, you can plan for time to promote and grow your affiliate business.
Fortunately, there are tons of great tools for affiliate marketing to help you succeed in launching and monetizing your side hustle while working from home. But first, let’s take a look at the concept of affiliate marketing.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing involves the promotion of other company’s products and services. As an affiliate marketer, you join affiliate programs for companies looking to boost the sales and reach of their offerings.
You then promote those offerings on your blog, via social media, and on other channels by sharing affiliate links in your content or on other platforms.
When someone clicks your affiliate link and ends up making a purchase on the original company’s website, you earn a commission.
Affiliate marketing tools for bloggers is a great way to generate extra cash. It’s really a mutually beneficial relationship for both you and the companies running the affiliate programs you work with.
So, to help you sell more of their products, the companies you are looking to help as an affiliate often putting together resources to help you thrive in your efforts.
One of my favorite examples of a company that really helps its affiliates grow and be successful is SEMrush.
It’s an all-in-one marketing tool. SEMrush offers ebooks, tools, and other types of content to help affiliate marketers drive potential customers to the site in hopes of boosting commissions.
Beyond Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing goes beyond selling software, but SEMrush has one of the top affiliate programs on the market, in my opinion. Depending on your niche, however, you can become an affiliate for retail companies, e-commerce like Amazon, software, programs and events and so much more
The thing is, however, affiliate marketing isn’t easy, and the added element of working from home can complicate things further. To be successful, having some resources in your back pocket can really give your affiliate marketing a boost.
To point you in the right direction, I’ve laid out some insights covering 10 amazing online tools you can use to give your affiliate marketing a lift when working from home. Let’s take a look!
10 Useful Online Tools for Affiliate Marketing
Whether promoting your links, creating content, or taking on other affiliate marketing activities, you can benefit from putting these 10 online tools to work for you.
These digital tools allow you to promote your affiliate links from anywhere in the world while keeping yourself safe and staying productive working from home.
WordPress
One of the top ways to promote your affiliate links is through blogging. And if you’re going to start a blog, WordPress is the CMS you need to be using.
The simple user interface allows even novice digital media users to create, launch and grow a blog.
You can pick a WordPress theme for your site that’s in line with the niche you choose for your affiliate business. WordPress has tons of amazing themes.
Then, start creating articles targeting the audience who would use the affiliate products you’ve chosen to sell and add affiliate links and banners to entice them to click – and buy.
Powerful Website Hosting
Many (if not all) of your affiliate links will be hosted on your website. Promoted in reviews, linked into blog articles, and dropped elsewhere on your site.
If you need to add a post, update a link, or do basically anything to grow your blog (and your affiliate business), you need quality website hosting.
Poor hosting can kill your site and your business. It can slow down your speed, and this is bad on two levels.
- Google hates a slow website, which can hurt your SEO
- Visitors will get frustrated and leave your site before clicking your affiliate links
Since you’re working from home, it’s up to you to choose a host that helps your site perform. There are a lot of great options for hosting, but a few of my favorites are BionicWP, SiteGround, A2 Hosting, and HostGator.
There are so many options, so dig around, do your research, and choose a hosting service that provides amazing support and ensures your site loads quickly.
VPN Tools for Affiliate Marketers
When working from home to build your affiliate business, you may not always have access to a secured network. Think about the times when you might be working at a café or find yourself using public WiFi.
This can leave you exposed to a number of cybersecurity issues, so you’ll want to make sure you put some measures in place to ensure your affiliate business doesn’t turn into a cybersecurity nightmare.
To provide a level of security, you need to consider using a Secured Encrypted Network. I highly recommend using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to protect your affiliate business against snooping cybercriminals.
And, as an added bonus, a VPN would allow you to conduct an SEO analysis of your affiliate website across the globe by allowing you to change your IP address to show that you’re essentially operating from all over the globe, even though you’re actually tucked away safely at home.
X Twitter Promotions: Tools for Affiliate Marketers
Social media is a great way to promote your affiliate links, and Twitter is one of my favorite places to do the promotion. So many affiliate marketers push their content on Twitter.
You simply need to post regularly and make sure you’re engaged.
As you grow your following and your content is shared, your credibility will increase. Then, when you go to recommend a product and push out an affiliate link, people will be more likely to click.
You can also drop links in your blog articles and publish your blog content containing affiliate links on Twitter to increase their reach.
Pinterest to Market Your Business
Pinterest offers a ton of value for affiliate marketers. One niche that excels here is the arts and crafts space. If you run a blog that focuses on DIY craft projects, you can join affiliate programs for companies like Michaels or other arts and crafts stores.
Then, you can drop links to products and other affiliate offerings into your blog posts and then share them on Pinterest.
Pinterest is great for marketing affiliate products outside of the retail space as well. Lots of marketers also use Pinterest successfully to promote their affiliate business and drive revenue.
So, when you develop your affiliate marketing promotional plan, factor in Pinterest for sure.
Viral Content Bee Network
Viral Content Bee is a great tool for helping increase the reach of your content. And content is key in promoting your affiliate links.
This is a platform where you can post pre-crafted social media content that links back to your posts (especially posts that contain affiliate links).
You then apply for credits and your content is promoted on a dashboard where other users of the platform can pick it up and simply click to share your pre-crafted posts. Next, you can pay for credits, or you can earn them by sharing other users’ content.
You can share content on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and several other channels.
MailChimp for Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to boost your affiliate marketing business. By compiling a list of subscribers, you can segment your lists by a variety of different factors.
Then you can send targeted messaging promoting your affiliate links. Be careful, however, not to be spammy or overly salesy.
There are some really powerful email marketing tools on the market. But to get started, you should focus on a lighter platform like MailChimp.
You can build your list of up to 2000 contacts before you have to pay.
So this tool can help you promote your blog posts and other content, with affiliate links embedded, at an affordable price.
Freshbooks: Tools for Affiliate Marketers For Tracking
If you’re going to get into affiliate marketing, you’ll want to treat it like a business. Treating your affiliate marketing like a real business means you need to find a way to keep track of your finances. Even if you have zero accounting background you can do it.
Freshbooks is great accounting software designed for small businesses. It works great for creatives, freelancers, and others, like affiliate marketers, as well. You can easily use a tool like this to track your revenue from different sources.
Moreover, keep track of what you’ve been paid by affiliate programs, what you’re owed, and track other important aspects of your business.
Google Drive
This is such a versatile tool. Whether you’re collaborating with other affiliate marketers and bloggers, tracking your affiliate logins with Google Sheets. You can also craft a piece of content, or storing banners and other graphics.
Therefore, Google Drive is a great place to keep your act together and to collaborate.
The best part is that it’s free. Rather than paying for Microsoft Word (or in addition to Microsoft Word), you can do all kinds of wonderful things to keep track of your affiliate business here, no matter where you’re working.
This collaborative cloud storage space offers so many valuable tools to keep your business running.
SEMrush: A Favorite of Tools for Affiliate Marketers
To really grow your affiliate business, you need your website (the place where you promote most of your affiliate links) to show up in front of potential clickers. To ensure your site shows up higher in search results, a strong SEO strategy and optimized website are critical.
That’s where SEMrush comes into play. SEMrush is really an all-in-one marketing toolkit with the ability to audit your site’s content, check out what competitor sites are doing, manage your social media and so much more.
I highly recommend adding this tool to your toolkit if you have the budget.
Wrapping it Up for Tools for Affiliate Marketers Today
There are so many amazing tools that can help you be the best affiliate marketer you can be, no matter where you’re working. Make sure to put steps in place to improve productivity, increase your security, keep yourself organized and really drive business.
The tips provided above offer 10 amazing tools for affiliate marketers that you can implement to take your affiliate marketing business to the next level while working from home.
Take advantage of the benefits of working from home to really build your side hustle and increase your revenue. There’s so much freedom in working from home as an affiliate marketer, but you need to do it the right way. And these 10 tools can help.
What are your favorite tools for affiliate marketers? We’d love to know more in the comments below!
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All Tools listed are really very useful for all affiliate marketers and I am learning about some new tools from this article and definitely try it
Thanks mam for this wonderful post
Hi Devender, welcome to Inspire To Thrive. Do you use any of these tools? What type of affiliate marketing do you do? Thanks for coming by and have a great day.
Hello Anthony and Lisa,
Affiliate marketing is one of my Primary ways of making money from my blog. SEMrush is definitely a great tool and I really loved it. You always need to explore new tools that help you in affiliate marketing. Thanks for sharing these helpful tips
Regards,
Vishwajeet Kumar
Hi Vishwajeet, Which is your favorite of the affiliates that you have? Mine is Agorapulse but I’d love to try a few others and of course use the products too. Thanks for coming by and have a nice weekend.
Hello Lisa,
My Favorite is Hostgator as It converts really well and I have generated some good commissions from it.
Regards,
Vishwajeet Kumar
I hear Hostgator is a great affiliate program. That’s one I need to sign up for. As far as hosting, I’ve found a ton of value in BionicWP’s managed hosting. That’s what I used for my blog. That’s what I use for my site. Here’s some info if you are interested. https://www.anthonygaenzle.com/bionic-wp-website-hosting-review/
Hi Vishwajeet, I loved Hostgator but had to switch about a year ago as my site got too big for them. I didn’t use them much for affiliate but probably should have as I did love their services. Thanks for the input and have a great rest of the week there Vishwajeet.
Thanks for reading, Vishwajeet! Affiliate marketing is definitely a great revenue source. SEMrush is not only a valuable tool to help your site perform, but they also have a really solid affiliate program.
Hi Anthony and Lisa,
Great tips here Anthony. First we do need a WordPress Blog and a great hosting company. That’s the structure. Then when selling affiliate products and/or services, one can do a review, or embed a link that is appropriate to the content of the article. (I use that a lot and it works great).
I’ve been building my affiliate email list lately and have done so via Facebook ads. It is inexpensive and works pretty well.
-Donna
Hi, Donna! Thanks for reading. For sure, it all starts with a solid website where you can drop links and add reviews. I also drop banners and deals into my emails. Along with needing solid hosting for your site, I also find that hosting companies have some of the best affiliate programs. One of my favorites that I’ve had a lot of luck with is Bionic WP. Is use it to host my site and I generate monthly revenue through their program. Have a great weekend!