Affiliate marketing is an important way you could be monetizing your content. It allows you to make money by taking a cut of any sales of products and services that you generate. In other words, if you write a product review, and someone follows a link to buy that product in your review, you make a cut — without the customer ever paying more.
There are plenty of tools for affiliate marketers, and they all serve slightly different purposes. Some are designed to better optimize your website so it ranks higher in search engines and drives more sales. Others are aimed at helping you discover new content, and offer ways to improve your existing content. Still others are built to connect you with the companies that make the products you’re promoting, ensuring you get a cut from as many products as possible.
Curious about the best affiliate marketing tools to boost conversions? Here’s what you need to know.
19 Tools Marketers Should Consider to Boost Affiliate Marketing Sales
Tool | Features | Pricing |
Semrush | Keyword research and analysis, competitor analysis, website audit. | $139.95- $499.95 per month. |
Ahrefs | Backlink analysis, competitor analysis, AI features. | $29-$1449 per month. |
Amazon Associates | Earn commissions on huge range of products, easy linking tools. | Free. |
Skimlinks | Large network of affiliate brands, free to join, easy to generate deep links. | Free. |
Buffer | AI content generation tools, social media scheduling, performance tracking. | Free-$12 per month per channel. |
Google AdSense | Ad units for different purposes, automatic ads. | Free. |
Flippa | Browse websites and brands that are for sale. | Free. |
Realize | Performance-focused AI for targeting and optimizing ads in real time, large suite of tools for producing and repurposing creative, landing page builder. | No minimum. Recommendation varies with CPA goals. |
Bluehost | Host your website at a low price with free SSL, domains, and more. | Starts at $2.95 per month |
Affise | Manage partnerships and analyze performance marketing campaigns. | Unpublished. |
Omnisend | Build and send email campaigns, create SMS campaigns. | Free plan, pricing depends on subscriber count. |
Grammarly | Check content for proper grammar, improve writing and vocabulary. | Free – $12 per month. |
RankMath SEO | Checks WordPress content for SEO, suggests improvements. | Free, paid plans start at $6.99 per month. |
Hunter | Finds professional emails quickly and easily. | Free plan, paid plans start at $34 per month. |
Visme | Creates content with great-looking graphics and charts. | Free, paid plans start at $12.95 per month. |
AAWP | Creates Amazon affiliate blocks in WordPress that update automatically. | Starts at $6.58 per month. |
Surfer SEO | Suggests SEO improvements to content, built-in content editor. | Starts at $79 per month. |
DupliChecker | Checks content for plagiarism. | Free, paid plans starting at $10 per month. |
Pretty Links | Shortens and organizes links on your WordPress sites. | Free, paid plans start at $99.60 per year. |
1. Semrush
Pricing: $139.95 per month (Pro), $249.95 per month (Guru), $499.95 per month (business).
Pros:
- It has an advanced toolset.
- The interface is user-friendly.
- Data is accurate and helpful.
Cons:
- It’s more expensive than some alternatives.
Core to marketing content online is optimizing it for search, and Semrush is one of the best known search engine optimization (SEO) tools out there. Semrush offers all kinds of helpful tools that can help affiliate marketers ensure their content comes first on Google: There are keyword research and tracking tools, complete website audit tools with analysis on backlinks, and even tools that can compare your website to any competitors. The main downside? Semrush can be a little pricey, especially for beginners, but if you want arguably the best SEO tool on the market, it’s worth paying for.
2. Ahrefs
Pricing: $29 per month (Starter), $129 per month (Lite), $249 per month (Standard), $449 per month (Advanced), $1,149 per month (Enterprise).
Pros:
- It has a huge backlink database.
- Some plans offer a comprehensive historical data tool.
- It has AI features that are getting better and more helpful.
Cons:
- It’s more expensive than many competitors.
- It can be slightly complicated to get started with.
Ahrefs is another SEO tool, but this one’s focused a little more on links and backlinks than Semrush. In fact, it has a massive database of backlinks that it tracks, helping build a better picture of how backlinks impact search rankings. It also offers tools for things like keyword research and competitor analysis, and it can conduct a site audit and track your website’s rankings over time. It’s also somewhat pricey, and unless you run a highly specialized service you likely don’t need both Ahrefs and Semrush. That said, it’s worth paying for if you want a better idea of your website’s SEO and how to improve.
3. Amazon Associates
Pricing: Free.
Pros:
- Its product database is bigger than anyone else’s.
- It’s very easy to get started with.
- There’s no fee to join the program.
Cons:
- It has a short cookie window.
- Commission rates are lower than some programs.
Amazon is the largest retailer in the world, and with an Amazon Associates account, you’ll be able to earn commissions on the vast majority of products listed on the site. It’s easy to get started with, and easy to generate links using Amazon’s own tools — though given its size, it’s able to get away with offering lower commission rates than many other affiliate programs.
Additionally, it has a short cookie window of 24 hours, which means that if a potential customer doesn’t make the purchase within that time, you won’t get a cut. Still, Amazon Associates is arguably the most important affiliate network for marketers, and at the very least should be one of the retailers that marketers make use of.
4. Skimlinks
Pricing: Free.
Pros:
- Large database of partner brands and services.
- Tracks purchases reliably.
- Easy, deep link generator tool.
Cons:
- Not quite as simple as Amazon Associates.
Skimlinks is another of the top affiliate networks out there. It works with a massive range of brands, allowing you to generate deep links to those brands’ products and get a solid commission. In many cases, the commission you earn through Skimlinks will be higher than what you might earn through Amazon, too, making it a no-brainer for affiliate marketers.
5. Buffer
Pricing: Free plan, $6 per month per channel (Essentials), $12 per month per channel (Team).
Pros:
- Its interface is simple and intuitive.
- It has helpful reporting and analytics tools.
- AI features can help you create content.
Cons:
- Its pricing can add up for lots of channels.
Social media is an important part of any affiliate marketer’s toolset, and Buffer can help you schedule, create, and track the performance of all of your social media posts. In recent times, it has added new tools that leverage AI to help you create more effective posts. Buffer offers excellent scheduling tools that can help you plan out your posts over time, ensuring that you’re posting consistently. If you only have a few channels, it could be relatively inexpensive, though given the fact that it charges per channel, pricing can add up quickly.
6. Google AdSense
Pricing: Free.
Pros:
- It provides a second revenue source for your content.
- It’s easy to set up.
- There’s very little technical knowledge required.
Cons:
- It takes a lot of traffic to generate meaningful income.
- It can lower the quality of your website if overused.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money from your content, but it’s worth ensuring you have other income streams, too. If you properly leverage SEO tools, your content will start ranking higher in search, which should result in more traffic to your website. Using Google AdSense on your site means the traffic that comes to the site will see ads, which you’ll be paid for relative to the amount of traffic you get. It’s free to use and pretty simple, too, though keep in mind that you’ll want to avoid overstuffing web pages with ads, as it’ll make your website appear lower-quality. Thankfully, you can set AdSense to automatically serve ads, and there are tools within AdSense to limit just how many ads it serves.
7. Flippa
Pricing: Free for buyers.
Pros:
- It has a huge selection of websites in all niches.
- You can see how much money a website is making before you buy it.
- It’s easy to search through available websites.
Cons:
- It’s possible to fall for a website-selling scam.
- High-income websites can get expensive.
What if you don’t want to go through the hassle of building a website from scratch? In that case, it may be worth considering buying an already established website from Flippa. Flippa is a marketplace for buying and selling established websites, some of which are already set up for affiliate marketing and are already generating substantial revenue. Of course, you’ll have to pay for a website that’s generating a lot of money, but every now and then you might be able to find a gem. Not to mention you could find a website that fits your expertise perfectly, allowing you to get started in affiliate marketing without going through the hassle of starting from the beginning.
8. Realize
Pricing: No minimum spend — pricing recommendation varies with CPA goals.
Pros:
- It helps drive conversions by ensuring you reach the best, most appropriate audience.
- You’ll get access to proprietary first-party data.
- There are lots of creative tools to help you both create and optimize assets.
Cons:
- It’s not suitable for all niches.
If you’re interested in leveraging advertising for your affiliate marketing campaigns, then realize could be a game-changer. A performance marketing-focused tool for advertisers, Realize combines multiple tools into one helpful platform, boasting features that you won’t find anywhere else. Notably, you’ll get helpful creative tools and AI assistance that can help you build and optimize your campaign, ensuring that you’ll drive up conversions and reach the right audience. Drawing from over 17 years of first-party data — data that you won’t find on any other platform — Realize supports a range of ad formats, and provides helpful analytics tools to assist you in refining your ads over time for the best possible result.
Realize's advanced AI capabilities enable precise targeting, engagement optimization, and budget simulation, maximizing advertiser ROI.
9. Bluehost
Pricing: Starts at $2.95 per month.
Pros:
- Its plans are relatively affordable.
- It includes free SSL, SSD storage, and more.
- Your domain name is free for the first year when you get hosting.
Cons:
- Prices go up when it’s time to renew.
Even before you get started with affiliate marketing, you’ll likely need to create a website for yourself, in which case you’ll need a domain name and a hosting service. I recommend Bluehost for this as it’s highly affordable and offers a range of helpful features. When you get hosting, you’ll get your domain for free for the first year. Not only that, but Bluehost includes free SSL security certificates and web storage, and it has tools for things like migrating a WordPress site.
10. Affise
Pricing: Unpublished.
Pros:
- It has ultra-helpful dashboards.
- It includes automation tools that can lessen your workload.
- It’s customizable and has an API for integration.
Cons:
- It can get expensive for smaller businesses.
- It has somewhat of a learning curve.
Affise is a marketing platform designed to help affiliate marketers automate relationships with their partners. It has analytics tools for all your different marketing channels and dashboards, which can take all of that data in and present it in a way that’s easy to understand and act upon. Not only that, but the platform lets you automate repetitive tasks and integrate popular tools with its API, as well as offering a helpful fraud prevention service that helps marketers secure their ads on a click level. Affise doesn’t publish its pricing anymore, but third-party reports note that its Affise Performance service starts at $499 per month.
11. Omnisend
Pricing: Free up to 250 subscribers, ranges beyond this depend on number of subscribers.
Pros:
- Its drag-and-drop email builder works well.
- It supports both email and SMS marketing.
- It has helpful A/B testing tools.
Cons:
- Its reporting tools aren’t the most robust out there.
- SMS costs extra.
Email marketing is still a hugely important tool for affiliate marketers. Omnisend is a great way to leverage the ROI provided by email marketing, since it’s built for those who want to sell online and comes with a range of tools that can help you promote products effectively. You can use it to build email lists with embeddable forms and timed pop-ups, and it even has a dedicated landing page tool. Additionally, it lets you send messages across email, SMS, and push notifications, meaning that it can extend beyond email marketing alone.
12. Grammarly
Pricing: Free for basic tools, $12 per user per month for Grammarly Pro.
Pros:
- It’s excellent at pointing out spelling and grammar errors.
- It can help you refine your writing tone and suggest better vocabulary.
- Grammarly Pro has a built-in plagiarism checker.
Cons:
- Grammarly Pro can get a little pricey.
- It can sometimes get in the way of creative writing.
- There are privacy concerns around how much it can see.
Writing good content is core to affiliate marketing, and good content is free of errors and as polished as possible. Grammarly can help you polish up your writing by pointing out mistakes, offering tips to improve your writing, and more. It’s perfect for those who aren’t necessarily the strongest writers but are excellent affiliate marketers, and it’ll offer helpful tips, such as better vocabulary to use. Plus, it integrates with your browser, Google Docs, and other services, eliminating the need to copy and paste text between tools. Of course, you’ll need to decide when its suggestions are actually useful, but although you never have to take action on its suggestions, they’re still handy to have.
13. RankMath SEO
Pricing: Free plan, paid plans start at $6.99 per month.
Pros:
- Its free version offers a range of helpful features.
- It has a clean interface and is easy to use overall.
- It has a powerful Schema generator.
Cons:
- There is a bit of a learning curve for beginners.
RankMath SEO is another great SEO tool that’s designed to help ensure your content ranks as highly as possible. It’s perhaps the best SEO-focused WordPress plugin out there, thanks to how in-depth it is: It will automatically go through all of your content and then offer suggestions on how it could be improved for better SEO. It’s relatively easy to use, too, although considering how feature-rich it is, some beginners might find it a little overwhelming.
14. Hunter
Pricing: Free plan, paid plans start at $34 per month.
Pros:
- It’s a very reliable email-finding tool.
- It has a simple interface and is easy to use.
- Hunter Campaigns lets you send emails at scale.
Cons:
- The pricing can get a little high for smaller businesses.
Hunter is designed for those who want to quickly and easily find professional emails, especially those tied to domains and professional services. All you have to do is type in a name and their company name, and it’ll help you find professional emails in seconds, which could come in handy for making those business connections. Not only that, but Hunter also offers the new Hunter Campaigns tool, which helps you build and personalize your cold emails, then send targeted emails at a larger scale. You can easily manage replies and track opens, which could in turn help you continue to build your business.
15. Visme
Pricing: Free plan, paid plans start at $12.25 per month.
Pros:
- It’s an all-in-one content creation platform.
- It’s well-designed and very easy to use.
- Its free plan is highly comprehensive.
Cons:
- Its mobile services are limited.
Building great affiliate marketing campaigns usually involves creating a lot of content, and Visme is the all-in-one content toolkit that can help. Visme offers a range of tools for creating documents, but also graphs, charts, and other helpful visualizations that can accompany your content. Even better is the fact that it has a great free plan that lets you create unlimited projects, and includes a huge range of templates, support, and more.
16. AAWP
Pricing: Starts at $6.58 per month.
Pros:
- The plugin automatically updates as pricing changes.
- It comes with a number of templates for customization.
- It can geo-target to send users to the correct Amazon store.
Cons:
- You’ll need to get Amazon API access to use it.
Like it or not, Amazon is a major part of modern affiliate marketing, especially for those trying to market products (rather than services or software). AAWP, or Amazon Affiliate WordPress Plugin, lets you quickly and easily create product cards, which can then automatically update through the Amazon API, to show up-to-date pricing and other information. It can even geo-target to send users to the correct Amazon store, and it boasts a range of templates for those who want to customize how products are presented.
17. Surfer SEO
Pricing: Starts at $79 per month.
Pros:
- Uses data to tell you exactly how to improve your content.
- It has a built-in content editor.
- It integrates with services like Google Docs and WordPress.
Cons:
- It’s expensive.
- Its huge range of tools can feel overwhelming.
Surfer SEO is an SEO tool that makes it easy to create content like blog posts, articles, and more, with only a few clicks. Surfer SEO offers powerful SEO auditing tools that can be used to check your current content, and analyze how you could improve it to rank better in search. Not only that, but Surfer SEO can detect low-quality pages, plagiarism, and more, which can come in handy.
18. DupliChecker
Pricing: Free basic tools, paid plans start at $10 per month.
Pros:
- It lets you check for plagiarized content for free.
- You don’t have to sign up to start using it.
- You can paste text, use links, or upload files.
Cons:
- The website itself is dated and has a lot of ads.
Plagiarized content is a huge red flag for search engines, and if you want to rank well and convert more sales, you’ll want to avoid it like the plague. That’s where DupliChecker can come in handy. It’s worth leveraging for all kinds of content-makers: If you have a team of writers, you want to make sure they’re not cutting corners, but even if you’re the only one writing content, it’s worth running it through DupliChecker — after all, you could have written similar-sounding content as something else by accident, or perhaps you subconsciously re-wrote content you read during your research.
19. Pretty Links
Pricing: Free with basic features, paid plans start at $99.60 per year.
Pros:
- It makes it easy to shorten and organize links.
- It has built-in click tracking.
- There’s a free plan to get started with.
Cons:
- The free version is a little basic.
- Not the best outside of WordPress use.
WordPress users will want to ensure that their affiliate links are as organized as possible, which is where Pretty Links comes in. A WordPress plugin that makes it easy to create shortened and custom links, it lets you manage those affiliate links in one place. Not only that, but it can track clicks, and help you find any broken links on your website, so you can fix them easily.
How to Choose the Best Affiliate Marketing Tool
Set Specific Goals
It’s a good idea to set goals for what you want from the tools you pay for. If you’re looking for ways to improve your website’s search rankings, you should look mostly at SEO-related tools, like Semrush and Ahrefs. If you’re looking for ways to improve your presence on social media, look at tools that can help you create and schedule social media posts. There are tools for all aspects of affiliate marketing.
Avoid Overlap
Just because you want to improve your SEO doesn’t mean you should rush out and subscribe to all the SEO tools you can find. Many tools do the same thing, and there’s no point in paying extra for additional tools that won’t help you. Not only that, but you probably don’t need tools that overlap with your expertise. If you’re already a backlinking expert, maybe you only need tools that focus more on keyword analysis.
Work With the Brands in Your Niche
When looking for affiliate networks, make sure you research which networks are used by the brands you often write about. Most brands only use one or two affiliate networks, and you don’t want to sign up to a service like CJ Affiliate only to find that none of the brands you want to promote actually work through CJ Affiliate. There are a number of affiliate networks out there, and you don’t have to limit yourself to one, but at least ensure that you sign up to the ones most useful for you.
Best Practices to Leverage Affiliate Marketing Tools
Remember That Tools Work for You, Not the Other Way Around
Don’t let SEO tools dictate everything about your content. Your content is unique because of the perspective you have on your niche, and while SEO can help you get the word out, don’t change everything about your content just because SEO tools told you to. You want to ensure that your content is unique and still matches your style, while simultaneously better fitting search engine expectations.
Be Consistent
While affiliate marketing tools can help you refine certain aspects of your business, they can’t actually do the work for you. Make sure you’re consistent with the content on your website or the social media channels you use. You could have the most-optimized piece of content on a particular subject, but it’ll still rank poorly if your website isn’t established, and that takes time. That goes for using things like affiliate networks, too: Check commission rates and brand presence on different networks regularly to ensure you’re getting the best rates possible.
Key Takeaways
There are tons of affiliate marketing tools out there, and they’re not all created equal. It’s worth ensuring, however, that you have solid tools for things like SEO, social media, and so on. And, make sure you sign up to any and all affiliate networks that could actually help you make money — especially when it comes to products and services that you use regularly.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can you make $10,000 a month with affiliate marketing?
Yes, but it might take a while. You’ll need to build an established brand over time, consistently outputting high-quality content and creating a big presence on social media. Hitting $10,000 per month is possible, but you’ll have to be very patient, and very dedicated, to get there.
Can you make $100 a day with affiliate marketing?
Yes, but again, this takes time. It won’t take quite as much time as hitting $10,000 per month, but even $100 per day can take a while to reach, and you’ll still need to ensure you’re consistent with your content and ensure every single link to a product runs through an affiliate network.
How can you use native advertising for affiliate marketing?
Native advertising can help supercharge affiliate links. As an affiliate marketer, you could use a native advertising network to generate sales from affiliate links, as long as you find products that have solid conversion rates and good commissions.