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.
Best 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. |
| ChatGPT | Write content, check content for SEO best practices, brainstorm ideas. | Free-$200 per month. |
| Flippa | Browse websites and brands that are for sale. | Free. |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
ChatGPT
Pricing: Free, $20 per month (ChatGPT Plus), $200 per month (ChatGPT Pro).
Pros:
- It can come in handy for a variety of uses.
- It’s very easy to use with natural language.
- It’ll seriously speed up your workflow.
Cons:
- You’ll need to double-check any information.
There are plenty of ways ChatGPT can help affiliate marketers. For starters, it can serve as an excellent SEO tool — simply ask it to give you SEO tips on your content. Beyond that, it can generate text for social media posts, check your content’s grammar, and even generate images that you can use. Think of it like an all-in-one content assistant. While it won’t help with actually monetizing your content, and it lacks reporting tools like those offered by Semrush, it could end up being invaluable in your workflow.
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.
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.
