What is the best tool for affiliate marketing?

Are you looking into becoming an affiliate marketer or just starting out as one? In either case, there's no denying that it takes a lot of work and effort to be successful at this type of business model. You'll have to learn how to write compelling ad copy, generate leads, build websites, create landing pages, monitor conversions, and much more if you want to succeed. However, with the right tools and strategies, it can all get easier than ever before!

There are many ways to make money online but if you're new to this industry and don't know where to start, there may be some confusion over what exactly affiliate marketing is. Let us take a look at the basics so we can see which specific tools should help you achieve success with affiliate marketing.

Which tool is best for affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing allows businesses who sell products on their website (or other platforms) to advertise those items by promoting them through banners, text links, social media posts, etc. The advertiser earns commission when someone buys from his/her link or advertises their item via another platform. This means that affiliates must promote these products themselves without any assistance from the seller.

It is important to note that this doesn't mean that they will only use the company's own ads - instead, they could also choose to promote competitors' goods too. It's up to the individual whether he wants to promote other brands or not. There are both pros and cons to each approach, and it really depends on the person's preferences. For example, if you prefer to promote other companies rather than yours, then perhaps creating your own advertisements would be better for you. If you'd like to focus more on your own brand, however, then using other people's ads might increase your chances of generating sales.

Regardless of which route you decide to go, there are plenty of different types of advertising available for you to try out. Some will cost you nothing while others may require a monthly fee. Here are several of the most popular options to consider.

Refersion ($99 per month): With Refersion, you can set up automated follow-up emails to send to customers after they purchase something from you. Then, Refersion sends those messages automatically based on certain criteria such as when someone made a sale within a particular time frame. You can even schedule future email campaigns to run later in the future.

ClickBank ($199 annually): ClickBank offers a wide variety of digital products including ebooks, audio files, video tutorials, programs, and courses. They also offer affiliate commissions for referring customers to their site, meaning you earn payment every time someone purchases anything through your link.

Rakuten Advertising ($19-$24 / month): Rakuten Advertising provides the ability to target users based on demographics, interests, location, and behavior. Additionally, it lets you create unique campaigns across multiple networks at once. The service includes multiple tracking reports, analytics, and custom reporting features to analyze data and improve performance.

Post Affiliate Pro ($29/month): Post Affiliate Pro gives you access to many of the same services offered by Rakuten Advertising above along with additional features such as split testing, conversion rate optimization, and multi-channel attribution analysis. Post Affiliate Pro also has a built-in autoresponder system that helps keep track of communication between you and customers.

CJ Affiliate ($27/month): Similar to Post Affiliate Pro, CJ Affiliate gives you access to a host of useful tools and resources. These include lead generation, customer support, SEO, web hosting, website design, and more. All of these services come together to provide you with everything you need to manage your entire campaign.

What software do you need for affiliate marketing?

If you've decided to pursue affiliate marketing as a career path, you will likely need a bit of software to help you grow your business. A few examples of software you might wish to invest in that will give you extra functionality include Google Analytics, LeadPages, HubSpot, and WordPress.

Google Analytics ($18/year): Google Analytics makes it easy for anyone to understand how visitors interact with their sites. You can easily view visitor activity, find out which pages are getting the most attention, and discover patterns in user behavior. Plus, you can segment results by country, device, age group, gender, browser version, operating system, referral source, and more.

LeadPages ($30/month): One of the biggest benefits of having a well-designed squeeze page is being able to capture leads directly from your website. That said, having the proper information about potential prospects stored away in a spreadsheet isn't going to cut it anymore. Fortunately, LeadPages comes equipped with drag & drop templates that allow you to quickly craft attractive forms to gather contact details. Once collected, you can save the form fields as "pages" that you can reuse again and again.

HubSpot Content Management System ($17/month): HubSpot is designed specifically for marketers who want to automate content creation and distribution to attract clients. As part of its package, HubSpot includes a blogging module that allows you to publish blog articles on topics related to your niche. The platform also supports scheduling, keyword research, image management, and more.

WordPress ($20/month): Although it may sound counterintuitive, choosing WordPress as your CMS is actually quite beneficial since it's open-source and completely free. This allows you to customize the theme according to your needs, install plugins, add widgets, change themes whenever necessary, and even export your database into CSV format for importing into Excel or similar applications.

The point here is simply to show that although these solutions aren't necessarily required for someone trying to break into affiliate marketing, they certainly won't hurt your cause. Many beginners end up spending way too much money on unnecessary software because they think that having the latest and greatest technology is essential to succeeding. While it is true that you will benefit from investing in quality software, it's equally important to remember that you don't always need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to acquire it.

In fact, there are tons of free alternatives to almost everything you pay for, especially when it comes to internet apps. Below we list three of our favorite tools that you probably already have installed on your computer.

1Password ($15/per year): 1Password is a password manager app that stores passwords securely and keeps them safe from hackers. By installing this program, you eliminate the risk of losing sensitive documents and login credentials to various accounts such as bank accounts, shopping portals, forums, social networking profiles, etc., making it much safer to share private info with friends and family members.

Evernote ($5/mo.): Evernote is a cloud storage solution that works perfectly for keeping notes organized and accessible anytime anywhere. Its primary function is to store images, videos, PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, and texts. What's great about Evernote is that you can sync all of your folders and files onto mobile devices too, allowing you to take your work wherever you go. Also, it's very secure due to its encrypted nature.

Dropbox ($9/month): Dropbox is a file sharing application that enables users to upload photos, videos, music, and documents to remote locations. Not only that, it allows you to edit and manipulate files offline, and share them with others instantly. Best of all, you don't need to worry about running out of space since Dropbox automatically backs up your local folder to the cloud, ensuring that you never lose any valuable files.

How do I become an affiliate marketer?

Once you're ready to begin building your network, there are two main approaches you can take depending on your level of expertise and experience. First off, you might decide to join an existing affiliate program that already has a large following and a proven record of success. Alternatively, you may opt to start your own affiliate venture.

Both methods involve learning how to effectively leverage automation systems, writing effective ads, finding high-quality products to promote, and managing your earnings and expenses accordingly. Regardless of which approach you pick, though, it's critical that you stay focused and dedicate yourself 100% toward growing your income stream. Don't expect overnight success, and definitely avoid trying to do things wrong. Instead, stick to the tried-and-true methodical process outlined below.

First, determine a budget for your first month of efforts. Next, figure out how much money you plan to bring home each week and divide it by 7 days. Subtracting that number from your total weekly salary will tell you precisely how much cash you'll need to bring home in order to meet your financial goals.

Now, use the remaining amount to buy whatever advertising vehicles you deem necessary. Remember, you can always upgrade to higher tiers as needed. Finally, allocate the remainder of your funds towards paying down debt, saving for retirement, or contributing to your 401(k).

Many people have been asking me this question over and over again since I started my blog about 5 years ago. It's almost like they want an answer but don't know how or where to start looking. The truth is there is no one right answer here because it depends on what type of marketer you are as well as what industry you're working in. But if we take a look at some general guidelines then hopefully we can help them find out whether it would be worthwhile for them too.

Affiliate marketing isn't easy by any means. You need to spend time learning about SEO, content creation, social media, etc. And once you've done all of those things then you'll still need to learn how to build your own website so that you can monetize it properly (and not just throw up ads). There's also the cost of hosting and domain names which will run into hundreds of dollars if you decide to go down the road of setting up your own site. So while many people see affiliate marketing as being very lucrative, it's definitely not something everyone should attempt!

But even with all of that said, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try affiliate marketing either. Many successful entrepreneurs started their online businesses off as affiliates before moving onto completely different types of business models. If you feel like you might benefit from doing it anyway, then maybe now is the perfect time to give it a shot. Especially when there is such a large number of new products coming out every day.

So let's talk first about why you'd choose to become an affiliate marketer and then move on to the various options available to you depending on what niche you end up focusing on. Is it worth it to do affiliate marketing? Can you really make money with affiliate marketing? How much do affiliate marketers get paid? What is affiliate marketing in simple way?

Is it worth it to do affiliate marketing?

If you think about it, most websites these days are built around selling other peoples' stuff. Whether it's e-commerce stores, apps, digital downloads, courses, or anything else, pretty much everything revolves around trying to sell someone else's product or service. This has led us to a world where there is literally thousands upon thousands of ways to generate income. Which makes it incredibly difficult to stand out amongst all of the competition.

And yet, with all of the choices available to us today, there are still plenty of people who are able to turn making money online into a full-time job. That's why it's important that you understand exactly what kind of marketer you want to be. Are you going to focus solely on promoting certain companies' products? Or perhaps you want to create your own products instead so that you aren't forced to rely on others to make money for you?

Whatever route you ultimately decide to follow, having the proper knowledge beforehand is crucial. Otherwise, you could waste countless hours creating great content only to discover later that nobody wants to buy it. On top of that, you may end up spending more than necessary on advertising efforts due to poor understanding of the marketplace.

Consequently, I recommend taking the following steps to ensure success with affiliate marketing:

Take stock of your skills and capabilities. Do you have a background in writing, photography, design, programming, etc.? Even if you don't work directly within any particular field, knowing what kinds of talents and skill sets you naturally possess will allow you to identify areas you excel at and use those strengths to promote other people's products. After all, people tend to trust a person who looks good on paper.

Learn how to write compelling copy. While you probably already know how to speak clearly and concisely, writing effective articles is another thing entirely. In order to attract potential buyers, you'll need to show them how awesome your offering truly is through informative and engaging descriptions. Also keep in mind that the actual conversion rate varies greatly between each individual article. So rather than worrying too much about getting 1% conversions, aim for higher numbers. For example, 100 visitors may convert into 10 leads. A lead converts into 3 customers. Therefore, if you were converting at 2%, you would expect to receive 20 sales. Of course, this assumes that none of your links went viral during the process.

Keep track of your results. One of the biggest mistakes most beginners make is assuming that simply putting together high quality content and driving tons of traffic will automatically translate into huge profits. Instead, you must actually measure your progress along the way. Keep track of the amount of clicks you received as well as the percentage of those clicks that turned into purchases. From there, you should be able to determine if you made any significant improvements or if you're making steady progress towards your goals.

Once you've decided on what kind of marketer you want to be, you can begin researching which programs are ideal for you based on your unique needs. Here are several popular options that you can explore:

Clickbank - Probably the largest affiliate network in existence and definitely the oldest. With hundreds of thousands of merchants accepting payments through clickbank, there are bound to be plenty of opportunities to earn commission. However, the downside is that many of the sellers pay low commissions compared to larger networks like Shareasale, Refersion, CJ Affiliate, or Rakuten Advertising.

Refersion - An alternative to Clickbank, Refersion offers a similar platform with slightly lower fees. Like its competitor, however, there are plenty of merchants willing to accept payments through Refersion. Unfortunately though, the payment rates vary quite drastically across the board. Some offer 50 cents per sale while others charge upwards of $2.50.

Shareasale - Another major player in the affiliate space, Shareasale boasts millions of users who purchase billions of dollars worth of merchandise daily. As a result, merchant partners are always searching for new products to feature on Shareasale. Consequently, if you're interested in joining one of the many affiliate programs offered, you can rest assured that you'll never lack for inventory to promote.

Post Affiliate Pro - Similar to Shareasale, Post Affiliate Pro features thousands of merchants ready to sell their wares to eager affiliates. Unlike Shareasale though, PAP requires you to register an account and wait for approval before you can join their program. Once approved, however, you'll enjoy access to a wide variety of merchants including Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and dozens of others.

Rakuten Advertising - Although technically marketed under the same umbrella as Post Affiliate Pro, Rakuten Advertising is a bit more flexible than its competitors. Not only does Rakuten advertise itself as a "merchant neutral" solution, unlike Refersion and Shareasale, but it also claims to have the lowest fees of any affiliate network currently operating.

Other Options:

Amazon Associates Program - Amazon allows anyone to sign up and list their own products without needing to apply for membership. They offer a range of different solutions designed specifically to assist individuals who wish to promote Amazon products.

Commission Junction - Founded nearly 25 years ago, Commission Junction is still among the leading affiliate networks in the world. Their system was originally created to serve small local retailers and wholesalers, but over time they expanded their services to include big name brands.

A lot of people ask me how long it takes to get profitable as an affiliate. Well, it varies from person to person. Obviously, the longer you stay in the game, the better chance you have at earning a substantial amount of cash. But that's not necessarily true. Some people are lucky enough to hit financial independence after just six months or less. Others struggle to make ends meet for years before finally landing somewhere near profitability.

The key takeaway from all of this is that there's absolutely nothing wrong with starting out as an affiliate. Just remember to invest time upfront into developing your marketable assets so that you can maximize your chances of success. Then put in place solid systems and processes that allow you to effectively manage your campaigns. Finally, always remain humble and focused on improving yourself so that you can continue growing as both an entrepreneur and a human being.

Can you really make money with affiliate marketing?

As mentioned above, the short answer to this question is yes. Yes, you can. But the reality is that unless you're extremely talented or have developed a unique ability to connect emotionally with consumers, it won't happen overnight. Most likely, it will take anywhere from 6 months to a year before you reach your first profit milestone.

It's certainly possible to succeed quickly though. People often refer to this as the "honeymoon period." During this phase, you'll experience massive amounts of growth thanks to increased exposure and demand. But eventually, the honeymoon comes to an abrupt halt as you realize that you have to continuously produce additional content and implement new strategies.

After that point, it becomes much harder to maintain momentum. Fortunately though, the rewards far outweigh the challenges involved. Over time, your efforts will yield exponential returns until you eventually achieve financial freedom.

How much do affiliate marketers get paid?

Affiliate marketing has been around since the early days of internet marketing but it's not what you think - this article will explain how to make money from online products without any technical knowledge or experience.

What is affiliate marketing simple words?

Simply put, affiliate marketing (also known as commission-based advertising) allows companies to promote their own brands by placing links with websites where they can earn commissions based on sales made through those sites. This means if someone clicks on one of these links and buys something, the company making the sale gets paid a percentage of the price. The person who placed the link does not get anything unless there was an actual transaction between them and the customer.

The most famous examples of affiliates are Amazon, eBay, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Facebook Ads, YouTube ads, and many others. There are also thousands of small niche publishers like blogs, articles, forums, etc., which allow people to place links promoting their goods and services. In general, anyone selling physical items such as ebooks, software, courses, video games, makeup, clothing, electronics, jewelry, health supplements, household supplies, or other tangible things can use affiliate programs to help sell more of their products.

What is affiliate marketing and its example?

One great example of affiliate marketing is when you see an ad on TV for a new car and then go to the website of the manufacturer to learn everything about the vehicle before buying it. You may have seen similar ads for computers, furniture, clothes, and so forth. Many times, the site contains information about all kinds of products offered by different manufacturers. When you click on the link, the seller pays some portion of the price to the advertiser for each purchase made through that link. For instance, let's say that you buy a computer at Best Buy using a link provided by Dell. If you buy another computer at Best Buy using a link provided by Dell, you'll pay Dell 10% of the cost of that second computer. So technically, you're paying both Best Buy and Dell for every single item purchased because each vendor receives payment from the other. It's just that Best Buy only keeps track of the amount they've earned from Dell while Dell keeps track of the amount they've earned from Best Buy.

Another good example of affiliate marketing is when you search for a particular book on Amazon or a DVD rental service on Netflix. Both offer ways for you to find books, movies, music, and other content that you might be interested in purchasing. They take a cut of whatever you end up spending on what you found, whether it's $10 or $100,000.

There are two main types of affiliate networks available today. One type is called programmatic advertising, where advertisers bid on certain keywords and phrases related to their business. As a result, each time somebody searches for that phrase they receive a list of possible matches along with a specific URL for each match. Then, once they click on the relevant link, the advertiser gets charged. Programmatic advertising makes sense for businesses that want to advertise very specifically, but it doesn't scale well. On the other hand, performance-based advertising uses algorithms to decide which advertisements appear when users visit a web page, and it works much better for large enterprises.

An alternative method of affiliate marketing is to create a blog post or webpage dedicated to a certain topic and include a short description of the product and/or service you're offering somewhere near the bottom of the text. People visiting the page will likely see the banner ads or sponsored listings at the top and down below. These banners usually contain a link to the merchant's homepage or store, and sometimes they provide additional details about the product or service being advertised. Some merchants even provide additional resources for potential customers to consult directly with the brand itself. At the same time, the host website earns revenue whenever visitors click through to the merchant's website.

If you don't know where to start when it comes to creating your own website or blog, we recommend checking out our guide to starting a blog in 2020. We also highly suggest reading our beginner's guide to blogging, which explains exactly why everyone should be doing this now and how easy it really is.

This is a pretty common model among startups nowadays, especially in the tech world. An entrepreneur creates a startup focused on solving a problem within a unique industry. Once they build a prototype or MVP, they launch into beta testing and eventually begin seeking funding to bring their idea to life.

How do I do affiliate marketing?

So far, we've covered what affiliate marketing is and how it works, but how would you actually implement it yourself? Well, here's a few quick tips to follow to ensure success:

Make sure you understand the basics of SEO first. Without proper optimization, nobody will ever come across your campaign, no matter how hard you try.

Once you've optimized your landing pages, consider implementing tracking codes and analytics. This way, you can measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and figure out what changes need to be made to improve conversions.

When writing your descriptions and headlines, keep in mind that 90 percent of readers won't read past the headline. Make yours compelling enough to draw attention right away.

While you're still learning the ropes, focus on building relationships with influencers and experts in your field. They can give valuable advice on how to market your business effectively, which can save you months of trial and error.

Now that you understand how to set up and run an effective affiliate marketing campaign, check out our complete step-by-step tutorial on how to become a successful digital marketer. And if you'd rather watch than read, feel free to view our full length course on how to become a successful digital marketer.

Best Affiliate Marketing Tools

A few years ago, many people made their living through affiliate marketing and there were a lot more ways to make money than there are today. In fact, if you look back at some of the most successful companies on the web then they all had affiliates who helped them grow.

Today, however, things have changed quite considerably with the rise of programmatic ad buying which means that an advertiser only pays when someone actually clicks on their ads rather than paying out per click as was previously done. This change makes it much harder to get paid by advertisers so affiliate marketers need to find new methods of earning income.

The good news is that there are still plenty of opportunities for success because people use these programs every day looking for solutions to problems they face in their everyday lives. As such, it is possible to earn a decent amount of cash using a variety of different strategies. The key though is finding the right strategy for you to implement.

1. Clickbank

ClickBank is one of the biggest names in affiliate marketing and although it started life selling digital downloads, its focus now is primarily on promoting eBooks and other downloadable content. You can start off small by just creating a free account and trying out the system but you'll quickly see why so many people choose to use ClickBank for their business needs.