Affiliate Marketing Tools – Marketing tools and software solutions that may potentially increase your profits
If you’re considering stepping into the world of affiliate marketing you’re going to need some basic, yet essential tools. Most beginners get overwhelmed quickly by all the advice of the self proclaimed experts. They get disorientated from the get go from all the offers thrown at them on a daily basis. Luckily, your buddy Dave is here to steer you in the right direction. In this post I’m going to share the affiliate marketing tools that I personally use each and every day, so you can rest assured that these are vital to succeed with affiliate marketing.
The fundamental elements that every online marketer will need are his own domain name, paid hosting for his web pages and last but not least an auto-responder. These are the basics and they play a huge part in whether you succeed or not. There shouldn’t be any negotiation here. There are some free options available, but it’s not a very a good idea to use any them. You don’t want to build your house on rented land.
The majority of free courses and e-books you find online about affiliate marketing have one thing in common, they all preach that affiliate marketing is easy, painless and it won’t cost you a dime to get started. Ludicrous claims such as “Unleash an Avalanche of Free Traffic with our Brand New Software” or “Earn a 5 Figure income with 15 Minutes of Work a Day” are very common.
But the reality is that affiliate marketing is a business, and like any other business, it will take time to grow, it will cost you money and most importantly you will need to put in some effort…lots of effort. There is no magic software or a magic button. You could spend your lifetime looking for the button, but I’ll save you the time and tell you that you never going to find it.
To fast track your affiliate marketing journey, there are a few tools that are absolutely required. Buying these tools will not be enough. You will also need to learn how to use them to get the best benefits from them.
So without further ado…here are 4 tools you might want to consider taking advantage of
1. A Reliable And Fast Loading WordPress Theme
First off, you need a reliable WordPress theme. If you’re not using WordPress, I advice you to start as quickly as possible. Google seems to favor websites that are build on WordPress. Another benefit is that WordPress provides you with all the tools to set up your website lightning fast. While WordPress remains to be free… the best themes are not.
Your goal is to find a theme that looks amazing and is suitable for both desktop and mobile phones. A good theme will be pleasing to the eye, load up fast and be a breeze to work with.
If you’re on a real tight budget you can always start out with a free theme such as Schema Lite or Maxwell. You can always upgrade to a paid theme once you’ve managed to make some money from your marketing efforts.
2. A Keyword Research Tool
If you truly want to succeed as an affiliate marketer, then you most definitely need to learn how to do keyword research. Fortunately, there are very reliable programs that will collect and collate a huge list of keywords in just a matter of minutes.
Software’s such as Long Tail Pro and Keyword Researcher are two of the top choices preferred by many marketers. On top of handing out a huge list of searched for keywords, they also give you the competition scores.
Why is this so important? When you know the competition score, you can target keywords that are less competitive or have no competition. This is very important because it will save you a lot of time and effort. You could spend years and still not be able to rank for a keyword such as “make money online” which has immense competition.
You need to focus on many long tail keywords and build your traffic from there. To get these long tail keywords you need to use a good and reliable keyword tool.
You might want to start out with free tools such as Ubbersuggest and Keyword Planner, but you will soon realize that these free options are far to limited to be really beneficial.
3. A Rank Tracking Software
There are both free and paid options for this one. Basically, what a rank checker does is that it checks where your site ranks, for the keywords you’re targeting. This can be a real time saver. Instead of spending hours scanning the search results to see where your site is, now you’ll know at one glance from a single interface. That’s fantastic.
An old one but a good one is Search Engine Genie. Don’t be fooled by the outdated interface because this free tool gets the job done and it’s quite fast. You should definitely give Search Engine Genie a try if you’re looking for a free rank tracking software.
4. A Social Media Scheduler
Truth be told, I’m always a bit late when it comes to social media stuff. On a personal front, I just hate it. You know, posting status updates and checking out what somebody cooked up for dinner, who gives a rats arse. On a business level you can’t go without social media these days, so a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. That’s why I’m thankful for these social media schedule software’s. They allow me to be present on these dreadful platforms without having to log in to my accounts everyday.
These tools will help you to organize your social media accounts so that you can automate your posts several times per day. It will also let you automate replies to the people who follow you and automatically follow them to. This way you don’t need to be slaving away posts and likes all day long. I use a tool called Jarvee but it comes with a hefty monthly fee of $30, but heaven forbid it’s worth every damn penny.
If you’re just starting out you might want to look for alternatives that offer a free plan such as Tweetdeck, Socialoomph and Later.
There are of course several other useful tools such as bot blockers, SEO plugins, etc. As you progress in your affiliate marketing journey, you will know which ones you need to simplify your business.
That’s what tools are for. To make your life easier and save you heaps of time, so that you can focus on the more important aspects of your business. Make use of these affiliate marketing tools wherever and whenever you can, because time is your most precious resource.