One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that it has extremely low overhead. As an affiliate marketer, you can make money online without the heavy investments other traditional business models require. That isn’t to say your costs can’t start adding up quickly. Buying SEO, SMO, and other internet marketing tools and plugins for $10 dollars here and $50 dollars there can quickly add up and cut into your bottom-line. To help you keep your costs low, we’ve made a list of the top nine free tools for affiliate marketers you can use to enhance your business. These tools offer the same functionality as some of their competitors but are completely free. So before spending big dollars on a bunch of marketing tools, check out these products first.
1. Buzzsumo
Buzzsumo is a research and marketing tool that helps you understand market trends. With Buzzsumo you can find the content that is most often shared on social media, track your competitors, evaluate and rate keywords, and get great ideas for both original and shareable content for your readers. Buzzsumo offers both a free version and a paid version. Though the free version has some limitations on the data and features offered, you can still gain meaningful market insights with the information they do provide.
2. Adcomparator
Adcomparator is a free online software based on the famous Taguchi method of statistical analysis. Unlike traditional split-level testing, Adcomparator’s software allows multivariable testing of up to 15 different aspects simultaneously that helps you compare and optimize your advertising strategy. Adcomparator can help you rate the efficacy of your email marketing campaigns, PPC strategies, website content, and even your direct marketing. With Adcomparator, you can see exactly what you need to do in order to increase your conversion rate.
3. Buffer
Buffer is a social media management tool that helps you effectively manage your time. From one site you can send out blasts to all of your social media accounts. A lot of sites offer this feature, so what makes Buffer special is that you can schedule your posts for later times. So you can manage all your content for the week at one time or make sure you are only posting content during optimal high traffic times for increase viewership. Managing your social media presence from Buffer lets you optimize your presence on your own schedule.
4. SpyFu
Affiliate marketing is a highly competitive market and understanding what your competitors are doing can give you a serious advantage. SpyFu is a keyword research tool where you can see every keyword a company has bought on AdWords and ranks those keywords by efficacy. SpyFu helps you do some serious SEO and PPC research so you can optimize your advertising dollars. As an extra bonus, SpyFu provides reliable contact information so you can generate better quality leads.
5. ClickMeter
As an affiliate marketer, you will be doing a lot of tracking in order to understand exactly what brought traffic to your site, what on your site helped them decide to buy a product, and what you can do to bring them back to your page. ClickMeter is a link, affiliate, and conversion tracker all in one and contains over 100 free features that you can use to track your performance and optimize your campaigns.
6. WordPress
WordPress is the most famous website, blog, and app publisher in the world. It is extremely versatile, easy to use, and the best part, completely free. When you are an affiliate marketer you need a well-designed, easy-to-navigate, and highly functional website, and with WordPress it’s easy. If you are just starting out, you can grab a free template and tailor it to your needs, if you are an expert designer, WordPress has all the geeky tools you need to do whatever you want.
7. Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator
Having to produce regular, engaging content through articles and blog posts can be difficult. Sometimes you might experience writer’s block or may not have enough material to work with to come up with clever ideas all the time. That is where Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator comes in. Hubspot’s Blog Topic Generator uses an algorithm and any three keywords you choose to come up with a week’s worth of topics. The only downside is that the Blog Topic Generator isn’t perfect and sometimes the ideas aren’t exactly usable.
8. Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer Tool
In order to drive traffic, you need attention-grabbing headlines. Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer Tool can help. It rates your potential headline on the structure, grammar, and readability of your headline as well as if the words are common, uncommon, emotional, or powerful. The tool also rates your headline’s length and word count, keywords, and sentiment. So you can see if your headline has the impact you intended.
9. Canva
Canva is the perfect content tool if you aren’t particularly skilled at graphic design but still want to have visual appeal. With Canva you can easily make infographics, brochures, ebook covers, and gift certificates. You can also edit photographs, add text to images, and make custom social media graphics for every popular platform. With Canva you don’t have to be a great designer to have a visually interesting campaign.
So whether you are looking for high quality analytics tools to optimize your performance or some great content design tools, there are tons of free tools you can use to make money online. These are just some of the amazing tools on the internet available for affiliate marketers. If you are looking for more options, check out Affiliate Marketer Training. On our blog and in our training, we go over some of these and other great tools in depth, so you can understand just how to use them to be successful. So check out our free resources.
