Affiliate marketing offers brands and individuals opportunities to create mutually beneficial relationships. For example, a fitness blogger can rave about their favorite protein powder and earn a commission for every tub sold through an affiliate web link to the merchant. With affiliate campaigns, the brand gets new customers, the blogger makes money, and the reader finds a great product.
With the right tools, an affiliate marketing program enhances affiliate marketers’ productivity, making it easier to find partnerships, manage links, and share content. Here are some of the top affiliate marketing tools and networks that can empower merchants and publishers to maximize affiliate income and expand their online presence.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a strategy in which a business or merchant rewards an individual or publisher, known as an affiliate or affiliate marketer, for promoting their products or services.
In most cases, the business provides unique links to affiliates. The affiliate marketers then promote the merchant’s products or services on their affiliate sites, blogs, newsletters, or social media pages to drive traffic to the merchant’s site. When someone clicks on these affiliate links and makes purchases or performs other desired actions, the affiliate earns a commission.
Affiliate marketing lets businesses expand their market reach and outsource lead generation without upfront marketing expenses. Meanwhile, publishers can monetize their online presence, earning affiliate income by endorsing products or services.
Types of affiliate marketing tools
- Affiliate networks
- Affiliate link tools
- Landing page builders
- SEO tools
- Email and social media marketing tools
A slate of well-designed affiliate tools can help you run a successful affiliate marketing program. Use these tools to manage different aspects of your affiliate campaign, such as optimization, communication, and content creation. Here are the best affiliate marketing tools:
Affiliate networks
Developing and maintaining relationships with affiliates can take a lot of time and effort. Using an affiliate network can help. These networks facilitate many aspects of an affiliate program. They connect brands with affiliates through an affiliate marketing platform where merchants meet publishers and forge partnerships. These networks simplify tracking, reporting, and payments between businesses and affiliates.
Affiliate link tools
Links are fundamental to affiliate marketing. When someone clicks on a link and makes a purchase, the business gets what it wants, and the affiliate earns a commission. Affiliate link tools allow you to track link clicks (i.e., traffic sources) through unique tracking URLs or cookies assigned to affiliates. You can then use this information to attribute commissions to affiliates.
Affiliate link tools may also provide link cloaking (a.k.a. link masking or URL masking) to modify affiliate links to make them appear shorter, cleaner, and more user-friendly.
Landing page builders
Creating appealing and intuitive landing pages is critical to turning clicks into conversions. Using a landing page builder makes this easy. These great affiliate marketing tools let affiliates design landing pages tailored to their audience without the need for coding skills.
Landing page builders often offer A/B testing capabilities, letting publishers and merchants experiment with different elements and layouts to optimize performance.
SEO tools
SEO tools can help optimize website visibility in search engines, which make them invaluable in affiliate marketing campaigns. They help creators optimize their content for search engines, driving unpaid organic traffic and increasing visibility.
Many of the free tools available include features such as keyword research, competitor analysis, and on-page optimization suggestions, helping affiliates identify relevant keywords and topics with high search volume and low competition. By incorporating these keywords strategically into their content, publishers can improve their search engine rankings and attract more website visitors to their affiliate links.
Email and social media marketing tools
Most affiliate marketers use multiple platforms to attract internet users to their affiliate offers. Social media marketing tools let digital marketers schedule posts, engage with their audiences, and analyze performance metrics across various social platforms.
Email marketing tools automate email marketing campaigns, generate leads, and promote affiliate products through targeted messaging. Together, these tools amplify reach, engagement, and conversion rates in affiliate marketing campaigns.
Affiliate marketing tools for marketers
Whether you run a successful online business and are looking to try different campaign strategies or are hoping to become an affiliate, you can benefit from great affiliate marketing tools. Here are some of the top affiliate marketing tools to help you expand your affiliate marketing business:
Shopify Collabs
If you run a Shopify store, Shopify Collabs is the place to connect with affiliate partners. This affiliate network app lets you recruit affiliates through a custom application page, create personalized links and codes, send and track gifts to affiliates (so they can try products and recommend them to their audience), and automatically pay commissions.
Pricing: Shopify Collabs is free for Shopify merchants to use, with a 2.9% payment processing fee on commissions.
ShareASale
ShareASale is an expansive affiliate network with 30,000 merchants and more than one million publishers.
Pricing: ShareAsale charges a one-time $625 setup fee. After that, it’s $35 per month, plus a 20% commission fee.
Bitly
Bitly is an ideal link-shortening and tracking tool for affiliate marketing. It’s easy to use and lets you monitor the success of your affiliate links and analyze performance metrics.
Pricing: For beginner affiliate marketers, Bitly offers a free tool for 10 shortened links per month. However, most affiliate marketers will want to invest in one of its paid plans that includes an affiliate ad tracking tool, custom domains, and data. Plans range from $8 to $199 per month.
EComposer
Built for Shopify, EComposer is a website creation tool for building attractive, high-converting landing pages. Its drag-and-drop templates are easy to use and don’t require any coding knowledge.
Pricing: Plans range from free to $82.50 per month.
SeedProd
SeedProd is a WordPress plug-in that makes building landing pages easy. SeedProd lets you choose from various templates and themes to create a beautiful page adaptable to various screen sizes.
Pricing: Plans run from $79 to $599 per month.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a comprehensive SEO tool. Key features include competitor analysis, site auditing, and a free keyword rank checker. One of its best assets is its free keyword research tool, which provides data about search trends and volumes for keywords relevant to your affiliate marketing campaign.
Pricing: Ahrefs offers some of its tools, such as the keyword generator, for free. More comprehensive plans start at $129 per month.
Semrush
Semrush offers a wide variety of SEO tools for affiliate marketers, and it provides some of the most comprehensive SEO features on the market for in-depth data analysis.
Pricing: Semrush’s free options include position tracking for up to 10 keywords, an affiliate site audit for up to 100 URLs, and one free template for an SEO writing assistant. Paid subscription plans, starting at $129.95 per month, offer greater project limits, sharing, and in-depth analytics.
Omnisend
Omnisend is an easy-to-use email marketing tool that can help connect brands, affiliates, and customers. You can choose from more than 250 email templates, create landing pages, and use A/B testing. According to Omnisend, its merchants make $72 for every $1 spent on SMS and email marketing.
Pricing: Omnisend offers a free plan for smaller mailing lists and paid plans starting at $16 monthly for more than 250 contacts or 500 emails per month.
Buffer
Buffer offers a comprehensive social media marketing tool. You can schedule posts in advance, optimize posting times based on audience engagement data, and manage multiple social media accounts from a single dashboard. Detailed analytics provide insights into post-performance, while team collaboration features facilitate seamless content creation and distribution.
Pricing: Buffer offers a free plan and paid plans from $6 to $120 per month.
Linkpop
Linkpop is an excellent tool for affiliate marketers on social media, particularly Instagram or TikTok. Linkpop allows publishers to insert affiliate links into their bios and sell directly from their accounts. You can also customize your landing page and use its analytics to track performance.
Pricing: Linkpop is free.
Affiliate marketing tools FAQ
What is the easiest way to start affiliate marketing?
Beginner affiliate marketers looking to get into the affiliate marketing game can begin by joining an affiliate network (or multiple affiliate networks) to find partnerships that are a good fit for their interests and business goals.
Is there affiliate marketing software for brands?
Yes, brands can benefit from affiliate marketing software that helps them track, manage, and invite affiliates.
What are the benefits of affiliate marketing tools?
Affiliate marketing tools can help brands and publishers manage and optimize the various aspects of their partnership and affiliate marketing strategy. Selecting great affiliate marketing tools can significantly increase the ease and efficacy of affiliate marketing efforts.
Is Google Analytics an affiliate marketing tool?
Google Analytics can help you track affiliate link performance, monitor conversion rates, analyze audience characteristics, set up goal tracking for specific actions, and optimize landing pages to enhance the effectiveness of your campaigns. However, it’s not a standalone solution for managing all aspects of your affiliate marketing.
