Last updated on November 17th, 2018 at 06:52 am
You want to start a blog in hopes of monetizing it and making money with affiliate marketing? Well, join the group, thousands of people are already using the Internet to supplement their income. Today, we’re going to be looking at some affiliate marketing tools that will help you grow your business.
This Is A Business
Have you just started your blog or still reading other people’s income reports hoping that you can one day make money with a blog?
If so, you’re in the right place. I’m here to tell you that it’s totally possible to build a passive income digital asset. But, it’s going to require a lot of hard work, time and commitment.
Yes, it’s even going to require you to invest in your business. Don’t worry, it won’t cost as much as you’re probably thinking.
In fact, I am going to share some resources for beginning and intermedia bloggers. I’ve separated them into two different sections, depending on where you are in your blogging journey.
If you’re brand new and have never had a blog before, then I don’t recommend that you invest a lot into your blog. You can start learning for free and I even show you where you can do that.
So let’s get started.
9 Affiliate Marketing Tools That Will Help New Bloggers
If you know anything about me, I’ve had affiliate niche sites in the past. Some did alright and most failed.
Here I am again building this authority website in hopes of earning passive income because I am getting older. Plus, I don’t want to work for anyone else.
I’ve purchased tons of plugins, tools, software, courses and etc to help me increase conversions. You know what I discovered?
Nothing beats consistency and hard work. If you just keep showing up every day and doing something for your blog, you will eventually start to see profits.
Tools are nice and can help make life easier. But it’s important to remember, it is just an apparatus to make your life easier.
It’s NOT going to make you successful if you don’t take action and use it. (hopefully, you already know that)
Top 5 Tools for Brand New Bloggers
These tools are for people who have been standing on the sidelines watching other people and hoping that one day they can finally muster up enough courage to start their blog.
If you already have a blog then scroll down to the gadgets for intermediate bloggers.
#1 Hosting
It’s important to start on a reliable hosting service like SiteGround, which has great customer support and is perfect for brand new bloggers.
One of the mistakes that most new bloggers make is they get started on a free platform. For some reason, they don’t want to invest in their blog or they just don’t think they have what it takes to earn an income online.
I know that it’s hard to pay for something that hasn’t made you any money. But you can’t think like that, you need to know that it’s going to work as long as you work the system.
Yes, it’s possible to start on a free platform if you don’t have any extra money and you’re struggling to pay your bills. But if you find yourself spending money on going out to dinner or buying Starbucks Coffee several times a week, you need to invest in your hosting.
You can get started for less than $5 per month with SiteGround, which is the same hosting account that I am currently using for this blog.
I’ve created a step-by-step tutorial that walks you through the entire process of getting WordPress installed on SiteGround.
Tip: Save money by paying for more than one year upfront. They’ve raised their renewal rates and I am so glad that I paid for 3 years upfront. When my renewal time comes around, I’ll most likely migrate to BigScoots.
#2 Google Analytics
Once you get your WordPress blog installed, it’s time to add some free plugins and get Google Analytics installed. This is a free tool that is available for anyone who has a website online.
It’s one of the most valuable software you can use to help you build your business. Once you start getting traffic to your blog, you’re going to want to know where your visitors are coming from and which content they are reading.
As a blogger, you need to know this information. It will help you know where your time is best spent and what marketing methods you can drop like a bad habit.
It’s okay if you don’t understand how to use it when you get started. All of us started out with zero knowledge of how to read and understand it. Heck, there are still some features in it that I don’t know how to use.
Resources to Help You Understand Google Analytics:
- Ultimate Guide to Google Analytics For Beginners WalkThrough
- How to Remove Referral Spam In Your Analytics (You won’t need to worry about this from day one, but eventually you will)
#3 Email Autoresponder
An email list is so important, I can’t stress it enough. All big bloggers that are making real money, will tell you that the money is in the list.
There are literally tons of services you can start with like GetResponse, ConvertKit, Aweber, Mailerlite, and etc.
If you’re brand new, I wouldn’t recommend spending a lot of money on a service upfront. It’s going to take some time to really learn how to use email marketing effectively.
These services can get expensive quickly, especially, if you’re not making money from your list.
MailerLite allows you to get started for free. The downside is that I’ve read tons of people complaining about lower open rates since they were marked as spam.
I’ve personally never used their service for this blog, so I can’t tell you what to expect. I just started using ConvertKit and I really love it.
#4 Affilorama
Affiliate marketing comes with a huge learning curve, especially, if you’ve never done it before. This free training gives you access to tons of lessons that will help you grasp what it really takes to build a profitable affiliate website.
If you’re new, you’re going to realize there are tons of courses, PDF’s, videos that promise to teach you everything you need to know. There’s even tons of free information online that you can use.
But Affilorama gives you all the information you need in one spot. No more spending tons of time surfing the web trying for free information.
Building a successful affiliate business requires a lot of time. You’re going to spending time writing amazing content, promoting that content, writing emails and etc.
Did I mention you’ll be spending time writing content?
You’re not going to have time to spend hours searching for free information. Especially, if you want to grow your blog and get traffic. Get started with the free training here.
#5 Buzzsomo
This tool is amazing and this is what I used to reach my first 11,000 pageviews on this blog. I no longer really use that method as much as I used to, but it’s a great way to get those first page views on a new blog.
Basically, you use that site to find your competitors’ most popular blog posts. You then use those topics to help you come up with your own posts on that topic.
You’re not stealing, because everything on the Internet has been written about several times. It’s only stealing if you copy and paste the article you find. (which you NEVER want to do)
All you’re doing is finding popular blog topics that do well on Pinterest. You can start doing your searches by clicking this link.
Why Pinterest?
Pinterest is one of those platforms that just does wonders for new bloggers. If you can create amazing pins and write great content, you should start seeing Pinterest traffic pretty quickly.
Every niche is different and some niches do a lot better than others. Here’s a list of the most popular blog topics on Pinterest.
Focus on creating content that is geared towards Pinterest, but don’t forget to optimize it for SEO. (I made the huge mistake of waiting too long for SEO)
Related Articles to Help You Write Content:
- 11 Types of Affiliate Marketing Content You Need to Write
- 15 Types of Blog Posts That Will Help It Grow Like Crazy
- How to Use Yoast SEO Plugin Everything You Need to Know
Tip: It takes time to become a great writer. The only way that you will get better is to keep practicing. I started out writing 500 words every day, now can easily sit down and write a 2500 word article in a few hours.
Biggest Tips for Beginners
There are literally tons of resources that you can invest in as a new affiliate. But the truth is that you probably don’t need it. I would avoid spending a lot of money at the beginning, you can literally go broke and get frustrated if you don’t see results.
The truth is that you really don’t need to spend a lot of money to earn money online. So why do so many people fail to earn online?
Well, the truth is that most people are NOT willing to work hard and keep at it even when they are not seeing results.
You just need to keep pushing forward, even when you’re not getting the results you want. For over a year, I wasn’t getting any love from Google because I was doing my keyword research wrong or just wasn’t doing it at all.
Most people would’ve thrown in the towel and called it quits. Not me, I kept writing and promoting and it’s definitely paying off.
As long as you’re writing content that profitable keywords you can actually rank for and optimizing your blog posts, eventually, you’ll see some organic traffic.
It doesn’t happen overnight.
Ignore the list below, until you have a better understanding of what you’re doing and have at least 20 – 40 blog posts.
5 Gadgets for Intermediate & Advanced Affiliate Marketers
This list is geared for bloggers who have been blogging for a while and have a full understanding of what affiliate marketing is. Maybe you’ve even made a few commissions, but it’s still not consistent and you’re working hard to increase your traffic.
#6 KWFinder
I am in love with this keyword research analysis tool, and I’ve been using it for about 3 months now. It’s definitely been a game changer and I’ve noticed my organic traffic growing slowly every month.
If you’ve never heard of it, be sure to read the review that I wrote about it. You can also read the post where I shared how I was able to increase my organic traffic by over 700% in two months.
There are tons of keyword tools you can use, in fact, I’ve used Ubersuggest, LongTailPro, Keysearch, Jaxxy, and SEMRush.
But I am in love with KWFinder because it is just working for me. Plus it’s one of the most affordable tools that fit my budget.
#7 SEMRush
SEMRush is a must have for intermediate and advanced bloggers. While I don’t recommend paying a month-to-month subscription.
I do recommend signing up with it at least once every 6 months and running a full-website SEO audit.
When I decided to pay for a full month, I ran an SEO audit and was made aware that my site had so many issues. I’ve since fixed them and you can bet that I’ll be checking them again every 6 months.
The thing about blogging is that our website might have SEO issues that we can’t see with the naked eye. SEMRush makes it easy to spot those types of issues that can end up causing you to lose rankings.
So make sure that you’re running an SEO audit at least once every 6 months. You can also use this keyword tool to help you find out which keywords your competitors are using.
Related: 35% Growth In Free In Free Traffic With 3 Simple Steps With SEMRush
#8 Tailwind
Tailwind makes my life so much easier not to mention, I also get to focus on other things in my business while still being active on Pinterest.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time to sit in front of my computer and constantly be manually pinning on Pinterest. That’s why I use an automated scheduler to help me pin while I am busy doing other things.
While I write this blog post, I am out of town enjoying the day. I’ve just taken a break to finish up this blog post from last night.
It’s nice knowing that my Pinterest account is staying active without me having to log in and pin on a regular basis.
I don’t recommend paying for an unlimited subscription until you have at least 30-60 of your own pins.
You can grab your free trial to test things out and pin your first 100 pins for free.
Articles related to How to Use Pinterest:
- How to Use Tailwind to Grow My Blog What You Need to Know
- 200 Tailwind Tribes That Will Help You Skyrocket Your Blog Growth
#9 Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
This is a premium affiliate course, but Michelle of Making Sense of Cents reveals some amazing strategies that she has used to grow her affiliate income to over $100,000 per month.
Her income is a combination of several different income streams, but she started off making over $50,000 from affiliate marketing alone.
When I purchased the product, I really didn’t think that the course would help me out. After all, I’ve had several niche sites in the past.
But the truth is that I did pick up some nuggets from it. The best part about this course is that you get access to her in her Facebook Group.
You can literally login into the Facebook group and ask her questions. Yes, she will take the time to respond.
This alone is worth the investment in this course. How many six-figure bloggers actually make time to answer questions from their fans?
Most of them that I know charge you some type of fee if you want them to answer a question or need help with something.
You can check out the course here.
These Are Just Tools
Don’t feel like you need to invest in all of these tools, because you don’t. Really all you need is a self-hosted WordPress blog to start building your passive income lifestyle.
No tool is going to make any amount of difference if you don’t actually sit down and use it. You can’t just expect to pay for a tool or software and sit back and reap the rewards.
Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You have to do the work and keep learning. If you don’t then it’s just a waste of money.
Regardless of which tool you decide to invest in on this page, make sure you use it. Otherwise, just hold on to your money and take your family out for a nice dinner.
Final Take Away
These resources have been amazing for my blog growth and income growth. Hopefully, you find them helpful as well.
I realize that you want to learn affiliate Internet marketing for free and not pay a penny to grow your blog. If you’re building a business, you can’t be scared to invest in your blog.
You don’t have to spend a fortune to learn affiliate marketing. Depending on what blog stage you’re at, depends on what types of tools and resources you should invest in.
If you do purchase any type of courses to help you with your blogging journey, make sure that you implement it. Don’t make the mistake of just buying product after product hoping that you start earning.
There is NO substitute for success than doing the actual work and learning along the way.
Hand Picked Articles for You
- 4 Best Grammarly Alternative Proofreaders to Help You
- Affiliate Marketing for Dummies What You Need to Know
- Best Affiliate Programs That Will Make You Money
Are you currently using any of these to help you grow your business? If so let me know which ones and if you’re happy with it.
