Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Marketing Tools

Friday, September 16th, 2011 at 9:42 am

The Top Affiliate Marketing Tools for Success

If you’re looking for affiliate marketing tools you are really looking to find the quickest and easiest ways to make money online. Affiliate marketing does still work, and works very well for those who know what they are doing. But it has changed in the last few years. All you needed to do affiliate marketing a few years ago was a Paypal account and some pay-per-click ads and you could make money easily. Nowadays you can build up a stronger and more reliable income with affiliate marketing, but it takes more time, work, and having the correct affiliate marketing tools in place.

The ultimate goal in affiliate marketing is to have a responsive, active, and LARGE list. You should only get affiliate marketing tools that will help you to either grow or nurture this list.

The only strategy that will build you a long term and steady income is to pick a niche, start building a list of people who are interested in this niche (usually by offering a free e-book, information, videos, etc) follow up with them via email giving them more information related to the niche, and every now and again suggest products that they will actually be interested in. By not always sending them your affiliate links you will build a strong and trusting relationship with them and they will be more likely to buy when you do send out an affiliate link.

The Top 5 Affiliate Marketing Tools

1. Autoresponders -

This will be vital to your success, you need a way to follow up with your list. A good autoresponder service will let you both have an automatic list of emails that get dripped out to a new person joining your list, and it will also have a way to blast a message to everyone on your list at once. You need the capacity to do a blast message so that if you have a special product launch you want to promote you can let everyone know.

Aweber – I personally use Aweber, as it is a good service with a user friendly interface, it let’s you see if your emails are being opened, your links are being clicked, etc. It also has a good standing, ensuring your emails follow legal guidelines and don’t contain spam.

2. Social Media

Not everyone considers this a tool, but pages like Facebook can be a great way to build a list. Again think about nurturing. You want to connect with people who are interested in your niche, but not send them affiliate links straight away.

You can start a special interest group in Facebook once you’ve built up a friend’s list of people who are actually interacting with you. Ensure you make it a “spam free” zone. Don’t let people post affiliate links and don’t do it yourself. You can then email the group once a month or so with a suggestion for a good niche related product.

3. Affiliate Networks

This one is obvious, but you need a place to find your products. You need to keep your list sweet, so don’t recommend crappy products to them. Find products that have a good track record and are very targeted to your niche. It’s better if you’ve tried them yourself, but in some niches that wont always be necessary.

A great place to start is Clickbank. You will find a wide array of products in many different niches. You also get statistics on each product so you can decide what will perfomr will for you. Once you’ve gotten going there are other affiliate networks you can use for products.

I don’t recommend picking products outside an affiliate network unless you have tried it yourself! Don’t risk the trust of your list for a quick buck.

4. Website or Blog

You will need to create a blog or a place for your leads to find you and to come back and interact. Having your own blog also means you can do product reviews and send your list to your videos or articles about products and why you think they will like them (this works much better than just sending them straight to a salespage).

If you don’t know how to start the How to Blog Tutorial will show you how to get your first business blog set up in just 30 minutes.

5. Education

Often overlooked, this is usually not included in most lists of affiliate marketing tools, but it’s very important. You need to immerse yourself in your niche and your business. Keep up-to-date with any news and happenings in your niche so you have material to keep educating your list. You also need constant education in marketing so that you can stay on top and compete in the world of affiliate marketing.

It can seem a little overwhelming at first, but just having the right affiliate marketing tools in place and following a strong strategy will set you up for long term success.

To be successful with affiliate marketing you will have to have a strong marketing and traffic generation strategy in place. Start by signing up for the Lead generation bootcamp at the right of this page. It was created for network marketers, but shows how to generate traffic and build a list in any niche.