To run a successful affiliate marketing business (or any kind of business, for that matter!), you need the right tools. And nowadays, you’re spoiled for choice. Although having options is always preferred to having none, it leaves you with a new problem: which affiliate marketing resources and tools should you choose?
If you're looking for the right tools to maximize the efficiency of your campaign, you're in the right place. In this post, we will share our recommended tools for various aspects of affiliate marketing to help you attract successful referrals. But first, let's get on the same page about what affiliate marketing is.
Affiliate Marketing: It's What All Affiliate Marketing Tools Are Made For!
Affiliate marketing is an arrangement where a retailer or company pays a commission for every sale that you make. This is a popular and effective way to generate passive income. Once you have the assets needed to guide the audience through the customer journey, you can earn from affiliate marketing for life!
One of the best things about affiliate marketing is its low barrier to entry. While it’s free to join affiliate programs, you need to invest substantial effort to actually succeed in this field.
Why Do We Use Tools for Affiliate Marketing?
As an affiliate marketer, your competition is everywhere. You have to be faster and better at implementing your campaigns if you don’t want to miss out on that referral. Even though you can theoretically become an online affiliate marketer without using any special tools, it’s going to be more difficult. Your competitors will definitely run circles around you, and you won’t be able to reach a lot of potential buyers. Therefore, using tools is a necessity — not a luxury.
So how do you know which tool is right for you? Here are a few factors that you should consider when choosing the right tool.
#1. Cost of Service/Digital Product
When selecting tools needed for affiliate marketing, your budget should always be part of the conversation. When you treat everything as an investment, you'll be in a much better position to see whether something is valuable. This means that you should always compare the cost to the potential value of a tool in terms of important factors like delivering results or saving time. If you're just starting out, even free tools can help you get a leg up on the competition until you have enough funds to invest in pricier services.
Low-cost and free tool suggestions: Grammarly, Yoast SEO, AffJet
#2. Quality of Customer Support
The tools of affiliate marketing sites are wasted if you can’t maximize their benefits. That's why when you put money into any business investment, you should use it immediately, and with ample customer support, you'll be able to. Of course, having specialists to help you with technical concerns is a must-have. However, if you want more comprehensive support, you should also look for guides, a community of users and a bug report system.
Suggestions for tools with amazing customer support: Ahrefs, Hunter, ConvertKit
#3. Ease of Use
The perfect tool should practically operate itself, but if that’s not an option, at least consider the level of technical knowledge required to use it. The last thing you want to happen is to be stuck figuring out how to make something work.
Suggestions for easy-to-use tools: Link Whisper, Frase IO, Nitropack
Best Affiliate Marketing Tools That Will Transform Your Business
Now that you have a deeper appreciation of how affiliate marketing tools can improve and transform your business, let’s delve into the specifics. In this section, we’ll share our recommendations to help you narrow down your options. To give you a more convenient navigation experience, we have divided them into a few categories.
Best Affiliate Marketing Spying Tools
In an age where people are craving privacy, using words like "spying" can sound off-putting. However, spy tools are simply used for competition research.
Adbeat
Pricing: $249 to $399 per month
Main features:
- High-quality data from more than 120 ad networks gives you the most complete information to drive your decision-making
- Competitive benchmarking makes it easier to see key strategic differences of as many as five competitors
- Instant alerts notifies you as soon as advertisers launch new campaigns
Adbeat’s pricing may be on the steeper end, but if you have a substantial ad budget per month, Adbeat is one of the best spy tools for affiliate marketing. It will serve as your eyes and ears everywhere in the advertising world, so you can recalibrate your strategy and campaign to create the biggest impact.
Mobidea
Pricing: $79.99/month for push options; $59.99/month for native options; $124.99/month for both
Main features:
- Inventory of more than 19 million ads that you can spy on
- PPC search ads’ bidding information helps you outbid the competition
- Traffic sources and target market info helps with your decision making
If you’re using push ads, Mobidea is easily the best among all the available affiliate marketing spy tools out there. It helps you see the top push campaigns in terms of profit, as well as to find winning ads and the best channels for your offer.
Adplexity
Pricing: $149 to $249 per month
Main features:
- Real-time data gathering helps keep your strategy fresh
- Seven versions to choose from: mobile, push, adult, native, e-commerce, desktop, and carriers
- Sophisticated ad filters to filter by keyword, publisher, advertiser and affiliate network
If you plan to use various traffic sources or receive commissions from various companies, Adplexity is worth looking at. With its easy navigation, filtering and search options, you can garner in-depth insights on how to run your campaign.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Tracking Tools
How is the performance of your campaign? Any affiliate marketer worth their salt will always know how to answer this question. User behavior, clicks and traffic are all important performance metrics; therefore, allocating funds from your ad budget for tools to measure performance is equally important. The information from tracking tools will help you make better decisions and prevent wasting money in the process. Below are our top recommendations for achieving a better understanding of your campaigns.
Hotjar
Pricing: Free to $79/month
Main features:
- Session recordings let you see your site from the perspective of an individual user
- Heatmaps show how visitors are interacting with your pages
- Surveys and feedback give qualitative input straight from your audience
If engagement is an issue for your business, Hotjar may be a great match. They can give you information about user behavior that numbers can’t reveal, letting you make necessary changes to certain elements of your landing page.
Voluum
Price: $499 to $1999 per month
Main features:
- Advanced optimization using real-time data
- Custom conversion tracking lets you track certain segments of the market without custom software
- High-level segmentation allows you to track the market segments of your campaign
If you use paid ads to drive traffic to your site, Voluum will be incredibly useful. Apart from tracking the performance of your ads, it also lets you automate and make changes to your campaign.
Thrive Tracker
Pricing: $44 to $79 per month
Main features:
- AI Optimization can make changes to your campaign based on set parameters
- A landing page tracking pixel tracks everything without the need for a redirect
- Funnel Support lets you set up multiple versions of the funnel without needing to edit your landing page code
Thrive Tracker does more than track the performance of your campaign. Based on certain parameters, it can also make decisions based on the tracked data. In addition, it offers a variety of tools for you to accurately compare real-time spending and earning.
The Best Affiliate Network Management Tools
Profit maximization is the name of the game! That’s why it’s very common for affiliate marketers to be a part of various affiliate networks. This helps them make recommendations that will truly benefit their audience. Additionally, if your audience comes from different countries, certain sites may not be available to them. So, to help manage all the networks that you’re a part of, we’ve found the best marketing tools for affiliate network management. With these, you’ll be able to focus on more important tasks like making decisions based on data insights.
AffJet
Pricing: Free to £30/month ($33/month)
Main features:
- One dashboard for all accounts ensures you don’t have to log in individually
- Streamlined income reporting lets you make financial decisions based on aggregated data
- Mobile-friendly platform lets you track earnings, no matter the device
If you belong to more affiliate networks than you can count, AffJet is the solution you're looking for. Instead of individually logging into each platform, all you’ll need is Affjet. Just add your affiliate networks and you’re good to go.
WeCanTrack
Pricing: €59 ($65) to €279 ($307) per month
Main features:
- Various reports are available, including ones on advertisers, content, networks, traffic sources, and campaign performance
- More than 350 network integrations almost guarantees network compatibility
- Marketing tool integrations allow you to make consolidated actions across all affiliate networks
With WeCanTrack, you can track all your affiliate data in one place. As a result of consolidating your data and marketing tools, you can retarget audiences efficiently, automate your campaign and much more.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Analytics and Reporting Tools
Data is at the heart of every marketing campaign. That’s why you’ll notice that most tools are somewhat related to the data from your affiliate marketing efforts. The next step is analytics and reporting. If you’re part of a big business, the tools we’re going to recommend will make your job so much easier! They let you focus on applying the analysis results to your campaigns. So let’s have a look at the affiliate marketing tools and resources that can help you make objective and data-driven decisions for your affiliate marketing strategy.
Whatagraph
Pricing: $223 to $335 per month
Main features:
- Unlimited historical data allows you to see and appreciate the advertising trends and changes throughout the years
- Pre-made templates make reporting data so much easier
- Up to 10 users are allowed so that everyone on your team can review the analyses
If you have an in-house marketing team, Whatagraph may be a good fit. It makes tasks related to the processing, analyzing and reporting of data effortless, so you can focus on creating new strategies to grow your affiliate business.
ClickDimensions
Pricing: Undisclosed
Main features:
- 13 marketing and sales dashboards help you control various aspects of affiliate marketing and sales
- 172 KPIs are tracked across various channels, letting you gain insights without doing any of the work
- Managed data connections and integrations give you access to the data needed to make marketing decisions
ClickDimensions is an affiliate marketing tool that connects all other tools and reporting processes, so marketers can examine sales and marketing events at the macro level.
Google Analytics
Pricing: Free
Main features:
- High-level audience segmentation helps you create campaigns for a targeted demographic
- Sophisticated AI-driven insights give you a starting point on how to proceed with your campaign
- Complete information covers practically every data point you need from your audience
Google Analytics will always be a must-have for affiliate marketers who want to learn more about their audience. It’s one of the most powerful affiliate marketing research tools for in-depth insights on quantitative data.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Ad Optimization Tools
If you're running ads, you have to keep the same energy or you risk fading into obscurity. Ads and marketing are always evolving, so your campaign should never be static. It should reflect the latest data to ensure that every dollar spent is worth it. Let's stretch your dollar further than it has ever been, shall we? These affiliate marketing tools for ad optimization will help get your ads closer to this ever-moving target of perfection.
AdRoll
Pricing: Starts at $36/month
Main features:
- Automated cross-channel recipes for increased brand awareness, retargeting, win-back and much more
- Configurable campaign reporting lets you see what’s working and what’s not, so you can make changes when needed
- Display, native, social, and email campaign compatibility lets you optimize any campaign asset for affiliate marketing
Even though it’s designed as management software for campaigns on various platforms, many of AdRoll’s features allow for high-level optimization of advertisements. Plus, you get AdRoll credits that you can use for additional advertising. This way, you can test out your optimized campaign essentially for free.
AdEspresso
Pricing: Starts at $49 per month
Main features:
- The A/B testing feature lets you see which ad version can generate more clicks
- Actionable tips give you ideas on how to improve your campaign and further stretch your ad dollar
- Automatic ad pausing for underperforming campaigns to help you save money
From creation to optimization of affiliate ad campaigns, AdEspresso can be your reliable partner. Even without changing platforms, it lets you create ads for Google, Facebook and Instagram. Data processing will always be a breeze because it lets ad accounts connect to other CRM platforms and affiliate marketing tools.
RevealBot
Pricing: Starts at $99 per month
Main features:
- Integration for Google Sheets, AppsFlyer, Wicked Reports, Slack and Hyros
- Custom metrics and time frames allow you to uncover specific insights
- Custom audiences can help improve the impact of your ad
One of our favorite affiliate marketing tools for Facebook ad optimization, RevealBot takes care of all aspects of ad creation. From developing strategies and monitoring performance to optimizing campaigns, you can do everything in one place.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Link Management Tools
Links are what allow you to earn commissions. This is your proof that someone purchased from the company because of your promotional efforts. As the number of offers you promote continues to grow, managing links becomes harder. Remember how we talked about the potential problems associated with being in numerous affiliate networks? This is one of them. Link management becomes so much harder when you’re on multiple sites! However, the challenges of juggling multiple affiliate links become much easier with the following affiliate marketing tools.
Affilimate
Pricing: $99 to $374 per month
Main features:
- Up to 48 months of historical data to see trends from a macro point of view
- Unlimited integrations so you can truly have everything in one place
- The universal affiliate link generator creates affiliate links ready for distribution
If you’re earning at least $1,000 in affiliate commission, consider Affilimate your new best friend. Apart from integrating all your affiliate networks and links in one place, it also has heatmaps, content segmentation and optimization functions, plus aggregate reporting to help you earn even more.
PrettyLinks
Pricing: $99.50 to $199.50 per year
Main features:
- Link keywords automatically so you don’t have to manually do it
- Diverse link management features like custom slugs, automatic link titles, robot filtering, nofollow links and many more
You can just sit pretty as PrettyLinks takes care of all the hassles associated with link management. You can automatically link, create, and replace links on pages with just a one-time yearly payment.
ThirstyAffiliates
Pricing: Free to $149/month
Main features:
- The proactive link fixer ensures that your link is working all the time
- Autolink keywords let you link an affiliate link to certain keywords automatically
- CSV Import/Export lets you manage your links across all your sites
ThirstyAffiliates is a WordPress plugin that helps you with one of the most headache-inducing tasks when running a campaign: managing all the links on all your sites. And because it's a plugin, you can use the search bar on WordPress to find any specific link.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Content Creation Tools
As an affiliate marketer, there’s going to be a lot of work at the beginning. Apart from setting up various systems before running your campaign, you also have to produce a lot of content for your audience to consume. So in this area, you’re going to need all the help you can get. After all, content is what will drive your audience into taking action. So, whether you’re running a blog, a YouTube channel or a social media page, these tools can help you present your message in the best light possible.
Grammarly
Pricing: Free to $15/month
Main features:
- Grammar and syntax checking makes your content sound more professional
- Real-time checking ensures you to correct errors right away
- Easy upload and download for reviewing pre-created files
Sending your message clearly won’t be as hard with Grammarly. This way, you can focus on the content instead of nitpicking every word you wrote. You can also set goals, so suggestions will be appropriate to your audience and platform.
Frase.IO
Pricing: Starts at $12.66/month
Main features:
- AI Generated Content Briefs give you fresh ideas when you’re drawing a blank
- Question Research generates relevant questions based on your keyword
- SEO Optimization surrounding your keyword improves the site’s ranking
If you want to boost your search engine ranking and organic traffic, Frase.IO will come in handy. Here, you'll see keywords that you can input to optimize content. The score will go up based on how optimized the content becomes. Others can also make edits to the article even if they don’t have an account.
Canva
Pricing: Free to $119.99
Main features:
- Employ various graphic selections that you can use for presentations, images and videos
- Create and convert video to .mp4 so you can use it for whatever purpose necessary
- Enhance texts and images with various effects to improve their aesthetic value
Canva is a graphic design platform that simplifies the creation of visual content. The best part is you can start for free. But if you want access to all the features that are on the site, you should, at the very least, upgrade to the cheapest plan.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Fraud Detection and Prevention Tools
Fraud is everywhere, including in affiliate marketing. Even though you're not on the buying end of the transaction, it's still possible for you to become a victim of fraud. For affiliate marketers, the most common form of fraud is having bots click on your ads. This drives up your ad spending without generating any positive results. So if you're planning to set up a campaign, make sure to have either of these marketing tools set up. They will help protect you from depleting your advertising budget on bot clicks.
Lunio
Pricing: Undisclosed
Main features:
- 15 platforms are supported, including Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok
- False positive prevention so your target audience retains their opportunity to purchase through your affiliate link
- Stores first-party data on clicks so you can review the data and recheck if fraud occurred
Lunio automates security through its features. With their help, your ad spending will be directed to customers instead of bots. If you decide to purchase, you can have it set up in just five minutes.
SHIELD
Pricing: Undisclosed
Main features:
- Real-time fraud prevention keeps your ad money safe at all times
- Comprehensive insights and analytics helps you verify the quality of traffic you get from various channels
- Customizable risk thresholds give you control of what will be seen as fraud
Optimize the performance of your ads based on real data from real people to improve your earnings with SHIELD. Apart from preventing bots from spending your ad money, they also give clear insights so you can make informed choices for your affiliate business.
FAQ on Affiliate Program Marketing Tools
Why do I need affiliate marketing tools?
All the resources and tools out there help you become a better affiliate marketer. With these tools, you can optimize your system to minimize time and monetary losses while maximizing the potential gains that you get from the marketing campaign.
Can I use multiple affiliate marketing tools at the same time?
Definitely! Each tool has its own purpose, and you can compound your success by using complementary tools in your campaign.
What tools are needed for affiliate marketing today?
It depends on what your budget is and what you’re trying to achieve. Here’s our quick guide to help you in this matter:
- Determine the gaps in your affiliate marketing business.
- Find out which tools would fill these gaps.
- Get the tool with the biggest positive effect on your business.
What are the best affiliate marketing tools for bloggers today?
Bloggers will definitely benefit from writing aids like Grammarly, Hemingway App and JasperAI. Meanwhile, SEO tools like Frase and Yoast SEO can help boost site rankings and increase traffic.
What kind of customer support is available for affiliate marketing tools?
It will completely depend on the company. A lot of the tools available will have at least a contact form. Others may also offer a Help Center where you’ll be able to try to troubleshoot the issue on your own.
What are the best affiliate marketing tools for beginners?
The number one criterion that you should be looking at is the ease of use, so you can integrate the tool into your system right away. When you're just starting out, free or low-cost tools are great. Just filter out your options using these criteria to find the best tools for you.
Is it okay to use free tools?
Definitely! They give you a great starting point, so you don’t run too much in the negative, and you can always upgrade later on.
Conclusion: Affiliate Marketing Tools and Resources Are Your Weapons for Success
Your job is to make sure that your weapon of choice is a good match for your obstacles. That's how you stack the odds in your favor. No matter the area of affiliate marketing that you want to improve in, there’s a perfect tool for it. The next step would be to start implementing your funnel. Seasoned affiliate marketers know that casting a wide net isn’t necessarily the best way to generate the most sales. It’s all about getting your message to the right audience.
Get your offer in front of a relevant, high-intent audience through the MGID platform. With our help, you can gain access to the best tools for affiliate marketing, a personal manager, a department of creative specialists and a large number of high-quality publishers all of which help stimulate the right engagement. Let us help your affiliate marketing campaign reach its highest potential. Register on the MGID platform today!
