When it comes to affiliate marketing, there are special tools designed to help you make sales.
Some are to keep track of your affiliate links.
Some are to help increase clicks and conversions.
In this post, we’ll be looking at 5 affiliate marketing tools that will help you do just that.
So let's get started.
The 5 Affiliate Marketing Tools
#1. Affiliate Links (Lite)
Owner: TeamDev
Price: Free w/ paid options
Use: Affiliate Link Cloaking and Tracking
When you’re into affiliate marketing, you will obviously deal with a lot of affiliate links. At least one affiliate link per product you promote.
So instead of memorizing every link you’ve got out there, using a tool like Affiliate Links (Lite) will allow you to keep track of all your links within your WordPress Admin area. Just like you would with your blog posts, categories, and tags.
You’ll be able to track the number of hits it receives. Which is a nice feature that isn’t provided by many plugins of its kind.
Another nice feature is you could categorize your affiliate links. Which could be super helpful when you have dozens of links.
Also, turning ugly affiliate links into clean URLs is the real treat.
Recommended: Affiliate Marketing: Learn How To Make Your First $1000 Passive Income Online
#2. Tablepress
Owner: Tobias Bäthge
Price: Free
Use: Comparison Tables
Tablepress is a WordPress plugin that lets you create tables with ease.
As an affiliate, comparison posts and product roundups are 2 types of content you’ll likely create.
With Tablepress, you’ll be able to create useful tables that could increase your affiliate content’s conversions.
Here’s an example of a table that includes product images:
Here’s one with just plain text:
As you can see from the 2 examples above, you’ll be able to include:
- The products’ images.
- The pricing.
- The pros and cons.
- Your overall rating.
- And what ever you'd like.
#3. Review Content Type
Owner: Chetan Chauhan
Price: Free
Use: Affiliate Reviews
Product reviews are an affiliate's best friend. When done right, they convert like crazy.
Now, there are several product review plugins out there. What makes this one different is actually pretty big.
Most review plugins add mini-reviews at the top/bottom of your product review posts.
Review Content Type doesn’t. In fact, it adds a whole new custom post type. It’s just like Posts and Pages.
Actually, it’s exactly like Posts because it’s got its own Categories and Tags. The only difference is this custom post type is called Reviews.
You’ll even be able to rank them in the SERPs.
As for the review posts, you’ll create them just like you would with normal posts.
You’d write your review content in the WP post editor.
And then you’d get to work on the plugin’s main review feature. Which is the “summary area” at the top of the post.
You’d do this by filling in the Review Data tab.
When you’re done with that, you’ll get something that’ll look like this:
#4. Shortcodes Ultimate
Owner: Vladimir Anokhin
Price: Free
Use: Shortcodes – Buttons and more
What are shortcodes?
You’ve heard of “coding” before, right? It’s basically what everything on the internet is made up of. Code.
Well, shortcodes are like shortcuts to codes that would take 10x longer to write.
Basically, it would take something that looks like this:
Into something shorter, like this:
And still come up with the end.
Quick Note: Most of the code in our example isn’t real. It was created for the sole purpose of helping you understand what shortcodes are and what they can do.
So, why use shortcodes? How will this help me as an affiliate?
The Shortcodes Ultimate has more than 50 shortcodes to use. But the reason it’s on this list is because of its button shortcode.
Buttons that stand out make great calls to action.
That means you could use this to increase clicks on your affiliate links.
Let’s take a look at some examples:
I bet the ideas are just popping up in your head right now.
#5. Thrive Content Builder + Landing Pages
Owner: Thrive Themes
Price: Paid
Use: WP Content Editor w/ Landing Pages
I’m sorry. I tried to keep this list low-budget-friendly.
But hey, we all know we need to invest in certain things so we can grow our blogs and online businesses, right?
And Thrive Content Builder is one of the things you’ve got to invest in.
So how will this tool help you with your affiliate marketing?
Blogging plus affiliate marketing means you’ll need to create content. Reviews, comparisons, product roundups, etc. That’s where TCB comes in.
TCB is WordPress plugin from the guys at Thrive Themes. It’s like your default WP editor. But it’s jam-packed with tons of neat features.
For example, Styled Lists. Which are unordered list points, but with a little more style.
The best part about this is you’ll never need to load your preview page because you edit your content literally in preview mode (not in the wp-admin area). It’s the real WYSIWYG.
So anyway, there are 2 ways this tool can help you drive affiliate sales:
#1. Visually Appealing Content Performs Better
Visual content outperforms regular text almost all the time. And it’s been proven time and time again.
A great example would be from Buffer. They found tweets that included images received a whopping 150% more retweets than those without.
Why is visual content so dominant?
Optimal Targeting shows you the why in this image from their infographic:
Fascinating, isn’t it?
With the Thrive Content Builder, you’ll be able to turn plain text into something that is visually appealing.
#2. It Has Features That Can Increase Conversions
TCB has multiple features (aka elements) that can increase your affiliate sales or conversions.
A great example would be their Call to Action element, which has 4 different styles. All aimed at getting the reader to click a button (that could link to your affiliate offer).
Another great example would be their Table element, which allows you to create tables within your web pages. This would be great for product comparison tables or roundups.
They also have others that’d be useful for affiliates. Such as their Testimonial element, Pricing Tables, Guarantee Boxes, and the Star Rating element.
A quick note about their landing pages: they have 4 templates for affiliate content.
- The product review
- The comparison review
- The video review
- The recommended resources page
Conclusion
Promoting other people’s products for a commission is one of the best ways to make money with your blog. Mostly because you'll never need to deal with creating products, processing orders, shipping, and all that other stuff.
The 5 tools we featured in this post, they'll help you earn those commissions.
Install them. Learn them. Use them.
Hey Julian,
Affiliate marketing has become one of the favorites money making technique to many. People are sharing their links on social media.
But they need to handle the website affiliate links with the tools mentioned above. I like the last one.
I have always linked the shortcodes and coding stuff.
Though cloaking your affiliate links is required which can be done using Affiliate Links ( Lite).
Thanks for sharing the list.
~Ravi
Thanks for the great comment, Ravi.
Cheers!!
Hello,
Awesome post and i appreciate your work.
I love it. Happy to read. Thanks for sharing.
You’re welcome, Ella. I’m glad you enjoyed it. 🙂
I’m loving your blog. Thank you very much for sharing these tools. I’m sure I can now make more sales
Great Post Julian, This helps a lot for many Affiliate Marketer.Thanks for sharing.
Hey Julian,
Thanks for sharing an informative post on this topic. Making sales in this industry is getting difficult due to the competition level. Looking forward to using these tools in the coming days.
Great roundup Julian…
Having been in the affiliate marketing world for 10 years now, it is always easy to forget how hard it is too make those first sales and earn your first commissions.
Keep testing new things and when you find something that works, milk that as much as you can by trying to improve the technique until you can get no more out of it then move onto new ideas!
All look like rocking tools Julian. I am getting a little more into the affiliate side of things these days so things are expanding in that area. Time to shop for tools. I know how you link can effect sales. Which is why for my Amazon Associates account I love using those short links. I generate royalty payments for my eBook sales then a nice little cut of those affiliate payments too. Double Dipping 🙂
Ryan
Hey Julian,
I’m loving the tools here. I really like the first one, Affiliate Link (Lite). I have quite a few affiliate links all that I need to keep better track of. I was tracking them in Google Analytics but you can only track up to so many links.
I use TCB and it’s a great plugin. I’m loving all the features. It took me a couple of days to get the gist of it, but once you do it becomes a great tool to attract more visitors to your blog and gain more subscriptions and sales.
Thanks for sharing! Have a great weekend!
it’s an amazing article. The list of tools you have provided is just amazing, I was very confused earlier that which is the best one but now I can easily choose one. Very nice explanation .
Thanks Julian Sakanee for sharing this wonderful article
Hi Julian,
Affiliate marketing let us to make adecent income with nominal effort. These tools will make the work more easier. I was unaware about Yoast review option. It seems to be useful for beginners who just entered into Affiliate marketing.
Thank you very much for the post.
Have a nice day !
Hi Julian,
Wow… I’m so glad to be familiar with the top affiliate marketing tools, will help me to achieve success driving more sales and conversation rate. Since it is free, TablePress sounds great and I want to use it first. Perfect for comparing the product each other, looks beautiful in image.
Also Review Content Type is best reviewing the product you want more views and conversions. Each and every tools you have mentioned here, is amazing and I’m so excited to first use of these affiliate marketing tools.
I have bookmarked this webpage and will be the best to use these all affiliate marketing tools in coming times. Thank you so much for awesome and useful share, Julian.
Keep sharing such useful stuff. 🙂
– Ravi.
Julian, you just nailed it.
You have added those tools which are proven to enhance the affiliate marketing sales.
I am using TablePress and ShortCodes Ultimates. These both tools helped me, and my affiliate sale has increased by 42% after using this tools.
These tools will make the work more easier. I was unaware about Yoast review option. It seems to be useful for beginners who just entered into Affiliate marketing.
I’m so glad to be familiar with the top affiliate marketing tools, will help me to achieve success driving more sales and conversation rate. Since it is free, TablePress sounds great and I want to use it first. Perfect for comparing the product each other, looks beautiful in image.
Also Review Content Type is best reviewing the product you want more views and conversions. Each and every tools you have mentioned here, is amazing and I’m so excited to first use of these affiliate marketing tools.
Wonderful post. I never thought of utilizing affiliate marketing tools to increase my sales. Instead, I thought of them as tools to advertise another company.