In this article, we’ll be sharing our 15 favorite affiliate marketing tools right now. But before we jump into the list, let’s get on the same page about what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and why you’ll probably want to get started with affiliate marketing if you haven’t already.

Best Affiliate Marketing Programs to Grow Your Affiliate Business:

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting products from another brand or company. That’s it. You basically find a product or service you like, promote it to other people like you, and earn money on the sale. Of course, you can’t just choose any product or service you love and expect to get paid. You first have to make sure that the company has an affiliate marketing program. To find out, you can go through an affiliate marketing platform or even head over to Google and search “product you love + affiliate program.”

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

At its core, affiliate marketing is simple: you promote a product and get paid on sales you make. There are several ways an affiliate program can be structured, though. Most commonly, you’ll find affiliate programs using one of these three models:

Customer Acquisition: You get paid when your marketing results in a new customer for the company. Purchase-Based: You get paid when someone uses your affiliate link to make a purchase. Traffic-Based: You get paid based on how many people you refer, regardless of whether or not they make a purchase.

What Are the Benefits of Affiliate Marketing?

If you’re not already using affiliate marketing as an additional stream of revenue, you might be wondering if it’s worth it to get started. Here are a few benefits of affiliate marketing for influencers and marketers.

(Nearly) Passive Income

We say “nearly” passive income because you’ll still need to create content and promote your affiliate products. However, you can make sales at any time and you don’t have to actively participate in the transaction for it to happen. Many of the affiliate marketing tools on this list will help you automate your affiliate marketing so you can get a great ROI.

Flexibility

With affiliate marketing, you’re just selling products that you like. You don’t have to create, manufacture, store, or ship the products. This means no set hours and the freedom to choose the products you want to promote.

Cost-Effective

Affiliate marketing is an easy way to start your own business without making a monetary investment. As we mentioned, you have no physical products to worry about — you just invest the time it takes to create content and promote the products.

Low Risk

In addition to being cost-effective, affiliate marketing is low risk. Again, you have no physical products to build or store. You might need to invest in your own domain and a content management system, but those things are pretty cheap. And, if you’re reading this, you probably already have those things in place.

No Customer Support

As an affiliate marketer, you just sell. No need to think about customer support for the products and services you sell. Of course, the products that you choose to promote to your followers should be high-quality and from reputable businesses with decent support. This matters because you’ll quickly lose trust with your audience if you’re pushing bad products from bad companies. Types of Affiliate Marketing Programs There are several types of affiliate marketing programs you can choose from. The affiliate marketing program you should choose will depend on your target audience’s behavior or on which digital channel they spend most of their time on. Do they prefer to look for deals or do they like to do research beforehand by reading blogs or social media posts? Let’s take a look at some of the common types of affiliate marketing programs and how they can fit into your marketing campaigns.

📢  Review sites

Review sites are a popular choice for affiliates. It’s a good choice if you’re focusing on marketing products that are more expensive, niche, or require more research on the part of your buyers. You can get in touch with a particular review site that’s aligned with the product or service you’re offering and ask them if they are open to affiliate partnerships or if they can provide you with an affiliate link.

📢  Loyalty programs

Many large-scale companies offer loyalty rewards to their customers. Often, they also come with a large membership base, giving you the opportunity to market your products as an advertiser.

📢  Rewards or incentive programs 

Incentive programs give you the opportunity to market your products or services to a significant number of potential leads. However, this same incentive may produce lower quality leads, which, in turn, can affect your sales. 

📢  Coupon portals

Coupon portals are ideal if you’re marketing a new or niche product. Given that there’s no shortage of potential buyers who are looking for good deals, partnering with a coupon portal for your affiliate marketing program can be advantageous.  Yes, you’re giving a discount for your products, but this also gives you the opportunity to put your product in front of potential buyers. This also encourages customers who have availed of your products to return to your brand and make repeat purchases.  Do note that this type of affiliate marketing program has its drawbacks. Aside from driving down your profit margins, this may cause your regular customers to only buy your products whenever you offer a discount code.

📢  Content marketing portals

Content marketing portals, such as blogs, also make for profitable (for both your brand and your partners) affiliate partnerships. Blogs and websites are valuable channels for posting about the features of your and for reviewing them. Additionally, you can work with bloggers or influencers who are aligned with your brand and  your ideal buyer persona. For example, you can partner with a social media influencer whose focus is on health and wellness. Ask them to feature or recommend your brand, which can prompt their followers your target audience) to check out your website or your products.  Working with brand ambassadors who have an established following on various online platforms would enable you to expand your reach. Plus, blogs or articles are more likely to organically rank in search engine results pages. This increases the likelihood of your product showing up when your target audience uses search engines like Google. 

📢  Email marketing 

Email marketing has been around for ages and has proven to be an effective tool. However, while it may be effective, it’s best to be mindful of how you’re going to go about it. This means working with affiliates who embody your target buyer persona or have a following made up of individuals who are likely to be interested in what you’re offering. 

Bonus: Paxful 

It’s a tool that works well for brands that already have an active affiliate marketing program or businesses that want to start one. It lets you track digital sales from your affiliates’ referral, automate your commissions, enjoy access to unlimited commission structures, and create better relationships with your affiliates through its personalized affiliate portal.  It’s easy to integrate with the e-commerce platform that you’re using, and it lets you monitor clicks and conversions in real time. Once integrated, you can start using Refersion to: ✔️ Sign up your affiliates ✔️ Manage conversions ✔️ Send payments ✔️ Run and schedule detailed reports ✔️ Encourage customers to become your affiliates ✔️ Promote your offers  Its main tools include: 🔔 Tracking 🔔 Account settings 🔔 Payment settings 🔔 Channels 🔔 Management 🔔 Dashboard views and reporting  Furthermore, with its analytics performance dashboard and recurring performance reports, you’d be able to track your brand and your affiliates’ performance.  Pricing: Refersion is designed to help businesses of all sizes grow, thus it offers two plans:

Professional at $89 per month for growing businesses that want to expand their existing network

Enterprise (price available upon request) for businesses with larger channels and referral networks. Pricing:

Listing fees vary depending on the type of site you’re listing Website purchase prices range from dirt cheap to millions of dollars

Pricing:

Free for affiliate marketers Merchants pay a one-time setup fee and ongoing transactions fees

Pricing:

Free for affiliate marketers Merchants need to contact them for pricing

Pricing:

Free for website owners and content creators

Pricing:

Free plan for up to 5,000 sessions Basic: $50/month Personal: $150/month Advanced: $300/month

Pricing:

Limited free plan Pro: $119.95/month or $1,199.40/year Guru: $229.95/month or $2,299.44/year Business: $449.95/month or $4,499.40/year

This platform lets you discover and recruit partners with its automated nurture campaigns. It also enables you to engage and train your new partners and help them become more productive.  One unique aspect of impact.com is it lets you optimize partner management based on your partners’ contributions. With it, you can tweak your partner strategy in a way that can help your most productive partners get more motivated.  For brands, this personal relationship management software lets you manage a variety of partnerships, including:  ✔️ Influencer and affiliate marketing partnerships ✔️ Mobile partnerships ✔️ Business development partnerships Another unique feature of impact.com is its fraud protection feature, which allows you to protect and strengthen your partnerships by exposing affiliate or influencer fraud and fake installs, identifying dubious payments, and detecting traffic abnormalities. This lets you eliminate invalid traffic, so you can retarget your efforts and your budget on legitimate and high-quality partnerships.  For publishers, impact.com helps you connect with some of the world’s biggest brands. It gives affiliates, mobile apps, content publishers, and influencers and creators more ways to promote (and earn) by letting you earn through channels such as retail sales, travel bookings, lead generation, installs, and downloads.  Other helpful features that allow publishers to scale faster include: ✔️ Automated contracting ✔️ Exclusive promo codes ✔️ Product catalogs ✔️ Direct linking  Pricing:

If you hand a brand, you need to contact them for pricing. If you’re a creators or publisher, signing up is free.

Key Features: Influencer Content Amplification, Search/Discovery, Automated Recruiting, Influencer Relationship Management, Influencer Marketplace, Team Collaboration Tools, Content Review, Content Library, Campaign Management, Campaign Reporting, Influencer Analysis, E-commerce Tools, Product/Gifting Tools, Forms and Compliance, Payment Processing, Pricing:

Lite: $99/month or $990/year Standard: $179/month or $1,790/year Advanced: $399/month or $3,990/year Agency: $999/month or $9,990/year

Pricing: Free! Pricing:

Scale: $499/month Custom: By quote

Pricing:

Beginner: $79/year Marketer: $99/year Super Affiliate: $149/year

It’s a platform that works for both brands and publishers. It connects brands with their active affiliate partners, helping the former to grow their reach. It also helps publishers build profitable relationships for brands, enabling them to monetize their traffic.  For advertisers, Awin gives you access to high-quality publishers and 15 global markets each managed by local experts and specialist account teams. Its diverse network of affiliate partners include finance and insurance partners, retail and shopping partners, telco and services partners, and travel partners.  Awin can help you connect with the right advertisers for your brand. You’d also get to enjoy more consistent payments and access to an expert support team. Furthermore, you’d be able to use Awin’s intuitive and easy-to-use platform, allowing you to easily manage your affiliate campaigns.  It’s worth noting that despite the multitude of products and services offered on Awin, you may need to sign up for such offers individually.  Pricing:

To become an advertiser, you need to get in touch with Awin. To join as a publisher, you need to pay a $5 deposit, which will be refunded to your publisher account when you get your first sale or reach your first payment threshold.

ClickBank offers higher commission rates (as high as 90%) and over 4,000 marketplace products for you to choose from. It also has Spark, an education platform that helps both novices and experienced vendors to gain the knowledge and skills needed to grow their online business.  As a ClickBank affiliate, you get paid on time and get credit for every sale with its HOPLINK tracking system. You’d also have the opportunity to select products that are bundled with upsell offers. Furthermore, you can receive the chance to receive recurring commissions, as ClickBank also features products that have subscription options. This means that you’ll be able to continuously earn even after the original sale has been completed.  Pricing:

Signing up for ClickBank as a brand costs $49.95, a one-time fee for product approval, and 7.5% plus $1 per sale for its sales and stocking fee.  Joining ClickBank is free for affiliates.

Pricing:

Basic: $99.50/year Plus: $149.50/year Pro: $199.50/year

An interesting offer for crypto enthusiasts—Paxful has a Bitcoin affiliate program that lets you earn money every time you refer someone to the platform. You can earn a 50% escrow fee when you invite people to buy Bitcoin using the platform. You’ll also earn a 10% escrow fee when the people you referred invite their friends to buy Bitcoin on Paxful. But what is Paxful? It’s a global cryptocurrency trading platform where you can buy and sell digital currencies. It offers over 350 payment methods and is being used by 6 million people worldwide.  With Paxful’s Bitcoin affiliate program, you have the opportunity to grow your network and earn while doing so. Once you’ve earned at least $10 worth of Bitcoin, it will then be transferred to your Paxful wallet. When your wallet reaches $300, you can withdraw your money anytime.  The program is pretty straightforward: you invite your friends by sharing your affiliate code or link, encourage them to trade on Paxful, and you get paid for every time your referrals buy Bitcoin.  Moreover, Paxful lets you sell your Bitcoin on its platform, allowing you to earn more money in the process. 

The Best Affiliate Marketing Tools Are the Ones You’ll Use

Affiliate marketing can be an effective and lucrative way to monetize your blog or other marketing efforts and bring in another revenue stream. While affiliate marketing isn’t difficult, there can be a long ramp-up before you start seeing your efforts pay off. We recommend checking out the affiliate marketing tools on our list and choosing two or three to get started (one of those should be an analytics tool). From there, you can add more affiliate marketing tools as needed. Also, be sure to take advantage of the free trials offered by any of the affiliate marketing tools you’re interested in. If you find yourself not enjoying the interface or the tool is too difficult to use, move on. Ultimately, the best affiliate marketing tools for you are the ones you’re going to actually use. Flippa ShareASale CJ Affiliate AnyTrack SEMrush Ahrefs Google Analytics Affise Pretty Links Easy Affiliate