When it comes to financing your website through online revenue, no method is as efficient as affiliate marketing. Even if you’re unsure what affiliate marketing actually is, you’ve definitely encountered it before, maybe even without realizing it. Affiliate marketing’s one of the best methods for increasing online traffic on your website as well as your sales. And here’s how it works.
Affiliate marketing works through a network of supporting affiliates that promote your content or products. By promoting your products online via the ‘affiliate link’ you provide them, affiliates gain a certain commission from your sales. As a potential customer clicks on the affiliate link that the affiliate recommended or advertised to them and made a purchase.
That purchase is recorded so that the credit goes to the affiliate, and therefore the affiliate gets the commission for providing an affiliate link.
To put it in the simplest terms possible: The affiliate gets the link from the provider, then they make an advertisement to show off or support that link, the customer sees the ad and clicks on the link, the customer then buys something off of the store, the provider validates the purchase, the affiliate gets the credit for the transaction, and finally the affiliate gets paid the commission for the credit.
But for starters, you’re going to need some tools to help you create an efficient affiliate marketing system. Aside from a good data scraping (for example a crunchbase scraper) you need a few more. So here are the best affiliate marketing tools that you’d need to start a serious business.
Best Affiliate Marketing Tools
1. ShareASale
What’s the most important part of your budding affiliate network, well obviously, it’s the merchants and publishers, of course. Unless you’re starting a specialized store and you already know who your customer base is, you’re going to need publishers to promote your business.
That’s where ShareASale comes in as a premier network of publishers and marketers that work together in achieving their perfect affiliate partnerships. It’s the best way for marketers to connect with potential publishers and future affiliates.
And it’s not only a great tool to connect with affiliates and marketers, but ShareASale also offers great tracking and searching solutions, which make it a perfect tool for beginner marketers and publishers alike. It also boasts an easy-to-use search mechanic so that you can find the ideal recruitment candidates as soon as possible.
With ShareASale, you have so many possibilities that not giving would be quite frankly an incredible missed opportunity.
2. AnyTrack
Running an affiliate marketing program requires you to have a tracking mechanism with which you can make sure that the links your publishers provide are properly connecting to you. That’s why you should use AnyTrack. It’s an easy-to-use conversion data platform that makes sure your links are aggregated in the right place and tracked for proper commission distribution.
You can use it as both a tracker for your publisher and as an advertisement tracker so that you have a clear picture of how well your advertisements are doing on sites such as Google, Facebook, and so on. While AnyTrack might seem complex, it’s actually incredibly easy to set up and get going.
3. LinkTrust
Finding reliable partners and agencies might be hard, but that’s why LinkTrust is a good option for you as it can both track and manage all the advertisers, agencies, and networks that might want to contact you. Having one of the best customer support teams in the market can help you get your business up and running in no time.
And as it offers white labeling for its affiliate marketing program, LinkTrust’s perfect for beginners as you can avoid the pesky watermarks other programs might have. LinkTrust puts everything in the palm of your hand so that you can personally customize the perfect solution for you.
4. Everflow
Running a successful marketing business requires a lot of data to flow through your computer. Managing that data and turning it into something you can actually use used to be a job for an entire office. But not anymore, not when you have Everflow.
Everflow is a premier marketing performance program that amplifies your marketing capabilities and makes your business a strong competitor to even the largest marketers. With it, you can track all of your performances in real-time and analyze them for optimal result improvement.
You can track your partners’ performances through multiple tracking options and even offer them coupon incentives to increase their productivity. As one of the most efficient affiliate marketing programs currently on the market, it offers in-depth analysis options that can help you make your perfect marketing plan come true.
5. Affise
Controlling each and every aspect of your business may seem daunting, and that’s why Affise does all of that data crunching for you. As affiliate marketing requires you to process all the data from your partners both separately and together, having a marketing platform like Affise crunch all that data so that you can make crucial decisions quickly is really important.
And with an intuitive dashboard that you can personalize to your own liking, managing and analyzing your partners’ performance will be a breeze. From YouTubers to massive corporations, Affise has something for everyone. Even if it might have a bit of a learning curve, it’s definitely worth trying out.
6. ClickInc
Unsure about downloading extensive marketing tools, maybe ClickInc would be perfect for you as its browser interface boasts minimalism and functionality. With ClickInc, you can easily create coupons for tracking, set up tiered commission systems, follow up emails, and even detect fraudulent activity.
It can easily track affiliate traffic, cookies, recurring orders, and campaigns so you can optimize your business to the max.
And with extensive trend graphs, you’ll easily be able to visualize your traffic flow to spot any discrepancies and keep track of properly paying out commissions. ClickInc also keeps you up to date with your numbers so that you can even manage your affiliates on the go.
7. LeadDyno
While it’s important to have an extensive behind-the-scenes tool to keep track of your affiliate marketing campaigns, only LeadDyno offers a specialized affiliate dashboard so that your affiliates may have a quick and easy time setting their partnership up with yours. You can track the performance of your affiliates and even automate the referral process for an easier revenue stream.
And as LeadDyno’s integrated with most leading monetary and commerce-based programs, you won’t need to worry at all about compatibility issues. You can easily pick it up and get going with your affiliate marketing plans, and even if you’re starting without any partners in LeadDyno’s got you covered as you can track top affiliates and see who suits your needs best.
8. Ambassador
When you’re just starting out, acquiring tons of different tools and programs can be a real pain, so all-in-one tools like Ambassador can really save you some time and money. Ambassador is a referral software program that encompasses all your affiliate marketing needs with a super simple referral enrollment program that can help you run your ad campaigns smoothly.
All you need to do is find your desired affiliates and send them enrollment options with which they can refer friends and colleagues. Ambassador’s perfect for new startups that need a program with cross-department sharing capabilities. And it comes in with a prepackaged visual editor so you can customize your on-site referral prompts.
9. ClickMeter
ClickMeter is one of the simplest affiliate marketing tools currently on offer. It’s designed to be as lightweight and as functional as possible. The main purpose of ClickMeter is to monitor traffic on your links in real-time. You can even redirect your visitors with it to ensure arrival onto the proper website (in case you have multiple website versions that depend on the visitors’ geolocation).
And with over 30 specialized tracking features that keep track of even the smallest details, you’ll be able to ensure proper customer satisfaction from your new visitors. ClickMeter can even compile your data to provide you with a visual representation of your top visitations based on the users’ geolocation.
10. HitPath
If customization is your thing, look no further than HitPath, as you can scale and customize your user interface to your own needs. As far as functionality goes, HitPath is one of the best multichannel marketing tools out there. You can track influencers, your own affiliates, and even other advertisement options.
It offers extensive campaign management, numerous accounting tools, a real-time chat to help with communication between parties, solid system management with a modular dashboard, and brand protection to ensure smooth sailing. With a multi-level reporting engine, not only will you be able to track your data with ease, but even your affiliates will be able to manage their performance.
While its main attraction is definitely the full customization capabilities, don’t let that fool you HitPath isn’t just a visually satisfying tool; its functionality’s on par with even the largest affiliate marketing tools.
Conclusion
To conclude, getting into affiliate marketing may seem daunting at first, but with these tools, you’ll be able to keep track of all the data and your affiliates as they help you grow your business to the high heavens and above.