I will be available at the Ask the Expert Roundtable at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas. Below are tools to assist bloggers in monetizing their sites with affiliate marketing. The tools are listed in alphabetical order versus any type of priority.
Buffer – Social media scheduling tool
Website: www.buffer.com
Description: While nothing replaces real time interactions on social media, a solid scheduling tool allows you plan and stay consistent with your affiliate posts. Buffer recently integrated with Pablo to make social media image creation a breeze, especially when creating quotes
Cost: Individual plan is free and the next level up is only $10 a month.
Google Analytics – Analytics tool
Website: www.google.com/analytics/
Description: Some of you are probably shaking your head right now, thinking this is an obvious one. However, I am amazed at how many affiliate marketers are not taking advantage of this amazing and free tool.
Most popular affiliate use for this tool? Discover through Google Analyticsyour highest trafficked pages and monetize these pages with affiliate links. Is your most popular page a recipe? Add links to a great affiliate store such as Abe’s Market or Thrive. Or link to the kitchen tools you use.
Cost: Free
LikeToKnowIt – Instagram monetization tool
Website: For many bloggers, Instagram has the largest number of followers but is a challenge to monetize due to the inability to provide links for each post. RewardStyle revolutionized Instrgam monetization with LikeToKnowIt. When a LikeToKnowIt user likes an Instagram post with an affiliate product, the user receives an email with an affiliate link to that specific product! Brilliant!
Cost: Free with your RewardStyle membership. Shopstyle also offers a similar tool to called Shopstyle.it.
Prettylinks – shrinks, cloaks, organizes and helps you test your links
Website: Prettylinkpro.com
Description: Prettylink does so much more than just make your link look pretty! In addition to cloaking your affiliate links, it also tracks your links for stronger analytics and optimization. It does all those while maintain your own domain server.
Cost: Prettylink Lite is free. PrettyLink Pro Bloggers Edition is $37
Shareasale’s Product Discovery Booklet – Link Creation Tool
Website: https://account.shareasale.com/a-bookmarklet.cfm?
Description: I love the convenience of extensions on my browser. This booklet is no exception. Shareasale’s Product Discovery Tool allows you to create affiliate links on the fly while you are surfing the stores. As I stressed before, deep links (as known as product specific links) provide higher conversions. This tool allows you to determine if the store you are looking at has a merchant in the program, join a merchant program and/or create an affiliate link on the fly. No more back and forth. It all happens on the site you want to monetize with!
Cost: Free on Shareasale. Avantlink has a similar tool called Snaplinker. CJ’s tool is called Deep Link Generator
SnapVisi – image linking tool
Website: www.snapvisi.com
Description: This tool is amazing for fashion and lifestyle bloggers. Do you have a great picture with multiple products and/or companies? SnapVisi allows you to easily add affiliate links to specific areas of your image. Instead of sending user to one page within your merchant’s site, increase conversions with deep links to specific product pages. In addition, you can include links from multiple merchants.
Cost: Free on Avantlink
Shopstyle – Fashion and beauty blogger tool
Website www.shopstyle.com
Description: Feeling overwhelmed with individual merchant applications and relationships? Shopstyle offers Shopsense. Shopsence is dedicated to helping fashion and beauty bloggers monetize their site with blogger friendly tools. From tools that link to the exact product in your post or something similar, Shopstyle does the work of applying for individual programs for you. The only warning I have to give here is that you will get less commissions than going direct. That being said, it is a great way connect with brands that you might not qualify for on your own. In addition, Shopstyle is network agnostic so you have access to multiple merchants in multiple networks.
Shopsense also has great tools to monetize Instagram (we all know how hard that is), Facebook and other social media channels.
Cost: Free. RewardStyle also offers similar services. However, RewardStyle has moved to invite only status. As such, I recommend RewardStyle for more established bloggers.
Yoast SEO
Website www.yoast.com
Description: This WordPress plug-in is a personal favorite of mine and almost everyone I know. While SEO professionals will caution the reliance on a tool, I maintain that Yoast provides a great guideline for developing SEO AND reader friendly content.
Cost: The basic plugin is free on WordPress. You can upgrade to the premium version for $69 for a single site.