Welcome to the Smart Leader Affiliate Toolkit the fundamental tools I recommend for building and optimizing your online business. These are the tools I personally use so you can start building your website with a strong framework.
If you are just starting and you are looking to only do a minimum investment, trust me, I understand more than most. I was in your shoes and I know it’s not easy to take a leap of faith and invest in something you are not completely sure about.
Nevertheless, putting something at risk is what sometimes pushes you to do the best you can. If you are passionate about this type of endeavor, investing in tools and training is what will get you across to the other side and reap the benefits of a business that your livelihood can depend on.
So, because I know starting out can be tough, I have prepared a lot of free resources as well to get you going.
Website Hosting
To have a stable and reliable business you will need a reliable host partner.
- SiteRubix has a free website option that will look like this:
yoursitename@siterubix.com - You can have your website up in 4 simple steps, but also, you can buy your own domain name.
- Include: Hosting, security, email, backup and integrated training platform with Wealthy Affiliate which teaches you how to rank your page and post on the first page of google
- Either you choose your own domain or the two free subdomains, your site is up and running in seconds.
- Free optimization features: sitespeed, sitehealth, sitessl and site protection
- Outstanding 24/7 technical support
Affiliate Marketing Training & Community
In order to be successful, you will need guidance on how to build a website and generate traffic. Wealthy Affiliate is the mentoring program I recommend.
Wealthy Affiliate Free or Premium Membership includes SiteRubix hosting!!
Wealthy Affiliate has been a fundamental resource for my online success.
I tried out a few different online marketer training programs but any like WA.
Their training is focused on how to make money online legitimately. They teach you how to build your website, find an accurate keyword to rank your post on the first page of google, create quality content and more importantly, how to earn money from your website. I encourage you to try the free version and see if you like it.
There it is !, I’m showing you where I have learned everything I know about website creation and making money online. In this community, you will have the same opportunity as me to achieve financial success with your website.
Wealthy Affiliate Training Offer
- The most active affiliate marketing community with more than 1 million members, both free and paid.
- Receive support from the entire community including the co-founder from my personal experience
- Receive coaching for your business
- Give you access to very useful training and tools for free like website manager and keyword research.
- Empower your business with strong networking
Keyword Finder Tool
The most powerful keyword search tools on the market.
I personally use this tool on a daily basis. I search for the exact phrases or sentences that people are looking on Google. When you start using it, you will see that it even gives you multiple variations of your search so you just pick the best keyword that suits your need.
This has a big advantage because it will increase the possibility of your article showing up on the first page of google and this, in turn, will help your website driving a lot of Free Traffic.
(Also Included in the wealthy affiliate membership but can be purchased separately)!!
- With this tool, you will quickly discover unique keywords. I believe is a masterpiece for high ranking your post within the search engines
- It uncovered not only accurate traffic but also competition, and domain insights.
- SiteRank Feature: Allow you to monitor and track any keyword ranking on Google,Yahoo, or Bing for any website. So you can see how your website or your competition are doing in terms of ranking on search engines
Affiliate Programs
The most profitable way to monetize your website
Remember the key is to find the affiliate network that works best for your target market.
I used to facilitate reporting, analytics, and payout from my affiliate programs. In another word, is a nice way to manage different affiliate stores. Amazon Associates is one of the best programs to start monetizing your business and is the one I like to use the most when I start most of my sites.
Why you should try Amazon affiliate program first?
Amazon Associates is one of the best programs to start monetizing your business and is the one I like to use the most when I start most of my sites.
- Commissions are still great for lots of categories
- Offer plug-ins and browser extension tools to easily create product links into trackable affiliate links
- Payment Methods Available: Check, Direct Deposit and amazon gift card. For international – Check, amazon gift card and Payone.
- Commission rates: 1%-10%
- Massive selection and people love shopping on Amazon
- Easy to Sign Up
- Trustworthy Platform
- None Traffic Minimum
- Big holiday spikes
CJ affiliate is one of the most popular affiliate platforms in the world and is perfect for anyone who wants who want to start with affiliate marketing. I personally use CJ in one of my sites.
- Free and Easy to Signup
- Several products to promote from58
- A large number of advertisers
- None Traffic Minimum
- Payment Methods Available: Check, Direct Deposit
This affiliate network focused on digital products like digital guides, books, videos or tutorials created by entrepreneurs from all over the world.
Unlike other affiliate networks which draw in large companies, ClickBank is a place for the little guys to work together to earn money. I haven’t the opportunity to used but a lot of people I know recommended.
- Several products to promote from
- None Traffic Minimum
- Payment Methods Available: Check, Direct Deposit. They also use Payoneer as a payment option for international
- Use Clickbank if you are going to focus on digital products and do it when your site started having decent traffic. Why? Clickbank account policy: If you don’t make constant sales for 90 days, your account will be charged $1 a day, $5/day after 180 days and $50/day after 1 year of inactivity.
ShareASale’s payout threshold is $50 for affiliates. This is quite a bit higher than most of its competitors, which may be a turn-off for newer affiliates. However, larger affiliate marketing businesses won’t find this to be a problem.
- Free and Easy to Signup
- An incredible variety of merchants
- Reputable company
- Plug-ins and browser extension tools to easily create product links into trackable affiliate links
- Payment Methods Available: Check, Direct Deposit
Website Design
Fundamental Plugin for Graphic Design
When you apply this WordPress plugin to your website, you will see how powerful it is. It can take a simple looking website and turn it into a professional-looking one.
How does it work? it will give you more editing options when creating your post or pages.
In the standard post/page editing screen in WordPress, you will get a new button that will allow you to enable “Elementor”, and it will take over your page-editing process entirely.
- Create stunning landing pages
- Pre-designed blog template
- Help you to customize your online store
- Works with many of the free themes of WordPress but I would recommend you to try it first.
- Truly help you create a better-looking website
Fundamental Tool for Graphic Design
Canva is a Graphic Design tool that every blogger, and website creator should use. For example, I created the logo and thumbnail of this website using Canva.
- Very useful to create Infographics
- Logo Creation
- Business card Design
- Flyers and Letter Templates
- Allow you to Create Facebook Post
- Facebook Cover
- YouTube Thumbnail
Image Optimization
Another great tool that I use on a daily basis.
Tiny PNG help you optimizing your web images before you loaded in your website. You will use this tool to deliver high-quality images but in the right format, dimension, size, and resolution. For example, it can take a 750MB picture to 150MB.
- Use TinyPNG to shrink images on your website to avoid slow loading pages.
- Is a nice free online program
- Compressing your PNG and JPG files
Signature Generator
Use this tool to create the outstanding animated signature that sets you apart.
See the example below
- Big selection of fonts, picture, and animation
- Free online program
- Very easy to use
Graphics Generator
Pre-Made Graphic and logo generator without a lot of design work. For example, you could create something like the logo above in less little than 5 minutes.
- Multiple categories
- Free online program
- Very easy to use
Do you have any tools for affiliate marketing that you would like to recommend?
Share it in the comment section so we can all learn more, together.