12 Best Free Affiliate Marketing Tools for Your Campaigns

Affiliate marketing refers to the practice of paying marketers, called affiliates, to promote a business’s products or services.

For blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, and social media influencers, it is one of the most popular revenue streams.

In 2022, affiliate marketing spend in the United States reached $8.2 billion. 

Therefore, affiliate marketers should double down on their campaigns and treat them as one of their best sources of revenue. 

As an affiliate marketer, you need the best free affiliate marketing tools on your digital marketing arsenal if you want to increase your return of investment (ROI), generate better quality leads, or have more control over affiliates.

In this article, you’ll find some of the best free affiliate marketing tools and software to help you succeed.

What Should You Consider When Choosing An Affiliate Marketing Tool?

When picking an affiliate marketing tool, keep these things in mind:

1. Easy Navigation: Choose a tool that’s easy to use and helps you with your marketing.

2. Tracking Abilities: Look for tools that can track clicks, conversions, and commissions to monitor your performance.

3. Integration: Make sure the tool works with the networks you use, making it easier to manage links, track performance, and do keyword research.

4. Scalability: Pick a tool that can grow with your business, handling more marketers, clients, products, and campaigns.

5. Reliability and Support: Opt for a tool with a good reputation for reliability and excellent customer support. This ensures you have assistance when you need it and that the tool works smoothly without major glitches.

6. Cost-effectiveness: Evaluate the pricing structure of the tool to ensure it aligns with your budget. Consider the value it provides in terms of features, support, and scalability, making sure it offers a good return on investment for your affiliate marketing activities.

7. Dashboard: A good tool should have a dashboard where you can track leads, promotions, and your marketing efforts in one place.

Best Tools for Affiliate Marketing

1. Flippa

Flippa is a platform that can be a game-changer for those aiming to quickly establish a thriving affiliate site without starting from square one. It acts as an online marketplace, resembling eBay, where you can buy and sell websites.

It’s particularly beneficial for affiliate marketers, Flippa offers the chance to acquire sites with a robust backlink history, giving a significant boost to SEO efforts.

The Pros

1. Efficiency Boost: Saves time and effort by providing a ready-made platform for buying and selling websites.

2. Backlink Advantage: Gives access to websites with solid backlink profiles, giving a quick SEO boost especially useful for affiliate marketers.

The Cons

1. Black-Hat SEO Risk: There’s a chance of getting a domain with a shady backlink history, which could lead to problems with search engines.

2. Thorough Check Needed: Users must carefully audit the backlinks before buying to make sure the domain hasn’t been artificially boosted by questionable SEO tactics like Private Blog Networks (PBNs).

2. SEMRush 

When it comes to keyword research, fixing SEO glitches, and sizing up the competition, SEMRush is our ride-or-die tool. A little heads up: I’ve been hooked on this tool since 2012, so forgive my bias here.

You can use SEMRush to identify top-performing competitor content to inspire your own, regularly track keyword rankings to stay on top of SEO game, and keep a vigilant eye on press mentions for brand monitoring. 

More importantly, you can conduct SEO audits to catch any website issues that might harm your search rankings.

The Pros

1. Versatile: It’s like a Swiss Army knife for marketers. It’s good at finding keywords, fixing SEO errors, and analyzing competitors.

2. Competitor Insight: It shows what content makes competitors successful and gives a good return on investment.

3. On-Page SEO: It helps find and fix issues on webpages to make sure they rank well on search engines.

The Cons

1. Personal Bias: I’ve been a fan of SEMRush since 2012, so I might be a bit biased. It’s good to explore other options that match your preferences and needs.

2. Learning Curve: For beginners, SEMRush might be overwhelming at first because it has a lot of features. But once you get the hang of it, the benefits are worth it.

3. ShareASale 

ShareASale is a great affiliate marketing network with 20 years of experience. It’s well-known, gets good reviews, and you can join for free. There are over 4,800 merchants to choose from, covering lots of different markets. So, finding the right fit for your website is easy.

People generally like ShareASale’s affiliate programs. Learning how to use it might take a bit, but it’s seen as a reliable way to make money online.

If you own a website, ShareASale is great because its interface is easy to navigate. You also get reports to see how your affiliate marketing is doing. And the best part? ShareASale gives you plenty of resources to help you get started.

The Pros

1. Partnership Opportunities: ShareASale acts as a bridge, linking publishers with advertisers who want help increasing sales.

2. Payment Options: Publishers on ShareASale can earn money in different ways, like getting paid for phone calls, leads, or generating website visitors for the advertiser.

3. Starting Point: If you’re new to affiliate marketing, ShareASale is a great place to begin. While working directly with advertisers might offer higher commissions, ShareASale provides a strong foundation for building partnerships.

The Cons

1. Higher Commissions Elsewhere: You might find better commission structures by working directly with advertisers. ShareASale may not be as financially rewarding in comparison.

2. Dependence on Intermediary: Using ShareASale means relying on an intermediary. This might not be the most profitable long-term strategy for affiliate marketers who could benefit more from direct partnerships with advertisers.

4. Yoast SEO

When it comes to optimizing websites for search engines, Yoast SEO takes the spotlight as our first-choice plugin.

It seamlessly integrates into every site we work on, bringing forth advanced SEO capabilities that elevate each page’s performance.

If you upgrade to the paid version, you can enjoy 24/7 support. Apart from that, you can also gain access to an advanced redirect manager, facilitating the redirection of broken or unwanted pages. That way, you can effectively remove them from search results.

Whether you choose the free features or invest in the enhanced capabilities of the paid version, Yoast SEO stands as an indispensable tool for those seeking an intuitive and powerful SEO plugin.

The Pros

1. Page Precision: You get to pick and choose titles and meta descriptions for each page. This means you can make your site more search engine-friendly in a way that suits you.

2. Canonical Control: Helps you manage content duplication and improves your site structure by letting you customize canonical links.

3. Sitemap Mastery: Makes it easy to create and customize sitemaps. Think of it as a roadmap for search engines to navigate through your site’s content.

4. Robust Meta Control: Fine-tune your meta robots settings. This gives you the power to decide how search engines index and display your content.

5. Free Foundation: The basic version of Yoast SEO won’t cost you a dime. It’s a great option for those who want to boost their site’s SEO without spending a lot of money.

The Cons

1. Limited Features in Free Version: The free version is good for basics, but if you’re after advanced stuff like 24/7 support and a fancy redirect manager, you’ll need to go for the paid version. It’s a bit of a trade-off.

5. Ahrefs

Ahrefs shares similarities with SEMRush in functions like keyword research, on-page audits, and competitive content analysis. However, Ahrefs stands out by putting a spotlight on backlinks, making it the go-to tool for those who believe in the might of link-building.

Ahrefs is ideal for those competing with larger sites, focusing on backlink strategies. On the other hand, SEMRush is highly recommended for ndustry leaders or those on the verge of becoming one, with a more balanced approach to various SEO aspects.

Both tools offer free trials, allowing users to explore and compare before making a commitment.

The Pros

1. Backlink Supremacy: Ahrefs is all about backlinks. It gives you in-depth info on new links, lost links, broken links, and even how your competitors are doing with their backlinks.

2. Comprehensive Link Analysis: You can spy on your competitors’ link profiles. This helps you find great opportunities to build links strategically.

3. Broken Link Solutions: Ever find a link that leads to nowhere? Ahrefs helps you find sites linking to broken pages on your site, so you can fix them up by redirecting them to the right places. 

4. Content Ideation: Need some fresh ideas? Ahrefs digs up what’s working for your competitors.

The Cons

1. Overlap with SEMRush: If you’re using both Ahrefs and SEMRush, you might notice some déjà vu. They share a lot of features, so it’s a bit like having two tools in your toolbox that do similar jobs. 

2. Specialization on Backlinks: Ahrefs is the backlink champ, no doubt. But, its intense focus on backlinks might cast a shadow on other important SEO aspects. 

6. Frase

Frase effortlessly blends the power of AI with advanced topic research, serving both bloggers and affiliate marketers.

This tool goes above and beyond. It provides an easy-to-use research panel to analyze competitors’ content, give essential SERP metrics, and utilize AI to create thorough, optimized content briefs.

The Pros

1. Understand Competitors: Easily analyze what your competitors are doing with a research panel. This helps you create better content strategies.

2. Track Search Results: Get important metrics from Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) to make informed decisions and improve your content.

3. AI-Powered Content Briefs: Use AI to create detailed and optimized content briefs. This makes the content creation process smoother and more efficient.

4. Simple Content Outlining: The Outline Builder makes it easy to organize content. You can choose and arrange headings effortlessly from SERP results or get AI assistance in generating outlines.

5. SEO-Friendly Content: The AI Writer tool helps you create content that is optimized for search engines. It takes inspiration from top search results for a specific keyword, ensuring your content is SEO-friendly.

The Cons

1. Repetitive Content Risk: The AI Writer might produce content that feels repetitive at times. You may need to review and edit manually to ensure variety.

2. Learning Curve: For some affiliate marketers, Frase may be less user-friendly compared to simpler tools, posing a bit of a learning curve.

7. Grammarly

Grammarly is a superhero tool for affiliate marketers, boosting your writing and communication skills.

It helps prevent accidental plagiarism, ensuring your content is always original. With AI-powered suggestions, Grammarly improves the overall quality of your writing, making sure your blog posts are polished and error-free.

The best part? It’s a team-friendly tool, allowing consistent writing styles across various projects. So, Grammarly is your sidekick for impeccable content!

The Pros

1. Mistake-Free Communication: Grammarly serves as a reliable guard against writing errors and typos. It ensures your posts, email campaigns, and blogs maintain credibility.

2. Improved Brand Image: By refining your content, Grammarly enhances communication with your audience. This contributes to a positive brand perception and higher engagement.

3. Affiliate Link Integration: Easily insert affiliate links in strategic places with Grammarly. This helps maintain a persuasive tone and consistency in language.

4. Personalized Style Guide: Customize Grammarly’s built-in style guide to create a personal repository for words, terms, and phrases. This ensures consistency across different campaigns.

5. Versatility: Grammarly seamlessly works with various content forms and platforms, including LinkedIn and Workday. It provides support for a wide range of content creation.

The Cons

1. Slang Oversight: Might miss detecting some slang words and phrases, making it important to manually review content for informal language.

2. Limited Free Version Features: While the free version is a valuable asset, the more advanced features, such as enhanced suggestions, are reserved for the premium version.

8. Voluum 

Voluum is a great tool for managing and improving your advertising campaigns.

It helps you keep track, analyze, and make your campaigns more efficient. With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, it’s easy to use and personalized for you.

You can connect Voluum with popular platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, WordPress, and Zapier, making it versatile. Moreover, it provides real-time reporting, so you always know how your campaigns are performing and can make quick decisions.

One great feature is that it supports transactions in different currencies, making it suitable for a global audience.

The Pros

1. Insightful Performance Data: Get detailed insights into the performance of your ads, keywords, and landing pages through robust reporting and analytical tools.

2. Comprehensive Tracking: Monitor clicks, conversions, visits from other web pages or search engines, and revenue with powerful tracking capabilities.

3. Time-Saving Automizer Feature: Efficiently manage conversions, adjust bids, pause or activate campaigns, update traffic costs, and receive alerts using the platform’s Automizer feature, saving you time.

4. Traffic Distribution AI: Optimize traffic distribution with AI, directing more traffic towards high-performing landing pages and offers for superior campaign performance.

5. Campaign Sequencing: Create sequences for campaigns that deliver the best returns, conversion rates, and earnings per click. This ensures optimal performance for your campaigns.

The Cons

1. Learning Curve: Beginners might face a steep learning curve when starting with Voluum, needing time and effort to fully grasp the platform.

2. Issues with Large Ad Sites: Using Voluum with big ad sites could be challenging, particularly if there’s a lack of robust customer support to address potential difficulties.

9. WPEngine

WPEngine stands out as a premium hosting choice for those without a strong IT/dev background, offering more than just basic hosting services.

While it might be pricier than popular providers like GoDaddy and HostGator, WPEngine provides a range of features that elevate the overall website management experience.

One great feature is the ability to mitigate risks by allowing users to restore their sites to previous versions if needed. It also enhances website security by providing SSL certificates at no extra cost and incorporates robust measures to safeguard websites from potential threats.

Most importantly, it improves site speed, positively impacting user satisfaction and search engine rankings.

The Pros

1. User-Friendly Hosting: Easy for affiliate marketers with no tech background, making it accessible for everyone.

2. Scheduled Backups: Regularly backs up websites, so you can go back to previous versions if anything goes wrong.

3. Free SSL Certificates: Gives you a free SSL certificate for each site, ensuring safe and encrypted connections.

4. Browser Caching: Speeds up your site by using browser caching, improving the overall user experience.

5. Advanced Security Measures: Takes website security seriously with advanced protection, creating a safe hosting environment.

The Cons

1. Higher Pricing: Comes with a premium price tag compared to other popular hosting providers, making it less budget-friendly for some users.

10. Imagify 

In today’s fast digital world, time is precious, and Imagify comes to the rescue by helping speed up websites through smart image compression. It makes compressing images easy, even if you’re not a tech whiz.

With Imagify, you can use modern image formats like WebP and AVIF, which load faster and make users happier.

Imagify also shows how site speed affects bounce rates, meaning slower sites can lose visitors and money.

By tackling slow loading times, Imagify helps keep bounce rates low and websites performing well.

The Pros

1. Better Image Compression: It helps make websites faster by smartly shrinking image sizes without losing quality.

2. Modern Image Formats: Uses formats like WebP and AVIF, making images load super fast compared to old-style formats.

3. Less Bounce Rate: Faster site speed keeps people interested and boosts revenue by reducing the number of visitors leaving the site quickly.

4. Easy to Use: Simple for anyone looking to quickly improve their website – no tech headaches!

The Cons

1. Limited Features: Imagify is really good at compressing images and works well with modern formats. However, it might not cover all the other things you need for overall website improvement.

11. Shortcodes Ultimate 

In the world of blogging, where easy reading is key, Shortcodes Ultimate stands out as a hidden gem for turning good blog posts into outstanding ones.

Shortcodes Ultimate offers a wide range of design options, giving users the freedom to pick and use designs that perfectly match their blog’s theme and content.

Understanding how important readability is for a blog’s success, this tool lets website owners add custom designs to their content, elevating their articles to a whole new level.

The Pros

1. Readability Enhancement: Makes your blog better by focusing on tools that improve how your content looks and reads.

2. Custom Design Integration: Lets you easily add your own designs to your blog, making it look more unique and engaging.

3. Versatile Design Features: Offers a bunch of design options, giving you flexibility and creativity to make your blog articles look great.

4. User-Friendly Implementation: Easy for anyone to use – you can add your own designs without needing advanced technical skills.

The Cons

1. Design-Specific Focus: While excelling in custom design integration, Shortcodes Ultimate may not cover broader website optimization features beyond design enhancement.

12. Hemingway

Hemingway is a helpful tool for writers who want their writing to be simple and impactful. It’s inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s style, known for its simplicity and powerful storytelling.

Unlike regular grammar checkers, Hemingway looks at things like adverbs and complex words that could make your writing harder to understand.

The main goal is to make your content reader-friendly. It encourages you to keep things simple, focusing on the idea that clear insights are more valuable than complicated language.

The Pros

1. Simplified Writing: Hemingway understands the need for clear and simple communication. It helps users make complicated sentences easier to read.

2. Reader-Centric Approach: It acknowledges that readers prefer clear ideas rather than complicated ones. The tool guides users to get rid of unnecessary stuff and share meaningful content.

3. Adverb and Word Analysis: Hemingway looks at your writing to find tricky adverbs and complex words. It suggests simpler options to improve your text.

4. User-Friendly Interface: The platform is user-friendly, making it easy for writers of all levels to use.

The Cons

1. Style Specificity: While excelling in simplifying writing, Hemingway may not cover advanced grammar or broader content optimization features.

Other Tools Recommended for Affiliate Marketers

Here are other handy tools we’ve tried using on our affiliate sites:

1. WordPress: Our favorite CMS platform for building a scalable website.
2. Google Analytics: A great tool for tracking website visitors.
3. Google Search Console: An essential tool for monitoring your organic traffic.
4. ThirstyAffiliates: Simplifies the process of creating new affiliate links on your site.
5. Hootsuite: A great social media management tool.
6. Instapage: A landing page builder that simplifies the process of building landing pages.
7. ActiveCampaign: Our personal choice for email marketing campaigns.
8. Google Ads: A PPC tool that helps you drive targeted website visitors (best used in the early stages of building your affiliate site).
9. Canva: Tired of hiring a designer to create sleek images for your blog? Canva is so easy to use; you can design a decent-looking image with their software.