Golden Goose Marketing

For a new affiliate marketer, it’s easy to get caught up in expensive affiliate marketing tools and ebooks.  Although there are some great products out there, don’t let yourself be fooled into paying for tools that have perfectly good free alternatives.

Below, I’ve listed 5 of the top free affiliate marketing tools. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should give you a good idea of what you can get when you take a little time to look.

1. Google External Keyword Tool – This is easily the best free tool out there for SEO and PPC affiliates.  No one has better data about keyword search volume than Google, which makes this a great place to find and research keywords.
2. PopShops.com – PopShops is a great tool for affiliates who want to work with datafeeds but don’t know where to start.  With their simple (and free at the basic level) tool, you can quickly create SEO-friendly stores full of your affiliate links.  You can also use their entirely free WordPress plugin for quickly creating product blogs with one product per post.
3. Quantcast – Quantcast is an outstanding tool for PPV or media buy affiliates who want to get a handle on who they’re targeting.  By entering a domain in at Quantcast’s website, you get a wealth of information about who is visiting the site.
4. SearchStatus Toolbar - The SearchStatus toolbar gives you easy access to a wide variety of data about the websites you visit.  At a glance, you can see Alexa rankings, Compete rankings, and Google Pagerank.  With a couple more clicks, you can get demographic data, do a WHOIS search, or check out old versions of the site through Archive.org.   This is a great tool for affiliates who do a lot of competitive research or media buys.
5. TubeMogul – Tube Mogul is amazing for video affiliate marketers, as it lets you submit your videos to multiple sites at a time.  Although there is a paid version, the free version is still a great tool.

So – the next time you’re thinking of buying an expensive affiliate marketing tool, think before you pull out your credit card.  There are a lot of tools worth buying, but make sure there isn’t a free alternative that would let you save your hard-earned dollars for something else.