Wealthy Affiliate: Best Affiliate Marketing Online Training and Community

My #1 Recommendation for Online Money-Making Education!

A True Essential - Wealthy Affiliate is the platform that taught me Everything from A-Z  when I started searching for ways to make money online.

No doubt the material here is indispensable; as a beginner you will definitely need the proper guidance and training in order to help you to succeed at making money online.

There are 4 main ways you can benefit from Wealthy Affiliate:

1. Thorough the Step-by-Step Training
2. Useful Tools such as their Website Builder SiteRubix (developed by the Co-founders of WA), Website Manager, Keyword Research, etc.
3. Direct 24/7 Technical Support from WA Support Team as well as the Co-Founders
4. Help & Support from a Worldwide Community of 1.5 million helpful and friendly online marketers and entrepreneurs.

If you truly want to "Turbo Charge" your online income-earning "straight out of the gate" rapidly, then becoming a Premium member is for you! 

This is one powerful place to help you start your own online business. As a FREE Starter member you get 1 website and 10 Lessons!

Jaaxy: Best Keyword Research Tool

Jaaxy is a Premium Keyword Research Tool developed by the Co-founders of Wealthy Affiliate. There are 4 versions of it, ranging for beginner, to intermediate, to advanced marketers. 

When you sign up with Wealthy Affiliate, Jaaxy is offered for FREE as a Keyword Research Tool within the platform. 

For beginners and intermediate marketers, their second level version Jaaxy Lite is my #1 Recommended Keyword Research Tool because:

1. It contains highly detailed metrics to help you select the best keywords, so you can rank articles high in the Search Engines

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2. It gives clear definitions of its metrics criteria

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3. It is the most user-friendly keyword tool I've found

If you're a more experienced and advanced marketer, you may want to check out their more advanced options, Jaaxy Pro or Jaaxy Enterprise. (3rd and 4th option). These premium paid-for versions have many more functions and more detailed results than all the free tools.

Free Alternative: Google Keyword Planner​

Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool offered by Google. To use GKP, you just need a Google account to sign up for Google AdSense. It is a tool inside AdSense.

The advantage is that it's free and it's a service from Google so it will definitely be accurate. But the disadvantage is that the results shown are not detailed. It only shows a rough number.

Affiliate Networks

Affiliate networks are the main platforms for you to find relevant affiliate products to promote on your website. They are all Free to join. Simply create an account with them.

The 4 main platforms are:

1. Amazon Associate (More for Physical Products)

2. ShareASale

3. ClickBank (More for Digital Products)

4. Commission Junction

There are many of these kind of affiliate networks and also private affiliate programs. Simply do some research in Google and you'll find out there is a huge amount of potential in this affiliate marketing world!

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to track all the useful information and statistics regarding your website.

It helps you to understand how your website is performing by analyzing the users' behavior and activities on your website.​

You can find out how much time your visitors are spending on your site, how many pages they are reading, where do they come from, etc.

It is a necessary tool because you need to know which part of your website is performing well and which part needs to be improved on, so that you can optimize it and make more money.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster Tool) is a platform that helps Google to understand your website.

Google first must understand your website before it can index and rank your pages in the suitable positions and rankings, called the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Some of the things you can do in Search Console includes requesting Google to crawl (look at) your site, check for errors on your site, submit a Sitemap for Google to index your site more easily, etc.

So, if you are not using Google Search Console, it's definitely much harder for Google to understand your website and give it decent attention.

Basically, Google Analytics is a tool for YOU to understand your audience, while Google Search Console is a tool for Google to understand your website.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is another way for website owners to make an extra source of passive income online by placing Google ads on their websites.

If you've eavesdropped on people claiming they can earn money by simply allowing people to click on Ads on their website, Google AdSense is the tool they are using.

However, the amount of money you can earn is very small if you don't have huge traffic since you're only paid a few cents (maybe up to a dollar) for each click. For those websites with tons of traffic, AdSense can be produce a huge passive income for their owners.

Before you start placing Ads on your website, they need to be approved by Google first. They will only approve you if your website has a decent amount of good content (according to Google) and they deem it as valuable.

It can be quite troublesome and challenging when you first apply for it though. If you're just starting out, first work on the foundation and the content of your site before looking into Google AdSense.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a great website to keep abreast on what the hottest trends are by analyzing the popularity of top search queries in Google Search across various regions and languages. 

By using graphs, Google Trends compares the search volume of different queries over time. 

It is an excellent tool to help you choose hobbies and interests (niches) that are currently trending and therefor may have a high potential for profitability.

Online Marketing Forums

Relevant online marketing forums are good places to hang out with like-minded people in the same niche.

What's is most important to you is that you can utilize these forums to promote your website and grow your business.

There are certain strategies you must be aware of. If you blatantly promote your website without following the rules of the forum, you'll be considered as a spammer and will most likely be banned.

Follow this guide if you want to learn more about Forum Marketing.​

The following 2 forums are great places to hang out as a blogger or affiliate marketer:

1. ​Warrior Forum
2. Digital Point Forum

MailChimp: Email Marketing Service

Email Marketing Services (EMS) are tools for you to build an Email list and market your products in the form of Email Marketing.

If you're looking for a Free Email Marketing Service then  MailChimp is the way to go. This service will turn out to be one of your top free affiliate marketing tools.

Their Free version will allow you to opt-in up to 2000 subscribers per month, and will allow you to send up to 12,000 emails per month. After the 30-period, both counters will reset. 

MailChimp also has a very user-friendly "drop 'n drag" design tool for creating stylish and beautiful emails, multi-leveled automation, and even with the Free version there are plenty of advanced features for a beginner and intermediate email marketer. 

For more advanced email marketers, there are many Paid-for services out there on the market such as AWeber, ConVertKit, and GetResponse.

However, for a free service nothing beats MailChimp! 

SendGrid:  Email Delivery Service

Email delivery services (EDS) are less popular than email marketing services but serve a different function.

Email delivery services ensure that your emails are delivered to inboxes, no matter how many of them you send, no matter who your website is hosted with, and no matter what email provider your recipients use.

A perfect example of what EDS's do are send your customers are FREE e-book when they opt-in to your form by giving their names and email addresses. This is something an email marketing service will not do for you. 

SendGrid is one of the few email delivery services that offer their preliminary services for FREE, and get a high rating. I have used them with good success. 

Crowdfire

Social Media Marketing is a great way to grow your online business.

Crowdfire is a tool to help you manage and grow your social media accounts. This will turn out to be another one of the useful free affiliate marketing tools available in your tool box.

If you've heard of Hootsuite or Buffer, you probably know that they are tools to help you schedule​ your social media posts.

Crowdfire does more than simply scheduling your post. It offers you a list of actionable instructions on what content to Like/Share and who to follow/unfollow by analyzing your accounts and your settings.

I feel it's much simpler and more effective to grow my social influence with Crowdfire. There is a FREE version that is very suitable for beginners. 

Canva

Canva is my #1 Recommended Graphic Design Tool!

It is an Amazing FREE graphic design tool which allows you to create your own graphics for your website and your articles. You can design custom logos, photos, and infographics, and so much more with Canva. 

It's a really super easy-to-use and powerful graphic design tool that every blogger, marketer and website owner should be using.

Personally I create almost all of my graphics for my websites and blogs using Canva.

It is simply an indispensable graphics tool for your free affiliate marketing tools cache!

Piktochart

It has been proven that having infographics on your website and in your blog posts allow your content to be more easily shared. It's a good way to boost your social sharing and make certain contents go viral.

Piktochart is a tool that allows you to create great-looking infographics for your website content without the need to hire professional graphic designers.

The Free Version is enough for basic usage. You can upgrade your plan if you need more templates.

Photopea: Photoshop on any Computer

If you are familiar with Photoshop, and need to design and edit advanced images but can't afford the steep price, Photopea is your FREE downloadable solution.

Yes, I came across this amazing advanced FREE image editor by accident while searching the internet. What you can do with this program on ANY computer is mind-boggling! 

Pexels

When you're building your site, you'll definitely need some photos along the way to make your content more visually appealing. 

However, most photos online are actually copyrighted and you need to pay in order to use them. These are called "Royalty Free Images". This is not ideal for those on a budget. For those who are on tight budgets, "Free Stock Images" are the only way to go! 

Free Stock Image sites like Pexels, Pixabay, and Unsplash are indispensable for your free affiliate marketing tools arsenal! 

Pexels is a wonderful site (personally my #1 favorite) where you can download amazing FREE beautiful images to use for your own website and articles by talented photographers , without infringing on any copyright issues. 

Here are 3 websites for you to download Free Stock Images without ever worrying about copyright issues:

1. ​Pexels.com
2. Pixabay.com
3. Unsplash.com

Be sure to bookmark these 3 websites so that you know where to go next time when you need some free and great-looking images. 

Pixabay

Pixabay is another cool site where you can download great FREE Stock images to use for your own website and articles by talented photographers , without infringing on any copyright issues. 

Once again, here are 3 websites where you can download Free Stock Images without ever worrying about copyright issues:

1. ​Pexels.com
2. Pixabay.com
3. Unsplash.com

Be sure to bookmark these 3 websites so that you know where to go next time when you need some free and great-looking images.

Unsplash

Unsplash is the 3rd site I would recommend where you can download excellent FREE Stock images to use for your own website and articles by talented photographers , without infringing on any copyright issues. 

Once again, the 3 websites for you to download Free Stock Images without ever worrying about copyright issues are:

1. ​Pexels.com
2. Pixabay.com
3. Unsplash.com

Be sure to bookmark these 3 websites so that you know where to go next time when you need some free and great-looking images.

Bitly

Bitly is a Free tool that allows you to shorten, customize and track your links.

It is very useful especially for Twitter when you have character limits​. In addition, its Chrome extension allows you to easily shorten the URL on the page directly.

Other similar tools include TinyURL and goo.gl (Google URL Shortener).

Jing

Jing is a Free tool by TechSmith that allows you to take shareable screenshots from your computer.

"Shareable screenshots" gives you a URL for each screenshot you take. To share it with others online, you can simply copy-paste that URL and send it to others.

There is no need to emphasize the usefulness of screenshots because it's so common nowadays. They are indispensable to have readily available in your free affiliate marketing tools arsenal.

There are a few of other similar screenshot tools online, but Jing is one of the only tools that is Free and available on both Windows and Mac.

SnagIt

Snagit is an award-winning screen capture that allows you to capture both images AND video. This software is the only program on the market with built-in advanced image editing and screen recording.

I started using Snagit (also by TechSmith) when I was first using Jing, but was not able to capture images that "disappear" such as hover buttons. 

BAM!  Snagit with its "Hotkeys" (keyboard shortcuts) came to the rescue!   Now I cannot do without the FREE Trial version of this Amazing program! 

ScreenCapture by Aprosoft

ScreenCapture by Aprosoft (screenshot.net) is FREE and my most used screen capture. This FREE downloadable screen captures is the absolute SIMPLEST to use! 

You can also use it to edit your screenshots with arrows, text, underline, and various colored elements. 

Forget the Pro version (seen in this photo), just use the Free version for simple screenshots, and that's all you will EVER need! When you need more sophisticated screen captures, use Jing and Snagit. 

Zamzar

Zamzar is a FREE tool I stumbled upon and use for all my conversions (e.g. word docx to PDF, jpeg to PDF,  etc.) and what I LOVE about it is there are no strings attached. You don't even need to download it!

Simply Google "Zamzar", click on the link and you will see their mascot, the "Frog."  Follow the simple instructions, and you can convert practically ANY file to some other file, without ever downloading the program. 

Zamzar was the ONLY Free program that allowed me to convert my Word files to PDFs without formatting issues. I was sold on this excellent. most east-to-use converter!

Optimizilla

When building websites, we often need to reduce large file sizes without losing image quality so our sites run fast. This improves our viewers' experience. 

Optimizilla is a FREE online image optimizer that uses a smart combination of excellent optimization and lossy compression to shrink images to the minimum possible size while keeping the high level of image quality.

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This is one of the Great Free Affiliate Marketing Tools that I highly recommend, and you won't even need to download it!  Try it and see. 

Kraken

Kraken is another online tool which allows you to optimize the size of your images before uploading them to your WordPress website.

File compression is necessary as smaller file sizes of the images make your website run faster. The speed of your website adds to your user's experience as no one wants to surf a slow website.

Kraken offers various pricing options for different needs. However, their Free version is enough for me so I'm won't be paying for this tool.

Fiverr

Fiverr is a outsourcing platform for freelance work perfectly suited for marketers and online entrepreneurs like us to outsource technical work to the specialists who will get it done in an cost-effective way.

Most of the basic services offered on Fiverr cost only $5. That's why it's called "Fiverr". But there are also custom services and add-ons available at custom prices depending on the seller.

As a blogger or affiliate marketer, you can outsource anything from logo design, to programming, to web design, to content creation, etc.

Personally I've outsourced logo design and content creation before to the gurus on Fiverr. From my experience, you can really get the quality you desire since the platform allows you to communicate with these specialists very easily and freely.

Thrive Themes: Best Themes for Conversions

Thrive Themes is my #1 Recommended bundle of products that specializes in offering conversion focused WordPress themes & plugins. Their themes are built for speed, readability, and clarity.

I've been using a majority of the Thrive products since I became a Thrive Themes member. Personally I LOVE Thrive products because they make my website building experience a lot easier and enjoyable.

You can purchase a Thrive Membership and receive bundled access to all of their products, themes, and plugins.  

As mentioned, there are 2 ways to acquire Thrive products. One is to purchase the license for individual Thrive products and the other is to purchase their membership to have access to all the Thrive products, support and training.

More on Thrive products and plugins below.

Thrive Architect:  Best Drag 'n Drop Editor (Plugin)

Hands down, Thrive Architect is the Best Drag 'n Drop Editor for WordPress. It s also the fastest and most intuitive visual editor for WordPress. It allows you to build your WordPress pages on the front-end by using 'drag-and-drop' feature.

What's the advantage?  You can see directly how your website looks like while you're constructing your website in real time. The usual WordPress editor doesn't allow you to preview your page until you click on the "Preview" button and open up a new tab.

Thrive Architect also allows you to create professional and good-looking elements on your page without any coding requirements. Some of the options include call-to-actions, testimonials, pricing tables, countdown timers, "Click to Tweet" box, table of contents, etc...

You have total control on the appearance of your page, even down to the tiniest details like margins and spacing. These are impossible to get done in the WordPress editor.

With Thrive Architect, you don't have to hire any professional web designers to design your website. You are your OWN designer for your beautiful and professional-looking website!

Thrive Leads:  All-In-One Email List Building Tool (Plugin)

Thrive Leads is an All-in-One Email list building tool. You're able to create and design any type of opt-in forms on your website for maximum conversions.

I highly recommend Thrive Leads for reaching your maximum audience.

Thrive Leads major benefits include:

• Many opt-in templates to choose from
• Customization of every single detail to fit your website/business
• Integration with over 30 Email Marketing Service Providers to collect and manage your Email list
• A/B testing, analysis to create opt-in form animations

Thrive Headline Optimizer:  Optimize Your Headlines (Plugin)

Headlines are perhaps the most important part of any piece of content you publish.  As the name implies, Thrive Headline Optimizer is a plugin that optimizes your headlines.

Write 3 different headlines for one post, and publish all three. Thrive Headline Optimizer will indicate which headline is receiving the most engagement. In the process, it will bring the detailed analytics and rigorous A/B testing that you already know and love from Thrive Leads to bear on your post titles.

A fantastic tool to drive a greater audience to your posts!

Thrive Landing Pages:  Create Beautiful Conversion-Optimized Landing Pages (Plugin)

Thrive Landing Pages allows you to create beautiful, conversion optimized and 100% editable landing pages for various purposes on your website.

There are currently 274 landing page templates available in this plugin. There are a greater number of templates constantly being added along the way.

Some of the landing pages you can build include opt-in pages, video sales pages, webinar registration pages, homepages, review pages, personal branding pages, etc...

Thrive Clever Widgets:  Conversion-Optimized Widgets for your Sidebar (Plugin)

Thrive Clever Widgets allow you to customize your widget area, such as your sidebar, for different pages and posts.

You gain full control over what you want to show to your visitors in the sidebar on different pages. This can greatly increase your conversions as it makes your widget area more relevant and user-friendly.

Yoast SEO  

Any WordPress website owner definitely needs a plugin for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because that allows your website to be indexed and ranked in search engine more easily.

Having a dependable and  robust SEO plugin is an essential component to maintain and to utilize for high search rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs) of the major search engines, and thus are essential free affiliate marketing tools.

Yoast SEO has a few more advanced features than its competitor All-in-One SEO. Although both of them have similar functions and perform really well.

For this reason, I prefer Yoast.  However, the downside is that it is a bit more complicated than All-in-One SEO from my experience.

Q2W3 Fixed Widget

Q2W3 Fixed Widget allows you to fix any widget on the sidebar so it will "stick" there while you scroll down the page.

This useful tool allows you to capture your readers' attention in the areas you want to convert more. (E.g. Opt-in forms, Banners, etc.)

Child Theme Configurator: Create Child Themes

Creating Child Themes are essentially carbon copies of your WordPress website. They will protect your site from losing work or "breaking" when periodic updates (changes) are made by WordPress to the parent theme. 

The Child Theme Configurator is a wonderful easy FREE plugin that will handle this technical subject for you in a breeze. 

Before I ever build any site from scratch, I ALWAYS create a child theme as a carbon copy to protect ever losing my hard-earned work. 

Ultimate Slider: Create Beautiful Slideshows

Have you ever seen beautiful slideshows with hundreds of thumbnail photos that when selected open up to ultra-impressive Full Size images? The kind you may have seen on a Hollywood movie site? 

 Well, Ultimate Slider is a plugin that will create incredible slideshows that open into beautiful full-size images. I've used this fabulous FREE plugin on a major movie director's website, and he was indeed impressed!  

Contact Form 7:  Create Simple Contact Pages

Every website should have a Contact Page which allows people to contact you.

Contact Form 7 is a simple and easy-to-use contact form FREE plugin for WordPress. Its contact form is nothing fancy but it works very well and it's more than enough for the majority of the bloggers and affiliate marketers.

WP Clone:  Backup Your Website

WP Clone is a very good FREE plugin to backup your website. Backups of all your website files are imperative in case your WordPress site ever breaks for any reason. 

Although it has not been updated by Academy for quite some time, it still consistently works well and is very easy to use. For this reason alone, I recommend WP Clone. 

All-In-One WP Migration:  Migrate Your Website 

If you ever needed to move your website to a different host- a process called migration - you know how frustrating this experience can be.  

All-In-One WP Migration is a plugin that exports your WordPress website including the database, media files, plugins and themes with no technical knowledge required.  

Upload your site to a different location with a drag and drop in to WordPress. No more complex and tedious FTP needed.

I used this plugin to move a client's website from a host to GoDaddy. Quick and easy!  The only drawback in that the FREE version limits the migration to 512 megabytes (a small website), but there are ways to get around this limitation.

Comment Approved: Automated Emails when your Comments Get Approved

Comment Approved is a FREE plugin that sends an automated  customized Email to those who have left a comment when their comments are approved.

The default WordPress commenting system will not notify the visitors when their comments have been approved or people have replied to those comments.

Comments Approved will encourage more comments, discussions and engagements, which in turn will benefit the ranking of the content.

Pretty Link: Shorten and Customize any URL

Pretty Link is a cool and handy plugin especially for affiliate marketers to shorten and customize any URL.

Affiliate links often have long and messy-looking characters in the URL and Pretty Link can help you customize it to the URL you want and track the number of clicks.

Pretty Link is a plugin integrated in WordPress while Bitly works on a complete different platform on its own. This is the main difference. 

Pretty Link allows you to customize the link according to your website URL while Bitly cannot.

Yet Another Star Rating: Add Star Ratings to your Posts & Reviews

As affiliate marketers, we often need to create reviews on various products and services in our given niches.

Yet Another Star Rating (YASR) allows us to add rating stars into a review and tells Google that this is a review page. The benefit of this is that it can potentially improve our rankings in Google.

Repost:  Repost Instagram Stories

For anyone familiar with posting on Instagram, reposting is a great strategy for posting others' useful and engaging content to gain more followers and engagement. 

Repost is a great app that allows you to easily repost any Instagram story or post from your phone . One of the essential free affiliate marketing tools I highly recommend it. 

Evernote:  Sync Notes/Ideas Across different Devices

Evernote is a very useful tool that allows you to jot down notes/ideas and sync them across various devices. This means that you're able to edit your note/idea from any of your devices in real time, whether it be a smartphone, tablet and laptop.

This tool is very useful for bloggers and affiliate marketers to record down their blog post ideas, To-Do-Lists, plans or anything that pops up in their minds anytime.

When you have new ideas or inspirations for your website/business, you should quickly record them down in tools like Evernote before you will forget them.

I've tried other similar tools but none of them work as smoothly and effectively as Evernote. In Evernote, you can record things in text format, image, video, recording, drawing, etc. 

The Free Version allows you to sync across 3 different devices which is just nice for smartphone, tablet and laptop!

(Windows, Mac, Android and IOS versions are all available)

Facebook Pages Manager:  Manage your Facebook Pages from Your Phone

If you have a Facebook Page for your business (which is highly recommended for website owners), Facebook Pages Manager allows you to monitor and manage your Facebook Pages on your phone.

A Must Have App on any mobile device!

TimeTree:  Create a Shared Calendar

TimeTree is a very convenient and shareable calendar App. It allows you to easily create a shared calendar with your family, loved ones or co-workers.

This handy tool is great if you are working with virtual assistants and other professionals as it allows everyone to edit and keep track of their schedules.

There's a more suitable Paid tool for bloggers and affiliate marketers to build their own organized marketing calendar called CoSchedule. However, for now I like Time Tree as the price is FREE. 

Fiverr:  App for Easy Outsourcing

The Fiverr App is similar to its web version. It allows you to easily outsource your work to the specialists on your phone directly.

Crowdfire:  Manage your Social Media Posts from Your Phone

Crowdfire similarly has an App version almost the same as its web version. This convenient app allows you to manage and schedule your social media posts conveniently from your mobile device.

The Smart Passive Income Blog

Smart Passive Income (SPI) is a website by Pat Flynn, who is one of my most respected idols on the Internet.

He is a very inspirational and helpful person who offers great information and advice regarding online marketing.

If you've not heard of him or seen his website, I urge you to check it out because you'll gain great value and learn many things from him.

The Smart Passive Income Podcast

The Smart Passive Income Podcast (SPIP) is by Pat Flynn as well.

Podcasts are another way for Pat to offer valuable information regarding online marketing to his audience. I often listen to his Podcast while travelling and I've since benefited a great deal.

If you're an iPhone user, it's very easy to listen on the Podcast App.

Extra Paycheck Podcast

Extra Paycheck Podcast (EPP) is a Podcast run by our fellow successful Wealthy Affiliate member, Alex Sol. The things he talks about on his Podcast are similar to what SPI Podcast has to offer: Online Marketing.

I've listen to Alex's podcast and learn much from it. .

Again, if you're an iPhone user, simply listen in the Podcast App.

31 Days to Milllionaire Marketing Miracles

This Amazing book "31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles" covers all the necessary things you need to know to get started with online marketing, from acquiring the right mindset to solid marketing skills and knowledge.

The book not only focuses on affiliate marketing, it covers "online marketing" as a whole. There is guidance on Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), etc.

In this book, Tracy not only shares her stories, experience and tips, but she also includes action plans at the end of each chapter for you to follow.

For anyone who is just getting started with online marketing, I would highly recommend you to read this book. It will give you a clear overview on how to get the MOST from your current situation, getting paid while you sleep leading to financial freedom.

You definitely won't succeed just by reading this book. There are MANY other things we must learn for each of our online marketing strategies which are also mentioned in this book. However, this book gives you a good overview and a strong foundation of how to get started.

The first time I was exposed to this book was from a local library. After I finished reading it, I decided to get a copy of my own to read it again for future reference.

That's how much I LOVE this book!