“If you don't find a way to make money in your sleep, you will work until you die” - Warren Buffett

Every Affiliate Marketer Needs a Good Tool Box!

In this post you will learn about:

• the digital affiliate marketing tools I highly recommend to profit and thrive

• the best sales funnel

• the best domain provider

• the best autoresponder

• the best web-based graphic design platform for all your social media needs

• A bonus tool free up your time and support your passive income business

Stay tuned to the end of this blog post and not only will I reveal all the tools I use to personally scale my business to a highly profitable, sustainable income source, but I will also share with you a bonus video focused on one tool almost everyone overlooks!

NOTE:  This post contains affiliate links.  I may receive a commission if you click a link or a button on this page and choose to purchase anything.  This is at no cost to you.  I give you my word that I only promote the tools and services I believe will be of value to you, as I have found them to be for me.  

1. FREELANCE DIGITAL AFFILIATE MARKETING EDUCATION

There are so many different ways that you can learn about Freelance Digital Affiliate Marketing. You can learn for free from a variety of excellent resources online: YouTube, blogs, short-form content like TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. The list goes on and one.

There are also a lot of opinions out there about how you can best learn how to do Affiliate Marketing. I have tried a lot of different free methods and paid for a lot of training too. There is lots of value in both kinds of education, but there are definitely some benefits to paying for training.

One benefit to paying for training is that it tends to be much better organized and systematized to make learning easier for you. The lessons follow a logical progression and you can connect the pieces much easier when things are taught in sequence.

I have learned a lot from watching YouTube videos, attending free virtual seminars and reading blogs, but, to be honest, I struggled to be able to put it all together in a way that really made sense for me. It was difficult to get a road map to follow from patching my training together from a variety of sources.

Below you will find two options that can really help you to get your start. The first is the training that started it all for me, back in August 2020. The second is the Affiliate Apprenticeship 2.0 course, taught by yours truly, that gathers all the knowledge, learning and challenges from my start in Affiliate Marketing, and walks you through how to set up an online digital affiliate marketing business.

THE 15 DAY CHALLENGE

I would be making the biggest mistake to NOT say that the very first tool in my toolbox is the very training that I used to learn about the foundations of Digital Affiliate Marketing:  The 15 Day Challenge!  The information I learned throughout the 15 days of lessons set my feet on the path to starting a highly profitable, online business.  

With the high-income skills I learned from The 15 Day Challenge, I started my online business with no experience in marketing, sales funnels, copywriting, email autoresponders, lead generation or business money management.  Those valuable skills I learned in that training gave me the solid foundation I needed to start a business that won’t just make me money today.  They’ve helped me to establish a business that will provide financial security for years to come, well into my retirement.  

AFFILIATE APPRENTICESHIP 2.0

As I have stated earlier, I have constructed the Affiliate Apprenticeship 2.0 to reflect and support all the struggles I faced, starting Affiliate Marketing from scratch with zero experience. If you want to get started but are worried about managing the technical aspects, help with picking a niche and how to start promoting your products, this is a great option for you.

After completing this course, you can have an online passive income business set up that can pay you for years to come using free social media traffic. No need to go into paid ads here!

If you are looking for a ways to start that is step-by-step and geared for beginners, the Affiliate Apprenticeship 2.0 is going to be perfect for you! Easy to follow video modules, worksheets to get you focused, the inside scoop on what products to promote and where to promote them. This course will move you from a complete beginner to an affiliate marketer who knows their path!

As well, when you'll also have the chance to join the FREE Broad Minded Solutions Facebook Community where you can ask questions and access lots of additional training. There are weekly Live Q&A Chats on Monday nights at 7PM EST so be sure to check it out!

2. SALES FUNNEL AND DOMAIN

The heart of your online business is your domain and sales funnel.  Let's look at what each of these are and what they can do for you!

WHAT IS A DOMAIN?

Did I mention when I first got started in Affiliate Marketing that I knew NOTHING about all the skills I now perform so easily I could do them in my sleep? Yup! This next section of information was all new to me, so I'm going to go into a bit of detail before I tell you my favourite pics for domain and sales funnel!

Now remember I am an English teacher, so to explain what all these domain-related terms are, let's pop in a little metaphor! Simply put, all of this information connected to domains is the map to find you on the Internet.

Your website is the house for all your information. For me, that is my Broad Minded Money Maker website.

So if your website your house, the domain name is the address on the internet where your website can be found. Mine is https://broadmindedmoneymaker.com. That is what all of you out here in cyberspace type into the browser URL bar to pop by and visit me.

The Internet is actually a large community of computers, all connected, through a huge global network. Any computer in this network can communicate with any other computer or device as long as it is also connected to the network.

In order for each device (computer, cell phone, printer, etc) that connects to the network to be individually identified, each device is assigned a series of numbers called an Internet Protocol (IP) address. It might be a series of numbers that looks like this: 10.887.39.7 (for the record, that is a completely random set of numbers that does not lead to anywhere specific but serves to illustrate my point). Think of it as the street address number of your house.

Anyone can visit a website if they know the specific IP address where the website can be found, but who can remember random series of numbers like that? Enter the domain name -- the memory-friendly alternative to having to remember the IP address for the websites you want to visit. It's comparable to the name of the street where you live.

Thanks to DNS, which is like the phone book of the Internet, people don't have to remember the IP addresses. DNS makes the connection between IP addresses and domain names so all you have to do to visit a great resource for all things blogging and freelance digital affiliate marketing is punch in Broad Minded Money Maker into your website URL bar and you arrive at that amazing site with one click!

One more term to define and then we can get down to the business of my recommendation for purchasing not only your domain, but your professional domain-email as well. The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is another name for the web address. It contains not only the domain name of your website, but also the protocol (http or https) and the path which will direct you to a particular page on the website. For example, https://www.broadmindedsolutions.com/now will not only direct you to my domain, Broad Minded Solutions, but to the specific path where a sales funnel for the Legendary Marketer 15-Day Challenge can be found.

NAMECHEAP

And now... for my recommendation for where to purchase your domain. Without any hesitation, that would be NameCheap. You can purchase a domain from them for as little as $4.95/year. If you are stumped at what name to pick for your domain or your desired domain name is already in use, they have a great tool called Beast Mode that helps you come up with alternatives that will leave you highly satisfied with the results. Not only that, you can purchase SSL certificates, web hosting, and VPN services from them as well.

When you start in online business, you are also going to need a professional email that is connected to your domain. NameCheap is a one-stop shop for this as well because you can purchase your professional email from their subsidiary company, Private Email for as little as $9.95 per month with a variety of storage and mailbox options.

NameCheap is an amazing service with absolutely the best Customer Service I have ever encountered in the online space. Sometimes you run into frustrating challenges with connecting domains to funnels, etc and I have had the most amazing experiences with the Customer Service Department at NameCheap. For me, there is no other service to recommend here: NameCheap is awesome and I highly recommend purchasing your domain through them!

WHAT IS A SALES FUNNEL?

A sales funnel is the visual representation of each customer's journey and visually illustrates the sales process from awareness to action. It gradually reduces the number of people in the funnel to result in a small number of prospects who will actually make a purchase. There are a few reasons why creating a sales funnel is important. Check these out: including the following:

• Sales Funnels Capture Customers: A Sales funnel captures the interest of a business's ideal customer and moves that person through a series of steps that may eventually shift them from prospect to customer

• Sales Funnels Generate Referrals: On top of attracting a base target market and paying customers, a sales funnel also provides satisfied customers a means to refer other prospects who may not have initially been attracted (by the funnel by sharing the link)

• Sales Funnels Monitor & Track: Sales funnels allow businesses to see the effectiveness of each step of their sales process (from prospecting to closing the sale) and allows them to make adjustments as needed. This helps ensure your business is making the most efficient use of time and sales resources. Useful feedback is acquired as customers progress through the sales funnel.

• Sales Funnels Focus Your Efforts: In order to appeal to your most specific client avatar, the sales funnel needs to narrows the business's focus to a highly specific group of consumers. Actually reaching your target audience members and converting them into customers will happen with a high degree of efficiency at the bottom of the funnel when your ideal avatar is clearly defined. Sales funnels can also help remove unqualified prospects from the sales process by requiring potential clients to go through a series of steps that eventually lead to a purchase

Now that we have that out of the way, let's do a deep dive into my top three recommendations for a sales funnel.

LEAD VORTEX

Now I am a person who has tried it all throughout my time as an affiliate marketer and online business person. My absolute top recommendation for a Sales Funnel builder is the most powerful software platforms I have ever encountered: Lead Vortex! It is an all-in-one platform that does literally EVERYTHING and is saving me over $150 monthly in service fees just because it does it all! If you want the complete scoop on what it does, check out my review, "Lead Vortex Review."

Lead Vortex is an all-in-one software platform that handles every single one of my main business functionalities, all for one incredible price! It is an autoresponder, sales funnel, Customer Relations Manager (CRM), website builder, website hosting service, blog platform, and course delivery platform. Not to mention, this platform's sales funnel is awesome, with drag & drop functionality that is on-par with the industry giant, Clickfunnels!

Now, for those of you who are current Clickfunnels users, Lead Vortex offers an amazing functionality. Prior to switching over to Lead Vortex, I was a Clickfunnels user and an avid fan of their platform. For that reason I was very, very hesitant to try something new. Just the thought of rebuilding all my funnels on a new platform was enough to put me into a cold sweat!

Lead Vortex made it nearly impossible for me to NOT give them a chance because they have an import function that will allow you to simply share the url of your current Clickfunnels products and seamlessly imports them into Lead Vortex with a few clicks and under 5 minutes.

What else could you possibly ask for in a business management software?

Well, how about this? You can also be an affiliate for Lead Vortex That's right, your monthly cost for using this platform to meet your own business needs can be easily covered by promoting Lead Vortex as an affiliate!

Any way you look at it, Lead Vortex makes a very strong argument for you to explore it as your number one choice for an all-in-one platform that can give you a sales funnel and much, much more!

CLICKFUNNELS

Prior to switching over to Lead Vortex, I was a flag-touting, proud Clickfunnels User. I still absolutely love the platform and the ease of use. They have a 14-Day Trial that allows you to see for yourself just how awesome their product really is! Add to that the amazing training opportunities they offer and an awesome affiliate program, and you have one strong argument for staying with the platform.

Clickfunnels has a standard ($97/month) platform and a pro platform ($300/month), but I can assure you that you won’t likely ever need the professional platform.  I used the standard platform and was completely satisfied that it served all my business needs!  This platform will allow you to build beautiful sales funnels, import already done-for-you sales funnels targeted at specific marketing aims (launches, sales, storefronts, etc) that have been time-tested and proven to convert prospects to customers.

As well, the Clickfunnels Customer Service department is second to none. If you are struggling, you get to talk to an actual real person, first through chat and also over the phone.

This link will allow you access to a special 14-day Free Trial of the standard platform.  

As I said before, in addition to the features and functionality of Clickfunnels as a sales funnel, the company offers a variety of excellent training programs and educational materials that I have used to help me along the way.  The One-Funnel Away Challenge offers a full month of daily training with one-on-one support to help you design your first sales funnel.  I cannot even begin to summarize all that I learned through that Challenge and the cost included use of Clickfunnels for the entire month! 

One of the most helpful resources I found when I was planning and creating my content was the Secret series books by the creator of Clickfunnels, Russel Brunson.  Dot Com Secrets, Expert Secrets and Traffic Secrets gave me great insight into how best to target and speak to my followers and convert them into my Ideal Customer.

Add to that the bonus of being a Clickfunnels Affiliate and now I receive 40% commission on all Clickfunnels products and services that I bring to the company!  If you do the math, that equates to only three sales per month of their standard platform and my own Clickfunnels cost is absorbed by the commission I receive!  Now that is a sweet deal!

You can't go wrong with Clickfunnels!

SYSTEME.IO

My other highly recommended sales funnel platform, and the one that I used when I first began and wanted to keep my expenses lower is Systeme.io. They offer a Free Plan, especially helpful when you are first starting out, but can then switch to a paid plan with more options as your business needs grow! 

An added bonus with this service as software is the inclusion of an autoresponder!  That's right! Build your funnels and send your emails all from one platform! It is truly an all-in-one service that can set your business on the path to success... on a budget! Even if you need to progress past their Free Plan to their paid plans, their costs are reasonable and will help you to run your business on a budget.

I was even able to host the first course I ever created on the Systeme.io platform. While I have now moved Affiliate Apprenticeship 2.0 over to Lead Vortex, for those you wanting to host courses in addition to using the sales funnel and autoresponder functionalities, here is another strong argument to choose Systeme.io as your all-in-one software platform.

3. AUTORESPONDER & EMAIL MARKETING

There is nothing more important than building an email or subscription list!  It is the key to financial success!  Once you collect your potential customer’s email through your sales funnel.  Once you have secured that email, it is imported into an autoresponder.  The autoresponder is an online service that manages the customer emails you collect and sends them, upon your instruction, emails that either educate them or sell them products you recommend.  

LEAD VORTEX

Now you have already read about how much I love using Lead Vortex for my sales funnel, but it also makes a very strong argument for choosing this platform once you give their autoresponder a try! Lead Vortex handles funnels, emails, websites, CRM duty, and even social media DMs. By switching to Lead Vortex, you can cancel ClickFunnels, Aweber, ActiveCampaign, Kartra, or any other page builder & email combo. Simply by switching to Lead Vortex, I have saved myself over $150 per month because if offers so many software services all in one platform, autoresponder included!

Email marketing is something that people often struggle with because they don't know where to start when writing. With Lead Vortex, there's no need to program your own email sequences because every Lead Vortex account comes pre-loaded with affiliate sequences for your favorite products as well as templates for your own stuff. If you can write a word doc, you can do email on Lead Vortex.

And this isn't just some collection of swipes. The creators of Lead Vortex, experienced affiliate marketers as well, have taken the time to hook up and pre program all the sequences to the actual funnels themselves. All you need to do is enter your affiliate link, tell your story in the first email, and you're good to go!

You absolutely cannot go wrong with Lead Vortex!

AWEBER

AWeber is an excellent email autoresponder to ensure you capture client emails & send re-occurring marketing messages!  They offer a free plan for anyone with an email list up to 500 subscribers, then charge you a reasonable rate as your list grows and you gain subscribers.  Up until I switched to the most powerful all-in-one platform I have every encountered, AWeber was my personal choice for autoresponder!

SYSTEME.IO

If you need to run your business on a budget Systeme.io offers one of the most affordable all-in-one platforms on the market, including in that platform a powerful email autoresponder. As I've mentioned before, they have a 100% free plan with all the features you need to launch and operate an online business. As well, should you need to switch to a paid plan, they offer an extremely reasonable plan starting at $27 monthly when most of their competitors have plans starting at $97.

That is a price that is very hard to beat! With the Systeme.io Free plan, you’ll be equipped with everything you need to get your business up and running, without spending a dime. You’ll be able to:

• Create sales funnels

• Send unlimited emails

• Have unlimited membership site members

• Integrate Stripe and Paypal with your payment pages

• Run your affiliate program

• Have unlimited storage space

• Create a blog

Just to name a few. You’ll have access to all of these features for free, forever. With the Systeme.io Free plan, you can become an entrepreneur and start making a living online. When your business succeeds and you need more features, you can just upgrade, and it’ll still be cheaper than other offerings by competitors.

Another added bonus: Syteme.io has an affiliate program! As an affiliate, all you do is promote their Free Plan and they take care of the rest. You attract the customers to them and they make certain that when those customers convert to paying plans, you receive the commission!

4. SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS

Potential clients need to see valuable content, drawing them in to follow you on your social media accounts so you can expose them to your recommendations on your affiliate products.  This is called your traffic.  The Affiliate Apprenticeship 2.0 can help you to select a social media platform and does a deep dive into how to create content that will build your audience and grow your sales.

Social Media platforms provide a way to create Organic Traffic.  Organic Traffic is FREE traffic, achieved through posting on social media platforms and blogging.  Ideally, a person can start Digital Affiliate Marketing on any platform: TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. It is best to choose one platform on which to focus and then expand as you grow your business.  To grow organically and fast on your selected platform, I highly suggest you post very frequently and every day!  That is the key to success.  

A key training that helped me to succeed on the TikTok platform was the 15 Seconds Free Leads training.  I learned the format and structure of the short-form videos I would need to create once I started on the platform.  I consistently applied the concepts I learned and have built my primary account to over 128K followers!  It’s a gem of a training and it only costs $1; yes you heard that right!

Social Media Platforms are a smart approach to begin making money online, very quickly, but follow your instinct and choose the platform that is right for your message, niche and personal needs.

Paid traffic requires you to spend money on advertising on your social media platform of choice.  Virtually every social media platform offers the option to purchase advertising.  This can be done with as little as $5/day to get started.

If you want to learn more about Digital Affiliate Marketing and how to create passive income that pays you while you sleep, vacation, and go about your daily life, join my Broad Minded Solutions Facebook Group and subscribe to the Broad Minded Solutions YouTube Channel.  You’re not going to want to miss out on all the valuable information and live training I offer there!  

5. GRAPHIC DESIGN SOFTWARE

No matter which social media platform you choose, or if you select blogging as your means of creating interest, driving traffic and attracting leads, you will need to use graphic design at some point.  You might need a great royalty-free picture or video to use in a video or blog post or you might need access to software that allows you to create striking layouts for your social media presence.  My hands-down, I’m-completely-lost-without-it-favourite is Canva!  Canva is a design web platform that offers both a free and pro pricing plan to suit your business needs.  

I use it for creating all the graphics and banners you see me use on all my social media platforms from a Facebook Group banner to brand logos and everything in between.  I have used Canva to design it all and never had to outsource for any of the graphics I use in my business.  They have thousands upon thousands of templates for every possible project you could ever need to design.  

There is a free version that you can sign up for, but I highly recommend giving the Canva Pro version a try.  That gives you access to exclusive high-converting templates and special features like social media scheduling that are not available in the free version.  Click HERE for a free trial to see the difference!

Now I know I said I would reveal my Top Five Tools of Digital Affiliate Marketing, but I'm including the following Bonus Tools.  They are, hands-down, the most indispensable time-savers of all.  Read-on to discover why I consider these next tools to be absolute life-savers!

BONUS: SCHEDULING TOOLS

Now as I’ve said before, my entire aim in establishing this online business is to create truly passive income!  The second thing I always keep in mind? Work smarter, not harder!

That means income streams that I don’t have to constantly attend to.  Creating the messages that draw the traffic and posting those messages on Social Media (whether that be a blog, YouTube, Facebook, or another short-form platform like TikTok) are definitely active tasks that I have to perform as a Digital Affiliate Marketer.  

So how do I convert these active tasks to a passive income stream?  The answer lies in scheduling tools that allow me to upload and then schedule the posts I put on the various social platforms so that I do not have to commit time to this daily.   

I discovered Tailwind.App at the beginning of my Digital Affiliate Marketing journey but never hopped on board in committing to use it.  I signed up for their affiliate program but then forgot about it along the way.  It wasn’t until I started posting to multiple social media platforms that I returned to Tailwind.App because I didn’t want to be chained to my phone and computer to post frequently and daily.  

Tailwind.App allows me to schedule my posts across all social media platforms including Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.  It is a recognized Pinterest Partner app so you are guaranteed not to have any negative push-back for using it to schedule your pins, unlike other non-native scheduling apps that are known to have a negative impact on your account. I can spend one afternoon uploading all my posts and pins and schedule these for the month!  I consider it an indispensable tool that has absolutely bought back my time freedom and allows me to accomplish so much more in so much less time than the manual approach I had before.  

An added bonus to using Tailwind.App is the communities you can join that explain and support all the ways you can use the service to take back your time and create truly passive income streams.  

The other absolutely indispensable & time-saving scheduling tool is Repurpose.io. They have a 14-Day Free trial where you can learn the platform and publish 10 video. Once your free trial has expired, you can opt to continue with a paid plan based on what you need.

For example, Repurpose.io downloads your TikTok videos without the watermark and automagically publishes them to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Reels, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more. The next time you upload a video to TikTok it will get published everywhere you desire, without you lifting a finger! It works like this for every other social media platform out there, so why wouldn't you want to expand your reach and work less?

The Podcaster Plan ($15/month) works well for audio creators who want automatically convert audio podcast episodes into engaging videos and publish them to multiple platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter. With this plan you can connect one of each social media platform. The offerings go up from there so everyone can find a plan that suits their needs. Work smarter, not harder and put Repurpose.io to work for you!

CONCLUSION

There you have it, friends. Those are my top five tools that Freelance Digital Affiliate Marketers need to Prosper in online business. I hope you found this helpful, and if you did, please drop a comment or share this with someone. Heck, maybe even pin this on Pinterest? I'd really appreciate the support. I've included a handy graphic for pinning if you'd do me the favour! 

Once you are ready to take the plunge and start Affiliate Marketing, come back and read my blog post, The 7 Step Guide to Freelance Digital Marketing Success. As for what you can promote to send those affiliate commissions your way, the choices are endless! 

Check out the video below to see some of your options! You'll learn how I was able to get my online business firing and the commissions rolling in. This might be just the right time of your life to take positive action, shift your mindset, and begin to believe that you CAN achieve this! 

I also have a Facebook group called Affiliate Marketing & Passive Income with Broad Minded Solutions. I'm happy to support you on your journey to become a blogger & Digital Affiliate Marketer!

Be sure to check out the other helpful articles here on the Broad Minded Money Maker Blog that you can use to help get yourself started on a more secure, financially free future and begin claiming the life you've always dreamed about having. 

So What Are You Waiting For? 

 

💦 CANNON-BALL!💦

And start your own Affiliate Marketing Business or Blog TODAY!