Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Affiliate Marketing Tool Stack 2026: What I'd Use If I Started Over (From a 20+ Year IT Guy)
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items Most beginner affiliate lists are full of $15 gadgets that pay you 40 cents. This is the opposite. Every tool here is something an affiliate marketer or creator actually needs to build a real online business, and most of them pay recurring or high on...
Sections
4
1. Build a Home Base You Own
2. Create Faster and Get Help Cheap
3. Sell Your Own Product
4. Learn the Skills and Make It Official
1. Build a Home Base You Own
Start here. Benable, Pinterest and TikTok are rented land, and any of them can change the rules or shadowban you tomorrow. A cheap site and domain on Hostinger gives you a link hub, a place to collect emails, and a landing page for freebies that you ...
Hostinger: Website + Domain for Your Link Hub
Etsy is great for traffic, but you pay fees on every sale and you do not own the customer. Once a POD design or digital product proves it sells, Shopify lets you run your own storefront, connect Printify or Printful, and keep the email list. The free...
Shopify: Your Own Store When You Outgrow Etsy
The one asset no algorithm can take from you is your email list. Kit is built for creators: landing pages, a signup form for your freebie, and automated welcome emails that send new subscribers to your best lists and links. Pair it with the Hostinger...
Kit: Build an Email List No Algorithm Can Take Away
2. Create Faster and Get Help Cheap
If talking to the camera is the part you dread, this makes it painless. Descript transcribes your video and you cut it by deleting words in the text, like editing a doc. It removes filler words and long pauses automatically, which is perfect for face...
Descript: Edit Video by Editing the Transcript
Your time is the scarcest thing you have, especially if you are juggling kids or a day job. When I did not know how to make good Pinterest pins, hiring a freelancer here was faster than teaching myself. Use it for the tasks you hate or are slow at: p...
Fiverr: Hire Pins, Logos and Thumbnails for Less Than Lunch
The tool I actually use for short form. Templates, auto captions, and beat sync make it fast to turn one idea into a vertical video for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, and those clips are what send people to your Benable lists. I also use it to cut AI vid...
CapCut: Free Editor for Reels, Shorts and TikToks
Typos kill trust, and trust is what makes someone click your link instead of scrolling past. Grammarly runs in your browser and catches mistakes in Benable notes, pin descriptions, Etsy listings, and emails as you type. The free version covers spelli...
Grammarly: Clean Up List Notes, Pins and Emails
One subscription covers stock photos, video clips, royalty free music, fonts, and design templates with unlimited downloads. If you post short form video, the music library alone helps you avoid copyright claims and muted clips. It is worth it once y...
Envato Elements: Unlimited Stock Music, Video and Templates
3. Sell Your Own Product
Affiliate commissions are a few percent. Your own product is close to 100 percent. Once you have figured out one thing other beginners struggle with, like getting an Optimized badge on Benable or getting approved for Merch by Amazon, package it as a ...
Teachable: Sell a Mini Course, Guide or Coaching Call
I made around $3k a year doing retail arbitrage with this back in 2017 and 2018. It shows estimated sales and competition for Amazon products so you are not guessing. It is just as useful for affiliates: before you build a list around a product, chec...
Jungle Scout: Find What Actually Sells on Amazon Before You Buy
The backend for my Etsy print on demand experiments. You upload a design, pick a product, and Printify prints and ships it only after a customer orders, so there is no inventory risk. It connects directly to Etsy and Shopify. Easy to start, hard to s...
Printify: Print on Demand Without Inventory
If you want your own product but have no audience yet, Etsy is the easiest place to start because shoppers are already searching there. Planners, budget sheets, Canva templates and wall art printables cost nothing to deliver, so every sale after the ...
Etsy: Sell Printables and Digital Downloads to Built-In Buyers
If you sell printables, print on demand shirts, or digital products, the listing photo decides whether anyone clicks. Placeit drops your design onto realistic mockups like shirts, mugs, framed prints, phones and laptop screens right in your browser, ...
Placeit: Mockups for Printables, POD and Digital Products
4. Learn the Skills and Make It Official
Most affiliate courses sold on social media are a rehash of free YouTube videos. This one is built by Google and teaches the real fundamentals: SEO, search and social ads, email marketing, analytics, and running an online store. You learn why some li...
Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce
If you want a focused course on one tactic, like Pinterest affiliate marketing, TikTok Shop, or SEO for beginners, Udemy has hundreds and they go on sale constantly. Never pay full price. Sort by highest rated, check the last updated date (anything o...
Udemy: Affiliate Marketing Courses (Wait for a Sale)
Once you have steady income coming in, an LLC separates your business from your personal assets and makes taxes and bank accounts cleaner. I used LegalZoom because I do not have a legal background and it handled the filings for me. You do not need th...
LegalZoom: Form an LLC When Your Side Hustle Gets Real
Tools only matter once you pick a lane. This is my other list where I break down every side hustle I have tried from home, including print on demand, KDP, retail arbitrage, AI music, and renting out space, with what worked, what flopped, and what I w...
My Side Income Hustle Compilation (Ways to Make Extra Money that Ive Tried)
Affiliate income is lumpy, especially in the first year. The most reliable way I know to fund your online business is a better paying, remote friendly day job. This is my list of tech certificates (several free) that I would point any beginner to aft...
AI-Proof Your Career: Courses That Actually Get You Hired
Almost every successful list creator I see is using AI for research, outlines, pin descriptions, and product notes. The difference between generic AI slop and content that converts is knowing how to prompt and edit. This short Google course teaches e...
Google AI Essentials: Use AI to Write, Plan and Research Faster
Affiliate links only pay off once you have an audience, and this certificate from Meta teaches how to build one on purpose: content planning, community growth, running ads, and reading your analytics. It is beginner friendly and self paced, and Cours...
Meta Social Media Marketing Certificate: Grow an Audience That Buys
Pinterest, Google and even Benable all work like search engines, so learning how keywords and search intent work pays off everywhere you post. This specialization from UC Davis covers keyword research, on-page SEO, link building and content strategy,...
Coursera SEO Specialization (UC Davis): Get Your Lists Found on Google
If you plan to take more than one course from this section, like Google Digital Marketing, Google AI Essentials, the Meta certificate and the SEO specialization, a Coursera Plus subscription can cost less than paying for each certificate separately. ...
Coursera Plus: One Subscription for the Google, Meta and SEO Courses Here