15 Free Affiliate Marketing Resources for Beginners

woman working on a laptop

Are you starting your affiliate marketing journey with a limited budget?

Your timing couldn’t be better? Affiliate marketing is booming right now, with 81% of brands using it to boost their sales. Even more impressive? The industry is expected to hit $27 billion by 2027!

Here’s the thing – at one point, I was exactly where you are right now.

It was 2006, I was just getting started and didn’t know where to look next. I failed for an entire year before I decided to spend money on training.

With my experience through the years, I can tell you that if you’re in a position where you have zero budget, you can still learn the ropes and start building your affiliate business.

The secret? Knowing exactly which free resources actually work. Not the ones that promise the world but deliver a “free trial” trap, but genuinely free tools that successful affiliates use every day.

Quick fact: Did you know that 31% of affiliate marketers now use AI tools to scale their content? That’s why I’ve included in this guide both traditional and cutting-edge AI resources. You’re getting the best of both worlds!

Here’s what you’ll discover in this post:

  • Learning platforms that are just as good as paid courses
  • AI tools that do the heavy lifting for you
  • Content creation tools that make you look like a pro
  • Affiliate networks that help you succeed by providing training

Let’s turn that overwhelming affiliate marketing journey into an exciting adventure – without touching your wallet! Ready to discover your new favorite resource?


This post may contain affiliate links. ThriversHub earns commissions at no extra cost to you when purchases are made through links on this page. For more info, visit the disclosure page.


Learn Affiliate Marketing For Free

You may not be ready to subscribe to a paid course yet but you can still learn the ropes of affiliate marketing for zero cost.

Paid courses offer more structure, are more comprehensive and offer one-on-one support. Free courses are often more disorganized or don’t cover the topic extensively but you can still get a lot of insight and knowledge from them. Support is often non-existent but at least you can still make a bit of progress.

Here are some great free learning resources you can try if you want to learn affiliate marketing for free.

1. Amazon Associates Resource Center

Amazon resource center

A lot of website owners monetize their content with Amazon Associates. This is because Amazon has almost everything in the world that you can be an affiliate for.

The affiliate program is especially popular among beginners. And if you’re looking for some free education on how to use Amazon as an affiliate, look no further than their resource center which contains articles, tutorials and videos designed to help you get the most out of the program.

You should start by reading the guides at the top under the headers:

  • Getting started
  • Learn about our products
  • Grow your business

These contain important info about Amazon Associates that you’ll need to know about if you want to become a successful earner. Things like:

  • Understanding the operating agreement – these are the rules
  • Build an engaging site or blog – you need this to get approved but the “engaging” part is also important too.
  • Drive traffic during key shopping events – a good strategy for success is to be active during events like Prime Day and Black Friday.

Then there are other great articles packed with information that you’ll find useful. They’re a bit disorganized but you can check off some boxes to only see articles, tutorials or videos. Or you can go by topic.

Be sure to click on the yellow “load more” button at the bottom for more articles.

Amazon Associates also has a newer resource called “Creator University” which aims to do the same thing as the resource center but in a more organized way. My only problem with Creator University though is that it focuses more on influencers than associates. It’s still a great resource that you should check out if you’re an Amazon affiliate.

2. Wealthy Affiliate’s Starter Membership

Wealthy Affiliate starter membership

With added AI integrations and huge updates to courses in 2024, Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best affiliate marketing training platforms for beginners.

The paid memberships have almost everything you’ll need to create a thriving business online including: web hosting, live training, core training courses, traffic training courses, an AI writer, research tools, and a hyper-active community.

But there’s also a free membership tier called the Starter membership. No free trial here – Starter is free forever, until whenever you feel the need for an upgrade.

If you’re just starting affiliate marketing then a free Wealthy Affiliate Starter membership is a valuable starting point. You’ll get access to the “Getting Started” course – 5 lessons on “Laying the Groundwork for your Business”.

You will also get a “business hub” which is created on signup after you choose a niche. The hub creation process is AI-assisted and you’ll get everything in one place related to your niche or business idea.

  • a WordPress website
  • niche research
  • affiliate program suggestions
  • content ideas ready to write
  • a place to add your writing tasks

You will also have access to the community at Wealthy Affiliate. It’s important to ask lots of questions, especially when you need help. From experience, asking questions help you to learn and understand concepts faster.

To signup for a Wealthy Affiliate Starter account, just go here to create your account.

3. Ahrefs Academy’s Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners

Ahrefs Academy free affiliate marketing course

More advanced level affiliate marketers and SEO practitioners use the Ahrefs tool to do keyword research, competition analysis, website audits and more.

Ahrefs is a useful SEO tool for anyone who has a website, which includes affiliate marketers. So it makes sense that they would have a free course introducing beginners to affiliate marketing.

The Ahrefs Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners is the perfect introduction to affiliate marketing for persons who want to learn how to make money using this business model.

The course is free and actually doesn’t even require a signup or email address. Obviously, they’ll reference their tool multiple times during the course which you’ll need to sign up to use.

At 49 minutes long, the course is very digestible and you can go through all the videos in one sitting. The 5 modules (16 lessons) that make up the course will give you a well-rounded understanding of everything from the basics (what is affiliate marketing, choosing a niche, etc.) to more advanced topics like link building.

So if you’re ready to get an overview of affiliate marketing, then Sam Oh (the VP of marketing at Ahrefs) is ready to walk you through this wonderful business model.

4. Adam Enfroy Beginner Course on YouTube

If you follow one creator on YouTube in the affiliate marketing space, follow Adam Enfroy.

Enfroy, an affiliate marketer himself, is the creator of AI Income Blueprint, an affiliate marketing course that teaches you how to profit with affiliate marketing with the assistance of AI.

But, AI Income Blueprint is an expensive course. However, I’ve found that Enfroy usually gives away a lot of value for free to his email subscribers and on his YouTube channel.

One example of this is his full beginner’s course on affiliate marketing with AI which I’ve embedded above. He frequently posts full courses so although this one says 2024, he’ll probably do one for 2025.

In the 2.5 hour free course, viewers will learn:

  • What is affiliate marketing and how to get started?
  • How to build an affiliate marketing website with AI
  • How to make your first sale
  • How to scale up for more profits

He also gives away some AI system prompts for finding your perfect niche market (even if you don’t know what that is now) and for developing a content plan.

I’ve used both prompts and never run out of content ideas for my websites.


Affiliate Networks with Free Training

Affiliate networks cannot exist without affiliates. Sure, their income comes from the advertisers who they manage but without affiliates, those advertisers would go elsewhere.

So it’s in the best interest of the affiliate networks to make sure that they educate their affiliates so they can convert sales and make more money. This is why many of them provide educational content and free training for their affiliates.

Here are some great free training from some of the affiliate networks that I use.

5. Mobidea Academy (Mobidea)

Mobidea Academy

Mobidea is a CPA affiliate network. This type of affiliate marketing model is a bit different from the usual affiliate marketing model that is widely taught. It involves buying traffic from ad networks (media buying) and other advanced tactics.

Most CPA networks usually have a stricter approval process but Mobidea approves all affiliates. Then they educate them.

Mobidea’s educational platform is called Mobidea Academy, where you’ll find all types of educational articles, guides and what they call “Learning Paths”.

I found this to be very helpful in learning CPA affiliate marketing and media buying as an alternative to the traditional concept of affiliate marketing. If you want to learn about getting paid to refer app installs or get paid for credit card submits or pay-per-call, then Mobidea Academy is a good resource.


Must-Have Tools & Software

Just like a carpenter has his toolbox so he can do his work efficiently, an affiliate marketer also needs certain tools to their disposal.

Many of these tools are freemium where the free version works really well (but has some limitations). I use a lot of free tools because I think most of the time, I don’t need the premium benefits. I also end up getting the premium version for some tools as well because on the other hand, it’s more convenient for me.

Here are some great free tools that are free to use in your affiliate marketing efforts.

6. Canva

Canva for design

You don’t need to be a designer or shell out money to pay one when you need graphics for your business.

Nowadays, everyone uses Canva. This website has thousands upon thousands of templates for everything from posters, social media graphics, video templates, slide decks and much more.

For affiliate marketing, you’ll likely need Canva for things like:

  • Blog feature images
  • Pinterest pins
  • YouTube thumbnails
  • Facebook ads
  • Lead magnet covers
  • Banner ads

Canva has a lot of AI-integrations to help you make beautiful designs and you can even access tutorials to help you get better at design.

I used Canva’s free tier for a while before upgrading to Canva Pro. The main reason why I did this was to get access to all the premium-only design assets. These assets usually come with a watermark if you try to use them on the free account.

There’s still a lot you can do with a free Canva account though. It’s one of the tools you’ll need almost every day in your affiliate business. A pro account is only around $13/month if you decide to upgrade. You can start with the one-month free trial and then the decision is yours.

7. Pretty Links Lite

Pretty Links is a WordPress plugin that lets you take ugly affiliate links and make them look like they’re coming from your branded domain.

I’ve used this plugin for as long as I’ve been building affiliate websites with WordPress.

Shortening and rebranding your affiliate links help build trust as people will see the link coming from your brand instead of some other seemingly random domain. Pretty Links also tracks clicks on your link so you can analyze how your links are performing.

Yet another advantage of using Pretty Links is if you need to change links on your website. For example, if I have one affiliate link in multiple places on my website and I need to switch them out for something else, it would be a headache to do them all one-by-one. With Pretty Links, you just change it once and it updates in all the places where you have that link.

Pretty Links Lite is the free to use and in most cases all you need. You can add it to your website from the WordPress repository and it will work without any changes to settings.

There is also a paid version that adds some features like auto-linking keywords, split-testing links, and generating QR codes for your links.

8. Greenshot

A lot of the images on this website are screenshots. Screenshots help breakup text in my content and illustrate what I’m writing about.

There are a few of ways to make screenshots, even without needing any additional apps. However, I like using a tool called Greenshot. It is completely free to use and has a number of useful features to make your screenshots stand out.

The Greenshot features I use the most:

  • Effects – Drop shadow, add border, grayscale
  • Obfuscate – I use this to block out sensitive info like email addresses
  • Crop – To get the exact part of the screenshot you need
  • Resize – I try to keep images at a certain size
  • Highlight – To bring attention to important parts of the screenshot
  • Draw – Add a freehand drawing to screenshot
  • Add elements – arrows, textboxes, speech bubbles, counters

Greenshot is completely free to download for Windows devices but if you have a Mac, you’ll have to pay $1.99. The website says it’s to cover their costs.

Once you have Greenshot on your device, you can just hit PrintScreen on your keyboard to launch or find the icon in the tray window.

9. MailerLite

You can start email marketing for free. Most email marketing providers have either free trials or a free forever account with limitations.

MailChimp is a popular option but they’re extremely limited compared to MailerLite. While MailChimp gives you a free account for up to 500 subscribers, MailerLite lets you market to 1000 subscribers for free and send 12000 emails per month. On MailChimp, you can only send 1000 emails per month.

MailerLite lets you sign up for a free account without the need to put in your credit card information. You’ll be able to try the premium features for the first 30 days and then your account goes back to limited.

10. RankMath

Better rankings in the search engines mean more traffic, more clicks on your affiliate links and more sales. For this, you need a good SEO plugin for your WordPress website.

Two great free ones are All-In-One-SEO and RankMath. I have both installed on different websites but I personally prefer RankMath. The settings panel seems like it does more and has more features for free users and you can get additional blocks inside the editor for things like table of contents and FAQs.

The free plugin can do all the SEO you really need but it’s limitations are mainly for more advanced SEO like adding specific schema types, tracking keywords, integrations and using their AI Content writer.


Free Content Creation Tools

Content creation is 90% of the work you’ll be doing in your affiliate marketing business. Paid content creation tools can help you save time and get the most out of your efforts. A lot of the times though, you wouldn’t really need them (if you have more time than money).

Here are a few free content creation tools I use and recommend for affiliate marketers.

11. Claude AI

Before generative AI programs like ChatGPT, creating content used to take a lot of time. One comprehensive post might take hours or even days to write.

Now you can use ChatGPT or similar AI writer to help with content creation. I prefer to use Claude.AI instead of ChatGPT because I feel it does better at writing content that’s easier to read.

I use Claude to assist with content creation task such as generating headlines, post outlines, content briefs, section drafts and more. I would never post a full AI-written post though. Content, especially for affiliate promotions, still need your human input to show unique perspectives and experience.

You can access Claude on the web here or download an app for your phone. Signup is simple and free. There are some limitations for free use but you can remove the limitations with a pro account for $20/month.

Claude is still pretty powerful as a free app that you can use to help create affiliate content for your website. Just be sure to avoid copy/pasting full articles and humanize the content by adding your experience and unique perspectives to your writing.

12. Grammarly

You may think that your writing is perfect even after checking it over for mistakes before you publish. You’d be surprised at how many grammar mistakes you can find using an app like Grammarly.

I installed Grammarly to try it out once and spent an entire afternoon correcting the mistakes it found throughout my blog.

Grammarly simplified complex sentences, corrected spelling, pointed out punctuation mistakes and incorrect grammar usage for me. And this was all with the free version of the app that I had installed in my browser.

While the free version will find mistakes for you, there is also a premium upgrade that does more – rewriting full sentences, adjusting your writing tone, etc. Upgrading costs $30/month or $12/month billed annually.


Must-Have AI Tools

It’s 2025 and everyone who I know doing affiliate marketing is using artificial intelligence (AI) to assist in their every day tasks.

Even if they’re not using AI directly, many businesses now have AI integrated into their tools and services. Canva, for example, has many AI tools for helping to create great designs.

13. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is the original AI that started it all. Affiliates can use it for everything from doing research and outlining articles to creating lead magnets and bonuses and even writing content.

It’s important to not post the AI-generated content as-is though. You should still be editing AI-generated content to include your personal experience and unique takes on the topic.

You already benefit from having the time it takes to create content cut down considerably. So you can take some of that saved time and make sure you put out the most engaging content possible.

ChatGPT has a free and a paid verse. The free version has limits on how much you can do within a certain amount of time. The paid version removes this limitation and has a few other benefits.

You can sign up easily by creating an OpenAI account. While ChatGPT is great though, I prefer to use Claude (mentioned above).

14. Rytr

Instead of using ChatGPT or Claude for creating content, you can use an AI writing tool like Jasper or Frase. However, these tools do not have any free plans. A great alternative to these paid tools is Rytr which has a free plan in addition to a less limited paid plan.

Rytr is simple to use and has a clean interface reminiscent of Google Docs. You just start a new document, choose a use case (blog outline, blog section, email, social ads, etc), a tone (conversational, convincing, etc), and then start writing.

The tool will generate content based on your chosen topic and you can then apply any number of operations to your selected text.

It makes writing and editing easier. The one downside is that you’re only allowed 10,000 characters per month which is not a lot if you write a lot of long articles. You can still do a lot with 10K characters if you want to generate other types of content, like social ads, email and other short-form content.

You don’t need a credit card to sign up for Rytr and it’s free forever. Paid plans start at $9/month if you need to do more.

15. Leonardo.ai

I use Leonardo.ai for image generation. Affiliates and content creators work with images in the form of:

  • blog feature images
  • banner ads
  • Pinterest pins
  • YouTube thumbnails
  • and more…

Generating AI images using Leonardo.ai can give you an idea of what you want. The results are better if you give it very detailed prompts and use the right model/presets. I usually work with Leonardo.ai and Canva to get exactly what I need.

Leonardo.ai isn’t the only AI image generation tool around but it’s one of the best I found. Plus, it’s free with optional premium upgrades.

To use Leonardo.ai for free, just sign up and you’ll get 150 tokens every day to use for image creation. You can usually create about 40 – 50 images every day in batches of 4 at a time.

A premium plan will get you more benefits, including enhanced quality and motion videos without watermarks. However, it’s perfectly fine to use for free if you’re just using it for affiliate marketing image creation.


Get Started Now

These are just some of the free tools and resources that you can use to get started with affiliate marketing.

There are no excuses to not start. Training and knowledge is free. AI tools are available to speed up some processes and there are lots of applications available for free to help you get stuff done.

When you start making money, you can always upgrade to the paid plan for tools that are helping or get more advanced training. Some tools, like Greenshot, can permanently replace any paid alternatives.

Get started with affiliate marketing now.

I’ll be updating this article from time to time to make sure the details are still relevant and possibly adding more tools and resources as I find them.

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