While everybody will tell you that affiliate marketing is the easiest way to start working from home. However, if you really want to make money with affiliate programs and eventually quit your day job, you absolutely need to choose the best affiliate marketing tools.

Don't be caught in the get rich quick scheme craze. Every successful affiliates (super affiliates) spend a at least eight hours a day in front of their computers. But that's not all... When they leave the computer, they are thinking about improving their overall business plan.

The question is: Do you have a plan? Did you wisely choose the affiliate marketing tools that your business require? Put in your mind that affiliate marketing is a business, and you should have an entrepreneur mindset.

Without the right affiliate marketing tools, you will fail like the majority of affiliate out there (95%). After researching, testing, tracking, making mistakes, I know what are the essential tools for your affiliate business...

Essential Affiliate marketing tool #1: Your own affiliate website

Building your own affiliate website is crucial if you want to make a living from affiliate marketing. Playing the affiliate marketing game and waiting for thousands of dollars in commissions at the end of the month is a pure utopia without a website.

Unless you are one of Dan Kennedy's mate and get him to send an email to his list with your affiliate links, you need your own affiliate website.

Imagine building a family without a house! Do you get the point now? Here is a little secret: earning a living online through affiliate marketing without a site (including blogs, forums,etc) is one of the biggest affiliate marketing myths.

Whenever you need to enter a market or dominate it, you want to have a place where buyers can find you: here come your affiliate website, securing your affiliate commissions.

You need to understand your visitors needs and worries in order to have an affiliate website user friendly. People are looking for information. Just give them what they want. Provide them with relevant informations and feed them with advices and guidance they can't find anywhere else.

They will return to your site again and again, post your url on forums, tell their friends about you... When that happens, you will need another essential affiliate marketing tool. Without this tool, I can guarantee you that you will not succeed.

Essential Affiliate marketing tool #2: The Affiliate Autoresponder

When your affiliate website becomes popular and people in your market start sending you email asking you various questions on your topic, you will be soon overwhelmed if you don't use this crucial affiliate marketing tool: the affiliate autoresponder.

With this tool, you give an edge to your affiliate business. The autoresponder will do all the hard work for you, and let you free to do what you love in life.

Place an opt-in form on every page of your site and let the autoresponder give people valuable information without you doing nothing. By opt-in, I mean a mailing list. The money is in the list. Remember this sentence because it is the second of your top affiliate marketing tools: a list of loyal subscribers.

With your autoresponder, you can develop loyalty with your subscribers until they become your subscribers, your exclusive buyers. If you know how to treat them, they will ask your opinion before buying a competitor product.

When you reach this level of trust with your subscribers, you are well on your way to fire your boss... and work exclusively from home.

Get these two affiliate marketing tools as soon as you start your affiliate business. Believe me, your affiliate website and your autoresponder are essential to building your online empire.

Try to market without these two affiliate marketing tools, and I'm afraid that you stay amongst the 95% who barely reach a monthly four figures income.