Scrapebox - invaluable for scraping data from search engines and manipulating that data to your advantage. E.G. finding expired domains with links that you can use to build a private blog network. DO NOT USE SCRAPEBOX TO COMMENT SPAM.

That's it. All I use is Scrapebox - that's it. It's a one-off cost of about $60. I use the free OSE, AHREFS and Majestic - they show me enough data being free. I can use sites such as Bulk DA Checker - Domain Authority Checker Tool, Moz Authority to bulk DA check a batch of domains without captchas etc.

It depends on what approach you want to take. I just find expired domains, register them, and build a pyramid style private blog network.

Now, don't get me wrong. I also work full-time as a digital marketing manager where I use paid AHREFS, Majestic, OSE, Social Media monitoring tools, PPC analysis tools, buy WP themes daily.. List goes on and on - but that's the companies budget, not mine.

For me, affiliate marketing is a hobby. I don't want tools automating my hobby, and I don't want to waste my profits on automating my hobby. It's like playing Chess, but buying a program that tells you what moves to make...

100% agree with the Scrapebox suggestion. Of course everybody else will as well since it is probably the most ubiquitous SEO tool. One thing to note on that though you should get some private or at the very least semi-private proxies. Free proxies are useless (for the most part). Of course not all of the modules use proxies, however, if you plan on doing scraping you will really need them.

You mentioned using tools to build backlinks though. If you want to go that route GSA SER has a lot of options that can help you build links from a ton of platforms. It is still spamming and I'm not going to tell you they will be the highest quality of links. But if that is what you are looking for then Search Engine Ranker is probably the best tool for it on the market right now. Just keep in mind you will want a VPS to run it on and private proxies as well. Oh and I almost forgot, you will need a captcha solution for it as well, check out Captcha Sniper or Captcha Breaker.

So there is a difference in scrapebox and gsr serp. What about analyzing my competitors backlinks and importing them into gsa ser so they could possibly be of higher quality?. Also the VPS is that a must??. I can purchase the private proxies no problem but is the vps really a must or can someone still get buy without one?? Sorry to sound real newbie I just thought from some of the hype gsa ser could do what scrapebox could do plus more that is why people liked it so much

Scrapebox should be your number one tool of choice to start. This tool is the most robust tool out there for SEO. As the other guy said, don't use it to spam but use it to learn about how SEO works and why things rank.

IM is more of an intellectual job than the security field.

It depends on the kind of tools you want to buy, i would say avoid any backlink software,
it's not worth it at all.

Rather get something that will help you analyze site backlinks and quality.

Any tools you use for building links are only going to provide low quality, spammy ones. If your strategy is churn and burn, that's fine.

Either way, you shouldn't be shopping for tools. You should develop a plan and then see if there are ways to automate parts of that strategy.

Too many people buy into the hype of some of these products and then try to develop a strategy around their tools instead of the other way around.

much depends on what kind of SEO you plan to implement. As mentioned by some folks here, GSA is fantastic for spam approach. With some tweaking, it can also be used for less agressive and 'safer' tiered linking campaign. At $89 (if I'm not wrong), it's a must-have for any bootstrap SEO.

remember to budget for necessary stuff e.g. proxies, captcha breaker, absolutely critical in baacklinking and scraping. invest in them and save you a lot in the long term.

Of course, you also need to track your keyword ranking. try free tool: Free Rank Checker: Google + Microsoft Bing Online Rank Tracker

lastly, install free analytic tool on your website e.g. google analytics

for link research my advise is ahrefs ( $79 month)
for competetive analytics market samurai (14 day trial) and keywoard revealer(free)
for tiar 2 links gsa (99 $) ( but you need some capcha soft too )
for serp tracking serpbook (4$ month) or free tools smallseotools sitemapdoc
for link indexing gsa seo indexer (free)