How to Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money

When you buy something that an influencer recommends online, you are dealing with an affiliate marketing business.

 Brands often form partnerships with creators to help promote their products and services. The creators earn commissions on every sale.

 Affiliate marketing is a rapidly growing industry. In the United States alone, affiliate marketing spends are expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2022, according to Statista.

Start affiliate marketing with no money

For many beginners though, the biggest hurdle is the upfront costs, which include buying a domain name, web hosting, courses, books, etc. The question is: Can you do it for free?

 

"Yes." is the answer. Using affiliate marketing can be a very effective way to make money (without upfront costs) and this guide provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to do it.

It may seem challenging at first to become an affiliate marketer. But if you break it down into smaller steps, achieving your goals is much easier.

 

Find your niche

Choose an affiliate program

Make a decision about traffic sources

Create content that builds trust

Grow an audience

Engage your audience and interact with them

1. Find your niche

Establishing yourself as an authority within a particular niche will greatly increase your chances of success in affiliate marketing. 

Your niche is the topic on which you'll gain authority. The most popular niches include:

Hobbies: travel, photography, golf, outdoor activities

Money: Bitcoin, credit cards, investing, personal finance

Health: Fitness, vegan, weight loss, yoga, nutrition

Lifestyle: Luxury, fashion, airlines, jewelry, lifestyle

Home: babies, dogs, plants, security

Technology: gaming, Webhosting, VPN, and software

Alternatives include marijuana, CBD, and herbal remedies

You need a niche because if you recommend a lot of different products, people won't think of you as an expert. 

Alternatively, if you create content about a particular type of product and only recommend that product, people can see that you have experience in that area.

It will also help you further down the road with search engine optimization (SEO) on social media and your affiliate website if you decide to build one.

How do you choose a niche?

Start with niches that are likely to be profitable. Business-related programs, for example, have some of the highest commissions, while clothing, books, and media have some of the lowest:

These aren't your only options, and some niches work better on certain platforms than others. 

To stay motivated in affiliate marketing, you need to have at least a mild interest in your niche.

 In order to stay relevant for your audience, it's extremely important to stay up to date with trends and industry news.

Do you have specialized training or experience? By having prior knowledge of a subject, you will be able to accelerate your learning curve and get ahead more quickly.

Can you create content without investing money upfront?

 There are some niches, such as technology or travel, that can involve a lot of upfront costs if you don't already have the equipment or content.

Is it profitable? 

Your goal should be to make money. When you choose a niche that is either too broad so there are too many competitions or too narrow so there are not enough people interested in it, you risk not making a profit.

Finding a niche can take time and practice so don't be discouraged if you don't see success right away. 

 

 2. Choose an affiliate program

When you've chosen a niche, the next step is deciding which affiliate program(s) to join. It makes sense to choose affiliate programs or products that align with your niche.

A lot of YouTube channels promote Virtual Private Network (VPN) services so there the audience can watch them from anywhere in the world.

Market places and direct affiliate programs are the two main methods for finding affiliate programs in your niche.

 If you're familiar with brands in your niche that have affiliate marketing programs, contact them directly to sign up for them (affiliate programs are usually free to join), as Derek did with VIVO Life.

A second option is to join an affiliate program marketplace or network where you can browse thousands of programs and sign up for them.

There are a variety of affiliate networks offering merchants in various niches.

•        ShareASale

•        ClickBank

•        Awin

•        FlexOffers

•        Amazon Associates

•        CJ

•        Rakuten Advertising

Although all of these affiliate programs have a good reputation, it is also important to consider the commission rate and earnings per click (EPC) when selecting one. 

There are programs with low commission rates but high EPCs, 

meaning that they can still be worth joining.

3. Decide on a traffic source

At this point, you should think about your traffic sources.

A common misconception is that you have to have a dedicated website (which costs money) in order to be a blogger.

It is helpful to have one later when you feel able to reinvest in your business and scale upward, but it is not essential.

Affiliate income can be generated using other (free) traffic sources, such as social media platforms, YouTube, and forum-based sites like Reddit and Quora. 

There are a few advantages and disadvantages of each platform:

Facebook

•          Pros: Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. it has a large audience.

•         Cons: Teenagers may not find it appealing. Poor organic reach.

Instagram

•         Pros: Excellent for showing off products and services, highly visual. A of video content such as reels and stories is available.

•         Cons: Organic reach for feed posts is lower.

YouTube

 •          Pros: Improves search engine optimization. Over 2 billion people are accessible worldwide.

             

 •          Cons: In most niches, there is a lot of competition. Video quality must be high and professional.

TikTok

 •          Pros: Short video clips without a professional look and feel. Authentic and more personal. TikTok is a trendsetting platform.

         

 •          Cons: Descriptions do not have clickable links.

LinkedIn

 •         Pros:  Good organic reach. A well-established platform for professionals.

            

 •        Cons: Designed primarily for business-to-business audiences.

 

 Due to my lack of social media following, I cannot do that. How will I make money?  

It's time to start a following if you don't already have one. In other words, you do not need a huge following to earn money-you just need to reach the right audience.

 

For many affiliate marketers, social media is their primary source of income.

Other ways to use social media include joining Facebook groups in your niche and answering questions, or commenting on TikTok videos relevant to your niche. 

Engaging people is the key to building an audience, not just spamming them with affiliate offers.

4. Create content to build trust

The next step is to create content that builds trust with your target audience no matter which platform(s) you choose to use for affiliate marketing.

 Internet users worldwide spent an average of 145 minutes a day on social media in 2020.  

Good content.

Content creation takes time, so it is a good idea to plan ahead and develop a content calendar. 

You can include on your calendar outlines of what type of content you'll publish on any given day, such as:

•        Tutorials

•        Q&As

•        Product reviews

•        How-tos

•        Tips and tricks

If you choose YouTube as your platform, keep in mind a keyword strategy as you create your content strategy. 

A high-quality piece of content can get lost in the noise if you don't optimize it for search.

You can determine what keywords to use with a little research. For example, look at your competitors' channels on YouTube. 

Pay attention to their most popular videos and their titles, descriptions, and tags.

Don't forget to include links to your affiliate products or services, as well as a disclaimer explaining that they are affiliated.

Publish high-quality content that teaches your audience something. Always provide value, don't talk about yourself all the time. 

Earning affiliate sales and landing brand deals will be exciting, but before you can do that, build a highly engaged audience. 

5. Grow your audience

It's also a good idea to start building an email list or SMS list while you're creating content on your platform. 

There are two reasons for this.:

To interact with your audience, You don't have to rely on social media platforms. 

You can always reach your audience through email if your platform goes down, as all the major platforms may have hiccups from time to time.

Even if some affiliate programs (Amazon's affiliate program, for example) do not allow you to include affiliate links in your emails, you can still send traffic to content that has affiliate links - Traffic can be sent to any of your content.

Your email list provides a great opportunity to further build authority in your niche by adding even more value to your audience.  Few suggestions to get you started:

News and reports about the industry

Links to recent blog posts

Interview summaries or roundups

In your business or personal life, what's behind the scenes?

Promotional deals (every so often)

You can build an email list for free with many email marketing software providers, including Shopify Email, Mailchimp, and MailerLite. You can check them out to see which works best for you.

When you gain an audience's trust, you can promote high ticket affiliate programs. Five figures can be generated by each of these programs. 

But to get people to buy more expensive products, you often need an established niche and influence.

6. Respond and chat with your audience

Engaging with your audience is the last tip for growing your affiliate marketing business. 

By generating conversation, you not only help your followers or subscribers feel heard, but you benefit from social media algorithms as well.

Generally, when people interact with your content, algorithms interpret it as a signal that your content is worth boosting and showing to more interested people.

When you like and respond to comments on your videos on TikTok, for example, you will be able to see a special badge saying, "Liked by the creator," which stands out among other comments.

As these interactions demonstrate to your audience that you read their thoughts and appreciate them, they are extremely valuable. 

Thus, they're more likely to interact with your future content (and perhaps even encourage others to do the same).

You can also find out what future content your audience might want from you if you respond to them - that is a win-win scenario.