Affiliate marketing is often useful when people are selling a product or service online. For this purpose, influencers look forward to doing partnerships with brands for their promotion. As a result, the influencers get a commission for every sale made through their approach. Statistics say that affiliate marketing expenditure will be about $8.2 billion in 2022 in the United States.
But upfront cost is the major problem in the way of beginner affiliate marketers. This includes the expense of buying e-commerce hosting, books, domain name, and courses. This usually arises the question of whether one can start affiliate marketing without any money or not. A simple answer to this question is yes. In this article, we will let you know how to make money online via affiliate marketing without any money. Let’s get into the details now.
How Can I Start Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner?
To start affiliate marketing as a beginner keep these points in mind:
- Select your Niche
A niche is a part of a larger market that is explained by its own unique characteristics. You can call it your specialty around which your content will be focused.
Top Affiliate Marketing Niches
The top affiliate marketing niches found by Easy Affiliate are:
- Technology
- Lifestyle and wellness
- Personal Finance
But you are not limited to just these options. You can choose a niche of your choice and interest. To select the most profitable one for yourself make sure to keep these points in mind:
- Are you interested in learning more about your chosen niche?
- Can you solve the hurdles that will come in the way of working with this niche?
- Is your chosen niche profitable and reliable?
- Select your Platform
Next comes using the most appropriate platform for your affiliate marketing business. There are different platform options available depending on the product or service you are marketing. Some people prefer writing blogs for marketing whereas others focused on Instagram and Tik Tok videos.
Options Available to Choose From
The two main options that you have as a beginner are:
- Product Review Site
In the case of product review sites, the products are compared to each other and are for a specific audience only. It also involves publishing product tutorials and buyer guides for helping shoppers in making buying decisions.
- Digital Content
Another method is to opt for digital content marketing with the help of social media marketing, influencers, and YouTubers. This includes publishing content resonating with the audience for getting more clicks and improving influence.
- Look for Relevant Affiliate Marketing Programs
Different affiliate marketing programs are offered but you have to be careful when choosing the right one for yourself. Not just look at high-paying affiliate programs but also consider the options that are beneficial in appealing to your audience to your products and services.
Questions to Ask yourself
Some important questions to ask yourself are:
- Is the program reputable in the market?
- Is the commission rate for the program worth it?
- Are the High Earnings Per Click of the program sufficient?
- Make Quality Content
On a global level, 170 minutes are spent by people online on average. To make sure that they look at your product or service make sure that you are providing them with quality content in your affiliate marketing.
How to Promote Quality Content?
Blogs can be really helpful in affiliate marketing and are the source of 65% of the traffic generated by affiliate marketers. You can use different social media platforms for uploading your content without having to buy a website. Social media promotion is not just easy but also usually free. This means from now on you can use Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for affiliate marketing purposes also.
- Build an audience
Building an audience is very important to understand for beginners who are interested in affiliate marketing. But before this, you have to reach your audience first.
How to Reach Audience?
For this purpose, you can create email lists to reach your audience directly. Moreover, you can also send people updates on new content, newsletters, and exciting offers.
In case you are doing affiliate marketing using social media follow and tag influencers are the best option to look at.
Make sure to gain the trust of your audience before selling them your product or service for building a better bond with them.
- Follow FTC regulations
Last but not least make sure to follow FTC regulations. These help you keep protected from deceptive marketing prices. Even in affiliate marketing, there are people who are more interested in scamming and misleading their audience when it comes to the promotion of their products and services.
How to Prevent Frauds?
It is a requirement of FTC that every marketer discloses his financial relationship with all the products and brands that he is promoting. Make sure that your audience is aware of the compensation that you are getting in return for the promotion. It would be best if you provide your people with an affiliate link also to make it easier for them to get the product or service.
Do I Need Money to Start Affiliate Marketing?
A simple answer to this question is no. This means that it is not necessary for you to have money for starting affiliate marketing. But two things without which you cannot start affiliate marketing include a stable internet connection and an internet-enabled device.
You must have heard of the saying that it takes money for making money but in the case of affiliate marketing, this is no compulsion. Well, you can invest money in your affiliate marketing efforts once you begin generating commissions for scaling your business. But one thing we can say for sure is that affiliate marketing is something that you can get started with no money.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing Without Investment?
Now let’s come to our main topic about how to start affiliate marketing without investment. Well, there are many ways that can help you begin with affiliate marketing without any money or even a website. Let’s get into the details now.
Initial Steps
You must have knowledge of some basic things before you start promoting your products or services via affiliate marketing. Some most important points to keep in mind are:
- Select your niche
- Get your links
- Start the promotion process
It is best to choose a niche that you are already familiar with. This will make it easy to get clicks on your links by providing quality content.
Sign up for some free affiliate programs and get knowledge of the terms and conditions applied in affiliate marketing.
There are some affiliate programs that only allow specific promotional methods. Choosing any other methods will kick you out for not abiding by the rules. So make sure you learn them first.
- Open a YouTube Channel
According to statistics, there are more than two billion users of YouTube. Also, more than 42% of internet users worldwide log in to their YouTube accounts every month. The best thing about YouTube is that you don’t have to pay any money for signing up for an account. Moreover posting your own videos on YouTube is also free for promoting your affiliate products.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing on YouTube
- Make a channel related to your niche.
- Record videos of your affiliate products.
- Some video ideas to take help with are:
- Use your smartphone or laptop for editing videos for free using free video editing software.
- Make sure not to forget to do basic keyword research on YouTube related to your product or video.
- Also, add the keywords in your description as well as the title.
- Once you upload your video on YouTube make sure to share it on other social media platforms also.
- Choose Pinterest for Affiliate Marketing
You can also choose Pinterest for doing affiliate marketing without any investment. It is a visual search engine where you can post about your products and ideas. You can also share and save pins on Pinterest. More than 40 million Pinterest users actually shop on it. Pinterest is a great platform for posting your affiliate links.
How to Begin With Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest?
- First of all, make a free Pinterest for business account.
- For the promotion of your product create pin graphics using free tools like pictochart or canvas.
- Or you can also directly upload the image of your product.
- Write a Keyword rich title when uploading your pin and a Keyword rich description.
- Post your pin.
- You can also make pens for your YouTube videos if you create some for your products.
- You can upload videos using Pinterest and also create story pins.
- Moreover, you can also bulk create several pins.
The best thing about using Pinterest is that for putting your pin on autopilot you can schedule your pins using its native schedule feature. The most important thing to keep in mind for getting your pins visible to your potential customers on Pinterest is valuing SEO. You can also increase your following by following related accounts. But one thing that you must know is that followers are not the main goal on Pinterest.
- Choose Facebook for Affiliate Marketing
Another great option to consider for affiliate marketing without any investment is Facebook. There are multiple ways that help you do affiliate Marketing on Facebook full stop the best step to start with is to create your own Facebook page and group. To start getting traction on Facebook may take some time. But using the proper strategy you can manage to do it efficiently.
Make sure not to forget to link your Facebook page and group together. The key to the organic growth of a Facebook page and group is to choose the right niche. Then post engaging, relevant, and shareable content. You can also take the help of educational posts and reviews for posting stuff related to your affiliate products. Facebook also gives the option of uploading videos directly for getting affiliate links and products within a wider audience range.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing on Facebook?
- Create a branded Facebook page.
- For growing a community creates a Facebook group.
- Make sure to add a keyword in the title and description of your group to make it easier for people to find it.
- For Organic growth of your page share long-form block posts, engaging memes, videos, etc.
- Stick around your affiliate product for creating content and videos.
- Choose Instagram for Affiliate Marketing Without Investment
Instagram is a very famous social media platform that is used by more than 1 billion active users worldwide. It is a great platform for driving traffic to your affiliate links without any investment. It is a visual platform that operates with videos, photos, and hashtags.
The more aesthetic is your content the better the results will be. Like TikTok Instagram also have a real feature that allows you to post short stories on your profile.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing on Instagram?
Affiliate marketing using Instagram is the same as doing it on other social media platforms. It allows you to post videos, images, stories, and reals for attracting your potential customers using strategic hashtags. To get started with this process follow these steps:
- Make a free Instagram business account.
- You can upload product tutorials, product reviews, product pros, and cons, etc.
- Also, look for hashtags that are related to your niche and product and use them in your posts.
- Upload videos, photos, and reels related to your product.
- Make sure you add your affiliate link in the bio of your Instagram profile.
In case you also have Pinterest and YouTube accounts you can also use them interchangeably with Instagram. You can make Instagram posts for your YouTube videos and pins for your Instagram posts.
The more the options of places where you are potential customers will see your links the better will be the affiliate marketing results. So the best way to do successful affiliate marketing is to make a web of interlinked social profiles.
- Choose TikTok for Affiliate Marketing Without Investment
These days Tik Tok is very popular and used by a lot of people throughout the world. TikTok has more than one billion active users and is growing very fastly compared to other social media platforms. TikTok just launched another great feature of the free business user account option. With this feature, you can post as a business, post a link in the bio and get video watch analytics.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing on TikTok?
You have to create videos following Tik Tok Trends for successful affiliate marketing on this platform. But using the best strategy this process can be easier for you. To start with this process follow these steps:
- Make a free Tik Tok business account.
- Add your affiliate link in the bio of your account. You can also use free services like Linktr.ee for adding links to your bio.
- Upload videos that are related to your product but avoid being extra promotional.
- For the growth of your followers and to get more attention on your affiliate links follow Tik Tok trend videos.
- After reaching 1000 followers you can also go live on your profile. This will help you interact with your audience in a better way.
- You may also re-purpose your TikTok videos as Pinterest videos or on your Instagram reels and vice versa.
- Choose LinkedIn for Affiliate Marketing Without any Investment
LinkedIn is also very great for affiliate marketing especially if you are considering it for tech, digit marketing, and B2B business software niches. LinkedIn has more than 800 million members so you cannot overlook the great results you will get after doing affiliate marketing on this platform.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn comes with some exclusive features that make affiliate marketing beneficial and easier. To start with this follow these points:
- Make a LinkedIn profile and make sure to complete it as much as possible.
- Send a connection request to businesses and people related to the niche of your affiliate products.
- Also, upload blog posts on your profile related to your product.
- You can also use your profile for posting status updates same as on Facebook.
- You can also join LinkedIn groups or create a LinkedIn business page for better affiliate marketing result.
- Write Affiliate Review Articles on Medium
When it comes to the most trusted user-generated content platform medium is the best option. You can use this platform as a niche blog without making it compulsory to create a website.
You can upload affiliate review posts and also get paid for them. Moreover, this platform also lets you add affiliate links to your blog post articles, and less than are not spammy.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing on Medium?
- The first step is to get yourself registered for a medium account.
- Then upload articles related to your affiliate products that inform, educate, and inspire.
- Make sure not to forget to add an affiliate link disclosure in your blog post.
- Make sure to avoid being spammy and overstuffing your post with a lot of links.
- Also, not every post on your profile should be a promotional post.
- Medium is a very famous publisher and has good rankings in search engines. So make sure to do good SEO and keyword research when uploading a post on medium.
- Affiliate Marketing on Reddit
Another very popular website that allows efficient affiliate marketing is Reddit. It is a collection of forums that can be used for multiple niches. It is also an up platform where people come together for posting questions and their answers. Reddit can also be used for sharing photos, writing short stories, or sharing other kinds of information. Once you understand its proper use you will realize how good it is for affiliate marketing.
How to Begin with Affiliate Marketing on Reddit?
One thing to keep in mind about Reddit is that it restricts you from posting direct links if you are a direct affiliate marketer. Moreover, before starting with the promotion process you have to become an established Redditor first. To start, follow those steps:
- Make your Reddit profile. Join subreddits linked to your niche.
- Begin with the engagement process by posting comments, threads, upvoting, replying to comments and downvoting, etc.
- After becoming a valuable member on Reddit think about the promotion of your affiliate links.
When creating promotional posts including an affiliate link make sure to keep its structure easy for helping the readers. Also never forget to cloak your direct readers or links to another resource such as the reviews of your affiliate product on YouTube. Most importantly always be engaging in your tone.
- Use Twitter for Affiliate Marketing Without any Investment
When talking about other social platforms for affiliate marketing approaches Twitter should also be kept in mind. It is a free platform to start with and has more than 396 million users. But one thing to keep in mind about Twitter is its limited character capacity, which is 280 characters per post.
How to Begin with Twitter for Affiliate Marketing?
- Make a complete Twitter profile add a photo and also a bio.
- For attracting followers interact with other Twitter users by following, replying to Tweets, re-tweeting, etc.
- Make sure that your tweets are focused on your niche.
- To make them more visible to your audience use hashtags.
- You can also share Medium articles, YouTube videos, and LinkedIn posts on Twitter for the promotion of your affiliate products.
Conclusion
Hopefully, now you have a good knowledge of how to start affiliate marketing without any investment. This article makes one thing clear you do not require money for getting started with affiliate marketing. But something that you cannot overlook in this case is patience, consistency, time, and traffic. Try on multiple approaches and soon you will be able to find the most suitable approach for your product or business.
