You can make money with affiliate marketing without a website, even if you don’t have any traffic source. Of course, you need to start from zero if this is the case. In this post, you will read twelve different ways that do not require a website, but you can use them to promote your links.
1. Create A Sales Funnel
With the term sales funnel, we mean the user’s steps from the moment that he learns about your offer until buying the product. Usually, it includes a landing page, an email form, your affiliate links, and some emails. There are more complicated funnels for other business models, but affiliate marketers must keep it simple.
Creating a sales funnel is a great option for a beginner because it’s easy to create them and understand what they must do. It does not require technical knowledge. Once you create a sales funnel that works, you can use it to promote your affiliate links for years.
If you worry about how to create a funnel, you can join ClickFunnels and get the pre-made templates. You can also promote their affiliate program. They give you the funnel, emails, and a strategy to get started.
Sales funnels work because they add value to the visitors. When they visit your funnel, they can get information about their niche or a specific product. If they decide to subscribe, they will see your affiliate links and get some emails that are part of the funnel.
Lastly, you will need a traffic source. This is how you will get visitors to your funnels. There is no limitation about the traffic because sales funnel can work turn many types of visitors into buyers. You can use some of the ideas in this post to get traffic on your funnels instead of directly promoting your links.
2. Start A YouTube Channel
YouTube is one of the most popular platforms on the internet. While creating videos is a type of content, you can easily talk about topics relevant to your product or share your ideas. The best part is that you don’t have to build anything because YouTube is already optimized for more views and subscribers.
Your task is to create and upload videos. Then, YouTube will rank them on the platform and put them next to other relevant videos. There is an audience in every niche and can find almost any type of video. YouTube users watch many videos every day, subscribe to channels, leave comments, and engage in every possible way. So, you can invite them to click your link as well.
The strategy of starting a YouTube channel is very simple. You just need to find interesting topics and create a video about them. Some good ideas for affiliate marketers can be review videos, unboxing, guides that include the promoted product, or tips for different things in your niche.
You will not get results from the first video. Most great YouTubers post videos consistently, and this is what everyone must do on this platform. If you upload videos consistently, you will start getting views and subscribers sooner or later.
Once you upload a video, you can add a description with your affiliate link. Some people will click the links and visit your products. Another option to earn money from your videos is Google AdSense. After uploading 10-20 videos, you can apply for Google AdSense to increase your profits.
3. Be Active On Forums
Some forums get a lot of visitors and engagement. The structure of a forum is simple with threads and replies on different topics. Forums focus on a specific niche, but there are broad platforms with the format of a forum like Reddit and Quora.
Forums allow adding a signature below the thread or the comment of each member. In your signature, you can add your affiliate link. Some people will click on them after reading content.
The first step is to find big forums on your niche. You can type on Google “forum + niche” to get started. You don’t have to join every forum of your niche but find one you like and create an account.
Every forum has some rules that you must follow. It’s important to know these rules to avoid losing your account and work after a while. Some forums have rules for the signature as well. You may need to make a few posts before they allow you to add a signature.
Once you understand how a forum works, you can start leaving comments on other people’s threads. Soon, you will need to create your own threads as well. The quality of your threads and replies will determine your success. If you add value, you will get even more views and clicks to your links.
Those who will decide to start with Quora must be aware that it requires a different strategy. It does not like affiliate links, but you can add links for a sales funnel or another page that includes your offers.
4. Buy Solo Ads
If you want to send direct traffic to your affiliate links, solo advertising is the fastest way to achieve that. When you buy solo ads, you pay another person to send an email with your link to their email lists. This email should have a description and a call-to-action as a regular email.
For this reason, it is important to find a legit seller in your niche. There are many scam sellers with fake email lists that just get your money. If you want to find a good seller, you can do some research by yourself or visit a marketplace only for solo ads. A popular website to buy solo ads from hundreds of sellers is Udimi.
You may have heard about solo ads from low-quality courses before. It’s so easy to start a solo ads campaign that many people try to sell the process as a guide. In my opinion, you should never buy a course that teaches you how to use solo ads. If you visit Udimi, you can find enough information on their forum and suggestions from the sellers to create profitable campaigns.
When you find legit sellers in your niche, you can make sales for many affiliate programs. However, they have a small profit margin. You can expect to invest $50 and get back $500. Many marketers suggest building an email list with solo ads instead of sending direct traffic to improve your return on investment.
5. Social Media Marketing
Many online marketers promote their products through different social media networks. For a few popular platforms, you can check Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. The chances are that you can find your target audience on all these platforms.
Social media allows us to communicate with other people so that we can promote our products. We don’t have to contact them directly, but it’s achievable through posts, videos, likes, and comments. Also, we can build a following that is important on a long-term strategy.
A good social media strategy should have three main steps:
Choose the right platform: You don’t have to be everywhere but start from one place that works for other people in your niche. Each platform has different demographics, content, and the users expect specific types of promotions from the marketers. The first step is to think where you can find your audience and go for it.
Create Quality Content: You must publish quality content relevant to your niche. Quality content means that it is good enough to get the attention of other people. You can publish videos, images, and posts. Each platform requires different content. For example, Instagram works with images, but TikTok works with short videos.
Engage With Your Target Audience: People tend to follow and check the suggestions of users that engage with them. It means that you must like and comment on other people’s posts. You can create a small daily routing that you comment, share, and like posts in your niche. It will not take over 10 minutes per day.
Lastly, you must read the terms and rules of each platform. Some social media networks do not allow affiliate links, so you may need to send traffic to a landing page that includes your links.
6. Influencer Marketing
Instead of building your audience, you can use other people’s accounts to promote your affiliate links. Influencer marketing is different from social media marketing because you don’t actively participate in the process, but you pay other people to do that.
The main benefit is that you can advertise yourself or a product at a low price compared to other advertising methods. Your results depend on the influence, but you get a lot of exposure and traffic even from a simple post.
However, you can’t always get results from this strategy. Some influencers don’t work well with your products, while there are people with fake audiences and engagement.
Your success with influencer marketing depends on your research. If you want to find low-cost opportunities without big risk, you must check the history of an account, the followers, the users that engage, and the engagement metrics in multiple posts.
When they get engagement consistently from real people, you can give it a try. A big following is not always a priority. There are many influencers with average followings that have a more active and engaging audience. When it comes to affiliate marketing, you need an influencer who regularly creates posts in your niche to improve your chances of getting a sale.
7. PPC Marketing
PPC stands for pay per click. It includes any advertising method that you pay for every click of a user on your ads. Most advertising programs on search engines and social media work in this way. Also, they take a few steps to get started with them, even if you are a beginner.
Once you have chosen an affiliate product, you can register for an advertising program and create your first campaign. Some good options are Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Bing Ads. If you advertise on search engines, you target people based on keywords and demographics. On social media, you can target interests, hashtags, keywords, and demographics.
There are different types of ads that you can use in each program. However, all of them need a good title, description, and a good landing page. In some cases, it’s possible to advertise your affiliate link directly.
The benefit of PPC advertising is that you can get targeted traffic right now. It’s very useful to promote discounts, launches, special offers, or just make some sales fast. The only problem is that you need a budget, and there is always a risk of losing money.
8. Post Classified Ads
When people hear about classified ads on the internet, they think Craiglist. It is one of the biggest websites with classified ads, but there are many other free and paid options. The structure of these sites is similar most of the time.
Your job as an affiliate marketer is to promote your links to the right audience, and this audience can be found on sites with classified ads. You must find the right categories, create nice titles and descriptions, and use nice images if possible. Then, people who browse these sites will click on it and check your offers.
It is not easy to get traffic in this way. You need quantity because there is no way to improve the quality of this method. You control only your copy and the number of the classified ads you post.
The competition on free sites is a problem. There are many people that sell everything, so it’s hard to get enough attention. You can test paid options, but there are no guarantees they will work. So, quantity is the only way to get free traffic from classified ads. If you put your ads in the right categories, this traffic will be targeted and have chances to generate sales.
9. Web 2.0 Sites
A web 2.0 site is any platform or app that allows you to publish content for free. For two popular examples, you can use Blogger and WordPress.com. They give you a place to publish content, but they work as a website. The only difference is that you don’t have to build anything. You make a few clicks and can create content.
These sites were more popular a few years ago. It was easier to get ranked on search engines with simple articles. It is more difficult these days, but you can still get some traffic in your articles.
Once you create an account on a web 2.0 site, you get a subdomain that you can use to publish posts. Affiliate links are allowed in most of these sites, but you must check their rules.
You will probably need some basic SEO knowledge and good content to get ranked on search engines. If you are consistent, you will get some traffic sooner or later. Of course, it would be a good idea to build your blog once you get some sales.
10. Email Marketing
Building an email list is a simple way to promote your affiliate links to your subscribers. You can easily send a few emails per week with your affiliate links and suggestions about different products in your niche.
If you want to get subscribers, you need a landing page to collect emails and a source of traffic. You can use any of the suggestions above to above your list instead of promoting your affiliate links directly. Any traffic source can help you get subscribers if you have a good landing page.
People don’t like to give their contact details, so you must give them something in exchange for their email addresses. Many affiliate marketers give short ebooks and reports. Some affiliate programs give resources to their affiliates that they can use to their pages.
Of course, your freebie must have some value and be relevant to your product. It should warm up your subscribers before they get your promotional emails. You will need an email marketing tool to get started. Aweber is one of the best options on the internet and can begin for free until you reach 500 subscribers.
The best part of email marketing is that it can be fully automated. You can create a landing page and a number of emails that you will add to your autoresponder. Once you get a new subscriber, they will get your emails automatically.
11. Write An Ebook
It is quite easy to publish an ebook these days. Self-publishing authors use Amazon or their own websites to sell their ebooks. Many of these ebooks have affiliate links or links to a landing page that allows them to build a list.
The benefit of an ebook is that it can include tons of information about a topic. If you create a detailed how-to guide on a topic, you can easily add links for tools or products to help your readers apply your suggestions.
As a business model, it can generate revenue both from the sales of the ebook and the affiliate links. You also have the option to offer an ebook for free and expect to earn money from affiliate marketing alone.
If you are not a good writer or don’t want to write, you can outsource the biggest part of your writing tasks. You can create a structure with the necessary chapters and outsource them to writers from Fiverr. Then, you can outsource the design of the cover and any promotions as well.
12. Create Flyers and Add Your Affiliate Link
Most people would not think that they can promote their affiliate links offline. However, it’s possible to create flyers and cards with your affiliate links. Then, you can distribute them to other people. I don’t suggest to go from door to door, but distributing a lot of flyers and cards at once.
First, you must make your affiliate link easy to read and type. The easiest way is to buy a simple domain name and redirect it to your affiliate link. It’s an easy process that you can do on any domain name registrar.
The second step is to create a flyer. If you promote a diet program, you can write a small description and invite people to join. Then, add the domain that you have bought and redirect them to your affiliate link.
Lastly, you can distribute the link to different places. Your goal is to reach as many people as possible.
For the creation of flyer and distribution, I suggest hiring a freelancer on Fiverr. The process would not take over a few days. Some of the people that will see your flyers will use your links. If they buy your product, you will earn a commission.
Conclusion
These are my best ways to make money with affiliate marketing without a website. They are beginner-friendly and don’t require any special skills. If you have a computer and internet access, you can start today with any of them.
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