Tips & Guides — 27 Feb 2023
How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing Without a Website
Many people think about starting affiliate marketing, especially after 2020, when normal life has turned upside down and businesses moved online. Yet, the majority delay jumping on the bandwagon because they have no affiliate site. But is a website necessary to become a successful affiliate? The short answer is no.
Today, affiliate publishers deploy all known digital marketing channels to generate quality traffic and make money online. And traditional blogging on a stand-alone affiliate website is not the most popular option.
With that in mind, we’ll lead you through the main platforms you can employ and provide you with a bundle of tips on how to start affiliate marketing without a website. Read on to get the ball rolling.
Later in this article, we’ll delve into platforms you can use for promoting affiliate products. But first, let us share some tips on how to start a journey in affiliate marketing.
Whether having an affiliate site or not, start with choosing a niche for your affiliate marketing business. Narrowing down your niche will help you reduce the competition no matter what traffic-generation channel you’ll select.
Bloggers specializing within a specific niche will find their audience quicker. Meanwhile, those who promote through PPC or search engine ads could spend less on ad campaigns due to lower competition in search auctions. On top of that, highly specialized affiliate offers, on average, imply higher referral commissions for publishers.
When choosing your niche, try to consider several factors:
The primary thing potential affiliates consider when choosing a referral program is its popularity or commission rates. No wonder why Amazon Associates has an abundance of potential publishers eager to join.
Unfortunately, many sought-after and high-paying affiliate programs do not accept affiliates without websites or prohibit specific online marketing channels. So, not to waste time on an application, carefully examine the affiliate program’s terms and conditions upfront.
If you do affiliate marketing without a website, finding a pertinent referral program may take time. To alleviate this work, follow our guide on looking for the best affiliate programs.
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, affiliate networks may be exactly what you need. These intermediaries between publishers and merchants can help you a lot in the following ways:
However, networks are also not always eager to accept the affiliate without a website. So, read the requirements before the application and be prepared. Our article “9 common questions about affiliate networks” will help you find the affiliate network and qualify for it.
Affise Reach is a partnership marketing platform which combines the best features of affiliate networks and partner programs brands offer. With this service, you can get access to hundreds affiliate programs in one place and communicate with advertisers directly, offering them the best suitable promotion techniques.
Apart from full ownership of choosing partners, Affise Reach offers you a completely transparent way of building affiliate marketing business. You can monitor your performance and earnings in real time with advanced tracking and professional statistics features.
The service gives you access to reliable advertisers and brands, provides transparent payouts, and requires zero intermediary commissions. Tap into our network to find the perfect partner with no risk and additional costs.
Starting an affiliate marketing business without a website demands the investment of effort and time into creating content, attracting the target audience, building trust, and so on. All of it is impossible without a platform. Let’s unpack the most popular and efficient ways affiliate marketers can use for promotion.
Starting a social network account is one the easiest ways to reach an enormous target audience. Half of the global population visits social media platforms, and the number of users is rising. Better yet, social media lets brands and marketers build close-knit relationships with customers.
Social media platforms have the lowest threshold — all you need is to opt in and start posting. And, if your content is interesting for the audience, social networks’ algorithms will do half of the work building a community. All of this makes social media perfect for making money with affiliate marketing. Here is the list of the most popular platforms you can enter.
To find the perfect social network, consider the following factors:
To get precise information about the ways of advertising affiliate products on social media platforms, read our article “Top tips for affiliates to promote products.”
With over 2.2 billion users, YouTube is the second most popular media platform globally after Facebook. Moreover, millennials trust recommendations from YouTubers — 63% said they are likely to try a product recommended by a YouTube star. It’s more than the number of people ready to follow the recommendations of movie stars.
It’s easy to setup a YouTube profile where it only requires your email, brand’s name, a decent brand photo, utilize a channel banner maker for your profile’s visual and videos with an intent to go viral with a little knowledge on video editing tricks could go a long way. The thing is, your advertising should be subtle and native, as viewers hate intrusive ads.
Another great thing about affiliate marketing on YouTube is that you can choose any type of video, from detailed product reviews to tutorials. Top YouTubers often get more creative. For instance, the YouTube channel “What’s Inside?” is famous for slicing various things, including Nike shoes and iPhones. These videos not only fascinate over 7 million subscribers but also allow content creators to promote these brands.
According to Statista, there are over 4 billion email users in the world. Many of them prefer to get promotional messages via emails rather than social media or other digital marketing channels. This makes email marketing a golden opportunity for promoting affiliate links.
The ways to advertise affiliate products through emails are infinite. You may limit yourself with a single mention of the brand in a newsletter or create a solo ad. The thing is, everything works as long as it provides value to your subscribers.
However, the biggest concern with using email marketing is building an email list. To create and grow your subscriber base, stick to the following strategies:
Email marketing is a complex online marketing channel with a lot of factors at play. To learn more about it, explore our article “How to Get Leads from Email Marketing Partnerships.”
If you took a shine to traditional blogging, think about starting your blog on a content publishing platform, such as Medium or Steemit. This solution allows you to begin writing instantly without spending time on technical issues. Better yet, you get access to a massive audience. For instance, Medium has around 100 million monthly active readers.
When choosing an external blogging platform, make sure it allows you to share affiliate links. On average, media look the other way as long as you approach affiliate marketing mindfully. It means you should put readers’ interests first and avoid overusing CTAs. They make your texts look spammy, which repels readers as well.
Another frequent requirement from content publishing platforms is to disclose that the blog post contains affiliate links. This rule keeps affiliate marketers inside FTC guidelines and helps to avoid problems.
Pay-per-click advertising is worth becoming a part of your online marketing strategy if you want to make money with affiliate marketing without a website. Paid ads swiftly bring results, allow you to pinpoint the target audience, and have a higher possibility to convert leads into paying customers.
It’s a good idea to take a slow start with a smaller budget and check if PPC works for you. If you see the desired results and high margins, you can always scale up your investments in this marketing channel.
The weak spot of paid ads is the inability to deploy efficient branded keywords as brands take them. Hence, publishers need to get inventive to generate high-quality leads without breaking the bank. To succeed with PPC, examine all the related keywords carefully, pay attention to tails, and adapt your ads to voice search.
It’s also important to create your own landing page rather than drive traffic straight to the merchant’s website. But make sure your page provides additional value; otherwise, you risk getting banned by an advertising platform.
Online communities and forums, such as Quora or Reddit, can be a golden opportunity to share affiliate offers and make money online. Such websites gather like-minded people and allow marketers to find relevant topics effortlessly.
However, affiliate marketing activities on online communities and forums should be subtle and native. Providing value and relevance is always an underlying principle of advertising through content marketing.
Before sharing affiliate products with potential customers, check the community’s guidelines to make sure that promotional activities are allowed. Sometimes, online forums even provide additional advertising opportunities. For instance, Quora has a built-in advertising platform and the promoted answers feature so that you can add them to your affiliate marketing strategy.
With over 90 million monthly listeners in the US, podcasts are a surefire way to reach potential customers for your affiliate products. They accumulate a dedicated audience, which stays engaged with content for several hours straight. Better yet, over half of podcast listeners say they think about buying advertised goods.
If you decide to use this channel for your affiliate marketing activities, be mindful. It would be best if you were attentive about what and how you advertise. Enthusiastic soundbites may be suitable for radio, while podcast listeners expect gentle and sincere recommendations.
Another thing to consider is the affiliate links themself. As your audience often listens to you on the go, they don’t stand a chance of typing the link immediately. Links should be easy to enunciate and remember so that listeners could type them in a search bar afterward. Typos not only steal your conversions but also can make you fall victim to affiliate fraud.
To scale the audience, employ the power of SEO. Keywords may not be a decisive factor for promoting in Apple or Google Podcasts. Still, optimized headlines and descriptions facilitate the task of finding your podcast.
There are plenty of ways to become an affiliate marketer without a website and make money online. However, owning an affiliate site or at least a landing page provides a range of benefits. Here they are:
On top of that, own affiliate websites may be necessary for services and channels that prohibit placing links on third-party resources. Even if links are allowed, it’s better to drive traffic from a conditional Medium to your affiliate site rather than a third-party resource.
Though we recommend creating an affiliate website, you can test the waters by starting to make money online on third-party services. No matter what platform you choose, you’ll need to find partners and join the affiliate programs that allow you to work without a website. Save your time and access them via Affise Reach.
Affise Reach has gathered brands, affiliate networks and agencies to let them effortlessly expand their partnerships. By joining Affise Reach, you get access to high-quality affiliate offers and advertisers. Apart from it, our software solution offers a bundle of services to facilitate your affiliate marketing promotions, monitor your effectiveness, and ensure timely payments.
Written by
Affise Academy
Affise is a partner marketing platform for brands, advertisers and agencies to scale via all possible performance marketing channels. Synergy of technology and our long standing experience lets you expand your partnerships, automate every step of the campaign lifecycle and make data-driven decisions.
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