Here’s our 2022 guide on how to start affiliate marketing without website.
Day by day; the affiliate marketing industry keeps expanding.
Between 2015 and 2020, Search Interest for ‘affiliate marketing’ increased by more than 200%. Yet, experts still predict Affiliate Marketing spending to cross $8.2 billion in 2022.
Resulting in more and more people joining the industry. Yet, there are still people who are confused about whether to start affiliate marketing without a website.
In fact, the ruling question is; “is it possible to do affiliate marketing without a website?”
Well, it’s actually possible, but at the same time, limiting.
In this article, we’ll be taking a quick look at how to start affiliate marketing without a website.
Contents
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy, used by merchants to promote their products or services via publishers for a pre-settled commission.
Affiliate marketing works like the long-used referral marketing we know of. However, it’s a bit more technical.
In affiliate marketing, the publisher serves as a middle man in our local business, who gets profit from what he sells.
These profits are called affiliate commissions and are predetermined by the merchant or affiliate network.
Unlike referral marketing that pays basically for leads, affiliate marketing has a varied payout structure.
Including the popular, pay-per-sale, leads, free trials, action, clicks to a website, downloads, etc.
What Do You Need To Become an Affiliate Marketer
There are a lot of Opinions to this question. Most people would say that you should have a website with a good traffic source and then you’re good to go.
Hmm…it’s quite true but not absolutely.
Having a website before exploring the affiliate marketing space, is not a prerequisite for success.
There are a lot of people who got there with the “having a website” mindset and end up asking if affiliate marketing is worth it.
And yes, I’ll answer that question again. Affiliate marketing is worth it only if you can implement the right strategy for the right products and the right audience.
I call it marketing’s R³, pronounced as “R cube”.
So what do you need to become an affiliate marketer?
You need the right strategy applied to the right product and the right audience – that’s if you want to be successful.
Can you do affiliate marketing without a website?
Yes, absolutely. you can do affiliate marketing successfully without a website.
If you can place your entire focus on the products you promote, your audience, and your traffic source, you shouldn’t have much problem.
You, having a website or not, still boils down to these things.
On the other hand, if you already have a well-built audience on any social media platform, you’re at a big advantage, even if you don’t have a website.
For instance, let’s say you’re an influencer with thousands of followers on Instagram.
You don’t have to start all over to organically build traffic to your blog before you start earning.
You can build your website, as you wish (no issues with that). And to make things even easier, you can refer your followers to your website.
And that’s what affiliate marketers call Landing Page or Lander.
You don’t need a website to be successful in affiliate marketing. But I think you sure do need a Lander.
That’s actually not a rule for all…but I’ll go into this, in detail, later.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing Without Website In 2022
So here’s what you need to do;
Join an affiliate network or program, vet on a suitable product to promote, do the traffic hack, and then boom!
1. Join an Affiliate Program or Network that don’t require a website
One difficult thing about starting affiliate marketing without a website is the fact that most affiliate programs or networks always enforce it on users to have a website.
It’s evident among popular affiliate programs like Walmart, Shein, GoDaddy
And that’s why we at Esopress, have taken out time to craft an article listing out some of the free affiliate programs and networks that you can join without a website.
You can check them out at your leisure.
But if you’d like to approach Affiliate Marketing with a generic niche strategy, I’d recommend ClickBank.
It works for any niche you can think of and has a diverse amount of promotable products.
Clickbank –
ClickBank is a popular marketplace for affiliate marketers and product owners.
Product owners would go to Clickbank, pay a service fee, and then Clickbank displays their products on the platform. On the other hand, affiliate marketers would go to Clickbank, search for products, vet them, and start promoting.
This is pretty much what happens at Clickbank.
All product commissions are pre-settled by the product’s owners. Same as product prices – you have no influence over them, nor do you have any information about these products.
And that’s why you need to take your time to do “Product analysis”.
Clickbank’s Product analysis is a little bit different from what you have to do on most platforms.
And the reason for this is that Clickbank is a marketplace, filled with a lot of unbranded products that are not proven.
So, you have to take your time to analyze and research each product you promote, based on Popularity, Quality, and of course potential earnings.
Gauge all Clickbank products on these before marketing them:
- Is this product relatively expensive?
- Is the gravity score decent enough?
Gravity score is a metric by Clickbank that is designed to determine how popular a ClickBank product is.
A high gravity score could mean that the product is actually good since a lot of people are promoting them.
But, on the other hand, it is being marketed by a lot of affiliate marketers. Meaning that the product could have already gotten a wide reach. And hence, it might be saturated.
However, I suggest you go for a product with a gravity score of 10-20.
- Does it look authentic?
- Are there marketing tools for the product?
- Lastly, what is the known reputation of the products? Good or a scam?
2. 6 Ways to Do Affiliate Marketing without a website (Traffic Hack)
So you’ve joined an affiliate program that supports affiliates without a website, and you’ve selected a product.
Now, how do you drive traffic to your affiliate products and eventually start earning from affiliate marketing without a website?
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the proven methods to do Affiliate Marketing without a website.
But, wait, I said no website, right?
Yeah, you don’t always need a website to do email marketing, effectively. And by this, I don’t mean you should be involved in “blackhat.”
I have a friend of mine who’s making hundreds of dollars from the Mangools affiliate program, monthly.
He isn’t involved in paid Ads, social media campaigns, content marketing, or website spamming, but he’s constantly making cool cash.
Then, how?
Well, he’d always email site owners and organizations who were not performing well, organically on Google.
Then he’d hit their inbox with a cold email, giving them a warm greeting while getting straight to the point on how they can maximize their ranking potentials on Google SERPs.
In the middle of the conversation, he’d then recommend Mangools to them, alongside Mangools SEO course.
His target emailee is always websites that offer services. E.g websites that offer plumbing services, Health services, etc.
Below is a video of how he (Daniel Hustle) does that–
2. Quora
Quora is a leading multi-niche question-and-answer website based in the United States.
A lot of people are using Quora to do affiliate marketing. But it’s intimidating, right?
After all, no one, these days, wants affiliate links on their platform. So how can you do affiliate marketing on Quora without a website?
Yes, Quora doesn’t allow affiliate links on their platform. And that’s why a lot of people suggest you use a website, which you could refer to your audience.
In this case, I concur with those people.
If you don’t have money to start up a website or blog, then you can think of using a free blogging platform (Web 2.0) like Medium and the rest.
Depending on the affiliate products, you can even choose to use a single landing page.
Products under health and weight loss offers, tend to do well with just a single landing page.
Overall, your target in Quora is to drive traffic from your answers to questions relating to your affiliate product.
3. Paid Ads
Paid ads are pretty much the fastest way to make money in affiliate marketing, even without any website.
Here, the workload is simple. You just have to get ready to spend some money on ads – it’s all for good, anyways.
There are a lot of approaches and platforms you could use.
A few of them include Google ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook ads, Instagram, Twitter ads, etc.
It’s worth mentioning that paid ads would require you to make use of a Lander. Of course, no advertising platform would allow affiliate links directly on their platform.
You can easily subscribe to a landing page builder like Unbounce, Leadpage, Instapage, etc, to create a neat landing page.
Your landing page should also be informative at its peak.
Additionally, you’d love your ads to be really catchy and attractive, with a straight-to-the-point title and description.
4. Social Media
Over 3.6 billion people use Social Media. It is by far one of the most influential inventions the internet has ever welcomed.
This implies that for sure there are marketing potentials in social media.
All you have to do is to find how to present yourself to your audience. And then boom, sales will keep coming.
For instance, on Facebook, there are a lot of groups to join. From macro niches like entertainment to a micro-niche like Blogging.
You can join these groups and help solve people’s queries. And to finalize your goal, you add your affiliate link.
For instance…
Let’s say, as an affiliate marketer, I want to promote GoDaddy.
All I’d need to do is to Join some blogging related groups on Facebook. Then I can answer some queries relating to blogging and hosting stuff.
So I saw something like this
….when I was going through a Facebook group.
It even got more interesting after seeing this
If I was a GoDaddy affiliate, it’d be very easy for me to make a sale, right now.
All I’ll have to do is to write a compelling comment on GoDaddy, add my affiliate link, and then boom.
It’s highly required that you always use a link shortener while posting your links. Bitly.com is a good one.
The same thing goes for Instagram, Twitter, and others.
The rule for all is to offer value before returns.
5. Online Forums
There are a lot of online forums today.
Quora Reddit, Stack Overflow, XDA- Developers, GameSpot, GitHub, and the list goes on.
I mentioned Quora solely, earlier, because I wanted to be pretty much specific on it.
Well, there are still a lot of other online forums.
As said earlier, if you’d want to drop your affiliate link, then you should be ready to offer value before returns.
And also watch out for online forums that don’t permit direct affiliate links.
6. Web 2.0 sites
So, there are some platforms that allow users to create websites under them. And in most cases, they allow their members to do this freely.
A good example of these types of sites is blogger.com and WordPress.com.
Well, these types of websites are called Web 2.0.
In other words, you can get a free website from these platforms.
The only con from these platforms is that you’re going to be getting a sub-domain from their domain.
Medium.com, Blogger.com, WordPress.com, are some of the well-performing web 2.0 sites you can find.
However, I recommend Medium.com since it’s more professional.
But, why Web 2.0?
Well, if you don’t have enough money to start up a website. Then you can use them.
Additionally, it’s kinda necessary to get them.
It could serve as a landing page for your affiliate, Like, in the event of Quora not accepting affiliate links.
Why do you need a Landing Page?
We’ve mentioned Landing Page severally in this article. But what’s the need…is it of any use in affiliate marketing?
I’ve said it over and over again. You don’t need a website to do affiliate marketing effectively.
But in some cases, you might need a Lander (landing page) – it’s actually vital.
In Affiliate marketing, a Landing page is simply a third-party web page that provides useful information about an affiliate product.
Landing pages can vary depending on the type of products you’re promoting.
For instance, a landing page for a health product could just be a static informational page that talks about a product mildly – this type of landing page is usually used for paid ads.
A landing page can also be a blog post, like a review article, a comparison article, a listicle, etc.
When a product requires a review article to get sales (like the case, most times), then for sure to market it, you might need a website.
And that’s where the need for a web 2.0 site comes into play.
Summary
Affiliate marketing is very possible and profitable to do without a website. But at the same time, it’s limiting.
If you want to approach the technique in this article, cool, you can start up with email marketing.
And then, if you’re a do-or-die type (lol), Social media, online forums, and Quora, should be your hub.
For those that want to see Fast results, Paid ads are highly recommended for you.
Anyways, If you’ve gone through this article “how to start affiliate marketing without website”, I’m sure you’re ready to make some cool cash.
Good luck!
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I be an affiliate marketer without a website?
Yes, you can become an affiliate marketer without having a website. All you have to do is to sign up for some affiliate programs that don’t require a blog or website and begin promoting.
How do I start free affiliate marketing as a beginner?
As a beginner, you can start affiliate marketing for free by joining relevant Affiliate Programs that have no money attached to them, when signing up.
How do I become an affiliate marketer with no blog?
Even without a blog, you can become an affiliate marketer. All, you have to do is to join some relevant affiliate programs that don’t require you to have a website.
