If you don’t want to build a website but you do want to make money then learning how to make money with affiliate marketing without a website is a great strategy.
Whether you don’t have the cash to build a website or you simply don’t want to put in the time and effort, the good news is that you don’t have to have a website to make affiliate income. All you need is approval from a company’s affiliate program and people that want to buy the product.
Sounds simple enough, right?
Maybe. Let’s see.
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How to Make Money with Affiliate Marketing Without a Website
Before we get into this, I have to say that I do recommend building and maintaining a website at some point but it’s not necessary to make money through affiliate programs. Here’s what you need to know about affiliate marketing before we get started.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is one of the most simple ways to make money online or offline. Someone else provides the product and all you have to do is find the people that want what it is that you’re selling.
Through online affiliate marketing, you’ll most often get a special link with a tracking code so the company knows you were the one to bring in the affiliate sale. In the offline world, you might be provided with a special promo code or “tell them Joe sent you for 10% off” kind of a deal.
That’s the basics of affiliate marketing and what it is.
Getting Approved for an Affiliate Offer Without a Website
You might hit a little snag when you’re trying to market an affiliate offer without a website. Many affiliates offer demand that you have a website before they will give you access to their affiliate program. Some are pretty strict about your website’s quality and your traffic as well.
Obviously, you’ll need to bypass these but the good news is that there are some companies that don’t care if you have a website or not as long as you’re generating sales for them. They’ll pretty much give an affiliate link to anyone.
Once you gain access to an affiliate program, this is where the fun begins.
Before we get into promoting your affiliate offer without a website, let’s talk about why you might want to consider getting a website or you can hop down below this section.
Why You Want a Website to Promote Your Affiliate Offers
I can’t in good faith let you pass by without at least letting you know the benefits of having your own website to promote your affiliate offers.
SEO
For those of you that don’t know, SEO stands for search engine optimization and is what you do to try to get your website to show up at the top of the search engines.
If you don’t have a website, you have no content to rank on the search engines. How sad.
Create a Passive Income Asset
A website is one of the only true ways I’ve ever found to bring in passive income. Remember – create more assets and decrease your liabilities folks.
My favorite thing is when I am able to go do something fun and then come back to check my affiliate accounts to see that I’ve made sales. Yay! It’s seriously the best feeling so that’s a major reason I think you might want to rethink the website having thing.
Opens Up Further Opportunities
When you have your own website, it can open up further opportunities. I’ve had people email me off my website because they’ve found it here or there. If I didn’t have the website, they wouldn’t have been able to find me.
How to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing If You Still Don’t Want a Website
Ok. Fine. You still don’t want a website.
Here is the most simple way you can get started with your affiliate marketing ventures and make money at it without having your own website.
Choose a Niche
First off, choose your niche and figure out what you’re going to be promoting. You can even choose a bunch of niches. I mean, heck — you don’t even have to build a website, so why not? lol
Start with one first and then you can build your web of affiliate offers if you so choose.
Do Topical & Keyword Research
Use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs to research your niche. Find topics and keywords that you can use when you’re creating content.
Wait – what? I don’t have a website. What am I doing this for?
No worries. You can still use SEO on free publishing platforms. While it won’t be as good as doing it to your own website, it’s still good.
Look for topics that you can share helpful information on and put your affiliate links within the content where it is helpful.
Choose a Free Publishing Platform
Now that you have some keywords and content ideas, you need to choose a free publishing platform. You might choose to use LinkedIn Publishing, Blogger, Hubpages or another free site to publish your content.
The bonus of building your content on these sites is that you’ll have access to their audience and will be able to get people to come back to your website from their site as well. Just make sure you do it tastefully or you might get banned.
Promote Like Mad
Now you have to promote your content. It’s great that you have it out there but if no one sees it — no good. Here are some of the best ways to promote your affiliate offers — that really work.
And by the way – you don’t even need to create content and post it on the free publishing platforms. You might choose to promote affiliate products directly. You’ll almost always get better conversions if you go to some platform with good content first and then to your offer though.
Whatever way you choose, these methods of promotion are still very effective.
1. Forums
If you aren’t already a member of forums in the niche you’re promoting, you need to go find the most active forums in the niche. The more people on the forum, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to make sales.
With forums, almost all of them allow you to have a signature that goes after all of your posts. Be helpful in the forum and make people want to see what you’ve got to offer.
2. Social Media
With billions of people on social media, there is bound to be something that’s looking for what you have to offer. Makes sense, right?
When you use social media to promote, you shouldn’t be spamming your status or spamming on other people’s posts. If you see someone that asks for a solution, you can share your link with them. If they make a purchase — you get paid.
Another tactic – if you’re on Facebook, go to your status and update your post with your affiliate link. When you do this, it will be at the top of your page so anyone that comes to visit it is going to see it.
Now go interact with your friends by commenting on their posts or at least like their content. Make sure to be genuine.
When you do this, they are going to come over to your profile and see what you’ve been up to and they are going to see your affiliate link. If it is something they are looking for – guess what! They are going to click and see what it is all about.
Again, if they make a purchase you’re going to get paid.
3. eBooks
You can create ebooks and put them on Amazon for very cheap or for free. Within the eBook, you can promote your affiliate link by linking to it as a resource in the book.
4. YouTube Videos
YouTube videos get a lot of attention through the YouTube platform and through Google search. Even if you don’t like being on video, you can make videos and put them on YouTube to promote affiliate offers.
You can make whiteboard drawings, animations or even PowerPoint presentations.
Make sure your videos are helpful so people trust your content and are comfortable visiting the website you recommend.
5. Classified Websites
Classified websites are a great place to post about products or services you’re promoting. Be careful that you don’t overuse this strategy or the websites will shut you down.
Make sure the content you’re adding is helpful and not spammy.
6. Pay Per Click Ads
You can even use pay per click ads to send traffic directly to the affiliate offer. Don’t expect to make your millions using this strategy right off the bat. You have a lot of learning to do and it could cost you thousands of dollars trying to figure out this strategy.
Rinse & Repeat
Now you’re ready to go.
Go go go!
Go through the steps above and create as many campaigns as you can manage. Keep the campaigns that work and ax the ones that are underperforming.
Want to Learn More About Starting a Blog?
Now that you know how to make money with affiliate marketing without a website, maybe you want to check out the blog making process and learn how to market your business with a blog. Hop over to my super in-depth post about how to start a blog for profit today and maybe get inspired to get going.
