Affiliate marketing has become a popular way of making money these days. Most courses teach you how to make money as an affiliate using a website. While this is a good strategy, it is not the only one available. Creating a website can be time-consuming and expensive. With a website, you will also need to consider copywriting services which also cost money. So the real question is, can you do affiliate marketing without a website? Yes, you can. This article will show you how.
Do you need a website to do affiliate marketing?
Creating a good website is time-consuming and expensive. The cumbersome process of building a website is why many beginners in affiliate marketing are looking for alternatives. As we have stated before, you don’t need a website to do affiliate marketing. You only need to make use of some of the tips discussed below.
How to do affiliate marketing without a website
Leverage social media
There are various social media platforms where you can choose to share your content. They include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. It can be quite challenging to gather followers on your social media account. However, once you build a strong following, you can start sharing content and your affiliate offers to your followers. Be careful with this strategy, as some affiliate programs do not allow you to promote their links directly on social media.
Email marketing
If you’re looking for ways to do affiliate marketing without a website, email marketing should come to mind. It simply entails sending out emails. First, you should create an email list. Second, have people sign up to your mailing list and then build trust with them by sharing valuable content through email. Once you’ve gained enough confidence with your subscribers, you can share your affiliate offers. The question is, how can you build an email list without a website? The answer is using solo ads.
Solo Ads
Solo ads enable you to reach various audiences by leveraging other people’s email lists to promote your affiliate offers. You can reach out to a solo ads provider in the same niche and strike a deal. However, not all solo ad providers can successfully promote your affiliate offers. Some will not yield any profits. As a result, you need to research the reputation of the ad providers before you invest your money.
Create an Ebook
An ebook is a great way to do affiliate marketing without a website. Although this method is tedious, a successful ebook will give you long-lasting results if done correctly, using the right ebook writing software. Writing an ebook simply for affiliate marketing is not advisable as your readers will easily lose interest. Instead, you can write something you’re passionate about so that your readers can get helpful information and finally trust you. Once they do, they should be willing to check out your affiliate offers. If writing is not your forte, several ebook writing services can help you.
Content publishing platforms
Medium and Steemit are the two most popular content publishing platforms where you can promote your affiliate offers. With Medium, you only need to create an account and publish the content with your affiliate links. Additionally, Medium has over 100 million readers, which means that you can easily gather a good following. Some platforms require you to inform your readers about possible affiliate links within your content.
Steemit is similar to medium, but publishers receive payment in the form of the cryptocurrency Steem. After they create and verify your account, you can start posting your affiliate offers.
Online communities and forums
Online communities and forums still exist and they’re the best places to do affiliate marketing. To get started, search for a community or forum that discusses topics related to the product you want to promote. Moreover, ensure you follow that forum’s guidelines to prevent the moderators from kicking you out. Once you an appropriate forum, become an active member and contribute where necessary to gain trust from other members. When you build this trust, people will be willing to check out your affiliate offers.
YouTube for affiliate marketing
YouTube is a gold mine when it comes to affiliate marketing without a website. All you need to do is create a YouTube account to get started. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need millions of subscribers on YouTube to be successful with affiliate marketing. If your videos are relevant and informative, you will easily gather a good following. You can then start promoting your links in the descriptions. You, however, have to give disclosure that you’re promoting affiliate links.
Writing reviews on classified websites
This form of affiliate marketing is similar to posting in online forums, only that you write reviews with your affiliate offers on classified websites. Craigslist is an example of a classified website. You can promote your affiliate offers by posting ads or other relevant posts. You can do this yourself or have a professional writer do it for you.
Using paid ads
Using paid ads is a fast way to do affiliate marketing without a website. However, you can lose a lot of money, so you have to be smart about it. Initially, you need to test and measure the paid ads to find a suitable one. Once an ad has earned a good return on investment, you can safely increase daily spending. Again, with this method, you need to make sure the product or service you are promoting allows you to run direct ads on their links.
Pros & Cons of affiliate marketing without a website
Pros
- Little or no capital required
- Flexible as you can put as much time into the business as you’d like
- The gross margin for affiliate marketing without a website is around 90%
- The quick build time will bring your product to the market faster
Cons
- Not a sustainable business model
- Social media platforms control the content you publish
- It may be difficult to get approved by other affiliate programs
What is the best social media platform for affiliate marketing?
Having over 2 billion users, YouTube has an active audience, with 74% of its users streaming videos every week. Built for video streaming, YouTube is a great way to do affiliate marketing. Moreover, 90% of people say that product videos are helpful in the buying process, and 64% are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed how to do affiliate marketing without a website. It may be hard, but it’s not impossible. Once you get the hang of it, it will get easier and even more fun. Whichever method you use, ensure your posts are consistent, providing your readers with relevant and fresh content.
No. You do not need a website to do affiliate marketing especially when starting out. You can use various methods to promote your affiliate links. However, this is not a sustainable strategy in the long-run as you will still need a website or a blog at some point.
You can use the following ways to do affiliate marketing without a website or blog.
Social Media
Solo ads
YouTube
Content marketing platforms e.g. Medium
Using paid ads
Writing reviews on classified websites
Ebook
Online forums
Affiliate marketers can make money without a website by promoting their links on social media, YouTube, forums, emails, and ebooks.
Amazon allows you to promote affiliate links on social media sites and YouTube so this could be the best place to start. Moreover, you can also publish your links on free content marketing platforms like Medium.
You cannot directly promote Clickbank links on social media. Therefore, your best bet would be using content marketing platforms like Medium or using an ebook to promote your links.