Your Guide to Affiliate Marketing for Beginners

This post belongs to our comprehensive affiliate marketing guide for beginners. Navigate by the link to learn more about how to kickstart your career in affiliate marketing.

Is it possible to earn more than $8,000 per month? With affiliate marketing, the possibilities are endless. Affiliate marketing is not just a buzzword or a trend with an expiration date. It’s a powerful industry offering immense moneymaking opportunities.

Do you want to find out how to get started in affiliate marketing? This article will help you learn affiliate marketing basics, analyze how to turn a hobby into a stable income, and, most importantly, how to succeed in affiliate marketing.

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What’s Behind the Popularity of Affiliate Marketing?

Do you know how affiliate marketing managed to gain such popularity? First, it is due to its accessibility, scalability, and result orientation, which allows you to earn money by working with your favorite brands and building an online business.

Let us explain what affiliate marketing is in simple terms. Conventionally, you become an intermediary between a company that sells a product or service and a potential client, and you recommend this product to the audience through the following mediums:

  • Blog
  • Social media network
  • Website
  • YouTube channel

As an affiliate, you receive a commission if one of your subscribers buys the product by clicking on the affiliate link. In other words, you earn money by sharing your experience and recommendations with other people. It’s like recommending a good store to a friend; only you get paid for it.

Why has such interaction with the audience become so popular?

  • Firstly, the industry offers opportunities to start free affiliate marketing. There are also strategies on how to start affiliate marketing with no money. We will unpack it later in the article.
  • Secondly, affiliate marketing benefits all parties: the brand gets new customers, affiliates get additional income, and consumers learn about and obtain specific products and services.

How To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing

It’s not uncommon for people to surf the Internet in search of tips on how to become an affiliate marketer. However, about half of them simply give up on this idea after reading about dozens of online marketing strategies, hundreds of promotion platforms, and numerous rules that must be followed after becoming an affiliate.

Let’s figure out together how to start an affiliate marketing business so that a cold search query can turn into a hot start to your affiliate marketing career.

How To Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money: Step-By-Step Guide

Do you still think you need big investments to build a successful business? Affiliate marketing proves that you can establish a stable source of income online, even without any start-up capital. All you need is a little time, enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn.

Here is an easy-to-follow guide on how to become an affiliate marketer with no money:

1. Choose a Niche

The earliest and most necessary step is to choose a niche you have knowledge of or are passionate about. It can be anything from car insurance and finance to the solar energy industry.

Why is it significant? You will create more authentic and engaging content by talking or writing about things you are genuinely interested in. In addition, it will be easier to resonate with your target audience and build long-lasting relationships with them.

2. Create a Blog

Now that you’ve decided on a topic, you require a place to share your knowledge and experience. Free blogging platforms such as Blogger or WordPress.com are great options for those who want to understand how to become an affiliate marketer with no money.

Both platforms offer a wide range of features and templates that make it possible to create an attractive and functional blog without the slightest technical knowledge.

3. Find an Affiliate Marketing Program for Beginners

To make money on your blog, you need affiliate programs. These are agreements between you and companies that allow you to advertise their products/services. You can find them on:

Company Websites

Almost all large companies (Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network) have their own affiliate programs for beginners. However, there is a simple way how to become an Amazon affiliate marketer:

  1. Sign up for the Amazon Associates program.
  2. Read the terms of the program to find out how to get affiliate links to the product you want to promote.
  3. Place this link on your website, blog, or social media.
  4. Monitor analytics.

Specialized Platforms for Digital Marketing 

In digital marketing, such platforms bring together many sellers and affiliate marketers in one place. Among the most popular ones are the Ahrefs affiliate program specializing in SEO tools, ClickBank – digital products (books, courses, software), PartnerStack – focused on SaaS companies, etc.

Search Engines

This is the laziest way: just enter keywords like “affiliate program + [your niche]” or “affiliate marketing network” in the search bar and see the options.

4. Create High-Quality Content

Valuable content is the key to success in affiliate marketing. If you don’t interest your audience, all your efforts will be in vain. To begin with, try different formats of the material:

  • Articles
  • Videos
  • Infographics
  • Podcasts
  • Live broadcasts
  • Guest articles

acebook business advertising formats examples, including photo, video, stories, messenger, carousel, slideshow, collection, and payables ads

Moreover, answers questions from listeners/readers, solves their problems, and offers useful information.

Please note! The purpose of affiliate marketing is to get as many users as possible to go to the merchant’s website through your unique affiliate link. However, it’s a mistake to overuse links in your content. It alerts people and turns your content into an advertisement. Try to place links organically.

Here’s an infographic showcasing how affiliate links are typically placed in video content:

Infographics that shows how to use affiliate links in video content

5. Engage Your Audience

As soon as you create content, you need to show it to people! There are 2 leading ways to do this that should be combined:

  1. Use all available channels where your target audience is concentrated: social networks (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn), thematic forums, and communities (groups on Facebook, Telegram channels, and Reddit, where topics related to your niche are discussed).
  2. Collaborate with third-party bloggers to create collaborations.

Don’t forget about SEO optimization to ensure your content ranks high in search engines.

6. Track Your Results

Do you want to know how to grow an online business with affiliate marketing without analytics? Unfortunately, you can’t. Affiliate marketing is not just about creating content and posting links. It is a constantly evolving process of development, experimentation, and optimization. To achieve maximum results, you need to monitor the effectiveness of each action carefully.

  • What articles and videos are the most popular? What gets the most reposts?
  • Which affiliate programs generate the most revenue?
  • Social media, search engines, email marketing – which channel brings the most visitors and conversions?
  • What percentage of visitors make purchases?

Answers to these questions will allow you to make necessary changes to your strategy, improve your content, and understand which affiliate marketing tools work well.

Each program has a tracking system that allows you to see how many sales you have generated and what the average check was. Google Analytics is a popular web analytics tool that collects data on user behavior. Besides, most platforms (WordPress, Blogger) have built-in analytics that track the number of visitors, popular articles, traffic sources, etc.

So, it is quite feasible to start affiliate marketing for free.

How To Become an Affiliate Marketer Without a Website

How do I start affiliate marketing if I don’t have a website or my own promoted blog?

This question remains relevant for rookie marketers interested in learning more about free affiliate marketing. But thanks to the development of digital platforms, this goal is no longer unattainable. Yes, you may not have a website, but not having an Instagram or Facebook account is out of the realm of fantasy.

Here are a few ways to become an affiliate marketer with no followers:

  • Social networks
  • Create an attractive Instagram profile, use relevant hashtags, and interact with users.
  • Short videos on TikTok can quickly engage your audience. Create challenges and use trending songs and melodies.
  • Create a Facebook page/group, post interesting content, and participate in thematic communities.
  • Make videos for YouTube on relevant topics and optimize them for search.
  • Create boards with useful tips and ideas on Pinterest.
  • Other platforms
  • Create a Telegram channel or chat where you share useful information.
  • Search for thematic Subreddits on Reddit and take part in discussions and votes.
  • Answer questions from Quora users to demonstrate your expertise.
  • Paid methods
  • Targeted advertising. Create advertising campaigns on social networks.
  • Contextual advertising. Use Google Ads to attract targeted traffic.

The advantages of this approach are self-evident:

  • Quick start
  • Flexibility
  • The ability to focus on creating high-quality content

Successful affiliate marketers typically have authority in specific niches and, while a website or blog can help marketers build authority in a given niche, it is hardly the only way to achieve your goal. Any tool or medium allowing you to connect with your target audience can help you launch an affiliate business and earn money.

Start Your Affiliate Marketing Journey with Profitise

We have laid out all the ins and outs of how to get into affiliate marketing. Now, everything depends on you and your desire to invest your time and effort in your affiliate marketing business.

Are you looking for high-quality insurance or solar leads? Enroll in the Profitise network as an affiliate or advertiser to get quality sales-ready leads.

Join Profitise as an affiliate

Join the Profitise community and start earning!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I become an online affiliate marketer?

Here’s a word of advice: stop thinking and start acting! Choose a niche, create a platform (blog, YouTube channel, etc.), join an affiliate program, create relevant content, promote affiliate products, engage your audience, and track results.

How long does it take to become an affiliate marketer?

Wondering how to become an affiliate marketer in a short time? The probability of success fluctuates depending on several factors, such as the competitiveness of the niche, the level of quality of the content, the growth rate of the audience, the affiliate program, your activity, and experience. Nevertheless, you should expect results in a few months or even a year.

How much does it cost to become an affiliate marketer?

The decision to become an affiliate marketer is cost-effective. Moreover, some options tell you how to make money with affiliate marketing. The initial cost of affiliate marketing can be minimal or even zero if you use free content creation platforms such as blogs or social media.

However, you may face additional costs for website development or hosting, tools and software, and paid advertising. In general, getting started in affiliate marketing requires less investment compared to other business projects.

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