Many affiliate marketers have a website, which costs money for the domain and hosting, plus it takes time to set up.
But guess what? You can still do affiliate marketing without a website! How? By using social sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
In this article, we’ll look at the best ways to do affiliate marketing without a website. Here’s a tip: whether you choose a website or social media like Facebook or LinkedIn, stick to one method at first. Focus on it until you succeed, and only then think about adding another method. Keep it simple and effective!
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6 Ways To Do Affiliate Marketing Without a Website
We have good news for anyone interested in affiliate marketing but are hesitant to do so because they don’t have a website or blog. Here are some simple solutions you can use:
1. Promote Through Social Media
You don’t need a blog or website to be an affiliate marketer, but you do need an online presence. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great places to start.
If you have friends or followers, they might click on your affiliate links. To grab their attention and get them to act, create posts that encourage clicks.
When posting on social media, use visuals along with important info. People love pictures. Also, make sure your content relates to your niche. Don’t post unrelated stuff if you want your audience to trust you.
Adjust your marketing plan for different social media platforms. For instance, look for groups in your niche on Facebook, use Twitter Chat and hashtags on Twitter.
Start with a social media channel you already know and maybe have followers on. Successful affiliate marketers are on various social media platforms; you just need to understand how each works and use the tools available.
On Facebook, you can find the perfect audience for your niche using filters and categories. These free tools help you, as an affiliate marketer, figure out what your niche audience likes. Then, you can tailor your approach to meet their needs and make more money as an affiliate. Facebook makes it easy!
To boost your affiliate marketing on LinkedIn, shift your focus to building a company page rather than just your personal profile. This page is like your brand hub, even if you’re a solo affiliate marketer.
On LinkedIn, a company page helps you establish an identity and attract others. Unlike other social media where you push affiliate offers, here you’re crafting a solid company presence.
Join groups related to your niche and actively participate. Answer questions, join discussions, and become a respected member. Also, connect with other company pages in your niche. Interact and aim to be seen as a valuable contributor.
In a nutshell, on LinkedIn, it’s about building your reputation and being an active, valued part of your niche community.
On Instagram, you can share quotes, photos, and videos. But here’s a tip: don’t be too salesy. Stick to the 4-to-1 rule – for every marketing post, share four educational ones.
Your affiliate link can be in the photo or video, but it won’t be clickable. Include your Instagram link in your email signature.
Posts on Instagram live for about two days, depending on how active the topic is. It’s like a “shelf life.” Check out Instagram’s free tools like storyboards and groups to boost your business.
2. Use YouTube Videos
What you want to do as a new affiliate marketer is start a YouTube channel in the niche you want to compete in and start making videos. The videos shouldn’t be affiliate product sales videos, especially in the beginning when you’re trying to raise your visibility and credibility. They should be valuable videos that offer viewers some useful information or help them solve their problems. These videos are completely free since you’re setting the stage on your channel and building your audience.
Assume your specialty is photography. You can start a photography channel and begin posting quality informational films about exposure, composition, and so forth, and gradually build a subscriber base. You can incorporate links to your website and product references in your videos. Similarly, you can market your YouTube channel using your website and emails.
Making a video is considerably easier now than it used to be. You don’t need to invest in a lot of specialized equipment. You can now make a YouTube-ready video on your phone in minutes. If you want it to be the best it can be, you may have to spend a significant amount of time editing it, adding an intro and outro, music, and so on.
The “green screen” was once reserved for television studios with pricey equipment and editing software. You film the subject (who may be you!) in front of a green sheet of fabric. You can use any background you like while editing. You may be at work, on the beach, or in Paris. It’s like magic, and it’s simple to do nowadays. When I turn on the TV and see another TV presenter in front of the identical green screen background I use, I always smile.
Your goal is to grow your audience by providing useful information. As your channel grows in popularity and followers, you can begin to use some of the marketing tools provided by YouTube, such as cards.
You can also include clickable links within the video. As a new user, you will want to use all of these tools. There are numerous videos on YouTube that show you how. We recommend a 4-to-1 ratio of informational videos to affiliate sales videos when incorporating affiliate links in your videos.
Remember, you’re working hard not to come out as too “salesy” in all of your promotions. You should keep this ratio of non-sales material to sales in your emails, website posts, YouTube videos, and social media updates. I take a more conservative approach, so I use a 4-to-1 guideline, even though many other experts claim a 3-to-1 ratio is sufficient.
3. Promote Through Forums or Online Communities
The internet is full of forums and communities these days, and they make great places to promote affiliate links. Start by finding a forum where the product you want to promote is discussed.
You may also want to check the guidelines for your community or forum to understand what types of affiliate links you may post. Take part in the community or forum once you have found the one you like. Active participation will enable you to gain your fellow forum members’ trust.
Active engagement involves interacting with people, answering questions, and finding solutions to problems. You can use affiliate links during these interactions. As time passes, community members will begin to trust you and will click on the links you provide.
The most popular forums for affiliate marketers are Reddit and Quora. Let’s take a look at how to promote affiliate products on both sites.
Reddit is home to thousands of groups and millions of conversations. Join some groups, listen to the comments, and contribute to those to which you can offer some valuable content. Become viewed as a valuable contributor. You want to establish your presence to help establish your brand.
You can create a profile on Reddit. But according to Reddit’s guidelines for self-promotions, self-promotion is generally frowned upon. It’s important to read and follow the guidelines and rules.
Pay attention to the group rules and obey them. Some groups strictly forbid affiliate offers. Some allow them. Some require that they be in a special area reserved for all offers. Often affiliate links may be allowed only in your profile.
One of your goals is to avoid getting banned. People are often banned on various social media platforms, including Reddit, for being overly promotional. That’s why we suggest the 4-to-1 guideline mentioned throughout this chapter: four informational posts to each promotional post.
Quora
Quora is a question-and-answer site. It’s a site to share information — for people to post questions and for people who have answers to share.
So for you as an affiliate marketer, this is a place for you to share solutions to questions rather than hitting people over the head with your affiliate offer. If you can provide a valuable answer to a question, post it. Develop a relationship with your audience and a reputation for being helpful.
You can create a Quora profile with a name and bio. The first 50 characters of your profile appear above your answers. You can also include links in your answers as long as they are relevant to those answers.
Many answers on Quora do contain links that are usually linked to the author’s website, but if your affiliate product is relevant, you can use that too.
4. Solo Ads
Solo ads are a great way to reach your target audience if you don’t have your own website. By using other people’s email lists, solo ads allow you to target audiences. You can then promote your affiliate products to them.
But how does it work? Assume you want to target the healthcare niche. It is one of the most popular affiliate niches, so you have signed up and are promoting your affiliate products on a number of online forums. You can now find influencers in the healthcare niche that allow solo ads in their email blasts.
In most cases, influencers will include your offer in their email list and charge you (usually per click). Thus, you will be able to generate more opt-ins and get commissions right away. Solo ads, however, are generally considered a hit-and-miss strategy, as quality traffic isn’t guaranteed.
When running solo ads, you should also balance your ROI. Be careful about signing long-term contracts, and review them regularly.
5. Create an eBook
One of the simplest methods is to write an ebook on an interesting topic that you know is likely to gain traction. Whether it’s a trending hashtag or something that could offer a lot of value to their consumers, anything is welcome.
Then, you need to embed the affiliate links into the content. If people enjoy your book and click on the links, they might eventually convert? Using Google Trends to determine the latest trending topics, and then creating an ebook based on those findings is one of the best things that you can do.
Your goal is to provide useful information to your readers. In other words, you are trying to gain your readers’ trust in the information you’ve provided. They should be willing to click on your affiliate links if they find the information presented valuable.
6. PPC Marketing
PPC marketing is the best way to get fast results. It is well known that paid affiliate advertising improves returns quickly, and you should definitely look into it as well.
You can market your affiliate products on both Facebook and Google. Each uses a pay-per-click advertising model that lets you only pay when a user clicks an ad.
Although Facebook advertising is one of the most profitable paid advertising platforms, we don’t recommend it, or any paid advertising platform, for beginning affiliate marketers until they both thoroughly understand the advertising system they will be using and thoroughly understand their audience.
More affiliate marketers have lost more money with paid advertising than practically any other method. Losses can be quite substantial unless you control your advertising budget. If you try Facebook ads or any paid ad system, make sure that you set a tight advertising budget within your means and monitor it.
Some people don’t realize that the limit they set on their advertising budget is a daily limit, so when they log in after a week or two, they find out that they spent a lot more money than they meant.
3 Tips for Affiliate Marketer Without a Website
If you don’t have a website, affiliate marketing will be difficult, and you should know that many of the leads you generate might not be converted. To help you increase the total number of referrals, here are a few tips.
1. Understand social media policies
Different social networks have different rules for the types and kinds of promotion they do and do not allow — different rules for the types of links they allow. You need to be aware of those limitations and keep abreast of the changes, as detailed in the social media’s latest notice of change in its TOS (terms of service).
The terms that are current now may change over time, so please check the current TOS for the social network you’re marketing in.
For example, Facebook doesn’t allow certain kinds of links. According to one Facebook marketer, they do not allow links for JVZoo, a popular affiliate marketing network. This expert’s recommendation was to try publishing a link — if it’s published, you are good to go.
If it isn’t published, then you know that Facebook has a problem with that type of link, so make a note of it and move on with another type. Our problem with this philosophy of marketing is that you’re doing “whatever works” and stopping with that particular method only when it doesn’t work any longer.
2. Adjust your approach for a different audience
One of the things you need to realize when you’re trying to build your affiliate marketing business on social sites is the difference in audience, which requires a different approach. When you’re doing affiliate marketing on a social site, you have to realize it isn’t a browser. When people go to a browser, they are looking for information. They are looking to solve a problem.
On the other hand, when a visitor goes to a social site, most probably she is going to see the latest information from her friends or what’s the latest in the groups she belongs to. She isn’t looking for the information or helps you can provide. Therefore, your approach has to be softer, perhaps a multistep approach that leads to your affiliate offer.
3. Keyword Research
Spend some time researching keywords before placing an online ad. Your next step after signing up for an affiliate marketing program is to research the right keywords for your niche.
Using long-tail keywords will maximize the impact of your SERPs. By targeting the right set of keywords, you will be able to get some decent traffic.
Having an Affiliate Website isn’t as Expensive as You May Think
Often you may hear people say that building an affiliate website is expensive. That’s no longer true. You can register the domain name you want for $10 to $14 a year. Low-cost hosting that can serve you well at the beginning of your affiliate marketing career costs as little as $3.95 a month.
Some people may respond by saying they can get free hosting from sites like WordPress.com (not to be confused with WordPress.org, which is the software side of the business). The problem with free hosting is that you’re usually the subdomain of the entity offering the free hosting.
That means that your efforts to build your reputation and credibility flow upward to the primary domain (in this case, WordPress.com) rather than remain with you. Also, free hosting companies have limitations on the themes, plug-ins, and other customizations you can use.
If you need more guidance, sign up for my online business coaching.
Jeff Smith, Founder of High Income Source, is an online business coach with a BBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship from the University of Pennsylvania. His online business coaching program is so popular that more than 100 students have benefited and started successful online businesses under his guidance.
Jeff started dabbling in online business while he was in college, where he began with dropshipping. After college, Jeff worked at a marketing agency and freelanced as a writer. His breakthrough came when he realized the potential of blogging, leading to a $100,000 sale of a dog-focused website. His expertise includes SEO, affiliate marketing, Amazon FBA, blogging and dropshipping.