How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Free

Here’s a quick guide on how to start affiliate marketing for free.  But first, an answer that’s never been given. 

“Hey fella, how’d you like to run your own 5 figure business with next to no start-up costs?”

“No thanks, I’ve got staples to staple and emails to answer”

That’s just it, isn’t it? We’d all jump at the opportunity to work for ourselves and get paid the equivalent of a 9 to 5, and then some. Affiliate Marketing has the potential to make that happen, and yes, while it is a slow and steady rise to the top, where you won’t see a fortune in a fortnight, you will have next to no financial risk, you will be able to do it while working full time and you will be able to earn a more than steady passive income if you work at it.

Stick around as we unpack how to start affiliate marketing for free. 

Index

• What is Affiliate Marketing? 
• How to start affiliate marketing for free
• Deciding on a niche 
• Picking a product 
• Finding an Affiliate Program/network 
• Choosing a Traffic source
• Building authority and bringing in traffic

What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Quick reminder? Affiliate Marketing is an online advertising model where you get paid to promote and bring in leads for a company’s products/services. The more actionable leads you’ll bring in (i.e clicks, sales, signups, etc.) the more you get paid in commissions. 

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

• You find a product and sign yourself up for its affiliate program or network.
• Get a unique link that tracks clicks from your site back to the product owner
• Promote the product on your website, blog, social feeds, or PPC advertising
• When a sale is made from your link, you get a commission

This is the super high-level, Macdonald’s drive-through version of Affiliate Marketing for free. To dive a little deeper, check out the Affiliate Marketing For Beginners: 2022 Crash Course, including all the best affiliate strategies, and product categories to go after.

How to Start Affiliate Marketing For Free

The journey ahead isn’t easy. You’re up against an ever-changing market and some pretty stiff competition. But, over time, and by breaking the work ahead into bite-sized steps, you’ll grow your audience, forge the right relationships and earn higher revenue with each passing product. 

Here are the steps needed to start affiliate marketing for free.

Step 1: Choose a Product Niche

You’ll need a niche to find and advertise products in. Niches are sub-sectors of a bigger industry, 

As an example, the Health & Wellness Industry can be subcategorized into niches like sports/nutritional supplements, exercise equipment, and weight loss products. 

Same with Online Entertainment (booming due to lingering global lockdowns) can be subcategorized into niches like Video on Demand (i.e Netflix), VPN services, digital courses, gaming, gambling, app installs, and so on. 

Niches come in all shapes and sizes and house tens of thousands of products. So choose wisely. Some thoughts to keep in mind when deciding on your new affiliate niche.

• Do you know anything about the industry or its products? 
• Are you passionate about the product range, or personally tried them? 
• Has the niche been growing or shrinking in popularity? 
• Does it have strong competition or a high barrier to entry? 
• Can you run affiliate marketing for free?

One last thing about Affiliate Niches? 

Try to find the sweet spot between a niche you like and a niche that makes you money. While you may be extremely passionate about ceramic caterpillars or Death Star lego, your potential source of traffic might not share the same love. As a guiding principle, go for the niches centered around online love, online wealth creation, and online health and fitness. And if you want to get more granular with subcategories, here’s a quick guide to choosing the right vertical 

Step 2: Find an Affiliate Program or Network

Affiliate Programs and Affiliate Networks are roads to the same destination. The difference? Affiliate Networks are multi-product platforms where product owners and affiliate marketers can connect. As an affiliate, and for a low monthly fee, you can sign up to an affiliate network, browse through their catalog and find the offer you’d like to promote. 

Here are a few of the best Networks to run affiliate marketing for free in 2022. 

Impact	ShareASale
Mobidea	CJ
Rakuten	Awin

Affiliate Programs, on the other hand, are free to join and are run by bigger companies. These programs are an additional sales channel where companies pay a commission for sales. Here are a few of the best programs to try affiliate marketing for free in 2022. 

ShareASale	Amazon Associates
eBay Partner Network	Clickbank
Fiverr	Shopify
WPEngine	Spocket
Target	Coursera

Step 3: Generate Traffic for your Affiliate Offers

If you already have a strong online presence and an existing following, then bringing in more traffic will be easier. But if you’re new to online promotion, here are a few simple steps you can take to drive traffic and make the most of affiliate marketing for free. 

Start a Blog 

One of the easiest ways to share affiliate links is through blogging. Post detailed reviews, and informative content around a niche that you’re passionate about and imbed product links, strategically and naturally throughout the copy. Avoid the Rambo hard sell, and opt instead for rich relatable content with links to products that actually add value. If you’re sharing a recipe, maybe your audience could use a particular kitchen product, if you’re listing digital trends, perhaps there’s room to make mentions of a helpful software subscription, and so on.  One more thing? Have a disclaimer at the top of your page telling your audience that you will be using certain affiliate links. Transparency goes a long way. 

You can also add your affiliate links as replies to blog comments. But only where helpful. 

Guest Post Regularly

Generate more traffic by guest posting on well-known sites that fit your niche. Keep the content relevant, engaging, niche-specific, and add affiliate links to your guest profile before submitting. Depending on the site, you may have to pay a nominal fee, but sites of similar size usually let you start affiliate marketing for free. You can also get other writers to guest post on your website where in exchange for hosting their content you’re likely to expand your own reach. 

Engage on Social Media

Target your existing social feeds to the niche or products you’re promoting. Offer actionable insights and daily tips in short, digestible posts and link back to your main articles, and website pages where applicable. Actively participate in communities with an interest in your products. Answer questions, engage with your audience, and always make sure your profile links back to your site and current affiliate offers

Start a Youtube Channel 

Close to 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every day. If you have the time, inclination and multimedia know-how, you can start your own Youtube channel and promote your affiliate marketing products for free through unique and interesting videos that relate to your vertical or niche. Add your affiliate links in the description below the video and consistently answer comments. The downside is that good video content takes time to produce. 

Answer Questions on Quora

Head over to Quora and thoroughly answer questions around your niche. Remember, that direct affiliate links are not permitted, but you can redirect traffic to your website or blog post, where your affiliate links are housed. Keep in mind that Quora users don’t take kindly to sales pitches.

Start a Medium Blog

Repurpose your existing site content and post quality, niche-specific articles on Medium. As with Quora, avoid placing direct links into the article itself, but rather redirect traffic back to your site through your profile and bio description. You can also use a similar approach on Reddit. 

Join Relevant Forums and Groups

Use forums to your advantage by actively answering questions, posting daily content, and reaching out to other community members. Again, be careful with posting direct affiliate links as this will most likely get you banned. You can however link back to bigger articles on your blog as a response to questions in forum threads. Numbers, stats, and trends go a long way with forums.

Email Marketing

Use a form to capture email addresses. Build up your subscriber list by sharing a report, ebook, webinar etc. Provide relevant content in exchange for email addresses and build your mailing list from there. Only send emails that provide value to your subscriber base and, where possible, segment your emails list so that the right affiliate links make their way to the right audience.

Monitor your web traffic

Create a free Google Analytics page and monitor your site to see which areas are bringing in the most traffic. Understand your demographics, who is visiting your site, and how best you can optimize your content to the best possible outcome. A few months down the line, you can invest in affiliate tracking tools to help you better understand your target audience. 

Optimize Your Website 

Traffic needs to find your site in order to click on your affiliate links. Make your site and site content easy to find and optimize your content to rank higher in Google’s search results. Your site pages should have relevant keywords, well-optimized meta-descriptions and titles, image alt tags, and well-placed subheadings. Ensure that your site is fast-loading and well optimized for both mobile and desktop. Check out these Key Tips To Grow Your Blog Traffic today. 

Final Steps To Grow Your Traffic From Affiliate Offers

Okay, this is cheating, BUT, there are two more ways to get traffic to your site and potentially bring sales from your affiliate offers. They may however come with a little investment. 

Run Contests and Giveaways

Run a giveaway or host a contest for people to win a prize. You may need to fork out a little for the prize itself, but not always. Giveaways can take the form of detailed eBooks, short courses, or discounts off of existing site products and services.  Keep the giveaway related to your niche and always try to create urgency in the copy, i.e for a limited time only. Direct your traffic back to a landing page with accompanying affiliate links. 

Use Paid Advertising

The easiest way to reach the right target audience is by running performance advertising, or PPC campaigns. There are a few things to consider when running online ads, namely the type of ad, the target audience, the targeting options, and the creatives you want to use. 

You can run your own ads through FaceBook, Instagram, Google Adwords, or similar, with the downside being that you may struggle to segment your audience properly and spend your ad budget on the wrong traffic sources. 

You can also use an Ad Network which serves as a broker between your ads and the sites that they’re going onto. While either option works, it’s advisable to side with an Ad Network if you’re new to affiliate marketing. You’ll have a dedicated team or account manager available to answer questions, analyze your product and recommend the best way to display it on site. So, while you’ll need an ad budget for both options, you’re less likely to waste money on the wrong traffic when you have the right help.

Start Affiliate Marketing for Free

While the road ahead can be a little daunting, it is entirely possible to start affiliate marketing for free, or at least initially in the first 6 months. Feel free to check out the Adcash blog for more Affiliate Marketing 101 tips or start earning commissions on your affiliate offers with the Beginners Guide to Affiliate Marketing. Reach out to us on LinkedIn, for more conversations around affiliate marketing or anything else.