Start Affiliate Marketing with NO Money

“How can I start affiliate marketing with no money?”

This is one of the most common questions from people trying to start making money online.

Why’s that?

Most people understand the potential of affiliate marketing. 

Promoting someone else’s product in exchange for a portion of the earnings. Without dealing with products, customer support, or any of the hassles that usually come with sales.

And whilst you can start affiliate marketing completely for free, so many beginners end up quitting or wasting most of their savings following empty promises. Sometimes both!

This article will give you all the tools you need to be one of the rare cases of success!

Click here to access the 15 seconds FREE Leads mentioned in the video!

Some of the links in this post are “affiliate links.” This means that if you click on the link and buy something, I will receive an affiliate commission. This has no cost to you and I only recommend tools that I use or have used myself and that are within the most useful, to the best of my knowledge.

Can You Really Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

Absolutely.

As an affiliate marketer, your job is to promote someone else’s product. 

The product creator you affiliated with will then pay you a commission for your marketing.

So, making money is 50% of the business. The half that most people never master.

If you think about it, you’re probably already referring products to your friends without realizing you’re doing affiliate marketing…

Well, in reality, you’re only doing the marketing part, because you’re not getting paid for it. Yet!

But I’m about to teach you how to change that…

How to do what you’re already doing and actually get paid for it…

I remember a friend of mine constantly trying to convince me how I should buy an iPhone.

We argued for days on that subject…

I’d never buy an Apple product. They’re not for me. But I recognize how good their products are, and I’m sure that her love of those products has already convinced many other people to buy iPhones and other Apple products.

In fact, I know it did.

Did she ever get paid for that?

No.

But she should! She’s done the marketing for that product. She’s referred customers to the company.

And whilst Apple doesn’t have an affiliate program (because they don’t need it), many other HUGE companies do.

When you become an affiliate for a company or product, you’ll receive a special link with your code which will identify you as the referrer.

That way, every time you send a new customer over, you get paid!

How Much does It Cost to Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?

[IMG how-much-cost-get-started-affiliate-marketing]

It can cost a lot, or it can cost nothing (when you know what you’re doing).

Beginners usually focus too much on their ‘affiliate link’ and attempt to throw it everywhere in the hopes that someone might click on it and buy the product so they can get paid.

But people are tired of spam and of being sold to.

That’s why you should focus more on the word ‘referral’ than ‘commission’.

These days, the most important factor in marketing is trust.

When I download a simple app from the app store, the first thing I look at is the star-rating it has. In other words, how many people have had a good experience with it. Next, I read some comments.

Do you do this too?

What do you trust the most? What the brand says about their own product or what other users have to say? Their experience.

One of the main reasons people fail with affiliate marketing is because they get in with the idea that it’s “easy money”…

Affiliate marketing can be very simple and I’m going to share with you a very simple process to do it without investing any of your hard-earned money, but you’ll only succeed once you stop chasing the commissions.

How Can YOU Start Affiliate Marketing With NO Money?

When I want to buy a new laptop, mobile phone, tablet, etc, I start to research.

I open Google and look for the latest stuff that came out. Then, I look for reviews on both, Google and Youtube. And finally, I look for comparisons between some of the products I found.

When I feel that I’ve found the best product for me, I go ahead and buy it. Many times by clicking the link on one of these articles or videos that leads me to Amazon or some other online store.

I’ve even felt annoyed at times because the person who published the video or blog post didn’t provide a link for me to follow.

I then have to look for a place to buy that product. And no one makes a referral commission (even though they deserved it)! 

And I wasn’t fully served…

Because they didn’t learn the affiliate half of affiliate marketing!

Those who stumble upon the concept of affiliate marketing and want to ‘promote a link’ are taught that they need to ‘drive traffic’ to their link.

This is a very limiting concept and gets beginners to spend a lot of money trying to make money. 

Weird, right?!

Well, they are often told they can pay for advertising to get those visitors to their page, link, etc.

That sounds easy and fast. Humans like easy and fast. And fake gurus prey on that!

Instead of trying to ‘drive traffic’ you should be trying to build an audience.

So how can you build an audience who trusts you, and will follow your recommendations and advice?

By being useful to them!

All those articles and videos I consumed when looking to buy a new laptop were extremely useful to me.

That’s what you need to do.

Create content about something you know and love, that people need more information about before they buy. And inform them. Educate them. Give them the answers they’re looking for.

Then, simply provide a link to that product and get paid for your marketing efforts.

But here’s the best thing…

When you use content to refer people towards a product, you’re also building an audience, and every piece of content you manage to place on the search results will be there for a long long time, working for you.

You’re building assets that generate passive income.

And all of this is free because you don’t need to pay for traffic.

If you choose to create your own blog, you’ll have to make a small investment in domain and hosting and a few extras…

Read “How to Build a Website for Dummies” for more details.

But there are ways to start creating helpful content that will build you an audience and build a passive income system without spending a cent. 

Creating a Youtube channel, for example, is completely free. 

More on this in Step #3.

Action Steps to Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money

By now, you’ve probably understood that the way to start affiliate marketing without an initial investment is through content creation, so let’s see exactly how to do that.

Step #1 Pick a (Very Specific) Topic

You need to pick a topic (niche) which you know well and love. And then specialize.

Your niche must be something you love talking about. Something you won’t get tired of after writing 10 articles or recording a few videos. 

You don’t want to waste all that work, do you?

Especially when starting out, it’ll take some time to see results. Search engines don’t immediately rank your content. 

One of the most important factors for search engine optimization (SEO) is authority. Which you’ll start building more and more of as you continue to create content around a subject.

This brings us to specialization.

Within your topic, you must have a specific point of view and specialize in something that will make you unique.

Let’s say you’ve decided to ‘talk’ about diets, more specifically the keto diet. That’s not enough, thousands, if not millions of people are already creating content around the keto diet.

But let’s say you coach a kids soccer team, you could write or make videos about the keto diet for children, more specifically, how this diet helps them perform better in sports.

You don’t need to focus your content only in sports, but you can approach it from your point of view as a coach.

How many people do you think are creating this kind of content?

Step #2 Make a List of Products to Promote

If you know the topic you chose well, and you should, you’ll know which products people will need to use. Most likely you’re already using some.

The best products to recommend to your audience are those that’ll help them achieve their goals.

If you’re doing Keto, you probably know how hard it is to get started, but there are many supplements that help people get over that obstacle. There are also some essential digital products like apps that count the amount of fat in each food or even courses.

Here are a few ways to find products to recommend:

1. Perform a Google search for “‘product name’ affiliate program”;
2. Create a Clickbank.com account to find digital products;
3. Create ShareASale.com account to find physical products

When choosing a product, prioritize the following:

1. The product is sold through a funnel with more offers that also pay you commissions – most products on Clickbank are.
2. The product pays recurring commissions – subscription products.

Here’s a video demonstrating how to choose a winning product on Clickbank:

Step #3 Create Content Around Those Products

When I started my first blog and read “pick a niche and create content around that niche”, I’d get so stressed because I wouldn’t know exactly what to write about.

I wrote a few posts which I thought would be helpful. One of them even went viral on Pinterest. But these weren’t optimized around a product, so they never paid any commissions…

Well, they did, because eventually I placed some Amazon Associate links in them. But even the one that was bringing over 1.000 visitors per day never amounted to more than $20 in a month.

What a waste…

Nowadays, I have both videos and blog posts with only a few hundred views which are already making more than that.

When creating content specifically about a product or the problems that product helps solve, you’re much more likely to lead your audience to buy it through your affiliate link.

Here are some types of content to prioritize:

• Lists (Example: “Top 10 Supplements to Jumpstart Keto for Teenagers”)
• Reviews (Example: “Keto for Teenagers Course Review – My Experience as a Parent”)
• Best of (Example: “Best Keto Power Bars to Keep Your Fat Intake Up Throughout the Day”)
• Comparisons (Example: “Brownies Proteicos VS Amix Gourmet – Which Ones Are Best for Keto Adaptation?”)
• Guides or How to’s (Example: “How to Get Keto Adapted in No More Than One Week”)

Whilst these are ideal formats that lead to sales, you can also create others types of content whenever you see opportunities. They will help you gain authority in the eyes of the search engines.

So where should you create this content?

There are 2 places I recommend above everything else. Your own blog and your Youtube channel.

I have both. They synergize perfectly. But you can get started with one only.

The reason I recommend these two above all else is because Google and Youtube are the two biggest search engines. And showing up in search results means your content will be seen every day for years to come.

Other places you can choose to create content are:

• Quora
• Pinterest
• Tiktok

You can skip having a blog or a Youtube channel and use these to create content and promote affiliate products. However, what I do and recommend is using them to promote your blog articles, Youtube videos, or both.

As per the main social networks, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. These can be used to promote your content, but I wouldn’t use them to promote products for two reasons:

1. Affiliate promotion is usually not allowed and people don’t like to be sold on social networks.
2. Content on these platforms is seen for a short time (from minutes to hours usually) – which means it won’t create passive income.

Step #4 Position Your Affiliate Link (& Call to Action)

Now that you’ve created a helpful piece of content and chosen a product to promote, you need to let your audience know how they can get that product and share your affiliate link, to get paid.

What most people do is place their affiliate link directly to the product within the content…

But there’s an extra step that can exponentially increase your earnings!

Instead of linking directly to the product, mention it, but offer a small solution your visitor can get before buying the product in exchange for their email address.

With this, you’ll be building your email list, which is your most important asset in affiliate marketing.

Think about it…

A brand you know and love, launches a new Keto Energy Drink. 

You now have a list of people that you know are interested in the Keto Diet to whom you can send an email (all at once) and tell them about that new drink.

Let’s say you built a list with 1.000 email addresses of people who already know you and trust you.

When they receive your email, 100 of them (for example) instantly go and order that new product, that’s a significant amount of instant commissions!

But how do you start building that email list?

It doesn’t need to be complicated or even time consuming at all.

By linking to a simple bridge page which will then link to the product itself, you’ll still earn that commission and acquire that email address.

All automatically. Automation creates passive income.

Here’s an example of how to create these bridge pages:

You can download a copy of the bridge page you’ve seen in this video here!

You can also:

• Create your own lead magnet and link to the product on the thank you page.
• Offer a lead magnet from the vendor (when available) and then link to the product on the thank you page.
• Use only a headline hinting to the solution which is given in the sales page video.
• Use a headline and a video screenshot (as demonstrated in the video above).

Once you have a lead capture system in place, make sure you also have a few welcome emails going out automatically.

With my first blog, I built an email list of around 400 people without ever emailing them.

After a year or so, I emailed them an offer and more people unsubscribed than those who even clicked on my affiliate link.

That’s because they didn’t even remember who I was or that they had subscribed to my email list. Some probably weren’t even aware they had done so!

This can be avoided very easily by emailing your list at least once a week. I do this to share the new content I create, which I know is helpful to my subscribers.

And most importantly by having a good welcome series in place telling them the advantages of being your email subscriber and continuing to provide value.

Now, I know these emails can be daunting to write, so I created a Guide with Free Templates that you can simply copy and paste to create your welcome series. You can download it below!

This can all be automated as autoresponders in your email marketing platform.

Here’s how easy it is to create an autoresponder in GetResponse:

Click here to create a FREE GetResponse 30-day Trial (no credit card)

How Much and How Fast?

How much can you earn as an affiliate marketer?

Your earning potential as an affiliate marketer is unlimited.

Whilst the vast majority of people will never earn more than a few hundred dollars, there are some very successful affiliate marketers earning 7 and 8 figures exclusively from this business model.

But how fast can you make money as an affiliate marketer?

It’ll take some time to start earning, if you’re starting out with free methods, but it’ll also create a much bigger compound effect in the long run.

Because you’re building your online assets – content that gets found in search – once they start earning positions in those search engines, your earnings will start to escalate without any extra work.

And these assets will continue to work for you indefinitely. Can you say passive income?

Once you start earning, you can also re-invest your earnings in advertising, which will scale your income and your business even faster.

Conclusion

To start affiliate marketing with no money, you need to focus on content.

Content will help an audience, which will place you as a reliable source. People who trust you will follow your recommendations!

The content pieces you create will also act as assets that will continue to do the hard work for you years after you’ve created it.

Here’s a bit more on content creation for affiliate marketing:

As you can see, it’s easy to understand how you should always start affiliate marketing by creating content.

It’ll cost you no money and earn you a lot!

How will you start?

A Youtube channel? A Blog? Or you’d rather go with one of the others instead?

Let me know in the comments below! 

Also, feel free to ask any questions you might have.