You’ve heard affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. You may have even seen screenshots of earnings posted and attributed to affiliate marketing, and now you have decided to try affiliate marketing.
But the problem is you do not have a website, but what if I tell you that you do not need to own a website before you can start making money with affiliate marketing?
The truth is, people are out there making money with affiliate marketing with just their smartphones without a website or a large amount of following on social media, and you too can make money promoting products or services you love with just your phone.
Now, let’s look at some of the various ways you can start affiliate marketing without a website.
Smart and Simple Ways to Do Affiliate Marketing Without a Website
Use Social Media Platforms
Social channels like Facebook, Instagram, or X (formerly Twitter) are a great way to start affiliate marketing. Before you begin, it’s essential to build your following, as this will enable you to connect with the right audience for your sales efforts.
Social platforms also allow you to add affiliate links in the bio section of your account. With free tools like Linktree or Beacons, you can have multiple affiliate links in your bio.
Linktree functions as a simple landing page, where you can insert affiliate link in your bio. Each link or button can point your prospects/audience to different affiliate products, services, or blog posts that have your affiliate links embedded.
Start a YouTube Channel
Launching a YouTube channel is another effective way to do affiliate marketing without a website because more people are gravitating towards video content as they find it engaging and appealing.
If you create videos on the video sharing platform (YouTube), you can place your affiliate links in your video description for your viewers to click and make a purchase.
Disclosure
Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate link, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through my link – at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products and courses I genuinely believe can help you. Thank you for your support!
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing is the process of sending direct emails to a specific target audience with the intent of communicating with them either by promoting a product or service or to build a relationship.
Email marketing is dynamic, meaning that it gives you some form of flexibility in the sense that you can embed multiple affiliate links in one email depending on your marketing strategy.
Even though you might not want to do affiliate marketing with a website or may have the challenge of paying for hosting where you can have your website running, you can leverage a free email marketing tool like Systeme.io for affiliate marketing.
With systeme.io, you can create a landing page for free where you can insert your unique affiliate link, send periodic marketing emails to prospects, and even prompt your targets to subscribe to your newsletter, which is another way you can make money.
Collaborations Through Guest Posting
Running a website offers numerous benefits, one of which is increased flexibility. Depending on the promotional strategy employed, affiliate links can be incorporated into a blog post to effectively market a product or service.
Another advantage a website has is that you don’t necessarily have to collect emails from prospects to sell to them. They can visit a website to pay for products or services. An example is a product review site where people can read about a product and make a purchase.
So if you do not have a website, you can reach out to website owners or businesses that have a website and ask them for collaborations. You can write for them on the condition that you will have your affiliate link in the content you have written.
When you do this, you are offering them your service in exchange for your affiliate link to appear on the post, which is a give-and-take strategy. A win-win for both parties. That means they’re doing you a favor, and you are also returning that favor.
Certain websites enjoy heavy user traffic. If you can pitch to them to have your affiliate link in exchange for a free article, there is a high chance you will make sales through your unique affiliate link(s).
Use Paid Advertising
Paid advertising is a strategy used online by marketers to advertise their brands or the products they are selling. It allows affiliates to run a promotional campaign at a cost. The goal of paid advertising varies for each marketer.
However, affiliate marketers use paid ads to either create awareness, generate leads, or drive sales, depending on the marketing stage that they are in.
Assuming you are running a Facebook ad campaign, the right thing to do will be to create an engaging/compelling post for your target audience, encouraging them to take an action, which should be for them to click your affiliate link. An example could be your product page, WhatsApp channel, or even a landing page.
However, be careful not to go against the rules of the social platform that you are using. For example, Facebook does not like a direct affiliate link in a post, so you can have your link in the comment section or the bio section of your account.
Promote Your Content Through Forum Posts.
A forum is an online platform where people discuss topics of interest. Forums are a great place to generate traffic to whatever product you are promoting. You will have to contribute meaningfully to the platform by either answering questions or making posts that others can engage with. Examples of forums include Quora, Nairaland, and Reddit.
Some forums do not accept direct affiliate links. However, you can build authority in forums, create relationships with people, and smartly suggest a solution to a specific problem that users of the forum might be facing, then have them visit your landing page if you do not have a website.
Recall that you can create a simple but free landing page for affiliate marketing. But do paste direct affiliate links in forums. Make sure that you are helping users with relevant and helpful posts before you try to suggest your landing page (in your bio) that will help them.
The reason you’ll be doing this is that most forums like Quora only trust websites or landing pages, and that will only matter if what you are posting is helpful to their users.