How To Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money

In this topic, we will discuss how to start affiliate marketing with no money. So if you want to earn an income online but do not have the money for business capital, this guide will help you. We will talk about how to do affiliate marketing and the tools you can use to help you generate better revenue. So continue to read on to build a passive income without any upfront investment finally.

How to Get Started

Let’s get started by knowing what affiliate marketing is first. Affiliate marketing is a marketing system where affiliate marketers promote someone else’s products and services and earn commissions from the sales. Many businesses have used it as a marketing strategy to increase their sales. Affiliate marketing is not only for affiliate marketers. Bloggers and YouTube content creators can also be affiliate marketers.

According to Affiliate Marketing statistics of 2021, about 80% of businesses have affiliate programs. The industry has an estimated global worth of around $12 billion and is projected to grow by more than 10% in the succeeding years.

A low-level affiliate can earn an average of around $300 per day. A mid-level affiliate earns anywhere from $300 up to $3,000 per day. A high-level affiliate earns more than $3,000 per day. But there are affiliates, considered gurus of affiliate marketing, that make more than $10,000 per day.

These earnings still depend on your commitment and hard work. These figures prove how lucrative affiliate marketing is even today and will also serve as your inspiration to work harder.

Market Research for Affiliate Marketing

Let’s also do some market research to verify the information we have for Affiliate Marketing. Let’s learn how many people are searching for it online and how it is trending.

Search Volume

To check the search volume, we will use Jaaxy. Jaaxy is an advanced keyword search tool that allows us to review a keyword’s monthly average search volume, traffic, quality, SEO ranking, and many more. Best of all, Jaaxy gives you 30 free searches.

The Jaaxy results show us that affiliate marketing has around 39K average monthly searches. And if your website ranks high in search engines, you can get up to 6K+ website traffic. This means you have a more chance of getting more sales.

Search Trend

To help us determine the search trend for affiliate marketing, we will use Google Trends to show us the direction of affiliate marketing at a given time and its trend projection to help us identify its sustainability.

In the graph above, you can see that affiliate marketing has been on a steady rise for the past two years. Then it reaches the peak of its popularity around the middle of the year 2021. Although the trend may seem to have declined, it remains popular as it remains above the 50% popularity mark on the graph. Affiliate marketing has been around since the early days of the internet, and it looks like it will stay for a very long time.

What exactly is the niche?

So now we have learned that affiliate marketing is a profitable business, but what niche will you choose? There are plenty of money-making niches nowadays. Here are some of the recent top-performing main places and sub-niches.

• Health and wellness – natural health and wellness, health and wellness coaching, health and wellness programs
• Technology – new technology trends, mobile computing technology, multitouch technology
• Personal Finance – managing personal finance, personal finance advice, personal finance planning

You may be inclined to try multiple niches but before you do that, consider the following:

1. Is it something that you are interested in? – This is the first thing you should consider when choosing a niche. Is it something that you will enjoy or something that you are passionate about? If you will be marketing products for a while, it is best to choose a niche that you like.
2. Will it solve a problem? – Since people generally look up for answers or solutions online, check if your niche can provide it. Determine if your niche will be able to offer solutions that your customers will find useful or valuable.

What Problem is being solved?

As mentioned before, consider choosing a niche that can solve a problem or problems. Problem-solving places are proven to remain relevant in the long term. To help you with this, think about the issues related to your home and list them down. For instance, using the Health and wellness niche, we could be dealing with the following topics:

• What are natural health and wellness products?
• Where can I find a health and wellness coach?
• What are the best health and wellness programs?

This list can go on and on. After listing them down, determine if your chosen niche will offer solutions to these problems. Also, think about if your sub-niches can provide solutions too.

How to Get the Audience to Purchase?

After selecting your niche, it is now time to think about getting your audience to purchase. There are several ways how you can do that. But to make it more effective, let’s determine the type of audience who will be interested in the niche you’ve selected. Taking the example niche before, for health and wellness, you can have an audience who are:

• Health-conscious
• In the elderly population
• Fitness enthusiasts
• Dieticians
• Medical professionals
• Recovering patients

There could be more beyond this list. But no matter how much they are interested in your niche, they are not your buying customers yet. So how are you going to get them to purchase? Take a look at some of our suggestions below:

• Focus on the high-paying audience – Look at your list of possible audiences and identify which of them are your high-paying audiences. These are the customers who have the highest probability of making a purchase. Then create solutions to surrounding these types of audiences.
• Be honest and transparent – Being honest and transparent in your posts allows you to gain the trust and credibility of your audience. For example, let your readers know that you have affiliate links on your post by putting up a disclaimer where they can easily read it. Letting them know about this beforehand gives them the freedom to leave if they don’t like the idea. Include a thank you message on your disclaimer for the visitors who decided to stay on your post to read and possibly buy your products.
• Write quality blog posts – Write quality blog posts that will offer value to your readers. Although your goal is to make more sales, if you aggressively push for it on your blog post, it can backfire. Instead, you should provide useful information that your readers will find relevant. Like offering honest reviews about the product or showing product comparisons that will enable your readers to choose by themselves.

Ways to sell with Affiliate Marketing

There are different ways how you can sell with affiliate marketing. It is up to you which method or methods you would like to use and how you will use them to increase your potential income.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate marketing is a marketing method under an affiliate program. These affiliate programs offer low and high commissions depending on the business running them. Commissions can range anywhere from 2% up to 10% or more if the company is generous enough. Some affiliate programs also offer incentives and bonuses for affiliates that perform well.

But before you can earn these lucrative commissions, you need to apply as an affiliate first. It is just like applying for a job. When you get accepted, you will receive your unique affiliate link. You can use this link to promote the products. If someone clicks on it and buys the product, you will receive commissions from the sale.

To help you find affiliate programs, we will use the Google search engine.

Using our example niche before, you can see that there are many affiliate programs you can join. But before you start applying for any of these affiliate programs, consider checking out the following first.

Look for an affiliate program that:

• Has plenty of quality products you can promote
• Will pay you good commissions
• Has no negative reputation
• Offers payment options you have
• Do not have any fees involved

Moreover, consider looking for a dependable company that will not leave you in the future. Look for a company that has proven its stability for many years, like Amazon. It is one of the most substantial companies in the world. This means becoming their affiliate can be long-term. Here are some products related to health and wellness being sold on Amazon:

Dropshipping

You can do affiliate marketing and dropship at the same time. Combining these two business models can help you generate more passive income—these two work hand in hand. If you have your customers’ contact info from your dropshipping store, you can also offer the affiliate products that they may find helpful and possibly buy them.

However, with dropshipping, you may need to shell out some money to help you get started. First of all, you will need an eCommerce website which can be pretty expensive depending on the size of your store. You will also look for merchants that will supply you with products. Depending on your agreement, some of them require down payments, whether upfront or within a certain number of days after your order.

With dropshipping, there’s no inventory involved since the products are with the merchants. You don’t need to ship the products since they are sent by the merchants directly to the customers. You also set the price of the products you sell.

Usually, you set a higher price than the price of the merchant. The difference between the merchant’s price and the price you charge is your income. However, make sure that your prices are set competitively to match your competitors.

Once again, we’ve used the Google search engine to help us find good merchants for our dropshipping business. Looking at the results, there are so many merchants we can choose from. But before you decide which merchants you will be doing business with, here are some tips that can help you avoid problems in the future:

An excellent dropshipping merchant should:

• Provide you with a long list of products related to your niche
• Be able to ship orders fast
• Have good customer reviews
• Be a reliable and a trustworthy company

Sell your products

If you have the resources and the time, you can also sell your products. Combining this business model with affiliate marketing can provide you with better income as well. If you have built your customer database, you can offer them your affiliate products to help you get more commissions.

However, this business model could require capital since it is like putting up your own company. For example, you need money to buy the equipment to manufacture your products. Or you need to pay for wholesalers that will supply you with products that you can label as your own.

Again we will use Google to help us with our search. Using our example niche before, you can find plenty of wholesalers who can supply you with products related to that niche. To find a good wholesaler company, you can refer to how we looked for good affiliate programs or good dropshipping companies.

When you’re selling your brand, you need to manage it from order processing up to shipping. Some wholesalers can ship the products on your behalf for a cost, but that could reduce your income.

Other potential methods of selling Affiliate Marketing products

If you are not into drop shipping or selling your products, other ways are to market affiliate marketing products. For example, if you are knowledgeable about your niche, you can write an eBook about it. Then place your affiliate links on the first and last pages of your eBook. You can also create videos such as tutorials and upload them on your YouTube channel. Then include your affiliate links in your video description.

What You Need to Start Selling Your Affiliate Marketing Products

Here, we will talk about the tools you can use to start selling your affiliate marketing products. The good news is, they do not cost anything. All you need to do is be consistent and dedicate time to market your products using these tools effectively. Let’s go ahead and check them out:

Building a website for Affiliate Marketing (My #1 Choice)

Having a website is a must with affiliate marketing. This is where you will be uploading your posts that promote your products with your affiliate links. You can also direct your customers here to view all the products that you sell.

Nowadays, there are many free website builders you can use to create your website in just a few minutes. And some offer free website hosting as well. After completing your website, you can immediately start writing your posts, share them on your social media, promote your products with your affiliate links, and so on.

Promote Affiliate Marketing products on Social Media

Social media is a powerful platform where you can promote your affiliate marketing products. Popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are just a few examples.

These platforms allow you to create a business account or page to promote your affiliate products without paying for anything. You can link some of your social media platforms so that each time you make a post, it gets shared on both. Otherwise, you can also do it manually so you can expand your audience reach.

Start a YouTube channel for Affiliate Marketing.

You can make affiliate marketing videos and upload them on your YouTube channel. I did mention earlier that you can create tutorial videos related to your niche. Aside from that, you can also generate unboxing videos behind the scenes or go on live to engage with your audience in real-time. By doing these, you can increase the number of your subscribers and your income as well.

Join Affiliate Marketing Social Communities

You can also join social communities for affiliate marketing. Social communities are groups that share the same interest and usually support each other. You can find these social groups on social media platforms. You can also look for social groups that are related to your niche. This allows you to target people already interested in your place, which means there’s a high chance that they will purchase your products.

Final Thoughts

Finally, we have concluded our topic today. I hope you have learned how you can do affiliate marketing without spending any money. If you are interested in creating your own home business, check out my #1 recommendation on building a successful business. You can get access to hundreds of training videos, 24/7 support, professional consultations, private access to my training guide, and much more.