Affiliate marketing has become so hot these years that everyone wants to get a slice of the cake. It sounds attractive to get passive income while lying at home just by promoting merchant’s goods online, right?
However, affiliate marketing usually means building a website, which is time-consuming and quite expensive.
Is it possible to start affiliate marketing without a website?
The short answer is definitely “Yes“.
But if you want to go deeper, the answer will be “Yes, but it’s not a good choice if you are serious about building your business”.
Before that, let’s cover some basics.
CONTENT
- Prerequisites of Affiliate Marketing
- Most Recommended Strategy – Create a Landing Page
- Start Affiliate Marketing without a Website
- Conclusion
Prerequisites of Affiliate Marketing
First of all, before we go on to discuss if building a website is a must for a qualified affiliate, it is more important to clarify the requirements that are indispensable for every affiliate.
As an affiliate, the major goal of your daily work should be bringing the matched audience to meet the advertiser’s offer. That is to say, you have to get the right offer first and then deliver it to the right people at the right time.
So two essential elements are involved: an offer and a source of traffic. Let’s focus on them now.
It refers to a product, a service or whatever you can promote, provided by the merchants. If you want to make money, the very first thing you need is to get the right offer.
You can search for your ideal affiliate programs one by one by yourself, or you can just simply join one of the existing affiliate networks or ad networks in the market to get more quality offers instantly.
It is defined as a place from where you can send referrals to the offer. It can be search engines, your own blog, social media, or a specific website.
The key point is, no matter what the traffic source is, you’d better keep the target audience of your traffic source in line with the offer content you take, which is likely to increase your revenue.
Most Recommended Strategy – Create a Landing Page
Now that we have made clear the foundation of what it takes to be an affiliate marketer, the next tricky issue is: how do you convert your audience successfully? The most common and recommended way is to create a landing page.
I am talking about the first choice now. So if you don’t plan to build a website, you can just skip to the next part where we list other practical ways for you.
What is a Landing Page?
In affiliate marketing, a landing page is a standalone page created with a single goal – conversion. It is designed for a particular marketing purpose or advertising campaign.
As the first page a visitor “lands” on after clicking on a link or ads, a landing page is usually designed to be informative and encouraging, with a CTA to draw potential customers in.
For example, here is one of Wix’s landing pages.
Why You Need a Landing Page?
The major goal of the landing page is to increase conversions. In other words, it can help convert your website’s visitors into customers or leads.
Imagine you are a visitor clicking on a jeans ads from Google, which way would you rather make a purchase, a straightforward product page? Or a persuasive landing page with detailed info and a noticeable CTA?
There is no doubt the latter will bring in more sales.
To be honest, not every affiliate has enough credibility to convince their target audience to make a conversion, especially while the affiliate links seem so suspicious. Landing page is a perfect method to increase your credit and then lead to more conversions.
Start Affiliate Marketing without a Website
Now let’s go back to the main topic. As we said in the beginning, affiliate marketing can be done without building a website.
Here we have listed 7 available ways for you to make money as an affiliate marketer.
Social Media
For those affiliates who don’t have a website, promoting through social media might be the fastest way to start, as social media platforms have seen massive growth over the last few years and nearly everyone has a personal account.
Above all, you must have the audience numbers first. Be it on Twitter or Facebook, LinkedIn or Pinterest, the premise of successful marketing is that you own a large number of followers and subscribers.
So this method is more suitable for the influencers who have clout on social and are able to leverage their audience. Otherwise, there is a long way to go before you build a follower base and monetize your online presence.
YouTube Channel
As the second-largest searching engine after Google, YouTube is an ideal platform for affiliate marketers, especially for those who have no website.
Have you ever seen some product-review videos on YouTube recommending you to click the link in the description? That’s exactly where affiliate marketing comes up.
Once creating your own YouTube channel, you can start to make unique and quality content in your niche. Keep in mind that YouTube requires you to let viewers know you are promoting an affiliate link by disclosing the partnership in the description or in the video itself.
Content Publishing Platforms
Here I’d like to focus on the two most popular content publishing platforms which are free to sign up: Medium and Steemit.
Medium has over 100 million monthly active readers, making it a perfect place for affiliate markets to publish content online. Affiliate links are allowed on Medium, as long as you make clear the affiliate partnership to your readers.
Similar to Medium, Steemit allows affiliate links as well. But you can only receive payment in the form of the Steem cryptocurrency.
Viral eBook
It is another form of content marketing. You can write an eBook on a hot topic and embed the affiliate link into your content. While a reader is interested in what you write, there is a good chance that they will click on the links and finally make a conversion.
Tip: The best way to know the latest trending topics people interested in is by using Google Trends.
Email Marketing
Instead of driving visitors to your website, you can simply send out affiliate links via email marketing. The precondition is that you must have a list of email subscribers who is interested in your content.
Building your own email list is better than simply buying one, as purchased lists are often of low quality.
To start with, you can look for a sign-up service from a third party if you don’t have a website. Keep sharing valuable content, such as a free course/guide/info-product via paid ads on social media sites. Once you got a steady number of subscribers, you can proceed to your affiliate campaigns via email marketing.
Forums or Communities
Yes, it still exists, though I don’t recommend this way at all. That is because most forum owners and admins will regard your affiliate links as spam, especially in large platforms such as Quora and Reddit.
But it can still work out as long as you follow the forum guidelines strictly about posting links and contribute to the online conversation to raise your authority. A useful tip is to put links in your profile or signature, which is usually allowed.
Online Advertising
Unlike other above methods, online advertising is not free. Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the two leading advertising platforms most marketers use.
Obviously, it can get you the most exposure and fast returns, but it also comes with more risk. Make sure you have a good strategy and experience before you start advertising, otherwise this is more likely to lose money.
Conclusion
Now that you have known the 7 ways to do affiliate marketing without a website, it’s time to move on to join an affiliate program.
Just remember, whichever way you choose, make sure your content is useful, attractive and fresh enough to satisfy your audience. Also, don’t forget to analyze your campaign regularly and make some adjustments then.
Also, if you are looking for performance marketing solutions or if you want to join some partner programs to get extra income, don’t hesitate to join Offerslook’s referral program and easily win up to $200 commissions.
