When I first learned about affiliate marketing, I wondered if I needed a website to be able to do it. While I was excited about the possibilities, the idea of creating a website for Affiliate Marketing was also overwhelming.
I know now that having a website or blog is still one of the preferred methods for affiliates (and we will explore why), but there is still a plethora of other methods you can use to promote affiliate offers without a website.
How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing Without a Website or Blog
Free Vs. Paid Methods
Like for most businesses, you need to ‘invest’ before earning. This investment can be in the form of money or, in its absence, time.
Most free or organic methods will require a bigger time investment than paid ads but there is something for everyone to choose on.
Pay attention to the following list so you can start creating your affiliate income today:
1. Using Twitter for Affiliate Marketing without a website
Free
Twitter users are very loyal to the platform and usually interact with it several times during the day.
With only 280 characters allowed per tweet, it is one of the easiest ways to promote your affiliate links since creating your ‘content’ could take less than a minute.
Look out for trending topics and hashtags in your niche and engage in the conversation. Do not just reply with your link but have something interesting to say so people feel encouraged to click.
Even better, curate your profile and timeline to make it interesting and non-spammy. You can also add your affiliate link to your bio.
If you reply to viral tweets with relevant content, people might check your profile and you’ll have a second chance for them to click your link.
Paid
Twitter does have an advertising platform but we do not recommend it since their costs are pretty high. However, you can do what is known as a ‘promo tweet’, by reaching out to influencers related to your niche and negotiating they make a tweet including your affiliate offer.
You will want to make sure they have a large, engaged audience and some of their tweets have gone viral before. This way you can reach a bigger audience with a lower budget.
The message can be posted as a new tweet or as a reply to one of their previous viral tweet if it makes sense with your product/service.
The cost for these tweets varies a lot depending on the number of followers meaning it can go from $20 to $500 approximately. The best is to do some research and talk with a few before making a decision.
Note: There is no guarantee you will make sales but the same goes for any method.
Recommended niches: e-commerce, gaming, sports, health, investing.
2. Using Instagram for Affiliate Marketing without a website
Free
With over 1 billion active users, Instagram is filled with opportunities you can leverage for your affiliate business.
Look at this account for example.
They have created a profile around the keto niche based purely on submissions and now they have a super targeted audience to who they can promote any keto-related offers.
You can place your affiliate link in your Instagram bio or use a tool like linktree to place more offers.
Paid
In Instagram, like in most advertising platforms, you can not create ads that link directly to an affiliate offer, so you would need to have a website for that.
However, the same way we mentioned for twitter, you can find influencers or accounts in your niche and paid them to do a ‘promo post’. This is a very common practice for influencer and meme accounts.
Since post captions are not clickable, the link is usually placed in the bio and visitors are directed there from the post. Also, most accounts will have the option to post a story with a swipe up to your link.
Recommended niches: beauty, weight loss, fitness, art, photography.
3. Using Youtube for Affiliate Marketing without a website
Free
Youtube is not only a social media but also a search engine, which means you can target people who are ALREADY looking for a solution that you can now provide through your offer.
The best you can do is to think about the problems your potential customers are facing and create a video to help them. Then you can mention your offer as part of the solution.
Another popular practice is to create review videos but, as you can imagine, every affiliate and their mom are doing them, so you would need to do something really special to differentiate yourself.
Next time you hear a youtuber mention he has a link in the description for a discount, trial, etc.; chances are those are his affiliate links.
If being on camera is not something that excites you, there are other ways to do it. Think stuff like “10 best cameras for beginners” or “5 gifts your mom will love”. These usually show the products on camera with a voice in the background, so your stage fears are not an excuse.
You can even have someone of fiverr do them for you if you rather save some time.
Paid
Youtube is a great platform to start creating what affiliates call ‘digital assets’
‘. Every video you upload on your channels is an investment that can bring you revenue for years.
However, if for some reason you don’t feel like creating your own channel, you can pay a ‘youtuber’ to do a promotional video in theirs and direct viewers to your link.
Youtube works well for almost every niche but currently, the most profitable channels are in beauty/fashion, gaming, food/cooking, fitness, and personal finances.
4. Using Facebook for Affiliate Marketing without a website
I don’t need to tell you how huge facebook’s potential is. While there are so many options when using a site or landing page, I will focus on the no-website options for this article.
Our preferred way to leverage Facebook for affiliate marketing includes:
Without your own group
- Start by joining groups related to your niche. Make sure they have more than 3k active members.
- Engage in the discussions providing valuable information.
- Add people you have interacted with as friends and offer to help them with anything else via direct message.
- When relevant, tell them about your offer and send them your link.
- Start posting content related to your niche in your profile so your new ‘friends’ see you as an authority.
- Every certain time make posts about your offer but adding some valuable information as well.
Recommended: Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads for Affiliate Marketing
With your own group
- Create a Facebook group for your niche.
- Use a few relevant words in the group name so people can find it easily.
- Create your group rules to avoid spamming.
- Create a pinned post with resources for the group where you can include your affiliate links directly or you can even create a pdf with some content and add your links there.
Facebook works well for most niches. The trick is to find the angle around support and community rather than the product or benefits themselves.
5. Using Pinterest for Affiliate Marketing without a website
Yes! You can use affiliate links on Pinterest without a blog. Back in 2015, Pinterest banned affiliate links because “spammers were abusing them” but they have claimed their spam detection system is stronger now which is only good news for us.
Now you can create pins and link them directly to your affiliate offers, the company’s home page, a free trial they are offering, a webinar, etc. Do you see the potential here?
The steps to creating a successful Pinterest campaign look like this:
- Assuming you already know your niche, go ahead and create 6-10 boards around the topic. For example, if your niche is travel, your boards could be Packing Hacks, Cheap Flights Tips, Bucketlist Destinations, etc.
- Do some research and repin other’s people pins into your boards.
- Create the images you are gonna pin and link to your offers.
- Pin them to your boards. Now you will have a combination of both repinned content and your offers.
- Create a schedule so you can continue to repeat this process.
Another great tool you can use to schedule and grow your Pinterest traffic is Tailwind. It allows you to schedule and keep repining your content to gain momentum. You can also join ‘tribes’ and contribute with other pinners to repin each other’s content.
Niches that work great in Pinterest are Home decor, Art, Travel, DIY, Photography, Design, Recipes, Quotes, and Motivation.
6. Using Google Ads for Affiliate Marketing without a website
While the Google Ads platform has very strict rules, they have no official policy against affiliate links.
This is an awesome opportunity since you can get very targeted traffic to your direct links. A couple of things you must consider are:
- Check if the landing page where you will be sending traffic is compliant with google’s policies.
- Verify with your affiliate merchant if they allow PPC as a promotional method.
- Ask if you are allowed to bid on keywords related to the brand. For example, if you are an affiliate for Samsung they might not allow you to use their brand on your campaign, but you could still target other words like ‘led tv’, ‘best tv’, ‘home theater,’ among thousand more.
While you can target any niche, the opportunity is in finding companies that are not using Google Adwords and will allow you to bid on the brand keywords. Someone who is already googling ‘Samsung’ is much more likely to convert on your ‘Samsung’ ad.
7. Using Forums for Affiliate Marketing without a website
Thanks to spammy affiliates, now some forums will ban users that promote affiliate links.
However, there are still some that allow you to include a link in your signature or profile. There is always a way to promote your links if you are smart about it.
The trick, (and this applies to all platforms and business models), is to provide value first. People are there genuinely looking for answers, so your first goal should be to help them. If you can offer them valuable knowledge, they will most likely feel curious to learn about what you are promoting.
Forums like Quora or Warrior Forum allow you to answer other people’s questions. Do this regularly and establish a profile where forum users see you as an authority in your niche.
Make sure that your answers and posts are interesting and provide useful information. Do not copy/paste your links everywhere as you will definitely get your account banned.
8. Using Blog Comments for Affiliate Marketing without a website
In a similar way to forums, blogs might allow you to include your affiliate links in the comment section as long as you provide some value as well.
A time-saving tool to stay up to date with the latest blog posts in your niche is Google Alerts.
You can set it up to notify you as soon as you want and all you have to do next is actually read the blog posts and respond in an interesting way.
9. Using LinkedIn for Affiliate Marketing without a website
The best way to promote your affiliate links on Linkedin is to write articles about common concerns and include your product as a solution.
It is a professional platform so you will want to talk about your career and how it has benefited you. Measurable results tend to work great for this type of post.
Finally, you can include the link to your offer in your summary and invite people to contact you if they need any help.
10. Using Ebooks for Affiliate Marketing without a website
While creating an ebook is something that might take a little bit more of time upfront, it can also help build your authority and generate another source of income.
It has never been so easy as now to become a published author. With Kindle, you can do it for free and have access to millions of readers.
You don’t need to be a poet to create helpful content. Just make sure it is useful to your audience and don’t just add affiliate links everywhere. Provide value and then recommend a product that backs up your message.
For example, if you are an affiliate for a debt relief company, your eBook may be titled Get Out of Debt for Good. Within that book, you may have tips and education about the topic and then you recommend the affiliate product which may help the reader.
If you decide to use Kindle to publish your book, start offering it for free, and once it starts to gain some attention you can increase the price and also make money from it.
11. Using Solo Ads for Affiliate Marketing without a website
Solo ads are a type of paid ads where you pay the owner of an email list for sending your message to his/her audience.
Lists are categorized based on niches so you know the people receiving it are interested in that type of product.
There are lots of places to buy solo ads, the one we use and recommend is Udimi but is still important you take your time to research and pick the vendor.
Pay attention to their reviews and, if possible, join their list so you can monitor the emails that you receive, the number of emails per week, quality of emails, quality of products, etc.
Choose a solo ad seller who sends no more than 7 emails a week and sends also sends content other than ads.
Why You Actually WANT A Website for Affiliate Marketing
While not having a website might sound like the easiest way to go in the short term, it can actually complicate things and make it harder for you to maintain and grow your affiliate business.
Here are some reasons why you should consider having a website:
- You never know when platforms are going to change their policies. While options like Google Ads and Pinterest allow affiliate links at the moment, most traffic sources don’t allow them, and this might indicate that’s the direction the rest will follow.
- Many affiliate programs don’t allow you to promote your links directly. This not only reduces your options but probably leaves you with those that are more saturated.
- You miss out on a lot of commissions. One of the benefits of having a simple website is to capture your visitor’s emails so you can follow up with them. Most people won’t buy the first time they click on an ad, but if you have their emails, you can keep offering them that on other products.
- Affiliates love saying ‘the money in on the list’ and, even though it is a cliche, it is true. An email list is the most valuable asset you can build for your business and, with a website, you can create it while reaping the commissions.
The Easiest Way to Create your Affiliate Website
I get it, websites seem complicated. From the hosting to the domain and the actual design, there is a lot of pieces to put together.
However, they don’t need to be. One of the tools we have always used for our affiliate business is Clickfunnels. It’s a drag-and-drop website builder that makes it easy to have a site up and running in minutes.
They have templates to collect emails, sell products or host a webinar.
You can create a freebie to offer your visitors in exchange for their emails and after they opt-in you can:
- Redirect them to your affiliate offer
- Continue to send them content and offers via email.
There is a monthly fee for ClickFunnels, but they offer a free trial and, after that, it is totally worth it and will help you a big advantage in your affiliate business.
Bonus: Link Cloaking for Affiliate Links
Even though Pinterest and other platforms allow affiliate links, there are still some pages that will disapprove your ads or ban you if your link looks spammy.
For this reason, it is recommended to use some kind of link forwarding software to cloak the links (this also protects your link ID and avoids your commission being stolen by other affiliates).
Clickmagick does this by making your affiliate links look like they are going to a domain, but then it forwards them to your affiliate link when it is clicked. It is around $14/month but it also helps you keep track of all your commissions and monitor your links 24/7.
Takeaway
As we have shown, you can definitely do affiliate marketing without a website. However, while it might seem like the ‘easiest’ option, it is not the most advisable or profitable.
The path to success in affiliate marketing is not about sending people to an affiliate link and hoping that they buy or take action.
You can probably get some sales that way but to create a sustainable income, you need to provide some value to your visitors and create a way to contact them without relying on other platforms
Now tell me, what source of traffic are you gonna master next?
