How to Start Affiliate Marketing for Free – Everything You Need To Know

Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time and is currently worth $17 billion globally. Many businesses have come to realize the power of affiliate marketing and even rely on affiliate marketing as their main source of revenue. If you’re new to this would like to know how to profit from this giant and ever-growing industry, you’ve come to the right place. Because I’m going to give you a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how to start affiliate marketing for free.

So What Is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is basically an online business model and marketing strategy where businesses partner with individuals (known as affiliates) to promote their products or services. Affiliates earn a commission every time a sale is made as a result of their direct effort of referring a customer to the business, usually through a unique tracking link.

Businesses all over the world have embraced and adopted this marketing strategy as it is a win-win situation for both parties as the businesses gain exposure and sale through the affiliate’s promotional efforts and the affiliate earns a passive income.

It’s Important To Keep Costs Low When Starting Out

Starting an online business can be very exciting! There are so many fancy tools, resources and systems that are being sold that supposedly helps you build an affiliate marketing business. You have to be careful or you’ll burn a hole through your pocket before you know it, as most of them are unnecessary when your business is just starting up.

However, it is important to minimize expenses and maximize profits when starting out. This will allow you to learn the ropes without incurring high startup costs or financial risks. Therefore, focus on getting your hands on free resources and tools as much as you can. This will help you develop essential skills and understanding of the industry, which will lay a strong foundation for future success.

How Does It Work?

In its simplest form, an affiliate marketer earns an income when someone buys a product via a unique link on his content (such as a blog, social media content, etc.). Whenever a buyer clicks on the link, which brings her to a product website, and makes a purchase, the affiliate marketer makes a commission from the sale. This is illustrated in the flowchart below:

Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing

With so many online business models, why would affiliate marketing be one of the best?

Well, here are a few reasons why:

1. Passive Income:

Affiliate marketers typically are able to generate income around the clock (even while they are asleep). This is because the content that they’ve created would continue to attract visitors long after it has been published. Anyone who comes to view the content and then proceeds to click on the link and make a purchase will earn the affiliate marketer a commission. This will continue to grow over time as more content is added.

2. Scalability:

The potential to grow and scale an affiliate marketing business is endless. As mentioned earlier, content that is created will continue to attract visitors and viewers. As more and more content is added, the effect is compounded. Affiliates can also expand their reach through additional channels, such as having their content on multiple social media platforms, on top of a blog.

3. Low start-up costs:

One of the most appealing aspects of affiliate marketing is that it is relatively inexpensive to start. There are many free tools and resources (this being one of them) which affiliates can make use of to grow their business to a certain size before investing more money into it. This is the key area of focus of this guide, to help you get started without much (if any) upfront costs.

Step 1: Choosing A Niche

The very first thing you need to do is picking a niche that your content will focus on. This can be something you are passionate about or something you are particularly knowledgeable of. It can even be something you are just interested in.

But the main thing is to stay focused on the niche, which allows you to target a particular audience through your content. This helps to establish yourself as an expert in the niche, which over time builds credibility and trust among your audience.

Another key reason to stay within a niche is that it allows you to streamline your content creation and marketing efforts, making it easier for you to plan and execute your content creation and marketing strategies.

A Few Tips To Help You Pick The Right Niche

Firstly, let’s go with your personal interests and expertise, as mentioned. Pick a niche that aligns with your passion, hobbies, or even something you do in your professional capacity at work. The idea is the more genuinely interested you are in your selected niche, the more likely you are to stay motivated and engaged in creating high quality content to keep your audience engaged.

The second option is to pick a niche which usually have high demand and general interest. Do a market research and look for trends, popular products or services which have a consistently high and growing user base. You can utilize tools such as Google Trends and social media platforms to gauge demand and interest through the engagement on those posts.

Here are a few examples of profitable niches:

1. Health and wellness, such as weight loss, fitness, mental health and nutrition
2. Finance and investment, such as personal finance, cryptocurrency, real estate investing and trading
3. Hobbies and interests, such as photography, travel, cooking, gardening, DIY projects
4. Technology and gadgets, such as smartphones, gaming, home automation, software
5. Education and personal development, such as online courses, language learning, career development, self-improvement

Analyze The Competition And Potential Profitability Of Your Chosen Niche

Now that you’ve chosen your niche, let’s do a little homework to make sure that it’s a good one.

Start by evaluating the level of competition in your chosen niche by simply searching for it online. Look for existing websites, blogs and social media accounts that target the same audience. A moderate level of competition would be the best, as it indicates demand without being overly saturated.

Next, assess the profitability of the niche by looking at the range of products and services that are currently available, their price points, as well as the average commission rates offered by affiliate programs. You will want a niche with a diverse selection of products with attractive commission structures. This what we are going to cover next.

Step 2: Finding Affiliate Programs And Products

Let’s firstly look at the type of affiliate structures that are currently available. They can typically be grouped into 3 types:

1. Pay per sale:

Affiliates earn a commission based on a percentage of the sale price or a fixed amount per sale. This is usually the highest paying structure in absolute dollars, as it is requires a little more effort. This is my personal favorite.

2. Pay per lead:

Affiliates receive a commission for generating leads for the company, such as form submissions, sign-ups, or free trial registrations. The commission is typically paid per qualified lead, where the company usually runs a simple check to ensure that leads are real people and not bots.

3. Pay per click:

Affiliates are paid for driving traffic to the advertiser’s website through their unique affiliate links. Commissions are based on the number of clicks generated. This is also the lowest paying commission structure and is a volume gain, as it is the easiest to do for the affiliates.

How To Choose The Right Programs

Now with the understanding of the different types of affiliate commission structure, let’s look at how you would go about choosing the right programs.

Product quality

The very first criteria is to look for high-quality products or services in your niche which have a strong reputation for quality and customer satisfaction. You want to promote a good product from a trustworthy company to ensure that this is a sustainable business for you. Read the customer reviews and testimonials to determine if the product is effective and has good value and consider promoting a product or service that you have personally used and can genuinely endorse.

Commission rates and payment terms

The next thing you should do is compare the commission rates offered by different affiliate programs to find the most lucrative opportunities. Few important things to note are the payment frequency, minimum payout threshold, and available payment methods to ensure they suit your preference. You should also review the program’s terms and conditions to be aware of any restrictions on promotional methods, geographical limitations, or cookie duration.

Assess the program’s reputation and support

There are millions of affiliate programs, some managed independently by the product owners and some through affiliate networks (more on that shortly). The key thing is to research the reputation of the affiliate program or network by reading reviews and participating in online forums or communities. You should also evaluate the quality of the support and resources provided, such as promotional materials, tracking tools, and dedicated affiliate managers. You should ultimately look for programs with a history of timely payments and a reliable tracking system.

Choosing An Affiliate Network

So what is an affiliate network? It is a service that acts as the middleman between the affiliate and the brands, so that they can connect with each other easily. The brands often use affiliate networks when they don’t have enough outbound sales support or have their own affiliate manager, have a small advertising budget or want to reach new audience through the affiliates.

Affiliate networks are useful to affiliate marketers because they provide a way to find programs and determine commission payouts easily. They are essentially an aggregator consisting of thousands of affiliate programs that you can discover and join.

As someone new to this, I highly recommend you start with an affiliate network as it is easy to join and navigate, cutting down hours of research to find a good affiliate program. Here are some of the most popular affiliate networks:

1. Clickbank

This is a digital marketplace that specializes in digital products, such as ebooks, software and online courses. This is my personal favorite affiliate network as it offers high commission rates, often between 50% to 70%. You can access a large selection of products across various niches, making easy to find relevant offers that suit your niche.

2. Amazon Associates

This is by far one of the most recognized affiliate programs that offers a diverse range of products across various categories. However, the commissions are usually lower, ranging from 1% to 10% depending on the category.

3. Commission Junction (CJ)

This is a global affiliate marketing network that works closely with well-known brands and advertisers. It offers a variety of commission structures, including pay per sale, pay per lead, and pay per click. One of the key features for CJ is that it provides affiliates with advanced tracking tools, real-time reporting, and personalized support.

4. ShareASale

This is a reputable affiliate network that features over 4,000 merchants across various niches and offers a mix of physical and digital products, with varying commission rates. It also provides affiliates with useful tools, such as real-time tracking, data feeds, and customizable banners.

Now let’s move on to the most exciting part – building your blog!

Step 3: Building A Blog

Having a well-established online presence allows affiliates to reach their target audience effectively and display their expertise in their niche through their content. A nice and professional looking blog helps to build trust and credibility with potential customers, which increases the likelihood of converting your audience to buyers.

Let’s have a look at what are the options available to create a free blog.

Free Website Building Options

1. WordPress

It’s one of the most popular content management system (CMS), which offers a free plan with basic features, such as a WordPress.com sub domain and access to a limited selection of themes and plugins. It is currently used on 43% of all websites. That’s more than one third of the entire internet! It has easy-to-use interface, which is suitable for beginners without any web development experience.

2. Blogger

Blogger is a free blogging platform owned by Google. Its key feature is that it has a simple interface and integration with other Google services, such as Google Analytics and AdSense. Blogger is equally suitable for beginners and content-focused websites.

3. Wix

Wix is a website builder with an intuitive user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, providing a wide selection of templates and design tools which allows for high levels of customization. It offers a free plan that includes Wix-branded ads and a Wix.com sub domain. It also has an option to upgrade to paid plans for additional features, such as removing Wix ads and connecting a custom domain.

All three of them are great choices to start a free blog. My personal favorite is WordPress as it is versatile enough to cater to most people’s design functionality needs. Do bear in mind that all free options will require you to use a sub domain which is not the best to build a brand. For example, if your brand is “I Love Ice Cream” and you build your website and blog on WordPress’ free option, your domain would be iloveicecream.wordpress.com, rather than iloveicecream.com if you had purchased that domain. But it’s okay to get started on a sub domain first and switch to your own domain when you’re more established.

Managing and Optimizing Content

Now comes the most important part of your business, which is creating the content for your blog. This is how you will communicate to your audience and potentially convert them to buyers. More importantly, you will create content that may potentially rank high on search engines. That is where most of your organic traffic would come from. Let’s look at the steps below:

1. Keyword research

Keywords are the exact words and search queries that you are targeting to rank on search engines. There are free keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest that helps you identify relevant keywords within your chosen niche. You will want to go for keywords that have high traffic and low competition, which are typically long-tail keywords, where you will be incorporating into your articles naturally.

2. Creating SEO-friendly content

SEO stands for search engine optimization and that means creating and optimizing your content in a way that would help you rank high on search engine results. There are a lot of resources out there on SEO, but the main thing is to create high-quality, original, engaging and relevant content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience.

3. Implementing on-page SEO techniques

A few important techniques that you can follow are:

1. • Optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions to include your keywords for each article
   • Including your keywords within the first two paragraphs
   • Link internally to other articles within your website
   • Link externally to a reputable site such as Wikipedia
   • Use multimedia elements, like images, videos, and infographics, to enhance the user experience and improve content engagement

4. Consistent content creation

It is important to establish a regular content publishing schedule to maintain audience engagement and attract new visitors. Search engines such as Google also sees this as a good sign that your blog and content is constantly updated and hence have higher relevance to your audience. This includes updating and refreshing older content to maintain its relevance and improve search engine rankings.

Step 4: Driving Traffic To Your Blog

Now that you’ve gotten some content on your blog, it’s time to drive traffic to it and build up your online presence. Attracting targeted traffic and focusing on relevant traffic sources ensures that your promotional efforts reach an audience that is genuinely interested in your niche and the products you are promoting. A steady stream of targeted traffic is essential for building a sustainable affiliate marketing business and generating you a consistent income online.

Now let’s look at the free traffic generation strategies that will help you with getting targeted traffic.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

• I’ve already covered most of it in the section above, but let’s summarize it here as this is one of the most important things to get right for you to attract targeted traffic.
• SEO involves optimizing your website and content so that search engines will pick up your content as high quality. You do this by conducting keyword research to ensure that the keywords you are targeting are highly searched and have low competition, implementing on-page SEO and focusing on producing high quality content.
• Although not an absolute must, you can also improve your off-page SEO by building backlinks from reputable websites (this means having those websites link to your website), guest posting and participating in niche-specific forums and communities.
• Last but not least, you need to ensure that you have a mobile-friendly and fast-loading website to enhance user experience and improve search engine rankings.

2. Social media marketing

• You can boost your reach to a wider audience by creating and maintaining profiles on popular social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, and share your content.
• Engage with your audience by regularly posting relevant content, responding to comments, and participating in niche-specific groups or communities. As your posts gather traction, this will create a snowball effect in getting you a highly engaged audience.
• By using the social media analytic tools to identify the types of content that resonate most with your audience, you will then be able to optimize your posting strategy accordingly.

3. Content marketing

• After you have produced your content on your blog, you can go one step further by having it in various content formats, such as videos, infographics, and podcasts, to cater to different audience preferences and increase the likelihood of sharing on social media.
• Additionally, reach out to influencers or other content creators in your niche and collaborate with them to expand your reach and attract a broader audience.

4. Email marketing

• This is slightly more advanced but can be extremely effective in helping you build a following and increasing your conversion rates.
• You build an email list by offering something valuable for free as an incentive for subscribing to your email list. This can be a series of newsletter to share tips and strategies, an eBook or exclusive content.
• You can do this by leveraging free email marketing service, such as Mailchimp or Sendinblue, to create and send regular targeted email campaigns that promote your content and affiliate products.

5. Forum and community engagement

• One great way to get targeted traffic is through niche-specific forums, online communities, or discussion boards, such as Reddit, Quora, or niche-specific Facebook groups, by participating in them to share your expertise and engage with potential customers.
• Do this by providing valuable and informative answers or comments, without overtly promoting your products, to build credibility and trust within the community. You always include a link to your website so that as you build your credibility, more people will visit your website to find out more from you.

Step 5: Tracking and Analyzing Performance

As you build up the content in your website and expand your marketing campaigns, it is important to track and analyze your performance. Monitoring performance helps you identify the most effective promotional strategies, content types, and traffic sources for driving conversions and affiliate sales. Looking through the performance data will enable you to make data-driven decisions, optimize your marketing efforts, and maximize your return on investment (ROI). This will allow you to identify areas for improvement and adapt your strategies to changing market conditions, consumer behavior, or product trends.

Let’s look at what exactly you be tracking.

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

I’ve listed down the 4 main KPIs that you should be monitoring that will ultimately be a deciding factor of whether you succeed in affiliate marketing.

1. Traffic: The number of visitors your online platform receives

• Firstly, track the unique visitors to your website, the page views, and average time spent on your website. You will then be able to assess how users engage on your website and your content effectiveness.
• Next, monitor traffic sources, such as organic search, social media, or referrals, to identify the most valuable channels for driving targeted traffic. You can then prioritize and strategize according to your most valuable traffic sources.

2. Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter

• You will need to set up a systematic way of tracking the conversion rates for each of your promotional method, content type, and affiliate product to identify the most effective strategies.
• With the tracking in place, you can then test different calls to action, page layouts, or headlines to optimize conversion rates and boost affiliate sales.

3. Earnings per click (EPC): The average earnings generated for every click on your affiliate links

• You can calculate the EPC by dividing the total earnings of a period of time or from a particular campaign, by the number of clicks.
• This will be important for you to compare EPC across different affiliate programs, products, or promotional methods to identify the most profitable opportunities.

4. Return on investment (ROI): The ratio of net profit to the cost of investment in your affiliate marketing efforts

• ROI simply means for every dollar you spend, how much do you earn back?
• You can calculate ROI by dividing net profit by the total cost of investment (including time, money, and resources spent on promotional efforts).
• ROI is an important metric to assess the overall effectiveness of your affiliate marketing strategies and to prioritize future investments

Free tools for tracking and analysis

There are a number of free tools that you can use to do the tracking and analysis of your performance.

1. Google Analytics

This is a powerful and free web analytic tool that provides detailed insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion data. It enables you to track metrics such as unique visitors, page views, bounce rate, traffic sources, and goal completions, as well as setting up custom reports and dashboards to monitor the performance of specific pages, campaigns, or affiliate products.

2. Affiliate network and program dashboards

Most affiliate programs and networks offer built-in reporting tools that allow affiliates to track clicks, conversions, and earnings. This is convenient for you to monitor performance data in real-time to quickly identify trends, opportunities, or issues that require attention. The tracking tools in the program dashboards can also be utilized to test different promotional methods, creatives, or landing pages.

Overall, continuous optimization and testing of your performance is important as the insights gained can be used to inform future content creation, promotional strategies, and affiliate product selection. Experiment with different promotional methods, content formats, and traffic sources to find the most effective combinations for your niche and audience. Most importantly, regularly review and update your online platform, affiliate products, and marketing strategies to ensure continued growth and success in your affiliate marketing business.

Conclusion

That was a lot to cover, but we made it! You now have all the steps on how to start affiliate marketing for free.

Just a few words of encouragement from someone who has done affiliate marketing for many years. Someone who has gone through all the pitfalls in this game but still stuck to the game and has seen some success.

Pursuing affiliate marketing requires patience, dedication, and a willingness to learn from both successes and failures. You will find that the hard work will pay off as it can potentially give you a passive income, as well as the flexibility to work from anywhere.

Focus on providing value to your audience so that you can build trust and credibility in your chosen niche.

Final thoughts

While starting an affiliate marketing business for free may have limitations, it provides a low-risk entry point for those looking to explore this exciting and potentially lucrative industry.

By following the outlined steps and consistently refining your approach, you can build a successful affiliate marketing business that generates revenue and offers long-term financial freedom.

However, if you would like a more systematic step-by-step training on how to perform every task that is listed here in this article, I recommend you check out my top recommended affiliate marketing program. This is the same program that I used when I first started out my journey in affiliate marketing, and I credit everything I’ve learned to this program. It comes with a huge list of training resources and every single tool I mentioned in this article to build up your business. Best of all they have a free version which includes the training and tools (such as a free website builder and keyword research tool).

I hope you’ve found this article useful and has helped you get started in the affiliate marketing space. Looking forward to seeing your success!

If you have any questions or would like to share your progress and success story, drop me a comment below and I’ll get back to you real soon!

All the best in your affiliate marketing journey!