There is a huge misconception that you need a lot of money to start with affiliate marketing, actually, you can start affiliate marketing without any investment and in this post, I am going to prove it.
For me, the main thing you need to make money online is the burning desire to make money online, you do not need to invest money to make your first sale or your first $100, but what I will recommend is when you make money for free invest in traffic, training, and tools so that you can scale your income.
How to start affiliate marketing without any investment
So as I said before, in this post, I am going to explain how to start affiliate marketing without any investment in just five steps, and as always the first step is picking your niche.
Find your affiliate niche
The first step to making money online is to choose what is the niche you are going to serve.
An affiliate niche is a specific market, interest, problem, or goal that people share.
Affiliate marketers make money by promoting products and services to people interested in the niche.
For example, “weight loss” is a huge market with millions of people interested in the topic.
You need to find a niche that many people are interested in and they are willing to pay money for products or services also you need to make sure that you have some kind of interest in that niche if you just go for the money it will drain a lot of your energy and it won’t be funny.
You can learn more about picking an affiliate niche here.
Pick a high converting product
After choosing your niche, you need to find two or three affiliate products in your niche that you can promote, you need to pick, one main one and another or two that compliment the main product.
You need to avoid promoting products that contradict each other, you need to have a clear vision of how you’re going to help your prospects.
There is an affiliate program for each and every niche you can imagine, you can start with the amazon affiliate program for physical products, you can go to Clickbank for digital products.
There are a lot of affiliate networks out there where you can pick digital or physical products but also there are some in-house affiliate programs that you can apply and promote their products.
If you can not find an affiliate in your niche just google your niche+affiliate program, you will find a lot of them.
After finding the affiliate program, make sure that the affiliate product you pick to promote is already selling and a lot of people are buying it.
Most beginner thinks that when you find a product that no one is promoting is gold, it is not true, there is a reason why the product is not selling don’t promote those, only pick and promote the proven products.
Build a landing page
Most social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others won’t let you promote direct affiliate links to their platform.
Also, I do not recommend directly promote affiliate products without building your email list, you need to make your prospect join first your email list before accessing the sales page or the download page.
I use Clickfunnels to build my squeeze and landing pages, but if you are just starting out and you do not have money to invest in it there is a workaround.
In order to build a squeeze page and build the list, we a going to use Aweber, a marketing tool that will help us to accomplish both goals.
So the first step is to join Aweber for free.
You will get a page like this, just fill it with your name and email address, then click sign up.
They will send you an email to confirm your information, that is it, you’re ready to start.
How to build a landing page with Aweber.
After confirming your email address and setting up your password, you need to log in and create your first landing page by using Aweber.
It is very simple, after login in click on landing pages and then click on create a landing page.
It will take you to a page where you will find templates, I always pick the simple template, but you can pick anyone and just click on the design and customize it.
You do not need to reinvest the wheel in this, take the headline from the sales page reword it, and use it for your headline in the squeeze page.
After customizing the form you need to click on the submission button, in this page you need to click when it says thank you page, click the drop menu, and select custom user, and in the space below it paste your affiliate link, do the same on the already subscribed page.
What it will do is that, when people subscribe to your page, they will be taken directly to the sales page and at the same time they will be added to your email list.
After finishing it, click on save and exit, then you will see an option that asks you to publish it, go on and publish your landing page.
Just copy the link like the one below and save it in a notepad, we do not need it now but later we will need it.
The link will be like this one.
https://aw17909e.aweb.page/p/f6d50f97-c74c-4750-90dc-b4b8111a500c
Cloak your link
The link you got above is a very ugly one. I do not recommend directly promote this link, I will recommend cloaking it.
In order to cloak your affiliate link, I will recommend using bit.ly. Just go to bit.ly, create an account (it is free ).
Click on the create button, copy the long ugly affiliate link that you got from Clickbank and paste it where it says PASTE LONG URL, then click create, that is it you will get the link like this one. bit.ly/37zF3mW.
INSERT YOUR WELCOME MESSAGE
When People Opt-in on your Squeeze Page. They Need to Receive an Automated Welcome Message containing whatever they opted in for.
Luckily For You, I Have Pre-Written One For You Here Containing The Free Gift For Your Subscribers.
Just Copy & Paste this as your First Message in your Aweber Auto-Responder. Click Here to Access.
Step By Step Instructions
- Download the message.
- Hover over the “Messages” tab and select “Campaigns”.
3: Next, click “Create a Campaign”.
4: Click “Create a blank campaign”.
5: Give your new campaign a name, then click “Create”.
6: You can choose to trigger the campaign for all subscribers or for subscribers who match certain criteria. To trigger a campaign for specific subscribers, click the “Add filter” button to the right.
7 After you’ve chosen to start your campaign for all subscribers or for a specific filter, add your “Send Message” actions to the campaign canvas.
On the right-hand side, it will appear a small tab with a create a message drop menu, if you click that one you will get three options, drag& drop, plain text, and HTML, just pick drag &drop.
Copy and paste the subject line and email, then click save and exit, guess what? you have your welcome email.
Drive traffic to your landing page
You guessed it, we are going to use Facebook to drive traffic to your landing page.
Facebook is huge for free and paid traffic, but today I am just going to explain how you can generate free traffic from Facebook.
Basically, there are two ways to generate free traffic from Facebook, using your own Facebook profile and creating a Facebook group.
Generating free traffic by just using your profile.
Generating traffic by using your profile is the simplest way to generate traffic from Facebook, you can do it in just two steps.
1) Create and optimize your Facebook profile
You can use your current Facebook account or you can create a new one just for your online business, this depends on you.
Once you create your account, you will need to make sure you use your real name and photo, this will increase the credibility, also make sure that you add all relevant links to your profile like links to your landing pages, blog, social media, etc.
2) Find big Facebook accounts in your niche and start interacting with their content, leave comments, likes and share their content, look to people who reply to your comments, and add them as friends ( some of them will add you first).
Some of these people will start coming to your Facebook profile to find more about you, and since you optimized your profile in the first part, some of them will click on the links on your page and subscribe to your squeeze pages and some of them will buy from you.
This method works very well even if you have zero experience, let them come to you, do not spam them, do not inbox them but if someone inbox you with a question reply to them and build some connections.
What next?
People will visit your profile and some of them will click on the link and join your email list, the autoresponder will send them your welcome message, some will buy some will not, but your email list will start to grow.
Aweber will allow you to build up to 500 subscribers for free, if you do this right you should have at least one sale for every 10 people who join your list, by reaching 500 you should have made many sales enough to pay for your monthly subscription.
The landing page you created is good but it is not the best, when you start making some money you can invest some in a better landing page.
Also, you can invest some of that money in buying traffic in order to increase your earning potential.
Final words
That is it, that is how you can start affiliate marketing without any investment, all you need is to follow the plan and take action each and every day.
Thank you for reading.