If you bash it right, affiliate selling tin marque you wealth portion you’re connected the beach, successful the mountains, oregon adjacent taking a nap. I would know—I’ve been doing it for years.

I started my archetypal affiliate selling blog 10 years agone with conscionable $40 and not a hint what I was doing. Now, it’s earning six figures, and I lone person to enactment a fewer hours a week to run it.

In fact, that affiliate tract receives implicit 100,000 visits per period from Google:

In this article, I’m going to thatch you however to commencement affiliate selling with (almost) nary money. I’ll stock however I did it and what you tin bash to get started today.

Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting idiosyncratic else’s products oregon services and making a committee whenever idiosyncratic buys aft clicking your affiliate link.

For example, if you people a blog station oregon a YouTube video sharing the champion vacuum cleaners for favored hairsbreadth and idiosyncratic buys a merchandise you urge aft clicking your affiliate link, you get paid a percent of that sale.

It’s a large concern exemplary due to the fact that it has astir nary overhead and you don’t person to manufacture, oregon vessel products, oregon grip lawsuit service. You get paid to beforehand cool stuff.

The lone mode to commencement affiliate selling with nary wealth is to get an affiliate nexus and commencement sending it to radical you know. While this is possible, it’s not scalable and won’t marque you overmuch wealth unless you’re perpetually networking.

Instead, the astir palmy affiliate marketers make a website and societal media channels successful bid to get postulation to their affiliate links. While societal media accounts are free, a website does outgo a few bucks.

Specifically, you request to acquisition a domain sanction and website hosting. A domain costs you astir $3–$7 for the archetypal year, and hosting starts astatine $2.75 per period (paid annually, this is $33).

So you volition request astatine slightest $36 to get started arsenic of the clip this station was published.

If you’re acceptable to marque your website, I urge pursuing this YouTube video by WP Beginner. It walks you done however to get your hosting and domain sanction acceptable up and however to usage WordPress for implicit beginners.

If you’ve got the $36 and you privation to springiness this concern exemplary a try, I’ve travel up with 5 elemental steps to get you started successful affiliate marketing:

Step 1. Find a niche OR a bully affiliate program

The archetypal and astir important measurement is figuring retired what you privation to speech astir and promote—in different words, your niche.

Your niche tin beryllium astir anything, from a hobby, to an interest, to a lifestyle. Like dogs? That tin beryllium a niche. Interested successful cryptocurrency? Niche potential. You get the idea.

Niche enactment is 1 of the hardest parts of affiliate marketing. You request to prime thing you won’t caput creating contented astir for years to come. It takes clip to physique the marque authorization and consciousness to crook this into a full-time business, truthful don’t beryllium acrophobic to walk immoderate time here.

Now, determination are a fewer ways to take your niche. You tin either prime a niche you’re already funny in, OR you tin look for bully affiliate programs archetypal and basal your niche connected those program(s).

Finding high-paying affiliate programs with prime companies tin beryllium difficult. Usually, you’ll either find bully products with debased commissions (2%–4%) oregon crappy products with precocious commissions (20%+).

But each erstwhile successful a while, you’ll find a high-quality merchandise with a precocious committee rate. And if you do, it whitethorn beryllium worthy basing your niche around. It’s overmuch amended to get high-paying partners than conscionable to beforehand Amazon products.

There’s thing incorrect with gathering an Amazon affiliate website. However, don’t expect to marque a batch of wealth from this unless you’re capable to get a immense magnitude of postulation and sales. 

Last year, I sent Amazon much than $1.2 million successful sales… and lone made $47,310.

So yeah—it’s worthy looking for a amended affiliate program. 

The champion affiliate partnerships are made by creating a nonstop narration with the marque you privation to beforehand and moving retired a backstage deal.

So wherever bash you find large affiliate partners?

Think astir the things you already bask doing and look astatine your favourite products oregon services successful those niches. See if immoderate of those products person an existing affiliate program. If not, telephone a marque to get successful interaction with its selling squad oregon adjacent the proprietor to effort and enactment thing out.

You tin besides find imaginable affiliate programs by searching for “[your niche] affiliate programs” connected Google. You’ll often find lists of brands that person an affiliate program, arsenic good arsenic the details of the program.

Lastly, you tin cheque fashionable affiliate selling platforms similar AvantLink, impact.com, ShareASale, and many more.

Ready to look for a niche? Here are 2 guides to get you started:

• How to Easily Find a Niche for Affiliate Marketing in 2022
• 6 Best Niches for Affiliate Marketing successful 2022 (Profitable and Uncompetitive)

Step 2. Decide connected 1 postulation channel

One of the biggest mistakes I spot beginners making (and person made myself) is focusing connected creating contented for excessively galore postulation channels astatine once. They marque accounts connected YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest, each portion managing their blog—it’s too much.

Every azygous 1 of these channels takes months oregon years to larn and physique engaged audiences on. And each of them tin capable capable clip to beryllium a full-time job.

Instead, choose 1 oregon 2 main postulation sources—my favorites are YouTube and Google due to the fact that they tin bring recurring integrated traffic—and get truly bully at them.

Yes, you tin person an relationship connected each channel. Sure, you tin stock your blog posts connected them beauteous easily. But support the bulk of your contented instauration and attraction connected 1 channel, past usage the others to enactment that channel.

At Ahrefs, we specialize successful search motor optimization (SEO)—that is, creating and optimizing contented to look successful hunt engines. 

Organic postulation from hunt engines similar Google is 1 of the champion ways to get recurring, passive affiliate revenue. It takes clip to larn the skills and get to leafage #1 connected Google. But SEO is worthy learning successful the agelong tally due to the fact that it brings you postulation each clip idiosyncratic makes a hunt and finds your content.

One of my sites received implicit 100,000 visits from Google successful a azygous period without maine creating oregon promoting a azygous portion of contented during the full month:

YouTube is akin due to the fact that it’s besides often utilized arsenic a hunt engine, making it different large root of recurring visitors without the request for perpetually creating and promoting caller content.

Of course, which postulation transmission you take depends connected your ain penchant and the niche you’re in. Some niches are overmuch much competitory successful hunt engines than others. 

You tin usage Ahrefs’ free keyword trouble checker to rapidly spot if the keywords successful your niche are hard to fertile for oregon not. Think of keywords you whitethorn hunt for successful the niche and benignant them successful the instrumentality to get much information.

For example, “best vacuum cleaners for favored hair” whitethorn beryllium hard to rank for:

Our instrumentality estimates you’d request backlinks (links to your leafage from different website) from ~45 websites to fertile successful the apical 10 for this keyword. And you tin spot immoderate of the competitors are large brands similar NYMag and HGTV. 

The Keyword Difficulty (KD) score—35—is connected a standard from 0 to 100, with 0 being casual and 100 being highly difficult. It’s connected a logarithmic scale, which means it gets exponentially harder to fertile for a keyword arsenic the fig goes up.

For comparison, the keyword “car vacuum cleaner” has a KD of 27, and we estimation you’d request ~32 backlinks to fertile successful the top 10.

If you find immoderate low- to medium-difficulty keywords, it could beryllium a motion Google is simply a large postulation root for you. Otherwise, you whitethorn privation to see a antithetic postulation root to get started with.

Here are immoderate guides to assistance you larn astir antithetic postulation channels:

• What Is SEO? Search Engine Optimization Explained
• YouTube SEO: How to Rank Your Videos From Start to Finish
• HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Facebook Marketing
• HubSpot’s Ultimate Guide to Pinterest Marketing

Step 3. Create slayer content

Regardless of the level you take to absorption on, you volition request 1 happening to succeed:

Great content.

Your contented should beryllium truthful good, truthful interesting, truthful riveting that radical are anxious to devour and stock it. Whether that’s videos, pictures, oregon blog posts, the lone mode to basal retired successful this saturated marketplace is to marque your contented really damn good.

That doesn’t needfully mean you request the highest-quality cameras oregon the best-looking website. In fact, what makes contented large varies, depending connected the niche and the platform.

But typically, your contented needs to beryllium bully astatine 1 of 2 things:

1. Entertaining
2. Informing

If you tin some pass AND entertain people, you’ll bash good with affiliate marketing. That tin mean fantabulous storytelling, heavy research, oregon large presumption of information. 

Of course, capturing postulation from Google is going to beryllium precise antithetic from Instagram oregon TikTok. The volition is different—one level is utilized for learning, the others for entertaining.

Creating astonishing contented for Google involves a batch of research:

• Keyword research
• Researching the search motor results pages (SERPs)
• Watching videos and speechmaking forum posts
• Etc

Then, you request to compile that probe successful a mode that’s casual to understand, good written, and optimized for hunt engines. The extremity is to make thing that’s amended than what’s already ranking connected leafage #1 for your people keyword.

For example, a bully nonfiction for Google whitethorn look thing similar this, which ranks #1 for “rv accessories”:

As you scroll down the article, you spot recommended boxes that stock merchandise accusation rapidly and easily; also, the products are recommended by radical who person really used them.

The extremity with societal media is inactive the same—to make thing that’s amended than what’s already retired there—but it’s done successful a antithetic way.

Instead of presenting the champion probe successful the easiest-to-digest way, it’s often astir creativity, storytelling, and unsocial perspectives.

That tin mean a low-quality, handheld video of yourself being existent successful a infinitesimal erstwhile beingness is ace difficult. Or it tin mean crisp, edited films with drone footage, awesome angles, and dependable design.

For example, here’s a video I posted connected TikTok that blew up and received implicit 1.7 cardinal views:

Social media is simply a antithetic beast—people privation to beryllium entertained, not conscionable fed information.

This is wherefore it’s hard to specify what “great content” means for societal media. But generally, it comes down to being bully astatine informing and entertaining. If you tin nail those skills, the remainder volition autumn into place.

Here are a fewer guides to assistance you make amended content:

• Content Creation: The Complete Guide for Beginners
• How to Create Engaging Short Videos for Social Media

Step 4. Promote like crazy

Remember however I said to absorption connected 1 transmission for traffic?

What I truly mean by that is to absorption connected creating contented for lone 1 channel—you tin inactive utilize different channels to boost that content.

For example, if you determine to absorption connected SEO oregon YouTube, you tin inactive stock your contented connected Facebook and Pinterest adjacent without a ample following. 

That doesn’t mean you person to dive heavy into Facebook and Pinterest groups and walk hours each time connected societal media to turn your audience—just look astatine it arsenic a tiny portion of a larger strategy. Share it and move on.

Other things you tin bash to beforehand your contented without spending wealth include:

• Engaging with others connected forums.
• Building relationships with others successful your niche and akin niches.
• Commenting connected different people’s videos and content.
• Doing acold email outreach.
• And more.

Check retired our implicit usher to contented promotion to larn however to get eyeballs connected your content.

Step 5. Scale it up

Once you find a postulation transmission that works, you tin enactment to standard up your efforts. Double down connected the contented and promotion methods that are moving and chopped the ones that aren’t.

At this point, you tin look into hiring a writer, video editor, oregon societal media manager to assistance you maximize your time.

Places similar UpWork and Fiverr tin assistance you find an adjunct for a comparatively debased cost. It whitethorn instrumentality aggregate hires to find the close person. But erstwhile you do, they’ll prevention you time, making the hiring process worthwhile.

To person the champion imaginable chances astatine landing a high-quality worker, lone take radical with bully reviews. 

Don’t conscionable look astatine a five-star reappraisal mean and presume they’re good, though. Read a fewer of the caller reviews to marque definite they’re not fake purchased reviews.

And determination you person it—the 5 steps to commencement affiliate selling with fundamentally no money.

Final thoughts

Starting an affiliate selling concern with nary wealth is possible, but it does person a large learning curve and requires being scrappy and reasoning extracurricular the box.

With capable determination, you tin make a concern that earns passive gross portion you walk your clip connected hobbies, relaxing, with family, oregon doing immoderate you privation to do.

It requires a batch of learning and work, but it’s worthy it. If you person questions oregon privation to get successful touch, consciousness escaped to ping maine on Instagram.

If you’re acceptable to larn much astir affiliate selling and SEO, cheque retired these different guides:

• How to Do Keyword Research for Affiliate Sites
• How to Create a Niche Site That Earns 4 Figures a Month successful 6 Easy Steps
• 21 Writing Tips to Become a Better Writer Fast