If you have just started your journey through affiliate marketing, chances are that you don’t actually own a website or blog yet. You are probably wondering how to make one. Or probably you just want to start out with whatever you have at hand, because as you know, making a website is not the easiest, or the cheapest nowadays. What if we told you that you don’t need a website to be doing affiliate marketing at all.
It’s true. You can start right away, and there are many affiliate programs, networks, and platforms that allow you to do that. You don’t need to think of building a website either (however that would be a nice long-term investment). But in the meantime, this article will guide you on what affiliate programs are out there for you if you don’t plan on creating an affiliate. It will also help you choose the best affiliate program for making money without a website or a blog.
Without further ado, let’s bring you some cash.
What Kinds of Affiliate Programs are there for Beginners without a Website
If you don’t have a website, nothing stops you from affiliate marketing, because there are so many programs and networks out there that allow you to work with them without a blog, website, or platform of your own. And the reason why this is beneficial is that it is not limited to any specific niche. There are so many programs for every niche out there that only and only want you to promote your products.
These niches can include:
- Parenting
- Travel
- Food
- Health and Beauty
- Gardening
- Craft
- Gaming
- Home Renovation, Decoration, Utilities, and Accessories
- SaaS (Software as a Service)
And so many more.
When you want to go the other way and do affiliate marketing with a blog or site, you need to find some affiliate programs that approve of your content. Of course, you could do without those as well, but those are the ones that pay more or have various types of payment models.
On the other hand, when you don’t have a website, the program benefiting from your promotion doesn’t really care whether you have a whole lot of content created related to the service they are offering or not. They might just check up on your social media or other related accounts. That’s why you can be open to so many opportunities.
How Does it Work
In order to promote affiliate links and products without a website, you will need to create an account on an affiliate program that doesn’t require a website from you for sign up. The other programs that require a website will ask you for it to check it, but you don’t have any boundaries here, so you are good to go as soon as you sign up. Then, you can look for offers to promote, and as soon as you find one, you can head over to social media or whatever traffic source you are using (we will talk about this in the next sections), and promote the link. Then all you do is optimize and wait for the customers to arrive, or for the conversions to be made.
This is just the basics of it. You promote a link and get paid based on the model set up by the affiliate program or offer. However, some programs might have more to them, like what to promote, where to promote, when to promote it, etc.
What to Avoid When Promoting Affiliate Links without a Website
Speaking of where to promote certain offers, we need to go over some DON’Ts in the affiliate marketing space, especially since you don’t have a website.
If you have a website, you usually grab the affiliate link and put it somewhere on your website that your audience can see. Then you post an ad including your affiliate website and redirect people to the website where people can see the promotion.
However, if you don’t have a website, you might wonder where you can post the affiliate link.
There are some places where you shouldn’t post the links. Firstly, you should never post affiliate links on social media posts or pages. So don’t post the links on your Tweets or your Facebook page. This can cause violations, and not as many people will like it either.
Posting your affiliate links on ads (like Google Ads) isn’t the brightest idea either. If every other affiliate grabbed their affiliate offer link and ran an ad campaign with it, then the whole point of the marketing would be gone, and that wouldn’t look good for the business. That is why it is actually banned to do that, and in many cases, it would be considered a violation in driving traffic to the affiliate offer, so better not risk that.
What you can do, instead, is post your affiliate link on a content-sharing platform or forum and community, and then redirect people from your social media accounts to that platform. Don’t worry if this feels complicated. We will go through all of it step by step.
Payment Models
As mentioned before, the payment models on these types of affiliate programs that allow you to promote your product without a website might be limited. Mostly the payment model on this type of affiliate program is Revenue Share. When you have a website, you might be getting paid in all sorts of different methods, like CPA (per action), CPL (per lead), CPC (per click), CPM (per impression). However, when you don’t have a website and your traffic source is not one specific website, tracking them can be tricky. So, the only (or the most popular) model for this type of affiliate marketing is Rev Share.
Revenue share means that the company will share a certain Commission percentage of its sales with you. For example, if you promote a pair of shoes that is worth $100 and the Commission rate of that program is 10%, you will get $10 from that sale.
Sometimes the commission rate might be higher, for example 50% of the income, and some other occasions it could be only 1% of the sale. Depending on that and some other criteria, you can make your choices.
1. Amazon Associates
The Amazon Affiliate program is the most popular affiliate program out there, so why not start with it? For Amazon, you can sell as many things as you want, and that’s the upside. You could go with your own passion, and luckily, signing up on Amazon Associates is fairly easy. If you don’t have a website, you just need to have a social media account, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Twitch, and you need to have at least 500 followers, depending on the platform.
The great thing about Amazon affiliate program is that not only does it pay you the commission for every sale on the item that you redirected the users to, but also any other item that the user buys after entering the website with your link.
- Commission rate: 1% to 10%
- Cookie duration 24 hours
- Payment frequency: Once a month with a delay of two months (60 days after the request for payment)
2. ShareASale
ShareASale provides you a network of 21K+ merchants around the globe whose products you can sell. ShareASale is amazing when it comes to supporting you and provides lots of resources to make sure your journey is seamless. It also allows you to track your progress.
- Commission rate: Depends on each merchant
- Cookie duration: Depends on each merchant
- Payment frequency: Monthly
3. ClickBank
ClickBank is a marketplace with many different categories of items. But it’s also an affiliate network that allows you to promote any type of product you want, all over the world, from digital products in the categories of dating, video games, marketing, languages, to categories like home and garden, health and fitness, parenting, etc.
The commission rates on ClickBank are amazing as well, in a way that you can earn up to 90% on every sale.
- Commission rate: Up to 90%
- Cookie duration: Depends on each merchant
- Payment frequency: Weekly or Biweekly
4. Payoneer
Payoneer is a payment service all across the globe, just like PayPal. It is trusted by many great companies, and they will pay you for promoting their service. You are not exactly selling the users anything, and are mainly just asking people to sign up on their website. They pay you $25 per every person that joins them and a $25 bonus after having made $1 000 in referrals.
The good thing about Payoneer is that since you get a virtual account yourself, you will receive the money on it, and you can withdraw it whenever you want.
- Commission rate: $25 per referral
- Cookie duration: Depends on each merchant
- Payment frequency: Whenever you want
5. Shopify
Shopify is a platform that provides eCommerce websites to people, and as weird as it may sound, you can promote them even without a website. You can recommend people to build a website on Shopify, and per every user that purchases a monthly plan of Shopify, you will get double that amount. If users buy the premium package, you will get $2 000 per each.
- Commission rate: 200% of subscription amounts
- Cookie duration: 30 days
- Payment frequency: Weekly or monthly
6. AliExpress
AliExpress might not actually be one of the best programs, but they are like Amazon except for Chinese products. You can sell all types of products, from beauty to utilities, accessories, and plastic products. They will pay up at the highest 9% per sale, and at the lowest 3%, but the limit for earning is $50, meaning that you can’t go higher on each sale, even if you sell thousands of dollars in one sale.
- Commission rate: 3%-9% with a limit of $50 per sale
- Cookie duration: 3 days
- Payment frequency: Monthly
7. Fiverr
Fiverr actually has a pretty interesting affiliate program and it absolutely doesn’t need you to have a website or anything else. The only thing you need is an actual source of traffic. Now, the payments on the Fiverr affiliate program are even better. You can get a $15-$50 per referral that purchases a gig on Fiverr. Or you can choose to get $10 per each gig and 10% of whatever your referrals buy on Fiverr for an entire year. Sounds pretty amazing, right?
- Commission rate: $15-$50 per acquisition OR $10 per gig and %10 of each purchase for a year
- Cookie duration: 30 days
- Payment frequency: Monthly
8. Etsy
Etsy is a marketplace for handmade goods, and on it, you can find all sorts of items to sell, from crafts to parenting accessories. Even though the commission rate for Etsy might not seem the best, you don’t actually need a website or anything special to sign up.
- Commission rate: 4%
- Cookie duration: 30 days
- Payment frequency: Biweekly
9. LEGO
Lego is a famous name for every kid or adult around the planet. So it shouldn’t be a wonder for you if you hear that Lego has an affiliate program. You are basically going to sell toy blocks that kids play with, all types of them. It’s a type of product that never goes out of trend, and in fact, more people will be buying it everyday, for movies, events, etc.
- Commission rate: 3%
- Cookie duration: 7 days
- Payment frequency: Monthly
10. Booking.com
Booking.com is a familiar name to whoever travels or has traveled at least once. What you will be doing is selling accommodations around the planet. And there are millions of them, 28 million to be exact. They are available all over the planet as well, so you won’t have trouble finding cases to sell.
- Commission rate: 25% to 40%
- Cookie duration: During each session
- Payment frequency: Two months after a guest has checked out
11. TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is another platform that helps you book hotels and accommodations and plan trips around the world. You can recommend people book their trips on this website, and you’ll be earning 50% of whatever TripAdvisor makes.
- Commission rate: 50% of TripAdvisor’s earnings
- Cookie duration: 14 days
- Payment frequency: Monthly
12. UberEats
UberEats is an online application for ordering and delivering food. You could be inviting people on UberEats, and everytime somebody signs up on UberEats and becomes a customer (meaning they make a purchase), you will get $3.75 per every one of those people that converted to a customer. This one should be fairly easy because you don’t need to convince anybody that UberEats is a legit platform. They already know it, and their motivation could be them feeling just a little bit hungry.
- Commission rate: $3.75 Per New Customer
- Cookie duration: 30 days
- Payment frequency: Weekly
13. Razer
Razer is famous among gamers, so if you are into gaming, you can definitely check it out. You don’t have to pay anything to sign up as an affiliate. You can simply send a form, and they will actually support you in your journey and help you increase conversions. The good thing about razer is that they are already well-known in the gaming community and you won’t be making much effort to sell their products. Even so, their commissions are good.
- Commission rate: Up To 10% Per Sale
- Cookie duration: 30 days
- Payment frequency: Monthly
14. Alienware
Alienware is another brand known by gamers. It’s a brand providing gaming peripherals and gaming computers and laptops. Their prices are actually pretty high as well since they are a high-end manufacturer. Unfortunately, their commission rate is low, but by selling just a single laptop priced at $2 000, you can be making up to $100.
- Commission rate: 1% to 6% Per Sale
- Cookie duration: 3 days
- Payment frequency: N/A
15. GameStop
GameStop is a retailer of video games around the planet, and everyone knows them for their video game stores. They are pretty well-established as well, so you won’t have a hard time selling anything on their website.
- Commission rate: 5%
- Cookie duration: 24 hours
- Payment frequency: 24 hours after the shipment of the order
16. Nvidia
Nvidia is definitely the one and only popular provider of GPUs (graphic processing units) for laptops, computers, and gaming laptops. Every single gamer (or even non-gamers who are into computers) has once heard the name of this company. You can get lots of support from Nvidia if you are their affiliate, and they will show you your progress and help you convert. Their cookie duration is also pretty long. They release new pumping products every year, so you can always sell lots and make money.
- Commission rate: Up To 5%
- Cookie duration: 45 days
- Payment frequency: N/A
Things to Consider When Choosing an Affiliate Program as a Beginner
Of course, there are many programs out there to choose from, and there are many niches there as well. How can you make the correct choice? There are some criteria that can help you narrow down your choices and reach the ones that actually bring you in good cash. We have listed them here.
Your Interest
First and foremost, are you even interested in what they are offering? This one is the most important one, because if you are not even remotely interested in collaborating with them, then it’s no use starting it either. You need to be passionate about the niche and the products you’re promoting. If you are not, your audience will lose trust or won’t trust in the first place.
How Easy it Is to Start
Some programs might have longer processes for joining, and some others might take only a few seconds. Some programs might actually need more information from you, such as social media accounts or where you are planning to promote their products. For example, if their program requires you to have 10K Instagram followers, and you don’t have that, forget about that program, unless you happen to gain that many followers later on along the way.
Try to narrow down to programs that allow you to start working immediately, so you can start with whatever you have. Don’t worry. You are not going to be limited. There are many choices out there.
Commission Rates
This is definitely an important criterion, because it directly affects the money that you will be earning. If the commission rate is too low and the product is hard to sell, don’t bother. Usually, a commission rate between 5% to 20% is fine when starting out, because you need to prove you can sell. After a while, you might meet the criteria to join some programs that offer higher rates. It’s a long process, but it will pay off.
Resources and Support
Another question you need to ask before making a choice is whether the program offers resources to help you succeed in selling its product, like trackers or insights.
You also need to make sure that the program is responsive to your questions. Search around in forums about the program you want to join and check whether their support answers affiliate questions or not. This is an important aspect of a program because if there is proof that they don’t answer affiliates, it’s probably wise to stay away from their affairs.
Cookie Duration
The last important thing when dealing with affiliate programs is the cookie duration. If you are not yet sure what cookies are, they store data of the users on the browsers so the websites will remember some data about the users. This means that when you visit a website, it will remember that you visited it and whether you left any actions incomplete.
That is why cookie duration matters. Different affiliate programs have different cookie durations. Usually, it can go from 10 days to 60 days. But obviously, the longer the better. So make sure to have this in mind when making a choice.
Based on the criteria mentioned above, an affiliate program is a good program for you if:
- You are interested in their products,
- Don’t have it strict for newcomers to join their program,
- Have a commission rate of at least 5-10% (for beginners),
- Have good support for their affiliates,
- Have at least 10 days of cookie duration.
Traffic Sources Suitable for Affiliate Marketing without a Website
Let’s talk about some practical stuff now. In order to get the traffic you need for getting customers without a website, you need to do some extra stuff.
The most important bridge to the affiliate programs you want to promote is social media. It is actually a must for you as an affiliate to be active on social media, so if you don’t already have that in place, make sure you make all necessary social media accounts right now.
Facebook
Using a Facebook page, you can post content, and your content should be really good. So good that users will actually follow up to see what other things you do on the internet, whether there are products you recommend, etc. You cannot post affiliate links on your Facebook page, though. The best practice is to promote another platform where your affiliate links are, and then have people go there from Facebook.
Twitter
This social media platform is the same exact thing as Facebook when it comes to how you can promote affiliate programs. You can’t actually paste affiliate links on your tweets, but you can get followers and have them redirected to another platform where you introduce your favorite affiliate products.
Instagram
Usually, when you post good content on your Instagram and have users follow you, you can guide them to the link on your bio, because on Instagram you can’t share links in posts. The link you put on your bio can be a link to another website that includes your affiliate links. This is a pretty common practice when it comes to Instagram, especially since everybody is always trying to get to the level of other people. So if your audience likes your content, they will buy anything you recommend.
TikTok
This is not just a place where people dance in front of a camera. TikTok has changed a lot since it was first launched, and now, many people actually do affiliate marketing on it. You can post content about things people like to see, and then have the link to another website that includes your affiliate links on your TikTok bio. Most users will check it out, especially since TikTok is becoming more and more popular regarding sales, and people are starting to buy lots of things on TikTok, so why not give TikTok a try.
According to Statista, most users who shop on TikTok shop when they see a product on their feed or stories. About 45% of them actually shop when influencers recommend something.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is good because you get to send users direct recommendations to buy a product, of course, with your affiliate link. “How?” you might be asking. There are services like MailChimp that provide you with a list of emails you can use for marketing purposes. You can send users news-letter types of articles and have your affiliate links attached to them.
Ebooks
This is actually an interesting way to promote your affiliate products. Usually, you can write an ebook for only 3000 words or more, and promote it to your audience. You can write useful information about a certain topic, and use that information to recommend some products to your readers at the end of the book. When they click on the links to the products, they will be redirected using your affiliate link. You can have multiple books or a series of books, and have your links at the end of them.
The good thing about this method is that you will be impacting your users emotionally or logically before you recommend something to them, so they are likely to be interested in what you are recommending.
Platforms for Affiliate Marketing without a Website
Now that we know what traffic sources are good for affiliate marketing without a website, let’s talk about some platforms where you can actually post content and have your affiliate links on them. These platforms act as traffic sources as well, but we decide to put them in the same category as a website/blog owner because you use them to share content that includes affiliate links, and not only share content and expect to redirect to somewhere else.
Pinterest
Pinterest is an amazing platform for sharing affiliate links. Everybody is always browsing Pinterest, and not many people think of earning some affiliate cash with it. The easiest way to promote affiliate products on Pinterest is to post a picture of an item people would really like. Then, you need to keep posting these images so you can get followers and pins and saves, and interactions. As soon as you do, you can start posting product pictures, things that your type of audience likes, and then have your affiliate links in the description.
I’m sure if you head over to Pinterest right now, you will be able to find so many pins with affiliate links underneath. However, make sure you actually write down what you are promoting and convince the users to head over to the website to make a purchase.
You need to pay attention to the Pinterest rules and guidelines as well, so always include a disclosure for affiliate marketing on pins that you are using to promote your affiliate links.
Medium
Another amazing place to share content for affiliate marketing. Almost everybody who feels like starting their own blog is too much, can easily head over to Medium, and start writing out their content, introducing affiliate products, recommending items, etc.
Medium is exactly like a blog, and you could even earn money out of it by just asking for a subscription from your users. However, that would be another topic. For now, what you can do with Medium is treat it like your blog, post quality content regularly, and have it updated.
You can start with articles about your niche and inform people while recommending some products or solutions or services at the end of your articles. It’s all possible.
Take a look at the user below, who wrote about the best tools to start making videos online, and in his article on Medium, he put a disclaimer saying that there are affiliate links.
Steemit
Steemit is a content-sharing platform as well. However, on Steemit, you work differently. It’s more like a newsfeed for its users, so you could be writing some content and have people follow you or read your content, but not many of them would click on your affiliate links. Of course, they might get interested and become your reader, but that takes some grinding. The benefit you have on Steemit is that your content is open to a wide range of users, and everybody will be able to see it. Besides affiliate marketing, if users upvote your content, you can start earning money from their votes.
The user below, as an example, posted a guide on what treadmill to buy on Steemit, and included purchase links with his affiliate codes on each product.
Reddit
Reddit is an amazing media platform where you can share stories, recommendations, questions, and everything. You can start posting content, and since Reddit is indexed by Google, all your content is easily searchable by users who are looking for certain things. You might not be able to immediately start sharing affiliate links on some subreddits, due to each subreddit’s rules. But you can have your own subreddit, or you can post recommended products on subreddits that allow it.
Take a look at this user on Reddit answering someone’s question on what’s the best automatic coffee machine. The user’s answer includes a product link with an affiliate code attached to it. As you can see the post got 7 upvotes, and wasn’t banned. The user’s description was concise and included a series of pros and cons.
Quora
If you have at least once searched a question on the internet, you have come across Quora. Quora is a platform where people ask questions and others answer them. That is a great opportunity for you to find questions related to the type of product you are promoting and answer them, including your affiliate links somewhere.
As a matter of fact, Quora has weekly newsletters, and it sends users updates of recent interesting questions and answers, and many of those have affiliate links in them. A great example is this one, where a user included a list of best pressure cookers, with links to the respective Amazon affiliate products. Even though you might not notice this at first, the user will be earning some affiliate share from you purchasing that item.
Notice how they put the descriptions in a list and prompted the users to click on “continue reading” to see the full list of products and their links.
Quora also allows you to update your posts, which is amazing considering the fact that you might want to update the products every once in a while. Creating a product review page on Quora is an amazing way to reach interactions quickly.
YouTube
If you are feeling a little extra fancy and you want to have yourself an influencer account as well, you can have a YouTube channel and talk about your favorite topic or niche, promote affiliate products and have their affiliate links down in the video descriptions. There are no rules against doing that, and people will actually pay attention if you manage to establish an influencer image in your audience’s mind. Take a look at the YouTube video description below, where the person has incorporated community interaction into a source of income by including Amazon affiliate links.
Tips to Succeed As an Affiliate without a Website
You must have read all of this and still wondered if that is all. Well, it is. But you need to pay attention to a couple of things that most beginners don’t consider.
Choose a Niche
First and foremost, no matter how much you say to yourself that you can be the jack of all trades, you can’t. In the affiliate marketing world, you need to work on one thing and become the best at it. The best practice is to choose a niche and only work in that niche. If you jump from niche to niche, people won’t trust you anymore.
So you need to make sure that the niche that you are choosing is good enough for you not to get bored or off the trend. Your niche needs to be both evergreen. It needs to be there at all times and it shouldn’t get affected by any market crash. The only time that affiliate marketing got affected by something was during the pandemic, but even through that time, we could still do affiliate marketing. So stick to a niche.
Use Different Methods
You should be working in one niche, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to only one method. For example, you don’t need to be working only on Medium, or only on Pinterest. You can identify where your audience is most, and work on those platforms. Usually, for any niche, a couple of platforms and social media are there. There are even forums out there. So you have so many ways to promote your affiliate links, no matter what niche.
You should use as many social media accounts as possible, where your audience is. You shouldn’t think that focusing your content in one place will result in better. For affiliate marketing, reaching out to more people is more important. You need to be everywhere. Have your content on Reddit, Medium, and Quora. Look around for insights, and you will find out where your audience looks for people like you.
Produce Content Yourself
This one is quite important. Many people think that they can just hire somebody on Upwork to write their content for them, but that is not recommended. You should absolutely write your content yourself in the beginning, as much as you can. Because you and only you know what you want to write, how you want to convey it, etc. Your voice matters, and until you establish an image in the public eye, you shouldn’t give that responsibility to someone else.
How Experts are Doing it
You might think, well, there aren’t any big affiliates doing it if they are not influencers, TikTokers or famous YouTubers. But that is not the case. There are many affiliates without blogs who are pretty successful, even without being influencers. McKinzie Bean is a great example. She has been doing affiliate marketing on Pinterest since 2012 as she explains it on a blog that she created, later on, to teach people about affiliate marketing on Pinterest. She has been making up to $10k a month doing this according to an interview.
Conclusion
Doing affiliate marketing as a beginner who doesn’t have a website might be overwhelming. But you don’t have to be worried, because it’s never too late to start affiliate marketing without a website using social media platforms and all the websites that provide free grounds for people like you to promote products, produce content, and gather an audience base and followers.
All you have to do is make sure you have your social accounts up and running with regular content, you have some platforms of choice for posting affiliate links or product reviews, and a good content strategy. With all that in place, you have nothing to worry about. If you want to be an influencer, you can also do it on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. Right now is the best time to start, so don’t hesitate and don’t give up.
