How to Promote Affiliate Links Without a Website?

If you have encountered websites with such messages…

…congrats, you already have an encounter with the world of affiliate marketing.

These websites are doing affiliate marketing that is one of the most cherished buzzwords in online marketing.

Why? Because it has proven as a lucky charm for many people that earned millions of bucks by diving into the sea of affiliate marketing.

But these all examples are affiliate links promotion through a blog.

So here are a few questions:

Does it work for everyone?
Is all the buzz surrounding affiliate marketing legit?
Is the website the only source to do affiliate marketing?
How to promote affiliate links without a website?

Here I have answered all your queries:

Table of Contents

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Before knowing how to promote affiliate links without a website, let’s find out what it is.

In simple words:

“Affiliate marketing is a technique where businesses use other influential people to market, promote, and sell their products and services in return for a commission or compensation.”

To understand this, let’s come up with a practical example.

You are a skincare freak, and you love trying new beauty care products. But to hit on the bat, you always look for recommendations through different beauty and health websites.

And here is what you get:

Source: Allure.com

You get a list of related products, their features, and from where you can buy them.

When they give you from ‘where you can buy them,’ that’s where affiliate marketing comes in.

Like, the above example shows the best way to promote amazon affiliate links.

For example, if you click on the above-given link, you will be taken to Amazon’s product page.

So what happened here?

Blogger gave you a product recommendation.

You clicked on the link, and it took you to the business page of the product.

You bought the product and happily signed out.

Great!

But what did the marketer get through all this hassle?

Answer: Commission!

For every buyer that goes to the product site through the blogger’s site, the blogger gets a set amount of money.

For Amazon, it is between 2%-8%.

So in a diagrammatic form, that’s how to promote affiliate links on google:

That’s the easiest way to promote affiliate links.

You will find many blogs in different niches involved in this huge market of affiliate marketing and doing well.

But do you always need to set up a website first before jumping into an affiliate program and start earning passive income?

For certain good reasons: no.

But before finding out how to promote an affiliate link without a website, let’s find out how a website fits (or doesn’t fit) into the equation of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing and a Website – What’s Good and What’s Bad?

So most of the people who see such stats related to affiliate marketing…

…they consider it as a piece of cake – cheezy-one.

You don’t have to spend any money to join an affiliate program.
You just have to tactfully promote the product by putting an affiliate link.
You can do it from anywhere and in any state (even while sleeping).

And money starts pouring out like crazy once your website gets popular.

No risk of loss, no upfront payment, and no trouble of creating product schemes.

This all is true.

But while calculating all these perks, most people forget to calculate the hassle of setting up a website, running, and ranking it.

There comes so much in between joining an affiliate program, setting the best platform for affiliate link promotion, and starting getting hefty paychecks that, at a certain point, you might end up thinking that all the buzz surrounding affiliate marketing was a lie.

Here is what you have to do with a website:

Find a good web hosting company (it can be costly, by the way)
Create an amazing and interactive website that is responsive and loads faster, along with offering a good user experience
Write irresistible blog posts or pay someone to write for you
Continuously feed the website with fresh content to stay relevant
Handle the hassle of search engine optimization (that can drive you crazy)
Learn marketing tactics to drive more traffic and enable conversions
Keep an eye on Google analytics

Sounds a lot of work? Well, it is!

Before you turn affiliate marketing into a jackpot for you, you have to invest a lot of time and money if you are taking the route of affiliate marketing with a website.

Fortunately, there are various other ways to promote affiliate links that save you from solving the puzzle of SEO, web hosting, and content writing.

So let’s find out what are they:

How to Promote Affiliate Links Without a Website?

Before I answer your question: how to promote amazon affiliate links without a website (or any other merchant’s links), let me give you the heads-up:

Firstly:

Usually, you need some kind of website to create an account for affiliate marketing because the other party has to see if you have some grounds before investing their time and resources in you.

So creating a minimal, one-page website can ease out things for you as compared to going without anything.

Secondly:

Always check out the affiliate program’s guidance, rules, and policies.

Some programs don’t offer an affiliate program without a website. So before you invest your time and energy into something, you should be clear that you are going in the right direction.

For example, here is Amazon’s affiliate marketing program guidance.

Scroll down this page, and you will find different sections describing various things related to the program.

Do read them to secure yourself from any trouble.

If you focus on these two things, you are good to go.

Now let’s find out the answer to the much-awaited question: How to promote affiliate links without a website.

METHOD # 1: Add an Additional Page

If you don’t want to handle the headache of creating a separate website for your affiliate marketing gig, no worries.

You can add a separate section to your pre-existing website (if you have one).

In fact, that’s what most affiliate marketers do because it is just like doing free affiliate link promotion.

You don’t have to create, promote, and rank a separate website. Instead, you can turn your existing website into a gold mine of affiliate marketing.

For example, when you visit TotalBeauty, one of the leading beauty blogs, you will find a separate ‘Reviews’ page.

That’s where they write reviews of different beauty products and technology. Then they link out to the product.

Simple!

Just what you have to do is: add an additional page to your website.

If your website is already well-established, it will double your revenue because you have a:

Promising traffic
Loyal reader-base
Well-established credibility

So convincing and converting people wouldn’t be that difficult for you.

METHOD # 2: Do Social Media Promotion

If you are not into writing blogs and investing time in doing research, social media is always ready to save you.

Obviously, you need an online presence for doing affiliate marketing, and what can be better than social media where almost half of the world’s population is lingering?

In fact, many marketers have already understood the significance of social media and decoded the code of how to promote affiliate links on social media.

According to Buffer, 73% of marketers agree that social media marketing has been effective for them.

Why? Because:

People are online searching for genuine recommendations.

People want real-life testimonials.

People are using social media to find their favorite products.

So you can effectively promote amazon affiliate links on Facebook once you know the trick.

Let’s see an example to understand how to promote ClickBank affiliate links on Facebook.

If you read out this post, you will find a few tricks that affiliate used:

An eye-catching image that grabs attention
Very intriguing opening line
Clear call-to-action
Use of friendly and casual words

No wonder that this post ended up getting 2.1K reactions and many shares.

You can imagine how many people would have visited the link and how many bucks the affiliate would have bagged.

Now you might be thinking:

Is Facebook the only social media platform for affiliate marketing?
Can affiliate links be promoted on Pinterest?
Can affiliate links be promoted on Instagram?

So answer to all these questions is simple:

You can turn any social media platform into your affiliate marketing goldmine.

In fact, many influencers are using Instagram for this purpose because they know how to promote affiliate links on Instagram. And they are really doing well.

So no matter which social media platform you choose to promote affiliate links for free, it can become the beginning of your success story if you focus on these things:

Which niche you are selecting
Where your targeted audiences like to linger
Social media consumption patterns of the targeted audience

It will make a lot of difference.

METHOD # 3: Promote via Online Communities or Forum

This point is going to give you the answer to your question:

How to promote affiliate links on Quora and other online forums and communities.

Online communities have long been part of the marketing formula of marketers.

And now they have become a new love of affiliate marketers.

Here is what you need to do:

STEP 1: Find a community that discusses topics related to your products of interest.
STEP 2: Check forums’ guidelines to see if there are any restrictions.
STEP 3: Actively participate in discussions and increase your circle and authority.
STEP 4: Provide answers to questions, and give out reviews. Meanwhile, add your affiliate link seamlessly.

This method works best once you have:

Active engagement with the people
Developed credibility
Many people that want to listen to you

If you have managed to grab all these three points, you can become unstoppable.

METHOD # 4: Make YouTube Videos

With 2 billion logged-in monthly users (according to Statista), YouTube is a popular video platform with people uploading 500 hours of videos every minute.

With so much potential to attract users, it isn’t a surprise that it is also in our list of platforms when we answer how to promote affiliate links without a website.

The best thing about being a YouTube affiliate is that you sometimes don’t even need to tap an affiliate program, and companies themselves approach you if you have sufficient followers and video views.

You can setup a YouTube channel and promote affiliate links without a website. You may also use long tail keywords and with traffic, you can make your own email lists where you can also promote your affiliate products.

Affiliates add the link into the description section.

For example, Jackie Aina is a popular beauty vlogger. And if you click on the description of her YouTube videos, that’s what you will find…

…a huge log of affiliate links.

But here is the key:

Don’t create a video just for the sake of adding the affiliate link.

Make sure your videos are really…

Interesting
Informative
Creative
Valuable
Engaging

…only then you will be able to attract people’s attention and increase subscribers for more success.

METHOD # 5: Go for Email Marketing

In an age when digital marketing is changing at a tremendous pace, it seems that no one pays attention to cold emails.

It might sound true when you send bland emails with unattractive subject lines that guarantee your emails’ landing in the trash.

Landing pages are also a good idea for getting potential customer.

But if you know the art of creating intriguing subject lines and catchy body that gets read, no one can stop you from becoming an affiliate marketing’s superstar.

In fact, email receivers like emails that tell them something valuable about a new product.

Source: Campaigner

But here you might have to face an issue: how to build email subscribers for affiliate marketing?

No, you don’t necessarily need a website to grow your email subscribers.

You can go with sign up form services that help you email subscribers without having a website.

Once you have enough relevant and interested subscribers, you can start pitching out your emails to earn some extra bucks.

METHOD # 6: Try Out PPC Affiliate Marketing

You will not hear many affiliate marketers talking about PPC affiliate marketing because it requires money – and affiliate marketers are not ready to spend it.

They want money to flow for them without spending a single dime.

But it doesn’t mean that PPC affiliate marketing doesn’t work.

Initially, you need money to invest before earning something.

I know it sounds like a big hassle and pain because you don’t know if you will be able to get your money back or not.

But some people are still investing in PPC affiliate marketing, and it is working for them.

Probably the biggest example is CharlesNgo, who earned a lot through this technique, and now he is considered as one of the most well-respected biggies in the field of affiliate marketing.

If he can do it, you can, too, if you do things in the right way.

How does it feel Like Promoting Affiliate Links on Different Channels?

In this blog, you found a few best places to promote affiliate links if running, maintaining, and promoting a website is not your kind of thing.

But you should be very clear about a few things. You should:

Show your creativity instead of just adding filler content.
Know the art of selling without sounding like a huckster.
Be clear about your motives and ideas and how to reflect them in your content.
Choose your niche very carefully
Have a good knowledge of your selected niche to provide valuable content.

Once you are sure of these things, the next step is to choose your platform carefully. Do some research before selecting the platform of your choice to promote amazon affiliate links.

But remember, you will get a different experience to promote affiliate links on different platforms.

That’s how it costs to promote affiliate links on different channels: