Can you really do affiliate marketing on a shoestring budget and how does doing it on the cheap affect your chances? The good thing about affiliate marketing is that you can get started for absolutely nothing. All you need is to join an affiliate program and find a means to promote your affiliate link for free. Doing everything for free does come with a number of limitations. However it’s definitely a possibility for those who can’t afford large marketing budgets or high ticket product ranges.
If you have a little cash to spare, it’s well worth getting yourself a domain name that you own and getting your own hosting. This will only set you back a few dollars a month. A domain name can be bought (I use this site) relatively cheaply (Less than $13 a year) and a hosting service can be bought for $3-$5 a month.
The next investment that’s worth your money is an email autoresponder. You can get access to one for free here which gives you up to 500 subscribers for nothing!
Affiliate Marketing On A Shoestring Budget
If you don’t have the cash for a website of your own at least get a free autoresponder for affiliate marketing. An autoresponder allows you to collect email subscribers from a website, whether you own the website or not. Collection of email addresses puts you in greater control of your traffic: the number one issue for many struggling affiliates.
Without a website of your own there’s a few strategies you can still use. See also how to promote affiliate links without a website. YouTube for example is a great option if you’re on a tight budget. Many YouTubers have build a huge following simply by upload content that they have created. Building a YouTube channel does take some time and effort, but it’s worth it when you can attract a following to promote your affiliate products to.
Free blog sites are an option too, if you’re shy about getting on camera. Hubpages.com WordPress.com, Medium.com and Blogger.com are all places you can go to get your content online and attract a following for the selling of affiliate products.
Affiliate Marketing On A Shoestring Budget – Target Audience
The main thing you’ll need to do to attract an audience for affiliate marketing on a budget is to create content. The main two ways to make affiliate sales online are paid and organic marketing. Organic marketing notoriously takes a lot more work and time. There’s also other methods which you can use such a social media methods. See my post on unpaid social media marketing.
If you’re going to go down the content marketing route, it’s well worth spending some time on defining your target audience or customer avatar first, before you start. Creating content is time consuming and it can be demoralising when a lot of work doesn’t amount to much.
To make the most of your content creation strategy, it’s a good idea to know who exactly you’re marketing towards. This will save you a whole lot of time and effort, wasting content on the wrong audience. Visit my post on the customer avatar worksheet pdf and work your way through it.
When you know very well the type of person who will buy, you’re already a better marketer. It’ll shave years off your journey!
– Choosing Your Niche
If you’re on a budget, it’s probably going to be a good idea to get good at building content – either written on in video format. To create and upload video upon video or blog post upon blog post, potentially for months, is a tall order. You’ll need to have at least an interest in your chosen topic for this to work, and ideally a passion for it.
A while ago I chose a topic I was uninterested in and for 6 months wrote blog posts on it. Before I lost the plot, I completely abandoned the site and it soon fell by the wayside. It wasn’t a total failure because I learned not to choose a topic I had zero interest in, (just because I though it might make some money)!
“The man who likes to walk will go further than the man who wants to get somewhere”! The same applies to content creation. Choose a topic you love and can get passionate about. Otherwise it’s going to be a much harder journey and you’re more likely to quit en-route.
Imagine upload videos or blog posts in your chosen topic for several months on a regular basis. If this makes you feel good, then it’s the right topic. Otherwise you might want a rethink. That’s how long it is likely to take; with over 600 million blogs on the internet and 113.9 million YouTube channels (in 2023) to compete with.
– Product Choice
Product choice has a great deal to do with your success as an affiliate and particularly when you’re going the organic route. If you can afford some paid advertising, to get traffic more quickly, it’s worth doing. But use a budget you’re happy to learn from, rather than earn from because initially you’ll likely spend budget without getting a return (other than data and knowledge).
There’s a vast range of products you can choose to promote as an affiliate and some affiliate programs do require you to already have a following. Whether that be a high traffic website or a large list of subscribers/YouTube subscriber base etc. But most programs will be happy to let you join them without any such requirements.
Amazon is the go-to website for new affiliates but Amazon’s commission structure is fairly low by industry standards. For example, some of their products pay as little as 1% commission on a sale. With organic marketing, you’re likely to start out with the odd sale, sporadically.
So when that sale amounts to very little, it can be difficult staying positive about your affiliate business. But if you choose digital products, you can earn more like 30-40% commission which can be more worth your while.
In addition, you can also promote subscription digital products too. These are definitely worth considering because they can pay recurring commissions from each sale. Checkout also my article on high ticket affiliate marketing products.
– How Does A Budget Affect Your Chance Of Affiliate Success?
Doing everything on the cheap will definitely affect your chances of success with affiliate marketing. If you can, invest in a training and education program which “plugs” you in to a community too. You can access one here.
Having like minded people to hold you accountable will definitely help you succeed online. It can be tough maintaining the drive to keep going when results don’t come quickly, especially with content creation.
When you start looking for results in your business, you stop working on it. If you doubt yourself, this effects your motivation and drive. You can’t always be on “top” form, however high your motivation is on any given day. So make habits out of doing the work to keep the momentum going. See also the the power of micro habits which is a useful post for content creators.
Summary
If you’re starting out as an affiliate I would recommend you get your own website and hosting and an email autoresponder at the very minimum. Then create content on your website or build a YouTube channel which helps your audience in some way.
Promote products through your channel and build your email list by offering some freebie giveaway on your website/channel such as an ebook you’ve created (here’s one I made earlier!).
Content marketing is a slow method of getting traction as an affiliate compared to paid advertising, so expect to be working for some time before you break through and start making those sales. To speed up your journey considerably get an email autoresponder and build an email list. Use subscription affiliate products and high ticket products which pay you recurring commissions and large one-off commissions respectively.
Those are some of the best ways I know to do affiliate marketing on a shoestring budget. See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products. If you know any other methods I’d be grateful for your comments!
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