Suppose you are planning to try your hands in a profitable online business and not sure about building a product or a brand by yourself because of your reasons. In that case, Affiliate Marketing is the perfect way to start a business. It is simply selling other’s product on your website or blog or via social channels in layman’s terms.
One of the most asked questions about this topic is How to start Affiliate marketing without followers? Is it possible to do affiliate business with zero followers or subscribers?
The answer is an absolute yes. We will explain how and why you should do affiliate marketing in the following paragraphs.
We will discuss problems and steps to start an affiliate business without followers or subscribers.
Pointers for this article:
- Misconceptions before starting an affiliate marketing business
- Step one – Create a business page or website or a video channel
- Step two – Paid or Free traffic
- Step three- Product or service selection to promote
- Step four- Focus on traffic source
- Conclusion
Bottomline Introduction
We will describe the complete process step by step to start an affiliate marketing business. Users can refer to this article to launch their online business journey with zero followers. We have to start from zero, and gradually, it will reach a considerable number of followers. Anybody can start making money with affiliate marketing without spending a lot on starting a business.
Let’s start with today’s article on How to Start Affiliate Marketing without followers
Before beginning with steps to start affiliate marketing, we should clarify Affiliate Marketing’s definition and the problems in starting an affiliate business.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is a form of marketing in which brands pay one or many affiliates based on their performance. Affiliates promote various products and services of brands on their website, social channels, and blogs and earn a commission for visitors and purchases.
If anybody plans to start their venture and earn a handsome reward, he/she must do affiliate marketing. Refer to this article to learn problems and steps to understand how to Start Affiliate Marketing without followers?
Now let’s go ahead with our first pointer of this article.
Misconceptions about starting an affiliate marketing business
Followers and subscribers base
You need a subscriber’s base to start an affiliate business, one of the most common misconceptions about starting affiliate marketing. All of us have to start from scratch and gradually build brands or subscriber’s base. A newcomer can create an affiliate marketing business for sure. Of course, it needs proper planning and dedication to increase followers and convert them into buyers or subscribers. It depends upon the nature of the products or services the affiliate is offering.
Initial investment
Brands have their criteria for shortlisting affiliates. They don’t charge you for the promotion of their products and services. People think they need a considerable investment to start affiliate marketing, which is a big misconception about affiliate business. So don’t worry about the investment part and start your journey into the affiliate marketing business.
Easy for established bloggers or YouTubers
Established bloggers or video makers have early bird benefits, but it is not correct to say that it is easy for them. They have to continuously make their content and video engaging and value-driven for the target audience.
Step one – Create a business page or website or a video channel
The first and foremost action for affiliate business is to have your video channel, business page, or website. You will need your property to post a blog or upload a video. You will get paid to reach your page or video and click on the company’s landing page link. You are selling the company’s products and services on your property.
Step two – Paid or Free Traffic
We have busted some common myths about How to start affiliate marketing without followers. Now we will discuss the process to create an affiliate business.
As a beginner, you need to decide between paid and accessible mode of gaining traffic. As a fresher who wants to start an affiliate business, the Free method is a better option. Free is the right choice because you are learning and experimenting. Established bloggers or vloggers can opt for paid versions as per their requirements and budget.
Let’s have some clarity about these two options of getting traffic for your video channel or website.
Paid way: You need to pay for advertising and promotion on social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook, Google Ads, and others. You can also boost your post or article on these social networks.
Free option: Search Engine Optimisation is the best way to get generic traffic for your website and blog. It is free and effective. Google maintains quality and relevant website listing, so if you are regularly posting relevant content and videos, your page will rank higher on SERP(search engine results page).
As a beginner, several people make the mistake of focussing on either paid or free way to get traffic. But the truth is, you should do both free as well as paid. It would be best if you had both options to optimize traffic flow for your website and channel.
It would be better if you had SEO for organic growth of your visitors, subscribers, and customers and paid advertising for quick ranking on search pages. You will get a response in less time than the free option. By combining both, you will get genuine, generic, fast traffic to bring customers and conversions.
When you are starting an affiliate marketing business without followers, you need relevant traffic in less time. So please use the free as well as paid option to attract traffic on the website and channel in shorter span of time.
Step three – Product and service selection to promote
You have made your channel or website and have decided how to attract traffic to your property. Now you need to choose which products or services you will promote via your channel and website. We will describe here some of the most popular categories here, which will help you select your niche segment.
List of most profitable categories in the affiliate marketing business as per our research and understanding.
- Wealth making products and services
- Personal finance, cards, business, stocks, investments, e-commerce, online money making
- Health products and services
- Cooking, supplements, kitchen appliances, nutrition, survival, diet, and other related topics
- Hobbies related products and services
- Airfare, Tour & Travels, Hotels, Music, cars, car detailing, trekking, and several other related topics
- Fashion and accessories
- Shoes, athletic wearables, smartwatches, sunglasses, sneakers, apparels, etc
- Electronics related products
- Lenses, Videography, Gaming consoles, drones, Headphones, computers, camera gears, and other related items
- Though the categories mentioned above are the most profit-making affiliate business, one point should be clear in your head that any type can be turned profitable with dedication and proper planning.
- Not every choice is perfect, so make mistakes and learn to make it better for next time. Every experience is a good experience and makes us wiser.
For your affiliate business, focus on basic rules, learn from mistakes and improvise in your different niche selection. It will help if you remember that you are not paying anything for becoming an affiliate. So, try different niche segments. Even if you fail in one category, you will learn some business fundamentals that will help your future affiliate business.
Don’t be afraid to lose. Keep learning, keep moving.
Step four – Focus on traffic source
There are several sources of traffic for your website and channel. Before we talk about traffic sources, here is the list of deciding factors for selecting traffic sources.
Deciding Factors
Budget: Budget is a deciding factor if you are planning to get traffic via paid services. It determines channels, frequency, and duration of promotional activities.
Experience level: In the initial years of affiliate business, focus on less expensive modes of promotion. With experience, you can increase your budget and channels for advertising.
Your skills: If you can create your landing page, design pages, HTML code, and others, it will save costs on promotional campaigns. You can increase views, traffic on your website and page by your skill-set.
Depending upon these factors, you can decide which traffic source to choose for an affiliate marketing business without followers.
Sources of Traffic
Display Traffic: Display Advertising is one of the best options to get traffic for your website and channel. It is simply the process of posting advertisements on blogs and websites for clicks, views, and conversions. For your affiliate business without followers, this is the way to get substantial traffic by banner or in-text ads. For this type of traffic, you pay on CPC and CPM models.
Pay per view: PPV or contextual traffic or COV is a pop-under or pop-up advertisements to garner more traffic and engagements on your website. Pop-up advertisements display when we open a page or website, whereas pop-under comes when we close a page, it remains in the background.
Google Ads: Google ads is a paid version of the advertisement by Google. It comes top and bottom of the search engine results page. With more than 50 percent of the market share, advertisements on Google will surely get more relevant traffic for your website.
SEO: SEO is a free option available on Google. It gives generic traffic but the most relevant leads because an interested person will click on your SERP link. So, SEO is suitable for making loyal and long-term customers for your affiliate business.
Native Advertisements: Native advertising is a non-disruptive form of advertising. It is becoming a popular source of getting traffic for your website and blog.
Social Media Marketing: Almost every person on the earth is on a social media network. It would help if you optimized your social media profiles to get relevant leads and traffic on your website and blog.
Common social media channels for affiliate marketing are:
- YouTube
Mobile Traffic: Mobile traffic is simply coming from advertisements on mobile platforms. The majority of the world population are on mobile, so tragetting them is essential to get more traffic for the website.
Email Traffic: You can collect emails via several forms and tools and start sending emails for offers and promotions. Email marketing is very effective in generating relevant leads and customer recall.
Incentive Traffic: When you reward your followers and subscribers for completing a call to action, known as incentive traffic, points, coupons, virtual currency, and digital rewards form for generating incentive traffic. Sometimes affiliates also offer e-book downloads or pdf downloads for incentive traffic.
Conclusion
We have reached the end of this article. We have explained every aspect of how to start affiliate marketing without followers. Article is according to our research and understanding to help you in planning affiliate business.
Best of luck with your affiliate marketing business!!!