If you do it right, affiliate marketing can make you money while you’re at the beach, in the mountains, or even while you’re taking a nap. I know this firsthand—I’ve been doing it for years.
I started my first affiliate marketing blog 10 years ago with $40 and no idea what I was doing. Now it’s a six-figure business and I only spend a few hours a week running it.
In fact, the affiliate site receives over 100,000 visits per month from Google:
In this article, I’ll teach you how to start your affiliate marketing journey at almost zero cost. I’ll share my experiences and what you can do today to get started.
New to affiliate marketing?
Read our beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing .
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting other people’s products or services and earning a commission when someone buys after clicking on your affiliate link.
For example, if you publish a blog post or YouTube video sharing the best vacuum cleaners for cleaning pet hair, and someone purchases the product you recommended after clicking your affiliate link, you will be paid a percentage of that sale.
This is a great business model because it has almost no operating costs, you don’t have to make or ship products, or deal with customer service. You just promote good stuff and make money.
[]()## Can you really start affiliate marketing with “no” money?
The only way to start affiliate marketing with zero investment is to get an affiliate link and start sending it to people you know. While this works, it is not scalable and it is difficult to make a lot of money unless you continue to build connections.
Instead, the most successful affiliate marketers create websites and social media channels in order to drive traffic to their affiliate links. While social media accounts are free, a website does cost some money.
Specifically, you'll need to purchase a domain name and web hosting, which will cost you about $3 to $7 for the first year, and web hosting, which starts at $2.75 per month (paid annually for a total of $33).
So, as of the time of this post, you'll need at least $36 to get started.
If you are ready to create your own website, I recommend watching the WP Beginner's YouTube video . It will walk you through how to set up hosting and a domain name, as well as how to use WordPress for complete beginners.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing with (Almost) Zero Money
If you have $36 and want to try this business model, I have come up with five simple steps to help you get started with affiliate marketing:
Step 1. Find a niche or a good affiliate program
The first and most important step is to figure out what you want to talk about and promote — in other words, your niche.
Your niche can be just about anything, from a hobby to an interest to a lifestyle. Dogs? That’s a niche. Interested in cryptocurrencies? Niches are huge. You get the idea.
Choosing a niche is one of the hardest parts of affiliate marketing. You need to choose an area that you are willing to continue to create content in for years to come. Building brand authority and visibility, and turning it into a full-time business, takes time, so don’t be afraid to invest time in it.
Now, there are a few ways to help you choose your niche. You can choose a niche that you are already interested in, or you can start by looking for great affiliate programs and then build your niche from there.
Finding high paying affiliate programs from quality companies can be difficult. Often you’ll find either great products with low commissions (2%-4%) or low quality products with high commissions (20%+).
But occasionally, you’ll find some great products with a good commission rate. If you do, it might be worth building your niche around that. Finding high-paying partners is a much better way to go than just promoting Amazon products.
There is nothing wrong with setting up an Amazon affiliate website . However, unless you are able to get a lot of traffic and sales, don’t expect to make a lot of money from it.
Last year, I sold over $1.2 million to Amazon…and only made $47,310.
So, yes – it’s worth looking for a better affiliate program.
The best affiliate partnerships are achieved by establishing a direct relationship and making a private agreement with the brand you want to promote.
So where can you find great affiliate partners?
Think about things you already enjoy doing and look at your favorite products or services in those areas. See if there are existing affiliate programs for those products. If not, reach out to a brand, contact their marketing team, or even the brand owner to try to find some partnership options.
You can also search for potential affiliate programs on Google by searching for “[your niche] affiliate program.” You’ll usually find a list of brands that have affiliate programs, along with details about the program.
Finally, you can check out popular affiliate marketing platforms like AvantLink , impact.com , ShareASale , and more.
Step 2: Identify a traffic channel
One of the biggest mistakes I see beginners make (and I’ve made it myself) is focusing on creating content for too many traffic channels at once. They sign up for YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest, while also managing their own blog — it’s just too much.
Each of these channels takes months or even years to learn and build an engaged audience. And each of these channels is enough to take up enough time to occupy a full-time job.
Instead, pick one or two main traffic sources — my favorites are YouTube and Google because they drive recurring, organic traffic — and get really good at using them.
Yes, you can have an account on each channel. And of course, you can easily share your blog posts on these channels. But focus your content creation and attention on one channel, and then use the others to support that channel.
At SidelinePlay, we specialize in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), WordPress.
Organic traffic from search engines like Google is one of the best ways to earn consistent passive affiliate income. It takes time to learn the ropes and get on the first page of Google. But in the long run, SEO is worth learning because it brings you traffic every time someone searches and finds your content.
One of my sites received over 100,000 visits from Google in one month, and I didn’t create or promote any content that entire month:
YouTube is similar in that it’s also often used as a search engine, making it another great source for attracting repeat visitors without having to constantly create and promote new content.
Of course, which traffic channel you choose depends on your own preferences and the niche you are in. Some niches are much more competitive in search engines than others.
You can quickly see if keywords in your niche are hard to rank for by using Ahrefs’ free Keyword Difficulty Checker. Think of keywords you might search for in this niche and enter them into the tool to get more information.
For example, “best vacuum cleaner for pet hair” might be difficult to rank for:
Our tool estimates that you need about 45 sites with backlinks (pages linking to you from other sites) to rank in the top 10 for this keyword. You can see that some of these competitors are big brands like NYMag and HGTV.
The Keyword Difficulty (KD) score is 35, ranging from 0 to 100, with 0 being easy and 100 being extremely difficult. The KD value is on a logarithmic scale, meaning that as the number increases, the difficulty of ranking for a keyword increases exponentially.
In comparison, the keyword "car vacuum cleaner" has a KD of 27, and we estimate that you need about 32 backlinks to rank in the top 10.
If you find some keywords with low to medium difficulty, this may indicate that Google is a good source of traffic. Otherwise, you may want to consider starting with other traffic sources.
The following guides can help you understand the different traffic channels:
- How to Write SEO Friendly Content (Beginner to Advanced)
- Importance of Keywords in SEO
- On-Page SEO Guide to Rank on Page 1
- 43 Simple SEO Tips to Help You Rank Higher
Step 3: Create Killer Content
No matter which platform you choose to focus on, you’ll need one thing to be successful:
Great content.
Your content should be amazing, engaging, and fascinating so that people will read it and share it. Whether it’s a video, a picture, or a blog post, the only way to stand out in this saturated market is to make your content truly amazing .
This doesn’t necessarily mean you need the highest quality cam or the most aesthetically pleasing website. In fact, what counts as great content varies by niche and platform.
But generally, your content needs to be good at one of two things:
- entertainment
- inform
If you can both inform and entertain, your affiliate marketing will do well. This means great storytelling, in-depth research, or brilliant presentation of information.
Of course, getting traffic from Google is very different than getting traffic from Instagram or TikTok. The two serve different purposes — one platform is for learning, the other for entertainment.
Creating great content for Google requires a lot of research:
- Keyword Research
- Research Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)
- Watch videos and read forum posts
- ETC
Then you need to organize your research in a way that’s easy to understand, well-written, and optimized for search engines. The goal is to create content that’s better than the number one search result for your target keyword.
For example, a good article for Google might look like this, which ranks #1 for “rv accessories”:
As you scroll down the articles, you’ll see recommendation boxes that make it quick and easy to share product information; plus, these products are recommended by people who have actually used them.
The goal of social media is still the same—to create content that’s better than what’s already out there—but the way to do it is different.
Rather than presenting the best research in the most digestible way, it tends to focus on creativity, storytelling, and unique perspectives.
This could be a low-quality handheld video of you being in a really tough moment in your life, or it could be a cleanly edited video with drone footage, great angles, and sound design.
Social media is different — people want to be entertained, not just informed.
That’s why it’s so hard to define “quality content” when it comes to social media. But in general, it’s about being good at informing and entertaining. If you can master those skills, the rest will fall into place.
Here are some guidelines to help you create better content:
Step 4. Crazy promotion
Remember when I said to focus on one traffic channel?
What I really mean is focus on creating content for one channel – you can still leverage other channels to enhance that content.
For example, if you decide to focus on SEO or YouTube, you can still share your content on Facebook and Pinterest even if you don’t have a large following.
This doesn’t mean you have to dive into Facebook and Pinterest groups and spend hours a day on social media to grow your audience – just think of it as a small part of a larger strategy. Share it, and move on.
Other things you can do to promote your content without spending money include:
- Interact with others on forums.
- Build relationships with others in your field and similar fields.
- Comment on other people's videos and content.
- Conduct cold email outreach.
- And there's more.
Check out our complete guide on content promotion to learn how to attract people to your content.
Step 5: Scaling up
Once you find an effective traffic channel, you can increase your efforts. Increase your efforts to promote effective content and promotion methods, and reduce ineffective promotions.
At this point, you might consider hiring a writer, video editor, or social media manager to help you maximize your time.
Platforms like UpWork and Fiverr can help you find assistants at a relatively low cost. You may have to search multiple times before you find the right person. But once you do, they can save you time and make the hiring process worthwhile.
To get the best chance of getting high-quality employees, only choose people with good reviews.
Don’t just look at the average five-star rating and assume it’s good, though. Take a look at the last few reviews to make sure they aren’t fake purchases.
These are the five steps to get started with affiliate marketing, which requires basically no capital.
Final Thoughts
It’s possible to start an affiliate marketing business without any money, but it does have a big learning curve and requires courage and thinking outside the box.
With enough determination, you can create a business that earns passive income while you spend your time doing hobbies, relaxing, spending time with your family, or doing whatever you want.
It takes a lot of learning and hard work, but it's definitely worth it.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article contain affiliate links, which means we may earn a commission if you click through to visit us, at no extra cost to you. See how SidelinePlay is funded, why it’s important, and how you can support us.
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