Affiliate Marketing Without A Website

Last Updated on December 20, 2023 by andrewtk

Can you do affiliate marketing without a website?

There is a short answer of course.

Yes!

Yes, you absolutely can become an affiliate marketer without a website.

But should you?

And if you should, how? This is what we're going to look at in this post.

Before we all go any further, I'm assuming you have been thinking about this whole thing for a while now.

Maybe you already have a niche in mind and you've started to get a bit of market research done.

If this is the case, make sure the next thing you do is…

Find Affiliate Programs That Do Not Require A Website

There are an increasing number affiliate programs that require you to have a website before you can get approved onto their program.

This is largely because the act of promoting affiliate links without a website has connections to the shadier end of the industry.

You probably know the sort of thing; buying email lists and spamming the life out of the poor souls who's email addresses you've bought; Solo-ads and all the crap that goes with that.

Anyway, just be certain to read the terms and conditions of the affiliate programs you're interested in before you go too far down the road with them.

6 Ways To Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Website

1. Email Marketing
2. Your own YouTube Channel
3. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
4. Forums and Online Communities
5. Social Media
6. Post on Web 2.0 Sites

Obviously there are other ways, but I reckon this five represent probably the easiest strategies, sans website.

Let's take them from the top.

Email Marketing

Email marketing works.

It's worked since email first existed, and it still works today.

You probably don't need me to tell you that you're going to need a good quality email subscriber list to get this one off the ground.

You can build your own list, which is hard but will deliver the best results.

Or you can buy a subscriber list. I'm not a fan of this strategy but if you want to go for it, make sure you buy the best, most relevant list that you can afford.

How can you build your own subscriber list?

Try offering a free, niche specific, info-product via paid ads on social media channels, in exchange for email list sign-ups of course.

You then email your list at least weekly and start introducing products and services your subscribers might find useful, via your affiliate links.

Get this right and you could have a goldmine on your hands.

Get it wrong and you'll simply own a burnt list.

Your Own YouTube Channel

Affiliate marketing with YouTube can be extremely profitable. There's a ton of hugely successful affiliate marketers doing it right now.

YouTube is a very effective platforms for promoting affiliate links.

It's also one of the riskiest, because YouTube will shut your channel down if you do anything outside of their T&C's, or if someone reports your channel for any number of reasons.

But hey, every business comes with risks.

Be certain that your videos are relevant to the products and services that you promote.

Shoot them to a high-quality and make them informative, or entertaining, or both.

There's an absolute ton of rubbish posted all over the web about how you hardly need any channel subscribers to make good profits (I'm talking job replacement type income when I say ‘good profits').

You're going to want to build a few thousand active subscribers before you start to see regular income coming down the line.

Get this strategy right and you'll not only be popping up high in YouTube search results, you'll also find yourself on the first page of Google…so that's nice!

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

I suck at this.

I really suck at this.

Don't let that stop you though, there are loads of people who are great at it and make handsome profits using this as an affiliate marketing strategy.

I simple don't have the gift of writing the type of super-short-form copy that produces great PPC results.

Marketers sometimes turn to PPC in search of quick results.

Unfortunately, the quick result most of them get is turning $5,000 into zip.

I'm terrible at PPC but I know one thing about it of which I am certain, only get involved with this strategy if you can afford to set-aside a budget in the region of $5k plus.

Forums And Online Communities

There's no shortage of online forums and communities, and you can find them in just about any niche.

They’re potentially great places to promote your affiliate links. Simply search for a forum in the niche you want to promote, sign-up and start getting involved.

Once you are a fully fledged forum member, start posting on your preferred topics, as well as answering questions asked by other members, dropping your affiliate links in where appropriate.

Sound a little too easy?

Yeah sorry, I thought it was still the year 2003.

This whole strategy got done to dust and now forum and community moderators are all over this type of thing.

Some don't allow affiliate links at all. Check the guidelines before wasting your time signing-up.

If you really fancy giving it a go, become a valued member by contributing decent content. If you do this often, you will probably get away with the occasional affiliate link in one of your posts or replies.

For me, the time and effort is not worth the return.

Social Media

It's not going to be easy, but if you can build up your following and one or more of the major social media platforms, you really could be on to a winner.

Opening up Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts is the most logical place to start.

You will then need to spend time, quite a bit of time, building your social media following.

It is a lot of work but it is definitely possible to combine social media and affiliate marketing to generate significant income.

Like with most stuff online, the key is to create engaging, interesting, content that will convert into either shares, sign-ups or clicks.

Above all, keep your content highly relevant to your niche. Do not start trying to appeal to everyone because you will end up appealing to nobody.

Work hard, be consistent and niche down.

Post On Web 2.0 Sites

Content publishing platforms, such as Web 2.0 sites, if run well, and by decent marketers, can be good places to post content that will potentially rank well in the SERP's.

Right now, Medium is probably the pick of the bunch.

Pretty much anyone can sign-up to Medium, and once you've got your log-in details you can start writing content.

The people at Medium know what they're doing, they have significant audience, Google seems to love them, and they allow affiliate links inside your posts, so long as you disclose them as affiliate links.

What's not to love? One-way ticket to making money surely?

Well, kind of. Just keep in mind that you don't own the platform, so you live or die by the hand of the decisions makers that do.

Affiliate Marketing Without A Website – Wrapping It Up

There is no shortage of ways to start affiliate marketing without a website.

Some are better than others and the list above is by no means exhaustive.

The real key to affiliate marketing is knowing how to send qualified targets to a sellers landing page, and you can do this in a number of different ways.

Would I actually go down the road of affiliate marketing without a website myself? No, I don't think I would.

At the end of the day, all you're doing with this approach is building a business on someone else's platform.

There are enough variables out of your control already in being an affiliate marketer, without introducing another one, and a very significant one at that.

If you become really successful, without your own website, what do you really have to sell to a buyer if you want to move on? Nothing!

Owning a website gives you that online real estate around which you can establish a business valuation.

So for me, for now at least, I want to own the platform that I primarily publish on, so I will be sticking with affiliate marketing with a website.