How To Be an Affiliate Without Having a Website
When you go online and start to look at earning money online, if you’re drawn towards being an affiliate then one of the biggest hurdles you might see is that you don’t have a website. So, let’s look at how to be an affiliate without having a website. There’s a way round everything.
Now, I won’t pretend that having your own website wouldn’t make it 100x easier, but if you’re not ready to tackle that (and most people aren’t on Day 1), then how can you get started with affiliate marketing, while avoiding having a website?
With affiliate marketing you identify a product you want to promote to make money – then you just tell other people about it. Point people in the direction of a service or product that solves a problem they have. People pay to have a problem solved. As an affiliate you have to identify a problem and provide people with the solution. Problem: “How do I ….” Answer: “Check out this affiliate link….” It’s that easy.
One thing you can do is take advantage of other people’s websites. There are websites out there, such as Squidoo, where you can literally just sign up (for free) and you don’t have to get a domain name or a hosting account at all. You do not need to learn any HTML, or anything else about building websites. With Squidoo you simply fill out the forms you see there, add your banners, product pictures and – most important – your affiliate link, and you’re done! Now you have a web page, on somebody else’s website, that you can direct people to. Now it is… Question: “How do I …” Answer: “Check out this Squidoo page…” As Squidoo has a lot of its own traffic, it means people are more likely to randomly stumble across your information – even though you’ve never told them to go there. Before you know it you’ll have a sale and you’re an affiliate without having a website!
Now, the pros reading this will be laughing right now, muttering “if only it were that easy”. Yes, there’s more to it, but using Squidoo is one way to be an affiliate without having a website. You still need to research your market, find the product you want to promote, learn to write good or compelling copy, learn about search engine optimisation and keywords …. and continually learn and tweak your page based on the new knowledge you are gaining. Beyond that you need to find out ways to drive free traffic to your page. But this is about how you can be an affiliate without having a website of your own.
Ultimately, it comes down to just a few simple things:
- You pick a product or service that solves a problem a lot of people have
- You write a page that draws a lot of free traffic
- You write something that makes people want to know more.
Other Sites You Can Create a Webpage at Like Squidoo
Squidoo isn’t the only place you can quickly create your own promotional page. Some others are here:
- HubPages – I actually have some HubPages and they earn me more than one of my websites that has an actual domain name and paid for hosting!
- WetPaint
- Tripod
- Yahoo Geocities
You’ll notice they all have their own little language for referring to pages, e.g. Squidoo call your page a Lens, HubPages call your page a Hub. Don’t be put off by this change in name – they are all just free web pages for you to create, filled with information about the problem you can solve for people – and containing your affiliate link.
Try to make each one solve a slightly different problem. e.g. How to Grow a Lawn in a Week; Brown to Green in Time For That BarBQ in a Week; Green Lawn Success Without Effort … see where I am going with that? Each one is solving the same problem, but targetted a bit differently. Then each page is different too as you’re writing it with a different focus.
Remember: these free webpages are your means to an end. They are a way for you to be able to create a simple page without any cash and without knowing anything about domain name registering, hosting, writing html, FTP or how to build you own website … that can all come in 1-2 years’ time when you’ve proven that you can market a product online and have the confidence and drive to take the time out to take your online business to the next level.
Top Tip: For each site that you create, simply re-write your content so it is not duplicated. This is because Google sees duplicate content as having a lower value than unique/original content. Having created your page on several sites, now link them all to each other! This will mean that Google sees them as being linked to and will assume that they are therefore more important than web pages that nobody has bothered linking to! This works in real life, if you see a tiny shop down a side street you might have noticed its existence but you won’t go there … now, if somebody tells you about the shop, you’re more likely to go into it because somebody’s “linked” you to it, so in your mind it is worthy of a visit. Google thinks like that!
Hey – This is Hard Work!
Nobody said it was effortless! Remember that earning money online is a job, you have to put time in at the beginning to get all your tools ready and in place; you have to put some effort in now, which will make it easier in a bit. You can’t spend 3 hours online, once, then sit back while money rolls in like a tsunami of cash! Remember, you are creating money out of thin air here, like a magician producing coins from behind the ear of a small child on the stage, you have to prepare your props!
Promote Your Page
Now you have a simple page, you can promote it. Below are some ways to promote your webpage and drive traffic to your affiliate program without having a website.
- Join relevant forums and become a regular poster there – e.g. if your chosen product is about Miracle Grow Lawns, then join some gardening forums. You can add your page address to your forum signature – before you take the time to sign up though, check if the forum allows signature links, a few don’t. Then you go to the forums and help people out. Every time you post some help on a forum to somebody, your free advert is in your signature.
- Add a link in your email signature to your webpages.
- Tell people about your sites and link to them from any social networking groups you belong to, like Bebo, Myspace, Faceparty. If you use Twitter, Twitter about it!
- Write a short article about the problem and how to solve it and submit this to article directories – these allow you to have a link to your webpage in your footer.
If you’re interested in being an affiliate, and just want some help getting started, then there’s a great collection of help available, in the form of well-written guides and videos to get you understanding affiliate marketing and to help you get started (it’s all free, so don’t worry) at More Niche. More Niche will help you build your affilate business, step by step.
Make no mistake, there’s a lot to learn, but you can learn it all at your own pace. Every day I learn something new that I can try, every day there are new ideas and tools to use …. nobody knows everything, but first take your first step … everybody started where you are today once – now look at us all.
