This article will look at the three main ways I started making money as an affiliate marketer and how affiliate marketing works. To get started, none of these solutions require any money.
First and foremost, let’s address a common mindset problem I encounter among new affiliates.
When we look at successful affiliate marketers, we typically assume they’ve always been like that. But that is the biggest falsehood in the industry!
It all began somewhere! And in many cases, that meant they had nothing, to begin with. So what evidence do I have? Because I began with no prior experience, no understanding of what I was doing, and, yes, no funds.
But none of that mattered; in just six years, I was able to earn nearly $3 million in commissions. Yes, indeed! It’s not only possible, but it’s also how almost every affiliate marketer begins. And in this blog, I’ll go over the three methods I used when I initially started.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing With NO Money

Important Note
This 15-day affiliate marketing program challenge is not free, but it is the best $7 you will ever spend. It includes almost 10 hours of action-oriented training, and after it, you’ll have a fully functional affiliate business.
It’s designed in a step-by-step format, with a lesson and a job to complete each day for 15 days.
So, while it is not free, I strongly encourage you to participate in the challenge.
How To Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money
So, let’s go into the issue of the affiliate marketing business without spending any money. To do so, you must first comprehend the essence of affiliate marketing, which entails convincing people to click on your links.
This is accomplished through what we refer to as traffic. You’ll attract more people to click on your links if you have a lot of traffic. Affiliate websites are the most typical way to achieve this.
However, because this takes a long time, we shall concentrate on faster methods. Because you usually don’t have any traffic when you first start, an affiliate program with no money becomes an affiliate network with no traffic. And there are only two strategies for obtaining traffic: paid and organic.
Almost every traffic-generating platform on the internet offers a paid option, and paying for traffic is simple. For example, you may create a Facebook ad and state that you are willing to spend $100.
You create some demographics for the people you want to reach, and then you see how many people you can persuade to look at your $100 offer.
However, many people do not have the financial means to invest in advertisements, especially when they are just getting started in affiliate marketing. So this is where organic traffic comes in, and it works like this:
Content is required by platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. However, they can only succeed if people provide valuable material that others interact with and engage with.
We become content providers for these platforms to gain organic traffic. We create the material and then persuade them that it is valuable and share it with others to drive traffic to our site.
Because YouTube and Google are search engines, we need to persuade them that our content should come up first when people search for something. We need them to believe that OUR content will provide the best answer to the user’s search query.
It’s not so much about popping up when people search for something on Facebook and Instagram as it is about building relationships and offering people information they may not even realize they want.
We want people to see our material when they open their phones and start scrolling through social media, but we don’t want to pay for it with an ad; we want it to happen naturally.
3 Ways To Do Affiliate Marketing With No Money
Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are three of the top free platforms for affiliate marketing.
So let’s have a look at how you can leverage these platforms to build a large organic reach and get people to notice and eventually click on your affiliate offers.

Affiliate Marketing on Facebook
One of the greatest ways to get started with affiliate marketing is to do it on Facebook, and here’s why.
You can have 5000 friends on Facebook, which means you have a free audience of 5000 people with whom you can start affiliating. You’re not going to spam them or send them affiliate links in their inbox. You’ll establish relationships with those individuals and supply them with value.
Remember, Facebook is a social networking platform, so by following the method I’ll outline, you’ll be providing Facebook exactly what they want.
You’ll be constructing networks, and you’ll be rewarded with organic traffic as a result. This is the most natural way I can think of to get affiliate clients – after all, isn’t that what “organic” means?
So, here’s how to do it in four steps.
1. Create a Profile
Create a Facebook profile if you don’t already have one (I am talking about a personal profile, not a business page).
2. Build Meaningful Connections
After that, you’ll concentrate on forming relationships with folks who would profit from your affiliate offerings.
Searching for groups in your niche is the simplest method to do so. For example, if I were an affiliate for my affiliate marketing course, I would search Facebook groups for “affiliate marketing,” “online marketing,” “internet marketing,” or “earning money online.”
Become a member of the greatest groups you come across (the ones with many people in them and a lot of interaction). Begin communicating with the members of these groups and adding them as friends.
Aim to add 50-100 new personal friends per day (it’s easier than it sounds).The most significant aspect of this strategy is that it allows you to add individuals as friends while also being viewed as an authority figure through your participation and interaction.
The relationships you form here will help you succeed in the following step of the process.
3. Post Value Consistently
Then, on your Facebook profile, you’ll want to publish regularly. Again, it consistently implies at least once a day, but I’d recommend 2-3 times a day.
Make sure you’re sharing useful information with your Facebook pals. This might contain interesting facts about making money online or anything else to help you position yourself as an expert in your field.
4. Promote Affiliate Offers
Promote an affiliate offer for every 2-5 valuable posts you write. This is where you can determine if you’ve done everything correctly so far because affiliate posts will appear spammy to people if the development of relationships and authority doesn’t precede them.
If you’ve done the other stages correctly, this step will work like a charm because it will appear natural to your Facebook pals. However, it’s also important to consider how you write these pieces. When I explain this strategy, I always use Momen Khaiti as an example because he does it so well.
He makes a lot of posts. He engages with others. He essentially networks by commenting and posting things that people can comment on, and then he does something like this every couple of times.
He recounts a narrative, includes his affiliate networks and link, and asks a question, as you can see. And as you can see, he’s received a lot of positive feedback from people who are interested in his offer.
These aren’t folks who are suddenly interested. They are familiar with him, have seen him frequently post in groups and on his personal page, and have most likely engaged with him there.
He’s already developed a network – which can be done in a matter of weeks or months – so that when he makes an affiliate offer, it just works for him because he’s already done the networking to establish the relationship and establish himself as a sort of authority in that field.
Make certain you’re promoting the appropriate deals. If you were to do this with an Amazon book, you would only make $.10 per sale and never make any real money.
Instead, concentrate on high-ticket or recurrent programs where a single affiliate sale can last a week.
Affiliate Marketing on YouTube
My personal favorite is YouTube affiliate marketing. It’s such a fantastic platform because I can make a video now and make money off it years later.
It’s also free because YouTube hosts and manages everything. So to become a YouTuber, all you need is a phone or device that can record video.
As an affiliate, you must produce the correct types of YouTube videos. You’ll probably struggle to get affiliate income and commissions if you make a series of YouTube videos about odd topics.
Affiliates who succeed on YouTube typically create extremely particular videos, such as reviews, demos, and lessons.
So, let’s assume I joined up to be a ClickFunnels affiliate. Then, when I search for “Clickfunnels Review” on YouTube, I get a list of all the videos that people have made.
If you look at the descriptions, you’ll note that they include affiliate links, and if you look at the videos, you’ll notice that they direct viewers to the description to access the affiliate links. This individual has even promised bonuses to anyone who purchases through his link.
Here are a few helpful hints to assist you in finding the correct stuff to write reviews about:
1) Write Reviews for Things You Enjoy – The simplest thing to do is write reviews for products you currently use. I assume that if you choose a niche, you are somewhat familiar with it and that you use software and items related to it. So simply go ahead and write evaluations for the things you already own.
2) a – review, b – review, c – review – Type in space dash space and then review (– review) in YouTube, then return to the beginning and type in letters one at a time. The items that people are looking for appear, which can provide you with some excellent ideas.
3) Uber Suggest – Neil Patel created this free tool. It generates a list of keyword suggestions that can be used as material for your videos. If you key in ClickFunnels, for example, one of the possibilities that appear is “ClickFunnels price.”
That’s a wonderful term to film a video about since if someone types that into Google, you know they’re looking to buy ClickFunnels.
You can also check how many people are looking for that term. In this situation, we can observe that 5400 people each month are attempting to decipher the ClickFunnels pricing structure, which can be perplexing.
All you have to do is produce a video about it and include your affiliate link in the description, and you’ll be good to go.
So, while affiliate marketing on YouTube is fantastic, it’s crucial to keep in mind that not every video will rank or earn money. You must be consistent and release a large number of videos over time, and then certain videos will perform better than others.
Affiliate Marketing on Instagram
Another fantastic affiliate marketing strategy to accomplish affiliate marketing without spending any money is to use Instagram. You should understand right away that Instagram is all about creating a following before making affiliate offers.
We can grow an audience on YouTube while generating affiliate offers, but Instagram is more like Facebook in that you must first build an audience.
Picking a niche, publishing, utilizing relevant hashtags, and doing all of the basic stuff is how you create a following on Instagram. To be honest, I strongly advise you to get a course like this one for $10 so that you may begin succeeding with Instagram right away, but you are not required to do so.
Here’s how Instagram affiliate marketing works
Create an Audience
To create a small audience, be consistent in posting on Instagram and using hashtags and other similar techniques. On Instagram, this is actually quite simple (a lot easier than on other platforms).
Affiliate Link in Description
Then, exactly like this, you’ll include your affiliate link in the description…
Make Posts That Point to the Link
The next step is to create posts that include that affiliate link. You could, for example, do the following:
- Do you want to make money on the internet? There is a link in the description.
- Free online money-making training. There is a link in the description.
Promote Your Link on Instagram Stories
You can also promote it through your Instagram stories. Simply open your phone and tell your followers a story. “Hey folks, I’ve got a wonderful deal for you!” you may say if your niche is weight reduction, for example. This guy is offering a really cool challenge where you can drop 50 pounds in 50 days. You can find a link in my description, so go ahead and click it.”
Giving your audience what they want is the whole point of Instagram, and they’ll love you for it. Be yourself and exhibit personality in your postings since that is what will make you stand out and what will allow people to connect with you. When you achieve that first, you’ll be able to naturally slip in some offers, which won’t feel like offers to your audience.
2 Keys That Allow You to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
Successful affiliate marketers have mastered the two elements of time and consistency. Each of the three procedures listed above takes time. If you don’t have any money, the only thing you need is time. It will take time for you to be consistent on whatever platform you choose, but it is quite feasible.
This is how almost every affiliate marketer began. They didn’t have any money, so they used the methods I described above. They stayed the course, gave it time, and are now reaping the benefits.
You can reinvest some of the money you generate from successful affiliate marketing into paid techniques like ads and purchasing equipment like microphones, computers, and cameras after you start making money. But for the time being, just get out there and try one of these no-cost affiliate marketing tactics.
There’s no doubting that affiliate marketing has a lot of potential for online business owners. But what should your next step be?
Here at Opportunity Sage, you’ll learn how I made affiliate marketing a full-time career. Then I’ll take you on a tour of my office and give you the scoop.