Affiliate marketing seems to be heaven for some, and hell for others. At Waalaxy, we believe that all you need to know is how to start affiliate marketing with no money to make it simple and effective. 👼
This article, it’s here to save you the headaches and long and boring processes. Keep it simple and efficient, that’s our motto!
What is an affiliate marketing program?
Affiliates are people who will promote a brand’s products and receive a % of remuneration on each sale they make.
Affiliate marketing is a web marketing method where sellers promote their products and services through affiliates and pay commissions based on their sales. In actual sales, it is the same system as the storage vendor. This is a system widely used by big brands like Amazon, Fnac, and Cdiscount, but also and increasingly by small web nuggets like Waalaxy. 😍
What’s cool is that any structure, no matter how big or small, can set up an affiliate program to attract more customers, and anyone with a self-employed status can be an affiliate.
How to start affiliate marketing with no money ?
The affiliate program consists of three parts.
- Advertiser: as the name suggests, this is a person who wishes to sell and promote a product or service. They offer to promote their offer to their affiliate partner and pay them a commission on all sales made.
- Affiliates: Individuals, blogs, or websites that generate traffic. He advertises the seller and receives a commission for all sales made.
- Buyer: Internet user who navigates on a partner’s site, validates the partner’s offer, and clicks on a link to order the corresponding product or service. Thanks to this Internet user, the affiliate has just received money from the seller.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the promotion of a product, that of a brand.
🚨 In practice, we add a tracked link to our publications. Each person who passes through this link is identified as a buyer you brought back, and therefore, you earn the commission. This link is super important. Without it, you can’t prove that the customer is coming because of you, and you can’t get your precious commission.
💰 To practice affiliate marketing you can use several techniques that are more or less simple to implement:
- Use social networks like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn = create a network and offer several products of the brands you have a contract with. 📳
Here is the example of Jenn Im, an Instagram Influencer, who has many contracts with big brands. 
- Have a website that you are trying to drive traffic to = usually through SEO or SEA. 💻
Here you can see the NYTimes site, which is an Amazon affiliate and lists thousands of items from Amazon. Their goal is to get you to go through their website so that you end up on Amazon doing your shopping.
On the link that leads you to the Amazon site, you can see the seller’s ID. That’s how Amazon knows the buyer went through the affiliate’s site. 👇 
- Contact targeted profiles directly using social network messaging & SMS = Usually, you find the contact information through a mail finder, or contact finder, then write your personalized messages based on your target. 🎯
We’ve all received this kind of message that promises us worlds and wonders on the networks. Personally, I think that the acquisition channel is not bad, but the affiliation technique should be reviewed. But we’ll get into the details later. 😜
Affiliate marketing for beginners
As a affiliate marketer, you act as a middleman between the merchant and the consumer.
Here are some key steps 🔑 to get started with affiliate marketing as a beginner :
- 👀 Choose a niche : select a niche that you are interested in or knowledgeable about. This will make it easier for you to create content and promote relevant products.
- 🛠️ Build a platform : this will serve as your platform to create content and promote affilate products, through a website, blog, or social media channels.
- 🌟 Create quality content : this can include informative blog posts, product reviews, tutorials, or videos. Your content should aim to solve problems, provide information, and engage your readers.
- 🔗 Incorporate affiliate links : these links should be placed naturally and relevantly within your content. Avoid spammy or aggressive promotion, as it may turn off your audience.
- 🔎 Track and optimize : monitor the performance of your affiliate marketing efforts using tracking tools privded by the affiliate programs or third-party software.
It requires consistent content creation, marketing efforts, and continous learning.
How to make money with affiliate marketing?
There are two types of affiliate rates:
- 🐶 1# Niche, where it is more difficult to sell but the rate is high, it makes more developed commercial capabilities.
- 👜 2# Tote, you with a low affiliate rate, but lots of things to sell, the goal is to make volume, often through an affiliate website.
A classic affiliate rate is usually between 0.5% and 1%. An affiliate rate on niche products/services starts at 20% for the most interesting ones.
The most common examples that people look for on the net are Amazon, or Facebook because they seem to be the simplest and especially because they are the most known. But they are not at all the most profitable.
The setup process requires a lot of work (creating and feeding a website) and often it is a full-time job, which certainly can pay, but only if you make high volumes of sales. So, we’ve put together some niche nuggets for you that we found in a great article from Hostinger. 👇
- SemRush (SEO analysis) > Commission rate: 40%.
- Waalaxy (multi-channel prospecting) > Commission rate 50%.
- Tripadvisor (vacation booking) > Commission rate: 50%.
- Booking.com (accommodation rental) > Commission rate 25 to 40%.
- Cheapflight (comparison and sale of flights) > Commission rate 65%.
Zoom in on the best affiliations
This little top 5 is going to let you know how to choose the right affiliate before you start.
Affiliate with SemRush
You need to sell a marketing tool that allows you to do SEO. Your targets are mainly on LinkedIn.
Target 🎯 = marketers, B2b, web writers, SEO agencies.
Your communication channels will be:
- Creation of a website dedicated to SEO (Optional),
- Creation of a Newsletter dedicated to SEO (Optional),
- Personal branding + LinkedIn communication,
- Sending automated messages on LinkedIn but also by mail.
Highlights.
🚨 Clearly, your stakes are going to be to define yourself as an expert on the subject, if you recommend this tool, you should be trusted. It starts with a strong branding strategy and social proof.
It will be much easier if you already have one or more websites, that you have worked in a communication agency, that you are familiar with this field…
But be careful, nothing is impossible, start with zero experience… some people do it every day, why not you 😉
Affiliate marketing with Waalaxy
Here you need to sell a LinkedIn + Multi-channel prospecting tool. The Waalaxy offer includes,
- A CRM for managing prospects,
- Lots of automation to get new customers: auto-import, advanced searches, message templates,
- A contact finder to find the emails and phone numbers of LinkedIn prospects.
- Automatic and simplified sending of prospecting emails.
Target 🎯 = Salespeople, B2b marketers, Freelancers, HR, CEOs, and startup launchers.
Your communication channels will be:
- Creation of a website dedicated to prospecting on LinkedIn (Optional),
- Creation of a dedicated youtube page (Optional but recommended).
- Personal branding + LinkedIn communication,
- Sending automated messages on LinkedIn but also by email.
Affiliation with Tripadvisor (Awin)
Awin is the affiliation program of Tripadvisor. It only concerns hotels, for which you earn at least 50% commission on visits.
The big advantage is that you don’t need to push for sales, you get paid when users click through to Tripadvisor’s hotel booking partners, whether they book or not. Awin gives you all the resources you need to get started: banners, photos, etc. In this case, we are talking about Btoc customers. That is to say, they are natural persons and not companies that you are targeting.
Target 🎯 = Individuals, between 25 and 65 years old, middle to the upper class.
You can set up:
- Creation of a website dedicated to travel,
- Creation of a Newsletter dedicated to traveling,
- Personal branding + communication on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Sending automated messages on Instagram and Facebook.
❌The biggest downside to this offer is that you have to do what’s called “volume”, meaning you have to find thousands of interested people to make money from it. So creating a blog and a newsletter are not optional here.
Affiliate with Booking.com
At Booking, you can be an affiliate for any type of reservation: hotels, houses, trains, cabins… Again, this will be a similar offer to Tripadvisor. You can set up :
- Creation of a website dedicated to travel,
- Creation of a Newsletter and/or transactional messages dedicated to travel,
- Personal branding + communication on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Automated message sending on Instagram and Facebook.
Commissions are lower, but you have more options in the type of product to sell and therefore, your target is wider. It’s up to you to see what you prefer. 😜
Target 🎯 = B2c, between 18 and 65 years old, middle class, and affluent.
Affiliation with Cheapflights
On their site, you basically see “75% commission”. Then when you look up the details, you realize it’s more like:
- 1. 0.45 per click from a computer or tablet
- 2. 0.25 per click from a phone.
Again, like the previous two: you have to do the volume of visits and not direct sales.
Conclusion: How does affiliate marketing work?
As you have understood, we have shown you two very distinct types of affiliation:
- 🎯 Affiliate rather than B2b = Your goal is to sell, you have real interactions with prospects and you create a multi-channel strategy.
- 🎯 The affiliation rather than B2c = Your objective is to get clicks. You’re going to have to create a website, feed it and develop SEO.
It’s up to you to choose what speaks to you the most. To begin with, I think that doing BtoB is much simpler because you learn the mechanics of affiliation and especially because the income is more easily achievable with the right technique. In a second step, you can cumulate both types of acquisition, and create one or more blogs. 🤑
How do you do affiliate marketing witgh no money without a website?
So it’s quite natural that I go to my preferred option = how to do affiliate marketing without a website. Well, the first step is to choose the right affiliate offer, the one that fits your need, with achievable goals without a website. I will give you 5 methods that will cost you only a few euros per month maximum and that will allow you to start without a website.
Personal Branding
The first thing to do is to define strong personal branding. ✊
- Who are you?
- Why did you become what you are?
- What do you sell?
- Why do you sell it?
- What is your legitimacy/ expertise?
To start your personal branding, the best playground is LinkedIn. You can observe strong profiles and get inspired. Then you’ll have to make your profile perfect to gain the trust of your new connections. For that, here’s the info. 👇
To see a great example of good personal branding on LinkedIn, we invite you to subscribe to Toinon. The master of a million views on the network. 😜
Content strategy
Yes, content strategy is pretty much inevitable.
If you’re selling in B2B, you need to leverage LinkedIn as the gateway through which prospects go to generate revenue. It’s your landing page, it’s the blog you don’t have. 🔥
But don’t worry, it’s not as difficult or time-consuming as it sounds. In fact, there is an editorial technique. Only one. That works. You publish 3 times a week, defining 3 types of audience from the least precise to the most precise, you stay regular and you make sure to bring varied content.
- ❌ No overly commercial content, or you’ll lose your audience fast.
- ✅ Monitoring is the best way to find new ideas for LinkedIn posts.
- ❌ Don’t copy competitors’ content, it will show!
You slip in some helpful tips once a week that allow you to quote the brand you’re selling, and add your affiliate link in the comments. 😜 Here’s some key info. 👇
To see the entire content strategy it’s this way. 🤙
Direct messages
Now that you have a great LinkedIn profile and are posting on the network, you want to take the next step. Find contacts faster. 🤑 As an affiliate, you have more of a free hand on how you generate new customers. That doesn’t mean you have to try everything and do anything. On the contrary, it’s best to make sure you have the right sales methods in place.
Direct messages, these are LinkedIn messages that you send automatically to your prospects.
There is a LinkedIn offer that charges you for this option, but with Waalaxy it’s 100% free. 🤓 You can target, and send connection requests and messages in a fully automated way.
Discover Waalaxy 🪐In the tool, there are also message templates to help you get started. Here are some more resources you need:
- How do you segment your search on LinkedIn?
- How to launch Waalaxy?
Nurturing
One of the key questions in the affiliate marketing (and even prospecting in general) is where do I find my contacts, my target audience, and the future buyers of the products I sell? 💰
LinkedIn is one answer for sure, but it’s not enough to know the LinkedIn profile of a potential buyer. We need more than that to sell. 🤑 We need his contacts and sometimes, phone numbers.
Enrichment is getting more information about a contact through an external tool that automates the data search.
Thanks to this tool, you will be able to create real prospecting files, in a totally automated way, and launch your strategy on several communication channels without it being technically complicated or time-consuming.
Multi-channel
Who says contact finder, says multichannel. This is simply the method that allows you to contact a prospect via several acquisition channels: email, SMS, calls, newsletter, social networks…
The method has developed and has become simple to implement. As an affiliate, you write a message to your prospects on LinkedIn, then if they don’t respond, (thanks to the mail finder), you can send them a follow-up message. 🥰 To succeed in these steps, we advise you to follow good sales approaches:
- 15 message templates to sell on LinkedIn.
- Create impactful prospecting emails.
Conclusion: 5 reasons to use affiliation
So in this article, you have been able to see what types of affiliation exist, how to join companies as an affiliate, and what techniques exist to do affiliation when you don’t have a blog or a website. 🎁 Now, let me give you a few good arguments to join the affiliate world:
- You can be a self-employed business owner: manage your hours, your free time, and your clients.
- You have no obligation: if you want to change affiliation you can, no one puts pressure on your results.
- You can accumulate benefits: You can sell products for a brand, launch your project, and be employed in another company, all at the same time.
- You can really make money: the better you are, the more money you make. If you can create real personal branding, you can earn a lot more money than as an employee.
- You have nothing to lose: The only person between you and your dreams is yourself. If you want to go for it, go for it. You can’t lose money (at worst, you won’t make any 😂).
User questions
In this part, we will list the frequent questions from our users, if you have any more, contact us via chat.
How can I become an affiliate with LinkedIn?
To do affiliation with LinkedIn, you just have to take maximum advantage of the network. You also need to sell the right product/service, preferably in B2b. That is:
- Create a personalized profile,
- Use personal branding,
- Have a content strategy,
- Use direct messages,
- Find the emails of your prospects (emails finder),
- Create contact through multi-channel.
These are very simple methods to implement. Just read the article and the little guides offered along with it. 🥰
What is the best site to do affiliate marketing?
I wouldn’t be doing my job right if I didn’t tell you that Waalaxy was the best. After that, the question is more complex than that. If you already have two travel sites, I would redirect you to sites like Booking. If you have an e-commerce, then why not Amazon affiliate?
But if you’re starting from scratch and have a little appetite for B2b, then Semrush and Waalaxy are good examples to get started the right way. 👽
How to do affiliate marketing on the internet?
If you already have a blog and want to do affiliate marketing on it, then there is a simple way to do it:
- You must have visitors on your site (work on natural referencing and paid SEA),
- Your visitors must correspond to the advertiser‘s target. To do this, add regular content around their theme, creating a quantifiable editorial schedule.
- Then, you must create banners in the different formats requested.
- Then, update your affiliate program, at least once a month: special promotions, and new deals.
Pay per click = The more visitors you have, the more people click on your links and therefore you earn money as an affiliate.
How to create an affiliate link?
Affiliate links are essential tools in your strategy. Without them, you risk not being paid. Usually, the affiliate company provides you with the link, as is the case with Waalaxy.
- You go to your affiliate platform,
- You click on “Manage my links”,
- Generate.
And there you have your link. 🥳
Discover the ambassador programAnd there you have it, you now how to start affiliate marketing with no money, but also the methods and steps to not go wrong with your choice of advertisers. We hope you enjoyed the article and that you would soon become rich through affiliate marketing programs. 😜
