10 Ways to Do Affiliate Marketing without a Website or a Blog in 2020? (And Why it Is Dangerous)

Thinking that building an affiliate website might take lots of money and time and looking for ways on how to do affiliate marketing without a website or a blog?

Is it even possible to make money with affiliate marketing without creating a blog and getting traffic through seo?

You are in the right place!

To answer you on this question, yes, you can make money affiliate marketing without creating a website, and I will mentioned below ten different ways that you can utilize in order to make this happen and start your journey with affiliate marketing today.

However, be aware that doing this, even though it can save you some time and money at the beginning, but it also comes with some limitations and it comes with a price that you might discover later down the road, which might make doing affiliate marketing without a website or a niche blog to not be a long-term strategy.

I will explaining everything in this article, so, stick with me until the end.

 

But for now, let’s start with the ways on how to start affiliate marketing without a website or a blog:

10 Ways to Do Affiliate Marketing without a Website or a Blog in 2020

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There are many was that you can follow in order to start affiliate marketing without a website that can bring faster results at the beginning, and here are the top ten methods:

1 -YouTube Affiliate Marketing

Starting a YouTube channel (Vlog) might probably be the best alternative for doing affiliate marketing without a blog or a website.

And the reason for that is that YouTube is a search engine and is a content publishing platform, which means that the video content that you put there can be found by people actively looking for information about the topics that you are creating videos around.

This means that people are looking for the content you are creating with the intent of doing something with it now (and maybe purchasing what you recommend through your affiliate link), and you don’t have to push it in front of them like it is with Facebook for example.

And YouTube videos, if optimized well for SEO, can rank fast on both YouTube and Google and can bring eyes to your affiliate promotions even faster that it is with a blog, but this method also comes with the risk of creating your own business on a platform that you don’t own, which makes it risky on the long run.

I have written a complete guide on how to do YouTube affiliate marketing, which will walk you in a step-by-step on how to find content ideas and how to optimize your videos for SEO, but one of the major points that you need to follow is that you need to make your YT channel specialized in one niche or topic in order to gain loyal followers and to get YouTube’s trust and traffic.

You can create either list-based videos, informational videos or reviews videos and recommend products through your affiliate links in the description area of each video, but probably one of the most effective types of videos are the “How to” based videos where you explain how to do a certain activity or how to use a certain tool that you promote.

2 – Promoting Affiliate Products Through Pinterest

Here comes another great way of making money as an affiliate without a website that I like the most after YouTube.

The reason why I like using Pinterest as an alternative to an affiliate website is that Pinterest is also a search engine.

To be more accurate, it’s a visual search engine where people look either for products to purchase, like apparel, or for ideas like home decorations and garden.

And many people have actually expressed that they go to Pinterest with the intention of buying stuff.

And what is nice with doing affiliate marketing on Pinterest is that, unlike with using a blog or a YouTube channel, you don’t have to really create content.

What you need to do though is to be consistent in posting good imagery that is related to a certain niche or audience in order to gain targeted followers that will see your new pins whenever they login into their accounts and not only when they search for something.

And like it is with YouTube and with blogging for affiliate marketing, you need to use the keywords that your audience use when they search for stuff in your niche, and name your pins with these keywords so that people will find your pins when they look for stuff on Pinterest or even on Google.

You can use keyword tools like Jaaxy that offers a free plan in order to find the most search terms in your niche and use them with your pins.

You need to use eye-catching, high quality images for your pins, and in some pins, you can place an affiliate link to the product that you are promoting that takes people to the platform where they can buy it, such as Amazon for example.

The downfall though of using Pinterest as a method of doing affiliate marketing without a blog is that, once again, like it is with YouTube, you build your entire business on a platform that you don’t own, which leaves you with the risk of losing your entire business overnight in case that you get your account closed permanently due to some policy violation.

Another issue is that Pinterest have audience concentrated in certain countries, demographics and niches, and it is usually better for promoting physical products that has good imagery.

3 – Facebook Groups

And I say groups and not pages, because posts on Facebook groups tend to have a better reach and engagements than posts on pages.

Probably the reason for that is that Facebook groups seem to be a more “social” environment than the pages because the owner of the group create posts with his own personal profile instead of using the business page.

Also, with Facebook groups, you can allow others to post their questions or posts through their personal profiles, which makes the FB groups feel more social, which is the intent from using social networks in the first place.

What you need to do is that you need to build an audience in your niche and keep educating them and help them find solutions to their problems and engage with them on regular basis in order to keep them loyal to you.

Here is an example from how a great affiliate marketer, the owner of Savage Affiliates course, engages with his followers on his Facebook groups and promotes to them, from time to time, either his own products or affiliate products that would help them in certain areas.

The downfall though with doing affiliate marketing through FB groups instead of websites or blogs is again, that you don’t really own the group since Facebook can close it anytime due to some policy violation issue.

Also, different from Pinterest & YouTube, Facebook isn’t really considered to be a search engine, meaning that people don’t use it actively in order to search for information or for products to buy like they do with Google, YouTube and Pinterest, where yours posts, pins and videos can accumulate and get more traffic on the long run.

With Facebook groups, there are two main issues:

1. You need to keep posting regularly in order to reach your audience, and you won’t reach most of your audience most of the time.
2. The posts that you publish to your audience on Facebook might be of interest to them, but they might need to buy what you promote right now, because they are not actively searching for it. There’s no strong buyer intention like with search engines.

4 – Affiliate Marketing On Instagram

You can use Instagram instead of a website for doing affiliate marketing in some niches that have audience on Instagram.

Mainly, Instagram affiliate marketing is good in passionate niches such as Yoga, fashion & beauty, and other niches. And it can also work well in industries that are of interest to Instagram followers such as weight loss and fitness.

Depending on your niche, you can either promote physical products, such as fitness gear, nutrition products or apparel, or you can promote digital products such as online courses, ebooks or recipes.

What is different with Instagram affiliate marketing is that you can’t post any link to an external website in your posts.

Instead, you can only post one link at a time in the description of your profile, which would be the affiliate link to what you promote.

This means that, different from other methods of doing affiliate marketing without a blog mentioned above, you can only promote one product as an affiliate at a time.

This is in addition to the fact that Instagram is good for affiliate marketing in some niches and not in every niche.

Add to that the fact that Instagram, although it’s a visual platform like Pinterest, but it is not used as a search engine but rather as a social platform, which means that your posts have the chance to be shown to some of your followers for a couple of hours or days mainly.

And like with Facebook, you need to keep posting on Instagram in order to keep reaching your audience.

The nice thing about Instagram is that you can reach more people other than your followers through using popular hashtags in your industry.

But the major downfall, like it is with the previous methods, is that you don’t own Instagram and you have no control over your reach or even over the existence of your account, which makes it risky on the long run to rely on Instagram for doing affiliate marketing without a website.

5 – Affiliate Marketing On Forums

Forums might be old school, but they are still alive.

There are general forums that have sub-forums in many niches, but there are also industry forums that specialise in certain topics.

You can find forums in your niche using Google search by typing the name of your niche and the word “forum” beside it, like it is with this example where I found fishing related forums.

What you need to do here is that you need to connect with others and help them answer their questions and solve their problems, and maybe create helpful threads where you explain how they can do a certain activity.

And through the process, you might sometimes promote affiliate products that might help them in solving their problems or improving their lives.

Be careful though not to spam and not to keep selling on people. Your role as a legitimate and successful affiliate is to help others, and through the process, you can make money by promoting what people in your niche need and what would really help them.

What is nice about relying on forums instead of websites for affiliate marketing is that the content on forums can rank search engines and can appear on Google when someone is looking for what is in that content, which might work better than Instagram for example on the long, as each thread or answer you put on a forum can stay there and get traffic for a long time.

The downfall is that, once again, you don’t own the forum and you have no control about how long it your content will remain there, or even for how long the forum will exist.

6 – Email Campaigns

This is probably one of the most effective methods on the long run for doing affiliate marketing outside your website.

The nice about using email for doing affiliate marketing is that you can reach your subscribers whenever you want, and you almost no external party have control over your email list.

Be careful though that you need not to spam your list with constant promotions everyday without providing value.

You need to send helpful email messages on consistent basis more than you promote affiliate products so that people engage with your emails and stay on your list.

Also, you need to be careful of the wording of your email messages as many email service provides that your list subscribers use, such as Google for example, might mark some emails as spam if they contain some keywords that are used by spammers, or if they contain lots of affiliate links.

Also, using email marketing for doing affiliate marketing without building a niche website has its own disadvantages, such as the fact the building a list without a website is difficult and cost lots of money to do buy using solo ads or other methods.

In addition to that, people who join your list from places other than your website are less likely to know you and to trust you as people who join your list through your own website or blog, which means that you making money with affiliate marketing through email and without a website can be more difficult than doing it with an email list that was collected through your own website.

7 – E-Books, PDF Guides & Checklists

The is one of the most subtle and under-utilized methods for doing affiliate marketing without a blog.

Using a keyword tool, you can find what people look for in order to download as an ebook or a pdf, whether free or paid.

You can research and create what people are looking for, like if you were to write content for a blog, and you can place affiliate links inside the guides, ebooks or lists that you create.

For example, you can create an seo checklist and inside it, you can recommend a certain keyword tool or SEO software through your own affiliate link.

Or you can create a guide on how to do measurements or testing on equipment, and you can recommend the necessary tools through your affiliate link that will take the readers to where they can purchase them online.

What you need to do is to find a place where you can upload the document you created such as Dropbox or a PLR website, and then you can link to it through one of the platforms mentioned above such as: Facebook, forums, emails, …etc.

The downfall with this method is that you can’t control these documents after people download them, which means that if a certain product that you promote expires, or if your affiliate link is changed by the product owner, then the old affiliate link on the document won’t work anymore and you won’t make money with it.

While if you have your content on your website, then you can change the affiliate link or even the whole product at any time you want.

8 – Affiliate Marketing On Quora & Other Q&A Platforms

Question and Answer based platforms are interactive platforms where people look for help.

This is similar to forums, but Q&A platforms such as Quora might have categories that belong to almost every niche, and they are probably more popular than many industry forums.

You can use the Q&A platforms in the same technique used with industry forums in order to make money with affiliate marketing without a website, and you need to follow the roles on each platform and help others before you promote anything as an affiliate instead of spamming your links everywhere.

And again, the downfall of relying on Quora and other Q&A platforms for marking money with affiliate marketing without a blog or website is that you don’t own the platform and you can control the existence of your content on this platform, or even the existence of your profile itself.

9 – Reddit For Affiliate Marketing

Reddit has communities (sub-Reddits) in almost every niche or even sub-niche.

And using Reddit for doing affiliate marketing is not an easy method as the sub-reddits have admins and every sub-reddit has its own roles that you have to follow before you post anything there.

Some of them ban affiliate links completely and might ban your account if you violate their roles.

If you want to be successful with affiliate marketing without a website using Reddit, then make sure that you first read the rules of the sub-reddits you join and abide by them.

And even if they allow you to post links to external websites (affiliate links in this case), then make sure that you don’t just place your link in the thread and leave.

What you need to do is to constantly help others in the sub-reddit with their problems and give killer answers to their questions and solutions to their problems and promote useful and relevant products only when necessary, and not in every answer that you put.

10 – Paid Ads For Affiliate Marketing (Google & Bing Ads)

Opposite to the common misconception that you cannot using raw affiliate links with paid ads on the major ad platforms such as Google, Bing and others without using a bridge page, you can actually direct link affiliate products with these ad networks.

However, there are some conditions in order to do affiliate marketing with paid ads and without a website through direct linking, and these conditions are different from one platform to another.

For example, you cannot use the redirect type of affiliate links that show a certain domain name at the beginning, but after you click on them, they take people to another domain name or URL.

For example, if you were to promote ClickBank products with paid ads without a website, you cannot use the affiliate link (ClickBank hop link) as a destination URL in the ad, because after people click on it, they will get redirected to a different URL.

The right way of using direct linking for affiliate links on search ads:

You need to find the final URL of the affiliate product and place it as the “destination URL” while creating the ad, and you get the affiliate link and place it in the “tracking link” field while creating the ad.

This way, people will see in advance the same URL that they would visit after they click on the ad, and the tracking link will activate the affiliate tracking cookie in order to credit you for the sale if it happens.

Also, there might be other conditions related to the landing page itself that needs to comply with Google and Bing policies.

For example, landing pages that look spammy or scammy will get disapproved, or landing pages that contain thin content, or pages that only contain a signup form without providing any value, or pages that claim to provide miracle cures for some health issues, …etc.

Also, you need to follow the affiliate program rules such as not targeting the brand name as a keyword in your ad campaigns.

So, these were ten of the ten best methods that you can utilize in order to potentially make money with affiliate marketing without creating your own website or blog, and probably start getting results in a shorter period of time.

However, there are many limitations and risks in building an affiliate marketing marketing without having your own website or blog, which I will explain now.

 

The Risk In Doing Affiliate Marketing Without A Blog Or Website

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1 – You Build Your Business On Platforms That You Don’t Own

As explained above, you can promote an affiliate link without a website in different ways, but building an affiliate marketing business on third party platforms without having your own website or blog makes you vulnerable to the risk of losing your entire business overnight due to closing your account, YouTube Channel, Facebook Groups, ….etc. at any time due to what could be a violation of their policies, copy rights laws, …etc.

While if you have your own website or blog where you create quality content and where you promote products as an affiliate, then no one can take your website away from you as you own it.

And this way, yo can get the organic traffic from search engines on the long run, and you can also use the platforms mentioned above and other methods as ways of increasing the traffic to your blog for free.

This a more long-term approach of doing affiliate marketing compared to doing affiliate marketing without your own website or blog.

2 – Limitations From Affiliate Programs

Every affiliate program has its own terms and conditions that you need to follow.

For example, some affiliate programs requires you to have a website with quality content in order to allow you to promote their products as an affiliate.

Other programs might allow you to promote their products through YouTube or Pinterest without having a website, like Amazon Associates for example, which is one of the best affiliate programs that don’t require a website and might accept your request to join them if you have a quality content and good following on Facebook, Pinterest or YouTube.

Other programs might not allow you to use paid ads to direct link to their websites, but some affiliate programs like ClickBank allow you to use PPC (Pay Per Click) ads in order to promote their products as an affiliate without a website.

Some programs allow forum or social media marketing, and some don’t. And so on.

This means that you limit your options when you don’t have a website in order to do affiliate marketing.

3 – Limitations From The Publishing Platforms & Ad Networks

As explained above, every publishing platform such as: YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, …etc. or even paid ad network has its own rules and conditions.

Some of them won’t allow you to use affiliate links at all, some will allow you to use affiliate links without cloaking, some will not allow the redirect links type, some will disapprove certain kinds of landing pages, and so on.

And this, again, will limit your options to promoting certain products and will limit your reach to your audience when you want to make money affiliate marketing without a website.

4 – You Don’t Build A Brand Without A Website

You need to make people trust you if you want to make money with affiliate marketing on consistent basis.

And this is difficult without a website.

Investing in building your own affiliate marketing website, although it doesn’t cost that much to have one, can show people that you know what you are talking about and that you are building a respectful business and you can be trusted with your promotions.

And more, as mentioned earlier, with your own website you can build a responsive email list that will be glad to hear from you on frequent basis.

5 – Affiliate Marketing Without A Website Is Not Feasible On The Long Run

In other words: how much money can you make doing affiliate marketing without a website?

This is related to all the methods mentioned earlier.

You might make this month a couple of thousands of dollars with affiliate marketing, and zero dollars the next month!

Not only that you don’t own the platforms that you will use, which might stop your presence on the overnight, but also, many of them, like Facebook and Instagram are not considered search engines, and they only show the most recent content to their users, which means that you posted there last month or even last week might not be of use anymore.

However, using a website where you have your quality content allow you to reach people at any time through search engines.

And the more content you create on your affiliate blog, the more people you could reach on the long run.

This, with time, allows you to create a passive business that doesn’t require your constant presence like it is with social media where you need to keep posting everyday.

These five risks should let you understand why it is crucial that you have your own website, although it is not a must and you can really make money with affiliate marketing without a website or a blog.

And now you might be saying to yourself:

But I don’t Know Coding Or Anything About Websites!

And you will never have to!

Actually creating a website today is much easier that it has ever been.

At my recommended platform to learn affiliate marketing, Wealthy Affiliate, you can literally start your own affiliate marketing website in 30 seconds with their amazing website builder like I show in this article.

You don’t need to know anything technical, nor you need to have any prior experience with websites.

What you need to do is to research your niche and create helpful content for your audience where you can promote products as an affiliate.

Another question you might have now:

What Kind Of Website Do I Need For Affiliate Marketing?

A simple WordPress website is all what you need in order to start doing affiliate marketing the right & sustainable way.

WordPress is an easy-to-use software or content management system that you can use in order to create and publish text-based content and to optimize it for search engines.

Working with the technical side of websites is not what you need to learn in order to succeed as an affiliate.

What you need to learn is how to deal affiliate marketing as a real business that provides value to others and makes you money through the process.

And Where Can I Learn How To Do Affiliate Marketing With A Website?

Don’t worry! I got you covered.

I will recommend to you here the best place to learn affiliate marketing the right way through building your own website in order to make your efforts pay on the long run instead of doing affiliate marketing without a website.

Wealthy Affiliate is the place to go if you want to build a long term affiliate marketing business.

This is where I learned affiliate marketing the right way, and this is why I recommend it to you!

At WA, you will learn affiliate marketing in a step-by-step, easy to follow training where you will be able to start from scratch until you build your income-generating affiliate marketing website.

At Wealthy Affiliate, you will learn the following:

• How to research and find a profitable niche for your affiliate marketing website.
• How to create your own affiliate marketing website in under a minute with no technical knowledge.
• How to research and find content ideas to write about through finding long-tail keywords for seo that will bring you organic traffic from Google.
• How to create quality content on your website that helps others and makes you money through the process.
• How to find good affiliate programs that you can join in order to promote their products.
• How to deal with your WordPress website and optimize it in order to convert visitors into buyers who will make you money as an affiliate.
• And much more.

Even better, at this recommended platform you will get all the tools that you need in order to do your research, create content, create your website and manage it, all in one place for no extra cost.

Not to mentioned the great community of 1.5 million online entrepreneurs like yourself that are willing to support you along the way.

Want more, this platform, Wealthy Affiliate, offers a free plan to start with before you risk any money.

And the free plan will provide you with the first ten lessons that will allow you to understand how affiliate marketing exactly works.

Even if you still want to do affiliate marketing without a website or a blog, you can still benefit from the training here in order to know how the whole process of affiliate marketing works.

So, if you are ready to learn the affiliate marketing process with or without a website, then read my review about Wealthy Affiliate in order to learn more about this platform and get at least the free membership where you can get the basics to start with. No credit card required.

 

Conclusion – Can You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing Without A Website Or A Blog?

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Yes, you can make money affiliate marketing without a blog or a website with the ten different methods mentioned above, but it is not a long-term strategy, and it comes with many risks and limitations as mentioned earlier.

You can still use the methods I mentioned above in order to promote affiliate links without a website and probably make money, but if you want the long-term, sustainable approach, then you need to create a WordPress website where you can publish quality content that makes you money on the long run.

This is the best way to do affiliate marketing and create a sustainable income with this model instead of just doing affiliate marketing without a website that you own.

If you want to learn it, then join my recommended platform where you can learn and start your affiliate marketing the right way and without technical knowledge TODAY.

==>> Click here to learn more about Wealthy Affiliate through my detailed review!

And if you still have questions about how to make money affiliate marketing without a website, or if you have other methods that you use in order to promote affiliate links without a website and you think that they deserve to be added to this article, then please, feel free to add them in the comments’ section below and I will be coming back to you asap 🙂

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