Many people ask us if you really need a website to make money from affiliate marketing.
In this article, I’m going to explore the opportunities and limitations of being an affiliate without a website.
Affiliate earnings without a website
Basically, there are already ways to earn money with affiliate marketing without a website. After all, it is particularly important that enough internet users see the affiliate link and that as many as possible click on it, e.g. to buy something.
However, it is not possible without reach, so you do not need a website, but other marketing channels to reach your audience and promote the affiliate marketing links.
Marketing Channels
Social networks are a good way to bring affiliate links to many users. If you have a profile with many fans, you can always add a well-suited affiliate link. But of course, you shouldn’t overdo it and mark the link accordingly.
Whether affiliate links are allowed or forbidden on a particular social network varies. However, I keep seeing affiliate links on well-known networks.
It’s similar on Twitter. If you have a lot of followers, you can definitely be successful with an affiliate link. But here, too, it must be clear that it is an affiliate link. Also, don’t overdo it here.
Forums are in themselves a very good way to find the right target group, but you have to be particularly careful here. The forum rules should allow affiliate links and even then you should only very rarely and only if it really fits, build an affiliate link. Otherwise, forum users can react very angrily.
A paid option is advertising on other blogs/websites. The advertising banner has the affiliate link as the URL. Of course, you have to measure that you earn more with the affiliate link than the banner costs. In addition, not all affiliate programs allow this method.
It looks even more critical with AdWords. There are different statements even in the Google forums. Some say it’s legal to include an affiliate link as a destination URL in AdWords. Others see this as forbidden. In addition, many affiliate program providers prohibit such distribution of affiliate links. So, bottom line, I would advise against it.
Which affiliate providers are suitable for this?
It is very difficult to make a general statement here. You should take a close look at the desired partner programs and read the regulations about what is allowed and what is not.
In principle, however, it is rather difficult, since when you register with most partner programs and affiliate networks, you have to specify a website on which you want to place the banner. Without a website, you are usually not activated for a partner program.
Amazon offers the possibility of publishing an affiliate link directly on Twitter or its YouTube channel, but when registering with Amazon PartnerNet you must specify at least one website or channel. For example, you can enter your Twitter channel name or your YouTube channel here.
Clickbank is supposed to work well without a website, although I haven’t had much experience with it so far.
In the long run, a website makes sense
So there are basically a few ways to earn money with affiliate marketing without a website. However, these are rather rare and of course, you still need a certain range to get enough clicks and then conversions on your affiliate links.
Nowadays it has become relatively easy to create your own website and integrate your affiliate links there via content marketing. For example, there are many website builders that allow beginners to create their own websites, such as Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com, or Blogger.
But there is also the possibility to create a self-hosted WordPress website. The barriers are no longer so high and you will find many practical instructions on how to create your own WordPress website yourself. > Instructions Here <
The bottom line is, in my experience, it’s easier and safer to build your own affiliate website. It does take some time, but you have a lot more options there and you own the site and you’re not dependent on a social network or anything like that.
Earn money without a website – Advantages
Working as an affiliate without a website has the following advantages:
- You only need your affiliate link to start marketing – no major prep work needs to be done to get started.
- You don’t have to invest months and years of work in your own website to build visitors.
- You don’t have to deal with SEO and you don’t have to worry about being pushed out by the competition and taking appropriate measures in good time.
- You don’t need to write elaborate articles to get free traffic from search engines.
- You do not need any know-how about the affiliate product, because your job is only to lead a prospect to the landing page where he can buy something.
- You don’t have to commit to working on a website for a long period of time and building it from scratch, which can take months or years.
From the advantages, you can see that you can save a lot of time and work by not having a website in order to earn money as an affiliate as quickly as possible. You’re just taking the resources the internet has to offer and trying to convert those resources into commissions.
Earn money without a website – Disadvantages
Of course, there are also some disadvantages of not having a website as an affiliate, these would be:
- Hardly any stable income is possible and you have to continuously distribute the affiliate link so that commissions can flow.
- You don’t have your own foundation that you can rely on and even improve and tweak to make even more money.
- There is no way to gain free and sometimes very high-quality visitors through SEO.
- Reputational risk. Affiliates who distribute their advertising links on other websites are often attacked as spammers and advertisers and are generally not well received, especially on community websites.
- If you do without a website, it is hardly possible to build up an affiliate income that can replace a real job.
The disadvantages are mainly related to the fact that you don’t have a solid basis as an affiliate to make money in the long term. You’re forever dependent on others accepting your ads and helping you attract and monetize prospects.
Some ideas to make money as an affiliate without a website
If you decide to work without a website to make money as an affiliate, I have a few ideas for you on how to get started – but you can already expect a lot of work and a long learning curve:
- Place click advertising (PPC) – if you want to successfully earn money as an affiliate without a website, you definitely have to get used to clicking advertising, also known as PPC advertising. This allows you to simply “buy” interested parties and take them straight to the target page – it couldn’t be faster.
- Forums and community websites – I still use forums and communities to advertise. However, I do a lot in the respective community and make myself useful there. I help other users, give them tips, and only then do I set my affiliate link, which is also helpful for the community.
- Offer your own newsletter – you could use a newsletter as an affiliate to make money, and you can do that even without your own website. You use a professional email marketing service, create a landing page with an integrated signup form, and bring interested readers to the list. You can then send relevant information to the list on a weekly basis and also recommend products from time to time.
- Comments on other websites – if you try to put your affiliate link directly as a website address in the comments form, you will often get a rejection. Although some such comments are activated and can generate prospects and commissions for years, I would not use comments directly with an affiliate link.
- Publish documents – you can publish documents on specialized websites and of course place the affiliate link there is a clearly visible place. This still works very well today, but you have to optimize the documents for search engines.
- Publish videos – today many affiliates without a website earn a lot of money with videos. All you need is a YouTube channel and you can post useful content and product recommendations in video form there to earn money as an affiliate.
- Use creativity – last but not least we have healthy creativity. An affiliate without creativity is not a good affiliate! You can place ads on your car, but you have to find a sponsor beforehand, advertise an energy drink on both sides of your t-shirt and often show yourself in gamers’ communities, etc. Get creative and find ways to earn commissions from affiliate programs without a website.
If you don’t want to build your own websites, you’ll need to use other websites to tap into their visitors. You depend on other websites and will need to “use” them to convert their visitors into commissions.
Conclusion
You can do without a website and still earn money as an affiliate. You even have some advantages, for example, you don’t have to work on the site for years, fill it with fresh content every week and give it a lot of attention.
However, if you plan to earn money as an affiliate in the long term, like many other affiliates and myself, you will have to use one or more websites as a basis to build up a high and stable affiliate income – there are hardly any better options.
I have been using my own websites for years and these days I mostly create niche sites or blogs with a lot of information content, which in addition to information also recommend paid affiliate products. Such sites work best for me and should work well for other affiliates as well.