If you’ve ever bought something an influencer recommended online, you were likely a recipient of affiliate marketing. In this form of marketing, online creators build partnerships with brands to promote the brand’s products and services. In return, they earn a commission for each sale made.
Affiliate marketing is a growing industry. Some analysts expect affiliate marketing spending to reach $16 billion by 2028.
However, the problem for many beginner affiliate marketers is the upfront cost, including buying a domain name, hosting a website, building an audience, and learning expert tactics. So, the question is: Can you start an affiliate marketing business for free?
The short answer is yes. Learn how to make money online with affiliate marketing and get a step-by-step tutorial on how to get started.
How does affiliate marketing work?
Affiliate marketing program payments vary. Some pay commissions, some offer fixed bonuses, and others provide free products or services. Examples of affiliate marketing programs include the Shopify Affiliate Program and Amazon Affiliates.
With time and hard work, successful affiliate marketing can turn your side hustle into a profitable business venture.
Looking to make money as an affiliate marketer? Here are the commission rates and payout details for the best affiliate programs.
How to start affiliate marketing
- Find a niche
- Choose an affiliate program
- Select a traffic source
- Create content to build trust
- Grow an audience
- Send traffic to your links
- Engage with your audience
- Track your results
Becoming an affiliate marketer can seem like a big undertaking. Here are eight steps to get you started.
1. Find a niche
The best way to succeed in affiliate marketing is by choosing a niche, or a topic you’ll become an authority on. A niche is valuable when getting started in affiliate marketing, because people might struggle to see you as a trusted expert if you’re promoting a wide range of products. Niche marketing is also helpful for search engine optimization (SEO) on social media and your affiliate website, if you choose to build one.
Some popular affiliate niches include:
- Hobbies: travel, photography, golfing, outdoors
- Money: Bitcoin, personal finance, credit cards, investing
- Health: fitness, nutrition, vegan food, weight loss, yoga, sexual wellness
- Lifestyle: luxury, airlines, fashion, jewelry
- Home: baby products, pets, plants, security
- Tech: web hosting, VPN, gaming, software
- Alternative: personal development, supplements, acupuncture and meditation, herbal remedies
So how do you choose? Start with niches that have a high chance of profitability. For example, Shopify research found that business-related programs have some of the highest commissions, while clothing, books, and media have some of the lowest:
However, these aren’t your only options, and some niches work better than others on particular platforms.
Keep in mind that affiliate marketing isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. You’ll need to have at least some personal interest in your niche to keep you going. To narrow your options, ask these questions:
- Are you curious to learn more about your niche? Keeping up with trends and industry news in your area ensures you’re relevant to your audience.
- Do you already have experience or training in a specialized area? If you’re already knowledgeable on a subject, you can flatten your learning curve.
- Is it possible to create content without upfront investment? Some niches, like technology or travel, can involve a lot of upfront costs if you don’t already have the equipment or content to start with.
- Is it profitable? It can be, but it depends on several factors. If your niche is too broad, you’ll face steep competition. If it’s too narrow, you might struggle to find an audience.
2. Choose an affiliate program
After choosing a niche, you need to decide what affiliate program to join. Choose an affiliate site or affiliate products that align with your interests.
For example, vegan fitness and lifestyle educator Derek Simnett is an affiliate marketer for plant-based protein supplements. Choosing to work with a brand that aligns with his goals and content means Derek can make affiliate income promoting products he believes in.
There are two ways of finding suitable affiliate programs within your niche: directly and through marketplaces. If you already know brands in your niche with affiliate marketing programs, you can approach them and sign up (affiliate programs are usually free to join). The other option is to join an affiliate program marketplace or affiliate network where you can browse thousands of programs and choose the one that’s best for you.
Affiliate networks offer new marketers free and easy access to thousands of reputable affiliate programs you can join right away.
Some include:
Remember to consider commission rates and earnings-per-click (EPC) rates before choosing. A relevant affiliate marketing program might have a low commission rate but a high EPC, which means it can still be a worthwhile program to join.
Looking for ways to boost your income with fewer sales? Explore high-ticket affiliate programs.
3. Select a traffic source
It’s time to start thinking about your traffic source for your affiliate marketing efforts. There are many free platforms for affiliate marketers to consider when starting out, including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. You can create an account for free on these platforms and start creating content right away.
You don’t need to become a blogger with a dedicated website (which costs money), but it may be helpful when you plan to scale the business. You can also generate affiliate income through free traffic sources, like social media platforms and forum-based sites like Reddit and Quora.
Here are a few advantages and disadvantages of each channel:
- Pros: The largest social media platform around. You can reach a big audience for your affiliate products.
- Cons: Less attractive to younger audiences. Poor organic reach.
- Pros: Highly visual, excellent for showcasing affiliate products and services. Strong emphasis on video content like Reels and Stories.
- Cons: Lower organic reach for feed posts.
YouTube
- Pros: Great for search engine optimization (SEO). Global audience of more than two billion people a month.
- Cons: Significant competition in most niches. Videos need to be professional and high quality to attract new and returning visitors and keep them engaged enough to click an affiliate link.
TikTok
- Pros: Short video clips that don’t require a “professional” look and feel. More personalized content and authentic experiences. Trends generally start on TikTok.
- Cons: Links in descriptions are not clickable. Your affiliate link will need to live on a link in bio page.
- Pros: Excellent organic reach for affiliate marketers. Established platform for professionals.
- Cons: Predominantly for business-to-business (B2B) audiences.
You don’t need a huge following to make money with affiliate marketing—you just need to reach the right audience.
4. Create content to build trust
Regardless of the platform you decide to use, you’ll need to create content that builds trust with your target audience. In 2024, the average person spent two hours and 24 minutes daily on social media. What keeps us online for over two hours a day? Great content. This is an affiliate marketer’s best strategy.
As The Greenspring Home owner Kelly Marohl explains, creating the best content means not being self-serving. “Focus on publishing high-quality content that teaches your audience something,” says Kelly. “Always bring value to them. Do not focus your content around yourself.
“You’re going to be excited to start earning affiliate sales and landing brand deals, but before you can do that, build a highly engaged audience. That will pay off in dividends later!”
Building a content library takes time, so plan ahead and create a content calendar or strategy that matches your affiliate marketing goals. Your calendar can include outlines of what type of content you’ll publish on any given day, such as:
- Tutorials
- Q&As
- Product reviews
- How-tos
- Tips and tricks
When developing your content strategy, remember to consider keyword strategy—especially for YouTube SEO. Even high-quality content can get lost in the noise if you don’t optimize it for search results. Search for your competitors’ channels and look at their most popular videos. Look for relevant keywords in the video titles, descriptions, and hashtags.
FTC Guidelines
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines maintain fairness and honesty in advertising and must be followed. They ensure that claims made in ads are true, not misleading, and backed up by evidence. This includes endorsements from influencers or celebrities, where the FTC requires transparency. It should be clear if someone is promoting a product because they genuinely like it, or if they’re getting paid.
Read more: Affiliate Marketing Tips and Strategies to Earn More Money
5. Grow an audience
While you’re creating content on your platform of choice, you’ll also want to build an email list or SMS list.
You own your contact list
All of the major platforms have hiccups now and then, but if you maintain your own email list, you can always contact your audience.
To leverage affiliate links
Some platforms, like Amazon’s affiliate program, don’t allow affiliate links in emails. You can, however, send email traffic to content that contains your affiliate links.
Using your email list is a great way to give even more value to your audience, and there are plenty of email marketing software providers that offer free plans—including Shopify Email, Mailchimp, and MailerLite.
Some ideas to help you get started with content for your email list include:
- Industry reports or news
- Links to new blog posts
- Interview roundups or summaries
- Behind the scenes of your life or business
- Promotional deals (occasionally)
- Free digital downloads
Once you build trust with an audience, you can start promoting high-ticket affiliate programs. These affiliate programs offer opportunities to make up to five figures per sale. However, you often need to have an established niche and influence to encourage people to buy more expensive products.
6. Send traffic to your links
Now that you’ve built trust with your audience, it’s time to start driving traffic to your affiliate links. This step is where your efforts begin to pay off, but it requires a delicate balance between promotion and maintaining your audience’s trust.
Start by incorporating your affiliate links naturally into your content. This could be through:
- Product reviews
- Tutorials
- “Best of” lists
- Comparison articles
For example, if you’re in the fitness niche, you might create a video showcasing your workout routine, mentioning the equipment you use and linking to it in the description.
Remember to use clear calls to action (CTAs) that encourage your audience to click your links. These could be as simple as “Learn more” or as enticing as “Get an exclusive 10% discount through my link.”
7. Engage with your audience
The last tip for growing your affiliate marketing business is engaging with your audience. Generating conversations not only helps followers feel heard but also works in your favor for social media algorithms. When people interact with your content, they indicate to search algorithms that it’s worth sharing with others.
For example, when you like and respond to comments on your TikTok videos, those comments will have a special badge that says “Liked by creator” that stands out against other comments.
This example shows influencer and affiliate marketer Lauren Loveless responding to comments from fans to help them make a purchase on her recommended product from Rare Beauty. Lauren has multiple affiliate links on the the link-in-bio page attached to her TikTok account. When she posts content driving to these links, she is engaged in the comments.
Responding to your audience also lets you find out what they want from future content—a win-win situation.
8. Track your results
Tracking results is an important step most beginners overlook. Without proper tracking, you’re operating in the dark and missing out on earnings.
Familiarize yourself with the analytics providers by your affiliate program. These often include metrics like:
- Clicks
- Conversions
- Earnings per click (EPC)
- Total earnings
Regularly reviewing these numbers can give you a clear picture of which products are performing well and which might need a different approach. To gain deeper insights, add UTM parameters in your links. You’ll be able to understand which products are selling and which content pieces or platforms are driving those sales.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on your content’s performance across different platforms. High engagement often correlates with trust, which can lead to more conversions down the line.
Utilizing social media for affiliate marketing
The average affiliate marketer makes their income entirely through social media. A great example would be Papery Thoughts, a YouTube channel (among other social media accounts) that creates YouTube videos about journaling.
The channel generates affiliate sales through links to products in the video description that the creator uses onscreen. Here, the creator shares an affiliate link with her subscribers for 10% off at The Washi Tape Shop.
While social media platforms are a great way for you to connect with your audience and promote products, not all social channels are created equal when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Each has its own strengths:
- Instagram works best for visual products like fashion, travel, and lifestyle items
- YouTube excels for in-depth product reviews and tutorials
- Pinterest drives significant traffic for home décor, recipes, and DIY projects
- TikTok is perfect for reaching younger audiences with quick, engaging product showcases
- Facebook Groups can help you build communities around specific interests
Tip: Focus your energy on one to two platforms where your target audience is most active rather than spreading yourself thin across all of them.
Build an authentic presence before selling
People follow you for you, not just your affiliate links.
Before pushing products, establish yourself as a trusted voice by consistently sharing valuable, non-promotional content, engaging genuinely with followers’ comments, telling your personal story, and building connections.
When you do share affiliate products, your audience will be more receptive because they already trust your judgment.
Why is affiliate marketing a good business model?
Affiliate marketing is a reciprocal business model that works for brands and creators. Both parties benefit from a successful affiliate partnership, with brands increasing their sales and creators earning performance-based rewards.
It’s possible to make a living from affiliate marketing because it’s a profitable business model. Here’s why:
- It’s low risk. Businesses only need to pay out when you make a successful referral (versus paying a fee for influencers). For affiliates, your costs can stay low (if there are any at all), so the only thing lost is your time if you don’t hit the right mark.
- It’s a win-win for everyone. The business benefits from the sales you bring in and then rewards you in return. However, customers also benefit from having a trusted recommendation to satisfy their needs and wants.
- You can work from anywhere in the world. If you’ve ever dreamed of living the digital nomad life, affiliate marketing can help you call anywhere your workplace. Though be sure to obey any work-related tax or labor laws.
- You can earn passive income. A fruitful passive income idea is to create a library of quality evergreen content. While this can take time, after a while, you’ll find that content you’ve already created still generates affiliate commissions months—even years—later.
Scaling your affiliate marketing
Once you’ve gotten your affiliate marketing off the ground, you can start thinking about growth. This won’t happen overnight, but there are several ways you can quickly level up your affiliate business:
Diversify your income streams
- Partner with multiple complementary affiliate programs that serve your audience.
- Look for products at different price points—some for volume, others for higher commissions.
- Consider adding digital products of your own alongside affiliate offerings.
- Explore recurring commission programs that generate passive income month after month.
Automate what you can
- Set up email sequences that nurture relationships and promote affiliate products.
- Use scheduling tools to maintain a consistent content calendar.
- Create templates for your most common content formats to speed up production.
- Set up tracking systems that automatically monitor your performance.
Invest in building your own platform
- Develop a website or blog that you fully own and control.
- Build an email list that allows direct communication with your audience.
- Create a community space where your most engaged followers can connect.
- Consider launching a podcast or YouTube channel for deeper, long-form content.
Test new traffic channels
- Try paid advertising with small test budgets to see what converts.
- Explore SEO to bring in organic traffic that compounds over time.
- Consider collaborations with complementary creators to reach new audiences.
- Look into emerging platforms before they become saturated.
Read more
- How To Source Products To Sell Online
- The Ultimate Guide To Dropshipping (2024)
- How to Start a Dropshipping Business- A Complete Playbook for 2024
- The 13 Best Dropshipping Suppliers in 2024
- 6 Tips for How To Be a Successful Dropshipper (Full Playbook)
- How To Create a Successful Affiliate Program
- 130+ Dropshipping Products To Sell for Profit
- Sell Photos Online- 18 Websites for Selling Your Photography
- How to Create a Small Business Marketing Strategy
- Etsy Dropshipping: The Definitive Guide
How to start affiliate marketing FAQ
What are the top 5 affiliate marketing networks in 2025?
The top five affiliate marketing networks are:
- Affiliate Future
- AvantLink
- CJ (Commission Junction)
- ClickBank
- FlexOffers
How can I make $100 a day affiliate marketing?
Affiliates can earn $100 a day by promoting multiple affiliate programs in their content. If you consistently post valuable content that entertains and supports your audience, you can earn regular sales in your affiliate marketing business.
Can you start affiliate marketing with no money?
Yes, you can start affiliate marketing with no money—and it’s surprisingly easy. Instead of creating a website for your niche, which can cost money to develop, you can build traffic with your target audience through free social media platforms or YouTube, for example.
