How To Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money In 7 Steps.

Introduction

Firstly, it’s important to dispel the notion that starting an affiliate marketing business with no money means you can work just two hours per day. 

In reality, it requires significant time and effort to find potential customers whom you would have typically attempted to reach through paying for Facebook or Google advertisements. 

Additionally, you’ll need to spend a lot of time to gain the skills needed to engage with each prospect; acquiring these skills will cost you time. 

Also, you’ll need time to improve on these skills as you converse with more people willing to buy these affiliate products from you.

So in this article, I will share useful tips for starting affiliate marketing without any money, specifically tailored for Nigerians or Africans seeking to earn money online.

How To Get Started

To begin your affiliate marketing journey without any money,  the first step will be to 

Step 1: Choose a Niche

You need to select a specific niche that interests you and that has a potentially large audience in Nigeria.

This could be anything from health and fitness to technology or fashion. 

Focus on a niche where you can provide valuable content and recommend relevant products or services.

Usually, most people, or affiliate marketers in Nigeria choose the make money online courses niche, but you don’t necessarily have to do the same. 

You can choose a better niche with a large audience and still make good money. 

Also, it might be a little bit difficult for you to sell a niche that you’re probably just new to as well-such as “make money online“.

What I usually advise, is to choose a niche for a product that you’re probably well established in already, for example, if you’re a medical student, you’ll find success more easily in the health and fitness niche. 

If you’re a tech enthusiast, you’ll find more success in the tech and tech products niche. 

NB: The most important factor is to find a balance between where you already have some sort of authority and blend it with a large audience. 

In a nutshell, make sure the niche you’re choosing has a large audience of people who are willing to buy what you’re selling.

Step 2: Research Affiliate Programs In Your Niche 

The next step will be to look for affiliate programs that operate in your chosen niche 

and programs that accept affiliates from Nigeria. 

You can choose to sell courses or informational materials in your niche, which for example can include, courses on information like; how to manage diabetes or kidney disease; if you’ve chosen the health niche.

Also, if you’re looking to sell physical products, such as health products or physical books, and generate affiliate commissions you can also attempt doing that through multiple platforms

You can also sell software, music, or other digital products as an affiliate.

I wrote an article on 5 Platforms where you can find multiple products to sell and access multiple affiliate offers. 

And you can access it below.

The most important thing to note when choosing a niche is to research how large the audience is, and the typical commission rates for each sector or niche. 

You don’t want to choose a niche or promote products with very low commissions. 

Selling products with high commissions and selling products with low commissions essentially takes the same amount of effort.

Step 3: Build An Online Presence

While you may not have money to invest initially, you can leverage free online platforms to create your online presence. 

Start by setting up dedicated social media profiles on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, and YouTube. 

These platforms will allow you to share content, build an audience, and promote your affiliate links, however, to succeed on these platforms, you must learn how to:

1. Create Valuable Content: 

You must focus on creating high-quality content that is relevant to your chosen niche. 

Write blog posts if you’re using blogs, create videos if you’re using vlogging channels like YouTube, 

And design infographics that provide useful information, product reviews, or comparisons. 

A free tool that can help you with this is Canva. 

The aim is to establish yourself as a trustworthy source of information, which will encourage people to click on your affiliate links.

(This is why I suggested choosing a niche you’ve probably already established. For example, if you’re a medical student- people will most likely trust you faster if you produce health-related content- however, make sure that your niche has a large audience)

2. Create Your Content Often: 

Building an online presence is no longer enough as most platforms currently have a lot of content creators, 

and already most of these platforms encourage a lot of people to create a lot of content everyday. 

So to stand out and get more traction or traffic on these platforms, you must create a content plan that allows you to post consistently and more frequently on any chosen platform. 

It is often advised to stick to one single platform, grow and establish yourself on it, and then expand to other platforms. 

Step 4: Leverage SEO Techniques

SEO generally means making sure that your online content is easily found by people who are searching on platforms like Google, Bing & Yahoo. 

You can learn about search engine optimization (SEO) to increase the visibility of your content in search engine results. 

The easy way to do this is to try to find relevant keywords or search phrases that your target customer will input to Google

And optimize your website, your blog or your videos to appear for those searches

Also, SEO involves building backlinks, so you can attract organic traffic and potentially increase your affiliate conversions.

If you have no money to start a website, you can use blogging platforms like Medium, however, these sort of platforms provide a limitation on the amount of SEO you can do. 

Also, if you’re creating videos on Tiktok and YouTube, doing SEO can help you make sure you’re making video content that your potential customers will find relevant. 

How To Make Your First $1,000 As An S.E.O specialist.

My Second Hack For Creating Content: 

An easy way to create content that your target audience will be looking for –

is to find larger channels on Youtube or TikTok that already create content for your niche- then try to cut up their content into bite-sized short-form videos, like 30sec-1min. 

You recreate these videos and then post them on your channels- that way you can get started till you learn more technicalities.

Step 5: Engage With Your Audience

Prioritize interacting with your audience on these platforms by responding to comments, questions, and messages on your social media platforms and website. 

Building a relationship with your audience helps you establish trust faster

and it also helps you build credibility, which often leads to more people buying your affiliate products.

Step 6: Utilize Free Marketing Channels

Take advantage of free marketing channels like your Whatsapp or free texting tools like Telegram 

You can use guest blogging and participate in online forums, Facebook groups and communities related to your niche. 

These strategies can help you expand your reach and attract more potential customers.

Note: Start with one channel, go hard on it, understand it well and grow your audience on it before moving into other channels or platforms

Download My Guide To- Using Whatsapp For Marketing Your Affiliate Links

Step 7: Consistently Monitor & Optimize Your Marketing

Regularly track your affiliate marketing efforts and analyze the performance of different products, strategies, and platforms. 

This data will help you optimize your campaigns, focus on what works best, and adjust your approach accordingly.

Remember, building a successful affiliate marketing business takes time, effort, and persistence. While starting with no money may limit your initial options, by consistently providing value to your audience, you can gradually grow your affiliate income in Nigeria.

In Conclusion:

When you begin affiliate marketing without any financial investment, your initial audience typically consists of people within your immediate contact list. 

However, it is recommended to allocate your initial earnings towards growing your affiliate business. 

This involves expanding your customer base through advertising and enhancing your conversion funnel to effectively convert more of the customers acquired through advertising efforts.

You can also subscribe to this YouTube channel to get more knowledge on all the skills required above