Start an Online Business For Free - Step by Step

Starting an online business to make money can be done through affiliate marketing, where businesses reward affiliates for referring customers. Affiliates promote products on their website or social media and earn commissions. It’s an effective way to generate income and drive traffic to a business website. This guide offers tips to succeed with affiliate marketing and online business.

Types of Affiliate Marketing For Online Business

There are several types of affiliate marketing, including:

• Pay Per Click (PPC) – Affiliates are paid based on the number of clicks on their ads.

• Pay Per Lead (PPL) – Affiliates are paid for each lead or sale that is generated.

• Pay Per Sale (PPS) – Affiliates are paid for each sale they make.

• Cost Per Action (CPA) – Affiliates are paid for each completed action such as signing up for a newsletter or filling out a survey.

• Cost Per Mille (CPM) – Affiliates are paid for every thousand impressions of their ads.

We’ll use Pay By Sale (PPS) for this guide. You’ll promote goods/services, get commission per sale through unique affiliate link.

Step 1: Choose The Right Niche

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online and can be very lucrative if done correctly. The first step in getting started is to choose the right niche for your business. This can be a challenging task, but it is essential to your success.

When selecting a niche for your affiliate marketing business, there are several factors to consider.

First, think about your interests and passions. What topics do you enjoy talking about and have knowledge about? This will help you narrow down your options and find a niche that you are passionate about. What topics do you enjoy talking about and have knowledge about? This will help you narrow down your options and find a niche that you are passionate about.

Second, consider the potential for generating income. Research the market and look for products that are in demand and have the potential to make you money.

Third, determine if there is enough competition in the market. Ensure sufficient demand for promoted products without picking an oversaturated niche. Finally, make sure there is room for growth. You want to choose a niche that has potential for growth so you can expand your business in the future.

By following these steps and doing your research, you can find the perfect niche for your affiliate marketing business:

Currently the top and most profitable niche markets are as follows:

Health and wellness
Beauty and cosmetics
Home and garden
Technology
Finance and investments
Sports and fitness
Travel
Pets
Education
Fashion and apparel

Step 2. Research Your Niche

When it comes to starting an online business with affiliate marketing, researching products is a crucial step. You need to find products that are related to your chosen niche and have potential for generating income.

Here are some tips to help you research products and make sure they are a good fit.

• Look for Popular Products: Research what products are popular in your niche and consider promoting them.

• Check Affiliate Programs: Make sure that the products you want to promote have an affiliate program.

• Analyze the Competition: Analyze the competition to see what products they are promoting and how they are doing it.

• Read Reviews: Read reviews of the products to make sure they are of good quality.

• Compare Prices: Compare the prices of the various products to make sure you‘re getting the best deal.

• Test the Products: If possible, test the products yourself to make sure they are worth promoting.

By doing your research, you can make sure that you are promoting products that have potential for generating income and that your customers will be satisfied with.

Step 3. Choose An Affiliate Platform

An affiliate platform is a website or service that connects businesses with affiliates and allows them to promote products and services in exchange for a commission.

Affiliate platforms aid affiliates in marketing and tracking product results with advertiser access. They allow businesses to manage and recruit affiliates, tracking campaign performance. Such platforms simplify businesses’ reach expansion and sales generation.

The best affiliate platforms to join to promote products and earn commission include:

• Amazon Associates: Amazon Associates is one of the largest affiliate networks in the world and offers a wide variety of products to promote.

• Clickbank: Clickbank is an affiliate network that specializes in digital products such as ebooks and software.

• Digistore24: Digistore24 is an affiliate network that offers products in a variety of categories, including fashion, home decor, and electronics.

• CJ Affiliate: CJ Affiliate is an affiliate network with products from thousands of advertisers, including major brands like Nike and Apple.

A lot of internet software services such as Bluehost which is a hosting company when you would like to build a website has their own affiliate programs you can join and receive a commission each time someone joins Bluehost using your affiliate link.

Step 4. Create a Website For Your Online Business

Having a website allows you to create content to promote your products and build an audience. It also provides a platform to showcase your products, build relationships with customers, and track the performance of your campaigns. Additionally, having a website gives you a professional presence and increases credibility with potential customers.

Web Hosting

Website hosting is the process of storing and providing access to websites. It involves providing a server for your website to run on, as well as other services such as domain registration, email accounts, and web design. Website hosting is necessary for any website to be able to be accessed by the public.

Although there are many different kinds, shared hosting is a fantastic choice for affiliate marketers because it’s inexpensive and doesn’t require technical expertise.

Additionally, you’ll require a domain name. Your affiliate site’s domain name serves as its address. Choose a distinct yet straightforward name, aiming for short names that will reflect your brand and avoiding unusual characters, as this is what internet users will input to access your website.

These two website hosting solutions are amongst the most highly rated in terms of reliability, flexibility and price:

Bluehost is a web hosting company that offers shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and WordPress hosting services. They are one of the largest hosting companies in the world and are well-known for their fast speeds and reliable service. They offer a variety of plans to meet the needs of any website, from small personal blogs to large enterprise sites.
Hostgator is similar to Bluehost in terms of service, supoort, relaibility. Hostgator offers slightly different plans and benefits. Pricing is almost the same. Both of these hosting solutions are highly recommended.

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that allows users to create and manage websites without needing to know any coding or web design. It is free and open-source, and it is one of the most popular CMSs in the world. WordPress comes with a wide variety of themes and plugins to customize the look and functionality of your website. It also has an easy-to-use dashboard for managing content, users, and settings. WordPress is also highly extensible, allowing users to install additional plugins and themes to expand the functionality and design of their websites. It also offers a wide range of tools and features for SEO, security, and performance optimization.

Once you have signed up to a web hosting solution you will be prompted to install WordPress so that you can begin designing your website. WordPress is full of features and is a drag and drop website design tool. You can also outsource your website design to designers on Fiverr who will do it for you for around $50.

Step 5. Getting Started To Earn Commission

Now that you have chosen your niche, chosen your webhosting solution and created your website you will need to choose a product to promote based on the niche you have selected.

Personally I have chosen the health and fitness niche as most people would like to be healthy. Follow these steps:

Register with Clickbank affiliate platform.
Go to Affiliate Marketplace
Look for a product in the health and fitness niche to promote.
I chose the Custom Keto Diet.
Click promote
Copy your unique affiliate link so that when anyone buys the Keto diet plan using your unique link you will receive $193.28 for every person that makes a purchase. That simple.

The affiliate link that is generated is a long link like this “https://b4b8bdy97v2sdy3xm4x9es1y3v.hop.clickbank.net/“so looks like spam but dont worry we can fix this.

Go to and register on a site where you can shorten any website link such as Bitly.com and simply paste the long link and bitly will shorten it for you for example to https://bit.ly/3gQ0ZUN which looks a lot better.

Okay so now you have your shortened affiliate link for the custom keto diet so that whoever clicks on the link and purchases the diet you will receive $193.28 into your Clickbank account and can then get paid.

Step 6: Identifying What Traffic To Use

There are several ways to generate traffic to your affiliate offer, including:

• SEO: Use SEO techniques such as keyword research and content optimization to rank higher in search engine results. For beginners this is a little advanced.

• Social Media: Promote your offer on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We will concentrate on this traffic source.
• Content Marketing: Create content such as blog posts, videos, and podcasts to attract potential customers. A good way to build an audience.

• Paid Advertising: Use paid platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads to reach a wider audience. This traffic software which generates traffic to your website you can try for only $1 which will speed up the time you take to build an audience. See EMPIRE here

• Email Marketing: Send emails to your list of subscribers to promote your offer. Creating an email list is the objective for all affiliate marketers as you can send offers to your email list every month.

• Influencer Marketing: Reach out to influencers in your niche to promote your offer. Not for beginners

By using these strategies, you can generate more traffic to your affiliate offer and increase your chances of making a sale.

Step 7: Selecting & Using a Traffic Source

As we are beginners lets discuss only the below traffic sources:

• Social Media: Promote your offer on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We will concentrate on this traffic source.

Paid Advertising: Use paid platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads to reach a wider audience. This traffic software which generates traffic to your website you can try for only $1 which will speed up the time you take to build an audience. See EMPIRE

Social Media

Social media has become an essential tool for promoting affiliate products, as it allows marketers to reach a large and engaged audience. With billions of active users on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, there are endless opportunities to promote affiliate products and earn a commission from each sale. In this article, we will outline the steps you need to follow to effectively use social media to promote affiliate products.

Choose the right platform:

The first step in promoting affiliate products on social media is to choose the right platform. Each social media platform has a different demographic and type of user, so it’s important to choose one that aligns with your target audience and the type of product you are promoting. For example, if you are promoting beauty products, Instagram would be a great choice, as it is a visually-focused platform with a large following of beauty enthusiasts.

Build a following:

Once you have chosen your platform, the next step is to build a following. You can do this by creating high-quality content that is relevant to your niche and providing value to your audience. Interact with your followers, respond to comments, and engage with them on a regular basis to build a strong and loyal community.

Use affiliate links:

Once you have a following, you can start promoting affiliate products by including affiliate links in your posts and content. You can also use link shortening services to make the links look more professional and less spammy. Be sure to disclose that you are using affiliate links in your posts, as this is a requirement of most affiliate programs and is also a best practice for transparency.

Share product reviews:

Sharing product reviews is a great way to promote affiliate products on social media. Offer your followers an honest and unbiased review of the product, including its pros and cons, and include your affiliate link in the post. This will help to build trust with your audience and increase the chances of them clicking through to purchase the product.

Offer exclusive discounts:

Offering exclusive discounts to your followers is another great way to promote affiliate products on social media. You can do this by offering a special discount code that is only available to your followers. This not only incentivizes them to make a purchase, but it also helps to build a sense of loyalty and community among your followers.

Engage with your audience:

Finally, it is important to engage with your audience and respond to any questions or comments they may have. This will help to build a relationship with your followers and keep them engaged with your content.

In conclusion, promoting affiliate products on social media can be a highly effective way to earn a commission from each sale. By choosing the right platform, building a following, using affiliate links, sharing product reviews, offering exclusive discounts, and engaging with your audience, you can maximize your success and earn a steady stream of income from affiliate marketing.

Free Tools You Can Use To Promote Affiliate Offers

Canva

Canva is a free design tool where you can design promotions, facebook adverts, Youtube thumbnails, book covers and so much more. Have a look HERE

Systeme

This FREE software allows you to create landing pages where you can create email lists. The landing page is the page a potential client goes to and enters their email address to access your product you are promoting or can download the FREE ebook you are giving away. Systeme also has a free autoresponder which sends emails to clients automatically. Newsletters are also generated and so much more. Have a look HERE

FREE Pictures and Videos

These two sites allow you to download copyright free pictures and videos to use for advertising or when you are creating videos.

Text to Speech FREE Video Maker

Invideo is a great free software tool where you paste or type text and the software converts it into a video. This video you can then upload to your Youtube channel to promote products. Invideo has a lot of free pictures and you can also import your own and choose music from Invideo to match your video.

Youtube Tags

A YouTube tag is a keyword or phrase that is added to the end of a video URL to describe the content of the video. Tags help YouTube categorize videos and make them easier for viewers to find. They also help videos appear in search results and related videos, so it is important to use relevant tags when uploading videos to YouTube. Rapidtags is a website where you type in your product name and it generates a lot of tags for you to copy and then paste into the Youtube tag description box and FREE.

Free eBooks

When promoting a product it is always beneficial to offer something in return such as a free ebook. You can download free ebooks HERE and then offer them absolutely free maybe to collect an email address using the free landing page software I spoke about earlier.

There are many more useful software tools which are free to make it easy for you to create adverts or videos to promote products and services on Social media or any other platform.

Paid Advertising

This article is about free promotions however if you want to speed up your online business journey lets discuss in brief paid advertising

The benefits of using paid advertising to promote affiliate products include: • Reach a Wider Audience:

Paid advertising can help you reach a wider audience than organic methods, giving you access to potential customers who may not have found you otherwise.

Target Specific Audiences:

With paid advertising, you can target specific audiences based on demographics, interests, and other factors. This allows you to maximize the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Track Results: Paid advertising platforms provide analytics that allow you to track the performance of your campaigns and make adjustments accordingly.
Generate Immediate Results: Paid advertising can generate immediate results, allowing you to start seeing a return on your investment right away. Using paid advertising can be a great way to increase your affiliate income and reach new potential customers.

If you would like to try paid advertising have a look here at this $1 trial to see whether it will help you.

Step 8: Monitor Your Results

Successful affiliate marketing requires constant monitoring and adjustment of your strategies to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your efforts.

By tracking your results, you can identify which products and strategies are performing the best and make adjustments to maximize your profitability. One of the most important metrics to track is the conversion rate of your affiliate links.

This is the percentage of visitors who click on your link and complete the desired action, such as making a purchase. If your conversion rate is low, it could mean that you need to adjust your content or choose a different product to promote. It’s also important to track the performance of your content.

This includes the number of views, likes, and shares your content receives, as well as the number of clicks on your affiliate links. If you’re promoting a product on social media, you can use the analytics provided by each platform to see which posts are performing the best.

Finally, it’s important to track your revenue. This will help you identify which products and strategies are generating the most income and adjust your approach accordingly. By monitoring your results and making adjustments as needed, you can ensure that you