If you ever wondered how to do affiliate marketing without money from the start, we’re here to help. You don’t need significant resources to start making income online if you know how to do it right.

Here’s how you run a successful affiliate marketing campaign on a small budget in 2022.

How to do affiliate marketing without money?

A quick introduction to affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is based on promoting brands online and getting paid when someone uses your recommendation. First, you register at an affiliate network and choose a product you want to promote. Then you generate a unique affiliate link, ensuring all the money you go to your account. Once you have the link, you can post it on your websites or social media. When a user takes a specific action with your link, e.g., buying a product or downloading an app, you get a commission.

Do you need money to start affiliate marketing?

The more people your offer reaches, the bigger your chances of making money. Many people choose to invest in the reach of their campaigns to get more traffic but remember – you don’t need any money to register at an affiliate network and start promoting offers. Doing it successfully will only require some of your time and effort. Don’t expect massive results right away. Slowly and carefully build your online campaigns, and the money will come.

What verticals to promote in 2022?

Choosing the correct category of offers to promote is a crucial step that can decide if your campaign is successful or not. While browsing through offers, use filters to pick the model of conversion, category of programs, and type of payment you’re looking for. Make sure to choose an offer in a category you’re interested in. It will be easy to stay consistent and post a lot of fun, creative content for your audience.

What categories are trending in 2022?

If you choose a category that’s already popular with your audience, the chances that they will use your affiliate link gets bigger. Some verticals, such as e-commerce, never go out of style and are always a safe option, but if you want to experiment with your campaign, here are some other ideas. In 2022 remember to take into consideration current global trends, like ecology and zero-waste solutions.

Health

In 2022 the health and nutrition category is still on the rise. Since the pandemic started, many of us have started devoting more time and effort to our health, so it’s a perfect time to promote exciting offers that can be useful to your audience in this area. Supplements, cosmetics, and diets will be a great choice to attract more traffic and earn more money.

The fitness genre of social media influencers is still on the rise this year. Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok – all of those platforms are full of people, who are looking for health and fitness advice and you could be the one providing it for them.

Online dating platforms

There’s always a need for love, so online dating platforms are still a very effective product to promote. Meeting people online is becoming more and more common, and many people are looking for someone to get to know through the Internet. It’s a great way for introverts to form new relationships without having to leave their house. You can help them out by promoting interesting dating sites and apps and making money doing it!

VOD platforms

Did you know that in 2022 a film produced by an online streaming service won the Oscar in the Best Film category for the first time ever? That should tell you how vital VOD platforms are becoming this year. After all, why watch TV when you can have access to thousands of movies and TV series online available to watch any time you want? Promote VOD platforms and streaming services to your audience, and you will surely find some of your audience interested.

Gambling and sports betting

Online betting and gambling platforms have gained a lot of popularity during the pandemic and the rise doesn’t slow down in 2022. Mark the main sports events in your calendar and promote your offers seasonally to maximize your income. When choosing the offer to promote, focus on comparison engines, as they often get the most traffic and have the highest commission rates.

Affiliate marketing trends in 2022 that you can use for free

You don’t need money to start earning online through affiliate marketing. The key is staying on top of trends to ensure that your campaign is as effective as possible. Once you’ve done your research, you’ll learn plenty of ways to do that without any investments.

Optimize your links

Imagine this: you put a lot of effort into creating a captivating social media post to promote your affiliate offer, publish it online and happily go to sleep. The next day you wake up, excited to check on how your post is doing, only to find out that a moderating bot has deleted it. It’s a common problem, but what is the solution?

Use link shorteners, like bit.ly, to make sure your links are clean and attractive-looking. Remember about deep links that redirect online users straight to the product or service you promote, so they don’t have to spend the extra time trying to find it on the brand’s website.

If you want to ensure your posts won’t get deleted, use HideLink. It’s a tool that makes sure that all moderating bots go to a secure landing page while real users get redirected straight to your offer. HideLink allows you to omit bans and limits on social media effectively.

Take advantage of seasonal offers

Black Friday, Christmas, International Day of Women – there are plenty of occasions you can use to make your offers more relevant. A lot of people plan their purchases for holiday shopping seasons, so it’s a great time to promote offers. Many companies offer big discounts based on the current time of year, so make sure to keep your affiliate marketing calendar for 2022 up to date.

Seasonal trends have always been a great marketing tool, but according to statistics it’s becoming even more important in the last few years, so in 2022 focus on utilizing them to the best of your ability.

Join TikTok

It’s no secret that in 2022 TikTok is getting more and more important on the social media market, but it’s not enough to just create an account and start randomly posting content. If you want to make sure you run a successful campaign on this platform, make a couple of accounts and create TikToks regularly to gain an audience. Explore the current trends and include them in your content.

Don’t spam your affiliate links. You can put them in your bio and let your audience know it’s there, and why they should use it in the TikToks you post. Avoid placing links in the description of your TikToks though, as it may decrease your reach and cause you more harm than good.

Focus on a niche

A niche is a group of online users, whose needs are not yet met. If you can gain access to such a group, the chances of making a high income will skyrocket. Explore Facebook groups you’re already a part of. They surely bring together people with very specific, similar interests and needs.

Once you’ve found your niche group, choose a product or service that may interest them. The more research you do, the easier it will be to find an offer that best suits their needs. Keep up with the current trends in the niche area and include them in your campaigns for guaranteed results.

To maximize your income, create a couple of target groups and create separate campaigns with different offers, suited to their needs. You can use tools like SMS marketing to inform your most interested users of new captivating deals. It’s a great way to communicate with a dedicated target audience, once you get their approval.

Utilize Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual search engine for people looking for inspiration. It’s a system based on photos and videos called pins, which you can like, share or save in collections to create boards of content. The highest top searches on Pinterest are mostly unbranded, so the users are open to new offers. If you want to make money with Pinterest, the circumstances have never been better.

Make sure to promote categories, which gain the most traffic on Pinterest, like DIY, home decor, fashion, or entertainment. Publish multiple pins for every offer to increase your chances of getting paid. Remember that Pinterest works like any other social media platform and SEO rules are important. Use keywords in the names of your boards and pin descriptions to get your content to the top of the search results.

Use GEO targeting

Geo-targeting is the action of promoting your offer to a specific group of recipients based on their location. You can use statistics available for free in affiliate networks to target the areas that your users come from. Once you do that, include local trends, holidays, and news in your online campaign. It allows you to personalize your content and increase engagement. The offer you promote is more relevant to your target audience, and wasted clicks are reduced.

If you want to promote an offer globally, use smart links. It combines a large number of partnership programs in one campaign, so you can use a single affiliate link, no matter what group you’re promoting to. When your recipients use it, the system automatically recognizes their country and redirects them to a website in their language version.

The more creative the better

Unique and experimental content is much more likely to attract the attention of Internet users and compel them to use your affiliate links. Create photos, videos, and graphics for every offer you promote.

Free tools to create graphics include:

• Canva,
• Figma,
• Clerro,
• Desygner.

Stay on top of the current memes and utilize them in your campaign to get more traffic and remember about GIFs. Just like emojis and videos, they diversify your content on social media. People don’t want to read long, boring texts – you have to keep them engaged. Use keywords to position your GIFs high in the GIF Engine Optimization system, which works similarly to SEO, to ensure they reach a wide audience.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to make money through affiliate marketing without any money. All you have to do is choose the best affiliate network that gives you access to all the tools you may need and do your research. Affiliate marketing in 2022 will keep on growing, so there is no reason to miss out on your passive income stream – register and get started.

Magdalena Bober