Most affiliate networks require that you show a legitimate website to be approved to promote their products. But what do you do if you don’t have one? Well there’s ways around it and I’ll show you what they are in this post.
Here are the 3 ways to become an affiliate for a network without a website:
- Using a Pinterest account when applying and directly linking to affiliate offers.
- Using a YouTube channel when applying and creating videos linking to affiliate offers.
- Using a social media page when applying and linking your bio pages or social media posts directly to affiliate offers.
Why these 3 options work (and will get you approved on affiliate networks):
It’s because just about every affiliate network that looks to take on new promoters wants to know the following:
- Is the affiliate that’s applying legitimate?
- Can that affiliate make us sales?
- Does that affiliate have a source of traffic to drive them to our offers?
And these 3 options I just gave you cross out the last requirement, while the rest is up to you and your skills at selling. So when you apply to become an affiliate, when they ask you for a URL, you can input one of these 3 things there.
If they see what you provide them with is legitimate, gets traffic and can be profitable for them, you have just as much of a chance of getting approved for the program as you would were you to apply with your own website.
Many years ago, this was not possible, but with the growth of places like Pinterest, YouTube and the other sites that all carry so much traffic and credibility, using these sources to become an approved affiliate for a network is possible.
Side question: Can you be approved to be an Amazon Affiliate without a website using these methods?
The answer is yes. Many major affiliate networks, including Amazon do allow using these options from my understanding.
Let me break down how each option works and explain it from a specific timeline, that being:
- From the moment you sign up with the affiliate network, what to enter so you get the approval.
- To the moment you get approved and what to do next to promote the products from the network.
Let’s examine how each option works:
1) How to become an affiliate without a website using Pinterest:
I’ve been getting involved a lot with Pinterest lately to build a travel blog and I find it is an amazing source of traffic when you understand how it works. I’ll be making a tutorial on doing affiliate marketing with Pinterest in the future, but for now, let me give you the step by step process of using this place to do affiliate marketing with:
- Sign up with a good affiliate network.
- In the area where you enter your URL, input your Pinterest account link.
- If you get approved, then you can begin making pins, promoting affiliate products and directly linking people to the offer.
- With Pinterest, you do not need a website to promote affiliate products, but I do highly recommend you consider it.
- Update: Here is a guide to doing affiliate marketing with Pinterest.
Notes: Before you attempt to become an affiliate using this method, make sure your Pinterest page has some decent stats to show. Every Pinterest account shows the monthly viewers it gets and the higher your number is, the better it’ll look for the affiliate network. Here is one of mine as an example:
My Pinterest page with over 200,000 monthly views is good for an affiliate resume. Now I just want to clarify, this isn’t 200,000 clicks, it’s visits and appearances which are 2 different things, but it is growing and I am getting traffic from Pinterest.
2) How to become an affiliate without using a website through YouTube:
I did a full tutorial on doing affiliate marketing with YouTube, so I don’t need to get into details, but the main point is that you can use your YouTube channel URL as your URL when applying for an affiliate network, so here is how this would all work:
- Sign up with a good affiliate network (again).
- When it asks for your website URL, input your YouTube channel URL.
- If the approval is made, begin making YouTube videos reviewing the products from the network.
- And as with Pinterest, you can do affiliate marketing through YouTube, without having a website.
Notes: As with Pinterest, you should also grow your YouTube channel, subscriber base and produce numerous videos before applying. The bigger your channel, the better luck you’ll have with the approval.
So if I had no website, just a YouTube channel and I were applying to say an affiliate program for mountain bikes, and they asked me for a URL, I’d provide them my YouTube channel URL and if they checked it, this is what they’d see:
And the fact that they can have an affiliate with over 3,000 subscribers is already a good resume itself and reason for them to approve my application.
3) How to become an affiliate without a website using social media pages:
Out of these 3 options, the social media one is the one I practice least, and it’s because most of my time is occupied on my affiliate blog, YouTube channel, other sites and my pay per click affiliate campaigns.
However, I do run a Facebook business page and 2 Instagram accounts and know they can be used to become an approved affiliate for a network. So if I were applying and showed the affiliate network my fan page and they saw it was legitimate, I’d likely get approved.
Here is a screenshot of mine:
An in addition to that, I also know of more than a few marketers who solely use social media to promote affiliate offers directly. For example, an affiliate I know by the name of Eric who managed to build an entire business on Instagram by targeting hashtags, getting traffic to his IG page and promoting an affiliate link on that bio page. Here are more affiliate case studies (unrelated to this method though).
- Sign up with an affiliate network.
- On the URL submission part of your application, provide a link to your social media channel.
- If approved, create social media posts and directly link to the affiliate offer there (it varies on which social media is used).
- Whether it be Facebook Fan Pages, Instagram, Twitter or so forth, you can do affiliate marketing with these options without having a website to show affiliate networks.
Note: Make sure you actually have a good social media page to show affiliate networks, meaning that:
- If it’s an Instagram account, make sure it has at least 100’s of followers and your posts get views and likes.
- If it’s a Facebook Fan Page, make sure it has page likes, and comments on the page itself.
Before you rush to use these methods and become an affiliate, read this:
I do not recommend you solely rely on these options to becoming an affiliate without a website. As I said in my YouTube affiliate marketing tutorial, you shouldn’t rely on building a business that can so easily go away. Any method of doing affiliate marketing without a website that you use is a risky method itself because it involves running your business on platforms that can at the push of a button take it down.
I always advise running your own central site, and using these other methods as branches to grow it in on the side to make a passive income. But if you are still convinced this is the way to do it, then you at least have these 3 methods and they are legitimate, even though I cannot guarantee you will get that approval from the affiliate program if you sign up.
I’ve sometimes had situations where I provided a legitimate URL with good stats for my site and other things that didn’t get an approval and it’s not always up to you if you get it. So if you get into that situation, try to join a different affiliate program and if you look there’s always many to find. For example:
- If you look for car insurance affiliate programs, here’s 9.
- If you look for drone affiliate programs, here’s 5.
They are easy to find so don’t dwell on a single affiliate network if you can’t join it.