If you are new to my site let me tell you one thing, Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money on the Internet, like it or not.
I recently discovered that many folks are researching how much money do you need to start affiliate marketing.
If you are a beginner in the online world let me say that you will find this article very helpful when it comes to starting an affiliate marketing business.
I am a full-time affiliate marketer for over 7 years and I know how difficult it can be to start this online business.
You will find pretty interesting things in this post like why you should invest in affiliate marketing, how much will it cost you, and many other things you should know.
Let’s start right away!
How Much Money Do You Need To Start Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing IS NOT expensive as you may think. Believe me, if you decide to start any other online business, like email marketing or dropshipping, you would need to invest a lot of money in the start.
When I was starting affiliate marketing years ago it was expensive because I did not have the tools and platforms you have today. And I will talk about what tools and platforms you MUST use if you plan to make serious money with affiliate marketing.
I can guarantee you that after reading this blog post you will be ready to begin your affiliate marketing journey, alone OR with my personal help, it will be up to you to decide.
What I want to say is that it is NOT possible for you to start affiliate marketing completely for free, you must understand that. Many folks ask me if can they start for free and I say YES but you will not become profitable in the long run.
You will need to invest in some things when it comes to affiliate marketing and that is not gonna cost you thousands of dollars like some other online businesses.
Now, let’s see where you will need to invest your money to successfully start an affiliate marketing business.
You Will Need To Invest In Hosting And Domain Name
Let me be honest with you, if you plan to start with affiliate marketing you will need to invest in a website. Yeah, it will be very hard to make money without a website.
I have a vast experience in this online business and anyone who tried to make money with affiliate marketing without a blog did not succeed.
You may ask why? Well, because you need a platform where you will be doing affiliate marketing, you can’t paste links on forums or social media because it is prohibited.
Owning a website is like you own real estate and websites grow in value over time. The point is that you will not need to invest thousands of dollars in your website.
To create a website you only need to have a good hosting plan and a domain name. The domain name you can get with a hosting package so it is very important to choose the right and quality hosting platform.
Without hosting your website cannot be visible on the Internet and no one can find it.
There are hosting platforms like Hostgator or Bluehost, you have probably heard about them so far and you can get the hosting plan for only $80/per year on those platforms.
You should look to find a decent hosting package that will make your website so fast, and so good when it comes to the user experience. What you should definitely avoid is free hosting.
If you choose free hosting like Blogger or Wix you will not make any money because no one will treat you seriously if you are not on a paid hosting and domain.
There are some important factors you should consider while choosing the hosting and on the link below you can find my top list of best hosting platforms for a website.
My Favorite Hosting Companies – Check Them Here!
So let’s wrap up, if you really want to start making a decent income online with affiliate marketing you will need to invest in a hosting plan and domain name. Don’t waste your money on cheap hosting companies but invest in those who will give you quality and the best support.
You Will Need To Invest In a Keyword Tool
That’s right my fellow friend, affiliate marketing without a proper keyword research tool is a waste of time. You have a website, you have hosting, and you have a plan to succeed with affiliate marketing but you need one thing, TRAFFIC.
Having a website with 0 audiences (traffic) will lead you to nothing. You must work hard to get quality traffic to your website so that you can make money from affiliate marketing.
Definitely, the best way to get traffic is through using SEO techniques that will work so well if you implement them.
You will get website traffic if you do the proper keyword research, keywords that you target with your website are the root of your success. All your traffic will come through the keywords you target.
The question is how will you find those popular keywords people are looking for? Plain and simple, you need a keyword research tool!
There are a bunch of keyword research tools on the Internet, some are quality ones but some are a waste of time. You should take the time to choose the good one but I will help you there.
Some of the best keyword tools are:
- SEMRush keyword tool
- Ahrefs keyword tool
- Jaaxy keyword tool
Those are the keyword tools you will need to invest money too because they will help you discover great, long-tail, and low-competition keywords you will target on your website.
SEMRush will cost you around $120 per month which is not a small investment at all but it certainly pays off. Jaaxy on the other hand is a much cheaper keyword tool I personally use and it works great for me.
With Jaaxy you can discover literally thousands of low-competition keywords that will help you get ranked in the search engines and get that organic traffic for free.
Jaaxy Keyword Research:
On the link below you can check my detailed article about the best keyword tool you should use to rank your website. When you have a quality keyword tool half of the job is already done.
Learn More About Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool – Click Here!
TIP: You will not find any quality keyword research tool that is free, I encourage you that you invest money in the right tool (like Jaaxy) so that you can maximize your success with affiliate marketing. Still, if you don’t want to pay for a tool you can use Google Keyword Planner tools that is free and it is not so bad.
Investing In Paid Ads (Optional)
If you are a beginner in affiliate marketing I suggest that you skip this part. Paid ads are for those more experienced affiliate marketers who know what they do.
Plain and simple, with paid advertisements you can get instant traffic to your website. You are paying Google to put your website at the top of search results and in a matter of minutes, you will start getting traffic for ANY keyword you want.
What is bad about this method is that it can suck out your wallet in a couple of days or even minutes if you don’t know how to do it. Even some experienced affiliate marketers are experiencing losses with paid ads and that is something you should be aware of.
Another thing is that you MUST have a super convertible sales page or landing page so that you can convert that paid traffic into customers.
Paid ads are a great thing for sure, if I want to rank under the keyword ”what is affiliate marketing” I can pay Google to put my website at the top of search results and I will start getting hundreds and even thousands of visits and clicks instantly.
Definitely, if you are a beginner I recommend that you stick to the free traffic source which is SEO. If you are doing white-hat SEO techniques you will start getting organic traffic in a few months.
The point with SEO is that it is a long and slow process and it can take anywhere between 3 and 8 months to start seeing traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. But it is definitely worth it!
Just take a look at my website traffic on the image below, it is 100% organic (free), through SEO:
The traffic you see above is from my website I started at the end of November 2019. You can see how long it took me to start getting traction from Google in the SERPs. So, if you decide to start your website today in a couple of months you will have a profitable website that brings you a regular income.
TIP: Avoid paid ads at least in the beginning, after you master the basics of SEO and you start getting organic traffic from search engines then you can start ”playing” with paid ads. Otherwise, you will lose your money with paid advertisements.
Investing In Images And Infographics
Another thing you might want to invest in when it comes to affiliate marketing. Images and infographics are very important and you will need to use them on your website and your sales pages if you plan to make money.
Images are great visuals and they will attract potential customers.
Honestly, I am not crazy for infographics, you can be a successful affiliate marketer without them but images are a must.
There are free sources of images on the Internet like Pixabay’s website but there are also paid platforms where you will need to invest money to get images of high quality.
Paid images don’t need to be expensive but paying for them adds up and you can spend some serious cash on them. My recommendation is that you focus more on free images instead of paying for them.
When you start making sales and start converting you can invest in more quality images but until that just stick to the free ones.
You Should Invest In Affiliate Marketing Training Platform (Optional)
Again, this is optional but you should seriously think about joining a quality training platform that will teach you how to start affiliate marketing. If you truly want to become a successful affiliate marketer a training platform is a must.
You have an endless number of courses and programs that are offering training about affiliate marketing but most of them are garbage that you should avoid.
For me, definitely, the best affiliate marketing training platform is a Wealthy Affiliate platform.
Inside the platform, you are gonna learn many things like:
- Creating your own niche website
- How to choose a profitable niche for a website
- What is affiliate marketing and how does it work
- Step-by-step process of creating a WordPress website
- Everything about SEO optimization that will help you get quality traffic to a website
- and many other things related to affiliate marketing business
Everything about the Wealthy Affiliate training platform you can find on the link below, this platform helped me to achieve my dream of working online and making a passive income. It can help you too if you are willing to invest time and patience into education.
The earnings below are thanks to the WA platform that helped me to start achieving a passive income online through affiliate marketing.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Training Platform in 2024 – Learn More Here!
TIP: You don’t need to invest money in a training platform but in that case, you are on your own, inside a platform like Wealthy Affiliate you have everything covered and step by step that will help you to start generating a decent income online.
Let’s now see some of the most frequent questions I am getting related to starting affiliate marketing: Make sure you read it because it will help you with your online journey.
FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) About Starting Affiliate Marketing Business
1. Do You Need To Spend Money To Start Affiliate Marketing?
Hm, definitely YES! If you plan to start making money from this online business model you will need to invest money in the things I have mentioned above.
You can start for free but you will see for yourself that at some moment you will need to invest money. However, the ROI (return on investment) is MUCH higher than your actual investment. It is worth man so just start doing it!
2. How To Start Affiliate Marketing as a Beginner?
Plain and simple, invest in the training platform that teaches about affiliate marketing. You will achieve success at a much higher and faster rate if you have a training platform instead of not having it.
Just check the Wealthy Affiliate platform for free and see for yourself what can you get inside.
3. Is Website a Must To Start With Affiliate Marketing?
It is not a must but it is highly recommended. There are people who are doing affiliate marketing on Instagram or YouTube. You can do that too but definitely, the most efficient way is to build a niche website and do affiliate marketing on your blog.
Having a website will make you a passive income online as your website is live 24/7 365 days a year. With affiliate marketing you will make money even in your sleep, that is the real truth but you must work on your website.
So, if you are ready to invest in affiliate marketing I recommend that you click on the link below and learn everything about how to start and how to be profitable with this great online business called affiliate marketing.
Start Affiliate Marketing With My Personal Help! (Success Rate 98%) – Learn More Here!
Hey, I’m Daniel, a 28-year-old from Serbia who has been successfully doing affiliate marketing for almost 10 years. Through years of trial, error and continuous learning, I have perfected my skills and I am delighted to be able to share my knowledge and advice through this site where you can find absolutely everything you need to start your online business.