How To Create A Profitable Affiliate Business For Free Blueprint
By Andreas Ioannou
Click here to Download our FREE Pdf Blueprint!
A complete strategy on how to build a profitable affiliate business from scratch at no cost.
Affiliate Marketing doesn't cost money; it only takes time.
Learn all the secrets of affiliate marketing!
4 Chapters
Chapter 1. How to choose the most profitable affiliate services that will give you passive income for a lifetime.
(Free to join affiliate programs)
Chapter 2. How to start an affiliate business.
(Create a blog/website for free)
Chapter 3. Ways to produce free content for your affiliate business.
Chapter 4. Marketing Strategies to promote your affiliate business and get a huge amount of traffic for free.
Proven marketing strategies that are used by the most successful affiliate marketers in the world.
One of the best ways to make a reasonable amount of money online is affiliate marketing, but you have to do it correctly.
First of all, for any newbies that do not know what affiliate marketing is, read below to understand how affiliate marketing works:
1. You sign up for a company’s affiliate program.
2. You get an affiliate link with a unique id.
3. You can promote the company’s affiliate products/services with your unique affiliate link.
4. Every time someone buys something using your affiliate link, you earn a commission.
Chapter 1: Choose The Most Profitable Affiliate Services
Three tips that I can give to help you choose the most profitable affiliate services to promote:-
Choose to promote services that reward you with a recurring commission;
choose affiliate programs that are giving you the option to register tier affiliates
and affiliate programs that have longer cookie duration-expire period.
1. A recurring commission is when you l continue to receive a commission for a lifetime, for a customer that subscribes to a service using your affiliate link, as long as the
customer is a subscribed/paying customer. Recurring commissions only apply to services/products that have a subscription plan, not services/products that are a one-time payment.
Recurring commissions often apply to SaaS (Software as a Service) affiliate programs.
2. Another tip I can give you is to use an affiliate marketing program that has tier affiliates.
A tier affiliate is when you referred a person to an affiliate program, and you make an extra commission for each sale your tier affiliate makes.
You can find many tier affiliates that will make sales, so you will have passive income from them.
3. You receive your commission if someone buys something using your affiliate link in a specific time frame from the day that someone visits a website, each affiliate program has its own time frame.
This time frame is based on the cookie duration each affiliate program has, cookies are small blocks of data that are saved on each person's device when he/she visits a website.
If someone visits a website using your affiliate link, this person it’s tracked by the cookie that is saved on their devices, even if they visit a website again with the normal link of a website, and not your affiliate link in the given specific time frame you receive your commission.
If you choose to promote an affiliate program with a longer cookie duration-expire period that means that you can send a potential customer to a website with your affiliate link and even if he/she decides to buy something after a long time, you will still receive your commission.
Something else to have in mind is that many companies retarget potential customers that visit their website using your affiliate link and show them ads of their company/products/services on many different platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Google, and so on.
They use pixels that are installed on their website for that. Pixels are pieces of code that are installed on a website that can track a user that visits a website and reach out to him/her on different platforms.
So basically they do all the work for you, to convince a potential customer to buy their services/products, you just have to convince a potential customer to visit their website once.
The ads that companies use to retarget their potential customers are great help for affiliate marketers, and if finally a potential customer is convinced to buy something while the cookies duration of the specific affiliate program lasts an affiliate marketer will receive his/her commission.
As an entrepreneur, you must always try to create a passive income. You get the work done once, and after that, you start generating money with no more actions that need to be done.
As Warren Buffett said, 'If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.'
Some of the most profitable affiliate programs you can join are:
1. Fiverr
2. Systeme
1. Fiverr
I suggest joining the Fiverr affiliate program.
The Fiverr sub-affiliate is called the Fiverr program for tier affiliates.
You get paid 10% of every referred affiliate’s earnings for a lifetime.
Fiverr cookies duration is 30 days for all Fiverr affiliate programs.
Some of the Fiverr Services you can promote as an affiliate.
1. Fiverr marketplace is the most well-known Fiverr service.
You can use Fiverr Marketplace to hire the cheapest freelancers for any kind of service.
Some of the services you can find are graphic design, SEO, social media marketing, website design, video creation/editing, and many more.
Fiverr marketplace has two commission plans, the CPA and the Hybrid, you can choose to promote which one suits you best, or you can promote both of them.
On the CPA commission plan, you get paid once $15 to $150 for first-time buyers (FTBs), depending on the category of the service, and on the Hybrid commission plan, you get paid $10 CPA, plus a 10% recurring revenue share, for purchases made within the first 12 months.
Fiverr only pays you a commission for first-time buyers.
If someone buys something from Fiverr using your affiliate link, but they already were a Fiverr customer in the past, you will not get paid a commission.
You can promote your CPA affiliate link to specific people that want to buy something once from a category with a well-paid commission if you need money fast, and you believe they will not be returning customers.
You can promote your Hybrid affiliate link to people you believe will purchase many services so you will get paid a commission for all the services they will purchase in the first 12 months.
When you register to the Fiverr affiliate program, you get access to both commission plans affiliate links, the CPA and the Hybrid.
2. Learn from Fiverr it’s an academy with courses related to freelancers (digital marketing, graphic design, website design, image, video editing, etc.).
(30% of every course order)
3. Fiverr Workspace is software for freelancers and small businesses, that is designed to streamline the time and expense tracking process with tools such as invoicing, contract creation, time tracking, expense tracking, payments, and more.
(50% of every unlimited plan)
4. Fiverr Business offer access to the same Fiverr marketplace, but with even more functionality and control.
For example, you can use the new interface to collaborate with your freelance team as a group and monitor the completion of your project with custom task lists.
($100 + 10% $100 CPA once the account reaches $100 in spend + 10% RevShare for 12 months)
5. The Fiverr sub-affiliate is what the Fiverr affiliate program for tier affiliates is called. You get paid 10% of every referred affiliate’s earnings for a lifetime.
2. Systeme is an all-in-one online platform to create promote and run an online business.
It has a free plan that may have fewer features than the paid plans, but the features you get in the free plan are more than enough to help you run an online business.
The free plan gives you the option to create a sales funnel, run your own course, run your affiliate program for your products/services, create a blog, and many more.
Systeme Plans:
1. Free
2. Startup $27/month $228/year
3. Webinar $47/month $396/year
4. Unlimited $97/month $828/year
Systeme's affiliate program has a recurring commission of 50%!
The way the Systeme affiliate program works is by creating a free or paid account so you can use Systeme to build/run your online business. You are automatically signed up for the Systeme affiliate program. No further registration is needed.
Once you log in, you can add your payment details. You can choose to get paid by PayPal or by wire transfer.
The last step is to find and copy your affiliate link on your affiliate dashboard, and you can start promoting!
Systeme has a lifetime affiliation program, this means whenever someone visits the Systeme website using your affiliate link even if is 6 months or a year later you will still receive your commission.
Systeme uses a different kind of affiliate system than most companies, with no cookies duration-expire period, that can track someone for a lifetime.
Something else to keep in mind is that someone can register to the free plan of Systeme and if in the future whenever they decide to upgrade to a Systeme paid plan, you will receive your commission.
An extra benefit of Systeme is that it has a marketplace with affiliate products/services from third-party companies/creators that you can promote with the same account.
There are products or services like courses, software, etc., in different niches such as marketing, finance, real estate, health, etc. Each of these products/services has different commissions and some also give you a tier affiliate commission.
If you have any products/services you can create a sales funnel and sell them through Systeme with a free or paid plan. You can also include them in the Systeme marketplace.
You can include them in the Systeme marketplace only if you offer an affiliate commission that you choose, and you can also include a tier affiliate commission if you wish. Again, you choose the percentage.
Systeme has one of the most attractive and innovative affiliate programs in the market!
3. Travelpayouts is a travel affiliate network, an affiliate network is a marketplace for affiliate marketers.
An affiliate marketer when he/she joins an affiliate network can find many available affiliates offers he/she can join.
On Travelpayouts you can find travel affiliate programs from many major travel companies like Booking, Agoda, Expedia, and so on.
You can find all the kinds of affiliate travel services from well know companies like hotel bookings, flight bookings, car rentals, train or ferries booking, excursions bookings, travel insurance bookings, and many more, each company offers a different affiliate program.
Travelpayouts is the ideal affiliate network for travel influencers or travel professionals that want to benefit from affiliate marketing.
There are freelancers on Fiverr that offer a gig to create a travel affiliate website that will include many of the above-mentioned services in one website, some of the freelancers offer along with the website a customized android or iOS mobile phone app with your website logo/details and your travel payouts affiliate services on it as well.
For example, it can be an all-in-one travel platform that can include 5 or 10, etc travel services you book from the same website hotels, flights, different kinds of vehicles, insurance, excursions, and so on.
The best of all is that the website is working on autopilot, which means all the new Travelpayouts offers/products/services are automatically included in the website and also everything that is needed in order for a website to work properly is done automatically.
The only thing you have to do is to promote it and bring traffic to it so it starts generating money.
You get paid a 7% commission for two years from the sales that each tier affiliate you register into the Travelpayouts affiliate network makes.
Something else to mention is that all these mentioned affiliate programs are good for affiliate marketing beginners.
The reason for that is that they have no requirements/preapproval in order for someone to be accepted in their affiliate program.
Anyone can join and register instead of affiliate programs which in order to accept you they have a lot of requirements for example you must have a big audience.
Chapter 2. Create A Blog For Free
One of the best ways to make money with affiliate marketing is to create a website/blog with original content, where you will promote affiliate products relevant to your website/blog niche.
Create content about your affiliate products like reviews, articles, videos, etc.
You must try using SEO, social media marketing, etc. to drive as much traffic as you can to your affiliate website.
If you succeed in bringing a lot of traffic to your website each month, your website will start generating money.
You can do it with other methods like creating a YouTube channel, a Facebook group, etc., but if you create a blog, you will have faster results, and if you manage to make your blog have a lot of traffic each month, you can leave it on autopilot.
I mean, no more actions are needed after a while. If you have a lot of traffic from Google, etc., each month, new visitors will find your blog, and some of them will buy your affiliate products/services.
You will also receive a commission from the buyers with the recurring commission and the tier affiliates you already have.
You can create a blog for free with Systeme. This way, you can also promote Systeme easily, because you will test Systeme and talk about it from your personal experience.
It will be easier to convince someone to buy/try Systeme for free.
The only expense that is not required but is recommended to do, is to buy a custom domain name for your blog.
If you have a custom name, it will make you look more professional and it will give you SEO benefits on Google.
You can buy a custom name from any third-party domain name seller and connect it with your Systeme blog.
There is a different price range for each name, but generally speaking, a domain name can cost you $2 to $20 per year, which is not a large amount, and it's considered an investment for your online business.
You can buy a domain name from Namecheap at prices starting at $0.99.Namecheap is a well-known budget company for domain names and web hosting plans.
Chapter 3. Ways to produce content for free for your affiliate business
1. Free Articles
You can use PLR (Private Label Rights) digital products (eBooks, articles, etc.) on your blog.
PLR products are products that give you the right to rebrand them, sell them, give them for free, put your name on them, distribute them in different ways online, etc.
Each PLR product gives you different rights. You can see the rights each product gives you in the license each PLR product has.
It's good to mention MRR (Master Resell Rights) products and RR (Resell Rights) products that give you similar but limited rights under the PLR.
You can download it for free or buy PLR content.
Paid PLR content is often of better quality than free PLR content.
Remember, in chapter 2 I mentioned that it’s good to publish original content, so how will you do that if you just copy and paste PLR content that is already used by many people?
The solution to that is to rewrite some parts to have the same meaning by using different words, for example.
Also, you can include your own experience in your articles, or you can enrich your articles with some business facts from Statista.
It's not good for Google SEO (Search Engine Optimization) if your content is not original, like PLR content that is already used by other people.
So it's better to use PLR content as a starting point, and try to personalize and customize your article as much as possible, because that will give you Goggle SEO benefits.
The more original your content is, the better it will be for your SEO. Use PLR content to create your original content, not just copy and paste.
You can find PLR content on these websites:
1. PLR Database
5. PLR
7. Plr Mines
9. IDplr
2. Free Images
It's also good to publish visual content (images) with every article, as images will help you with your marketing strategy that I will mention in the last chapter.
With Canva, you can create custom images that you can use on your projects.
Canva is a very useful online graphic design platform for any online entrepreneur.
It helps you design any kind of images, like banners, infographics, logos, or any kind of visual content that you can use on your blog.
It's user-friendly, it works by dragging and dropping, and it has many templates you can choose from for any kind of design.
You can choose a template and customize it, after which you can download the final image and publish it on your blog.
The best of all is that you can use many of the templates and functions of Canva for free. If you want to use more templates and functions, you can upgrade to the pro version.
But for the average small business owner or blogger, the free version will be fine.
The second option for free images is to download royalty-free images.
Royalty-free images are images that give you the right to use them in your commercial or private projects.
Some pictures require author attribution to give you the right to use them. Some do not.
Check the rights each image gives you before you use them.
On these websites you can download free royalty-free images:
1. Unsplash
2. FreeImages
3. Pexels
4. Pixabay
Paid options:
I know this blueprint is about how to create a profitable affiliate business for free, but there are some paid options to produce content that is worth mentioning.
Everyone's financial condition is different, and some people may be able to invest some money in their business.
1. You can use AI (Artificial Intelligence) writing software to produce articles or any kind of text.
The generic way an AI writing software works is by writing some keywords about what kind of article you want, and the AI writing software creates an article/text for you.
As the first free option with the PLR products, you don't get SEO benefits for articles/content that is coming from an AI writing software.
It's wise to use AI writing software as a writing assistant and not to create your final article.
Don't copy-paste the article you get from an AI writing software but instead personalize and customize your article with your personal experience, or by adding some business facts from Statista, rewriting some parts of the text, etc. because in this way you will have Google SEO benefits.
If you want to try the AI writing software solution just to have an idea of how it works you can try the free version of Smodin.
If you want to use an AI writing software with more features you can purchase Jasper which is considered by many marketers as one of the top AI writing software, or alternatively you can purchase Writesonic which is also an AI writing software with many features.
2. You can hire a ghostwriter from Fiverr to write an article for you for as little as $5.
A ghostwriter is someone that writes an article on demand for you and gives you all the rights.
You can present it as your own article or use it however you want.
You can also hire ghostwriters that have SEO skills to write articles optimized for SEO according to your website's niche and keywords.
One tip that you can use is to check if the articles/content you buy from a ghostwriter on Fiverr are original and that the ghostwriter didn't buy them/copy them from another source or create them but sells the same articles that are sold to other customers is to use Copyscape.
Copyscape is one of the best tools that helps you check plagiarism in your articles and content. You can copy-paste your article and it will tell you if it is original or has already been published somewhere else on the web.
Some ghostwriters on Fiverr will provide you with a Copyscape proof, which they will state in their gig description.
3. If you have some writing skills but your writing is not perfect, you can write your articles, and if you are worried that your articles will have a lot of mistakes (grammatical, etc.), you can hire a proofreader or editor from Fiverr to correct your article.
Also, if you are not a native English speaker and you don't have the skills to write an article in English but you are good at writing, you can write the article in your native language and hire a translator from Fiverr to translate it into English.
Some people can choose to create an affiliate business in their native language. This is a personal choice for everyone, but English is the international language, and with a blog or online business in English, you target a bigger and international audience.
Both editor/proofreader and translator services can be found on Fiverr for as little as $5.
Chapter 4: A Free Marketing Strategy for Increasing Blog Traffic
There are many digital marketing strategies someone can use to gain traffic on their website or blog, like SEO, social media marketing, etc.
If someone has some of these skills, they can use them and can combine them with the strategy I will mention.
I will mention this specific marketing strategy that can help someone gain a huge amount of traffic on their blog if it is done correctly, and no other marketing strategies because the subject of this blueprint is how to create an affiliate business and not a digital marketing lesson.
This strategy is used by many affiliate marketers, bloggers, or any kind of website or online business owner to gain traffic on their website.
You can use Quora to gain traffic to your website.
People ask questions about any topic, and anyone who wants to can respond.
You can answer questions on Quora to gain traffic to your blog.
You can send people to your blog by adding the link to your blog to relevant questions, and also you can include your website in your profile description.
First of all, Quora doesn't allow posting affiliate links, so you must send people to your blog article where you will add your affiliate links. Second, don't spam your website link.
If you answer irrelevant questions, you will be blocked or your answer will be deleted. The same will happen if you post your affiliate links.
If you create a new account, Quora will not let you post your website, even in answers that will be relevant. It will be considered spam.
The way to change that is if you create a new Quora account and spend at least one month, or even a little bit more, answering questions without posting your website in any answer. After that, you can start posting your link in some answers.
For example, depending on your availability, you could spend one hour or more each day answering questions on Quora.
After the one-month time (it depends), you can post your link once in a while, after every five answers, etc., and after some time, Quora will let you post your link every time the post is relevant. Again, don't spam because you will get blocked.
Your purpose, if you create a new account, is to build credibility on Quora. That's why if you answer questions and give valuable answers to people for at least one month, Quora will trust you and let you post your link.
You can answer questions that are relevant to your niche, which in that case is affiliate marketing and our affiliate products, like Fiverr and Systeme.
For example, you can answer questions that are relevant to the affiliate marketing niche, like any affiliate marketing question, online businesses, how to make money online, etc., or questions that are relevant to Fiverr or Systeme, like freelancers, blogs, sales funnels, etc. questions.
When you create a new account, Quora will ask you to provide some information about your interests, etc., and it will show you questions or content you can answer based on that.
You can also use the search bar on Quora to find relevant questions. You can make a list of questions you will answer.
You can ask questions that have recently been asked and those that are more popular (more answers, interactions, views).
Also, you can search on the Google search engine for questions. You can try to write some questions on the Google search engine related to affiliate marketing or anything else, and you will see that some Quora answers will show up on the front page.
You can answer these questions, and in this way, you can gain traffic from Google and Quora.
Spend some of your time creating a professional profile on Quora, adding your credentials, a good profile description, a professional profile photo, etc.
You can also become a contributor to some Quora spaces. A space in Quora is similar to a Facebook group. If they accept you as a contributor in a space, then you can share your own content there. You can also create your own space.
This means more exposure and credibility!
Now the most important part is how to answer the questions. First of all, you must give valuable answers. Your goal is to write a better answer than everyone else, because, in this way, your answer will get more views and shares, which will lead to more traffic to your blog.
If you want to answer a question but you are not sure if your answer is correct, you can research on Google for more information before you answer.
Format your question. For example, include bold text, bulleted or numbered lists, etc.
You can use any text editing software like Google Docs to format your answer, and afterward you can copy and paste it on Quora.
You can also include an image with each answer you give. You can use Canva to create some custom images, or you can download some royalty-free images from the websites mentioned above.
You can create some answer templates (text and images) that you can use each time to help you save time.
You can use Google Docs to create answer templates or any other software you want.
You can research on Quora the way some of the most popular answers are formatted (the format style, the image they used, etc.), and you can copy the styles that are used on them.
An affiliate business or any other online business without traffic is worth nothing as no sales will be made.
If you invest some time in learning and using Quora correctly, it can skyrocket your affiliate business!
If you know any people that you believe will want an extra source of income, you can send them this blueprint!