“The money is in the (email) list,” as they say, so no affiliate marketer can expect to succeed without email marketing.
But it’s just as true that no email marketer can expect to be successful without an autoresponder tool. And the better the autoresponder, the more efficient and effective he can be at making money.
A. Why You Must Choose Carefully–Or Else!
But do we really need to specifically consider which autoresponder is best for affiliate marketing in particular?
Absolutely! It’s not only a question of which one works best but which one can you use without getting banned!
Even if you have the ‘best autoresponder,’ it doesn’t mean it will work for your affiliate marketing.
For Instance, some popular email autoresponders have strict policies that ban or greatly restrict affiliate marketing. Some won’t even allow you to even link to a website that contains affiliate links.
SendPulse, for instance. I was just getting excited about the great features it has, like Automation 360, web push notifications, and chatbots.
Then, seeing my emails under moderation, I was prompted to check their Terms Of Use and discovered that using their services for affiliate marketing, whether in an email on your website, is flatly prohibited–no caveat or exceptions. Yeah, that’s why you need to read that boring stuff. (By the way, I still recommend SendPulse, just not for affiliate marketing.)
Many affiliate marketers have been banned by autoresponder services for violating their rules.
Getting banned can cause you to lose your whole email list! And for an internet marketer, that’s scarier than a nightmare!
But thankfully, that needn’t happen to you, since I’ve researched the best autoresponders for the job (affiliate marketing) right here in this post.
B. Best Autoresponders for Affiliate Marketing: List of Top 7
If you can’t wait to read the rest of the post where I’ll review each autoresponder’s features, including the pros and cons, here is my top recommended list of the best autoresponders for affiliate marketing.
Best Autoresponders for Affiliate Marketing: List of Top 7
C. How To Choose The Best Email Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing?
What is the best email autoresponder for affiliate marketing?
That depends on several factors, considered below.
11 Important Factors To Consider When Choosing An Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing
1. Is It Affiliate-Friendly?
Are affiliate links even allowed? It’s not worth getting banned. No matter how good it may be in other respects, if they don’t allow affiliate marketing it’s not an option.
How strict are they about it? If you are uncomfortable with the restrictions, just pick another one.
Additionally, you should consider whether its features are compatible with the type of affiliate marketing you will be doing.
In this list, I have made sure to recommend only affiliate-friendly autoresponders.
2. Does It Have A High Deliverability Rate?
Will your emails even reach their intended destination, or will they end up failing or landing in your subscriber’s spam folder? Emails that don’t get delivered are as good as no emails. And that means lost time and money.
3. Is It User-Friendly?
Unless you’re an experienced email marketer or have a large email list, you shouldn’t choose an autoresponder so complicated you have to take a course on how to use it. The more time you spend learning how to use it, the less time you have to actually use it.
A good autoresponder (for beginners at least) should preferably be easy to understand and use.
You may, however, need from time to time, to look up how to do this or that with it. Autoresponder companies usually provide tutorial articles on their website.
4. What Features Does It Have?
Does it have everything you need to get the job done? Does it go beyond what you need?
Most autoresponders offer a trial period, so check that out to see if it’s right for you.
5. Does It Enable Personalization?
Relatedly, does the autoresponder give you the option to personalize your emails? That is, to automatically add things like their name, email address, location, time, the content they looked at before, etc.
Can you segment your audience based on their interests or other factors?
6. Does It Have Marketing Automation?
It’s important to check out the automation capabilities of an autoresponder.
This typically involves things like automated email campaigns which can be triggered upon certain conditions, such as signing up from a particular form, visiting a particular page, expressing interest in a product, etc. (Another aspect of personalization.)
Marketing automation helps save you time and increase your conversion rate by customizing and automatically sending targeted emails.
7. What Kind Of Support Does It Provide?
Should the situation arise–and it probably will–that you need support for some issue, what kind of support can you expect? Live chat (like Aweber)? Phone or email support?
Some companies (like EmailOctopus) limit their support for free clients.
8. Is The Pricing Affordable?
Some email autoresponders can get quite expensive, especially for bigger lists. Can your business afford them? And do the extra features justify the higher cost? That is an individual thing you’ll have to decide.
9. Is The Trial Period Long Enough?
In deciding whether an autoresponder is right for you, it’s best practice to try out their software before fully investing in it. Most of them offer a free trial; some for an unlimited time; others only give you a few weeks (or less).
Fortunately, all of the autoresponders recommended in this list have free forever plans.
10. Does It Include Email Templates?
Email templates can not only provide a beautiful format for your emails but also help you save time by making things easier and faster for you.
That’s why autoresponders often give you templates to choose from.
But what if you don’t like the templates or they don’t match your theme? Well, you can either customize them, create your own, or–with Aweber–generate an email template based on your website.
Some autoresponders even give you templates for writing the text of your email. If not, I recommend using Aweber’s professional writing templates which can be adapted for any kind of business.
11. How Well Does It Integrate With Other Software?
Last, but not least, it’s important to know how well the autoresponder will integrate with your software or CMS.
For example, if it doesn’t provide its own form builder, is it possible to connect it to a third-party form builder to generate leads?
Can you integrate it with the software or CMS (e.g., WordPress), you currently use?
D. The Best Autoresponders For Affiliate Marketing
What are the best email autoresponders available to us affiliate marketers? Here I’ll give you the top autoresponders to choose from and explain why they’re great for you (or if they are).
GetResponse
1. GetResponse [Overall best autoresponder for affiliate marketing]
GetResponse is the favorite of many affiliate marketers–and marketers in general–for good reason.
It’s not just an autoresponder.
For a surprisingly affordable price, it’s packed with the full spectrum of marketing tools. Everything from a native webinar service (the only affiliate autoresponder that does that!) to lead generation features, to AI website builder technology, sales funnels, and other landing pages. It also integrates for use with social media marketing, and live chat and push notifications for your website.
Why Use GetResponse for Affiliate Marketing?
They are very affilliate friendly, and this is a favorite of affiliate marketers.
It’s a complete marketing suite with features across multiple marketing channels.
Live chat and push notification features.
Exceptionally high email deliverability rate of 99% average.
User-friendly interface.
Lead generation features: e.g., sign up forms, lead funnels, landing pages, popups, etc.
Allows up to 1 million leads/month.
Easy-to-make responsive emails: premade email templates, drag-and drop email editor, or plain text emails.
Personalization features and tagging options.
Ability to schedule emails or send them immediately.
Can send practically unlimited number of emails each week (700 million).
Simple to categorize, tag, and segment your audience for easy targeting of potential customers.
Split-testing for testing which emails are most effective before sending them out to everyone in your audience.
Automatic follow-up campaigns.
Advanced conditional automation.
Deep analytics for analyzing open rates, click-through-rates, etc.
Integrates well with CMSs like WordPress, ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Woocommerce, affiliate platforms like Clickbank, third-party lead software like Optin-Monster, and payment processors (e.g., PayPal, Stripe.)
Good customer support.
Affordable pricing.
You can unlock the full Free trial (no credit card required) for any of their payment plans, as well as switch to a lower plan when the trial ends.
Significant discount with 12 or 24 month plans (18-30%).
Thousands of Shutterstock images for Free!
Free Lifetime Plan.
GetResponse Drawbacks
Webinar hosting, custom automation sequences, and DKIM authentication only available with Plus plan on up (not in Basic).
The Basic plan only gives you one sales funnel.
The deliverability rate is not as high for everyone.
Some advanced features are complicated to use.
Free Plan only allows 500 subscribers.
GetResponse Free Trial & Plan
GetResponse offers both a free trial and a free plan. The free trial gives you full access to all features on any of their plans for 30 days. The free plan is free for an unlimited time, but with limited access to features.
After your free trial of any of their payment plans, GetResponse offers a forever free plan, a monthly plan, a 12-month plan with an 18% discount, and a 24-month payment plan with a 30% discount.
The pricing fluctuates based on what features you’ll be getting and how many thousands of people are on your list.
For 1000 subscribers, and a 12-month plan, pricing starts at:–
2. EmailOctopus [Another Great Affiliate Freindly Autoresponder]
If you are sick of email service providers treating affiliate marketing as though it were some kind of illegitimate business, EmailOctopus is refreshing. They not only allow but welcome affiliate marketers.
EmailOctopus is one of the few email autoresponder companies that openly welcome affiliate marketers.
EmailOctopus is not as well known as most of the others, but it’s one of the best free autoresponders.
It’s truly award-winning software.
Why is EmailOctopus Great for Affiliate Email Marketing?
They’re very affiliate-freindly.
They are user-friendly. Easy-to-use.
It’s easy to create emails using their premade, customizable templates, drag and drop editor, or plain text emails.
You’ll have the ability to segment your subscribers based on characteristics like their activity or interests.
It has features for automation, triggered email sequences, and drip campaigns.
It’s got a drag and drop editor for creating embedable sign up forms for your affiliate website, to help you build your email list for marketing.
They also give you the function to create landing pages for affiliate marketing or other purposes–no integrations necessary.
Schedule your campaigns or send them instantly after you create them.
You can monitor your emails’ performance and success with reports on open rates, CTR (click-through-rate), etc.
User-freindly with easy user interface.
One version of EmailOctopus integrates with Amazon’s Simple Email Service. It has a cheaper plan and gives you a higher deliverability rate.
The Free plan is the most generous I’ve come across. Free up to 2,500 subscribers!
Priority Support with Pro Plan.
EmailOctopus Drawbacks
Because EmailOctopus is relatively unknown and new, the available integrations with other software is more limited than others.
Only basic support available in free plan.
Unable to remove EmailOctopus branding in your emails in the free plan.
Free plan only gives you access to your reports for 30 days.
EmailOctopus Vs. EmailOctopus Connect.
There are two versions of EmailOctopus: EmailOctopus and EmailOctopus Connect. Both have the same features. The only differences are that (1) EmailOctopus Connect is specifically for use with Amazon’s SES (Simple Email Service) and (2) it’s cheaper.
How Much Does EmailOctopus Cost?
Forever Free Autoresponder Plan
EmailOctopus is one of the top best free autoresponders for affiliate marketing.
While most free autoresponder plans limit you to 500 or at most 1,000 subscribers, EmailOctopus allows you to use their services without charge for up to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month.
Pro Plan
$24/mo. for up to 5,000 subscribers and up to 50,000 emails/mo.
$36/mo. for up to 10,000 subscribers and up to 100,000 emails/mo.
$75/mo. for up to 25,000 subscribers and up to 250,000 emails/mo.
$130/mo. for up to 50,000 subscribers and up to 500,000 emails/mo.
$250/mo. for up to 100,000 subscribers and up to 1,000,000 emails/mo.
Pricing continues to go up in like fashion till 500,000 subscribers, at over $1k per month. If you have more than that, you’ll need to contact them for a custom plan.
Try Email Octopus
To sign up for their Free or Pro Plan, or to learn more, click the button below.
Like EmailOctopus, SendX may be considered not only affiliate-friendly but pro-affiliate.
SendX promises to never ban you because you are an affiliate marketer.
SendX will not ban you for affiliate marketing.
SendX deserves its place on the list also because of its user-friendliness, advanced automation, and high deliverability rate.
It differs from all the others in that it is the only autoresponder that allows you to send an unlimited number of emails and get access to all their features on any subscription plan.
What SendX Features Are Great For Your Affiliate Email Marketing?
High affiliate friendliness.
Embedable sign up forms to generate leads on your website.
Easy to quickly create emails using their ready made customizable email marketing templates, or use their simple drag and drop editor.
Instant free access to over half a million stock photos.
Ability to automate (and segment) all your email campaigns based on certain trigger rules.
Tracking for all the important data metrics.
High email deliverability rate.
Send unlimited emails and access all features regardless of payment plan.
Unusually cheap, starting at $9.99/month.
If you have an existing list, you’ll get free migration and ability to upload your contacts list.
SendX integrates well with many third-party platforms and software, like WordPress, PayPal, Slack, and webinar tools.
Dependable customer support through a live chat, email, etc.
Push notifications for your website.
SendX Drawbacks
Only a 14 day free trial.
No landing pages.
How Much Does SendX Cost?
SendX Pricing Chart
The pricing is based solely on the number of subscribers. All their features are available in all the plans.
Aweber remains one of the best and free autoresponders for affiliate marketing. It’s also great for beginners because it’s simple and easy to use–certainly more than autoresponders like MailChimp.
It’s a well-known and established brand in the email marketing business since 1998. They offer great support and training, in addition to a range of features. Aweber is a favorite of affiliate marketers as it’s one of the most affiliate-friendly autoresponders out there, and they have a high deliverability rate.
Aweber is one of my favorite autoresponders for its simplicity and ease of use.
What Aweber Features are Great For Your Affiliate Email Marketing?
Create unlimited landing pages (with lots of predesigned templates) to generate leads, offer digital courses or downloads, or even sell products directly.
Easy to create emails with their hundreds of premade but customizable email templates, drag and drop email editor, or even use their AI-powered email builder to generate email templates that match your website’s theme!
The emails are mobile-responsive.
Create embeded or popup sign up forms with custom follow-up campaigns.
Maximize your conversion rate with a variety of personalized tags. E.g., automatically insert their name in the opening or subject.
Ability to segment your audience with behavior based tags.
Behavior based automation features.
Schedule drip campaigns.
High email deliverability rate.
Integrates with Canvaso you can use Canva to edit images without ever leaving your email editor.
Integrates with a wide range of platforms, including CMSs, payment processors, and even your Facebook Business Page so you can generate leads on social media.
Use Aweber as a mobile application.
Split campaign testing.
Anaytical reports.
Great for beginners.
Solid and reliable.
Excellent customer support (including live chat.)
Free premium trial for 30 days, and forever free plan, up to 500 subscribers.
If you’re already using an autoresponder service, they’ll migrate all your contacts and data for free.
Aweber Drawbacks
Their automation is not as advanced as other autoresponders (like GetResponse).
The sign up forms look outdated, and are limited in customization. (But this can be overcome by connecting their API to a third-party app.)
The Free plan only allows up to 500 subscribers, 1 list, and lacks automation functionality.
Not as many features as some other autoresponders.
Try Aweber
Learn more, or sign up for their Free or Pro Plan by clicking the button below.
5. Moosend [Affiliate-Friendly Autoresponder With Advanced Automation]
Last but not least we have Moosend for affiliate marketing. (Yes, I specifically asked them about that before including them.)
Moosend is one of those autoresponders that hasn’t gotten enough attention and should be more fully explored.
Despite the simplistic cow logo, they offered some advanced features.
What Moosend Email Marketing Features Are Great For Your Affiliate Business?
“Drag & Drop Dead Beautiful” selection of hundreds of modern email templates to choose from, and an easy to use editor. Create appealing newsletters
and showcase your products.
Create powerful automation with their simple and easy drag and connect automation workflow (including templates!).
This includes setting up abondoned cart emails, and purchase follow up offers.
Hyper-personalize your campaigns with highly targeted emails with offers based on their interests (or that stimulate their interests) and behaviour.
A/B testing.
Real-time analytics and tracking.
Build your email list with their GDPR-compliant customizable opt-in forms, while keeping out the bots.
Advanced list segmentation.
Easy integration with your CMS & CRM (including WordPress, Shopify, and WooCommerce)–no coding needed.
Step-by-step video tutorials.
Create beatifual landing pages.
Moosend Drawbacks:
Their sign up forms are bland and need to be customized, but very little customization is possible, and what they do allow is tricky (in my experience.)
Limited support for free plan.
Free plan doesn’t give you landing pages or ability to add team members.
How Much Does Moosend Cost?
Moosend offers a generous free forever plan for up to 1000 subscribers.
You can also unlock their features with an affordable Pro or Enterprise plan. For a list of 1000, the Pro pricing starts at $8 Monthly. The pricing for their Enterprise plan is always customized for your business.
E. Email Autoresponders That Do Not Allow Affiliate Marketing & Others to Avoid
Now that I’ve told you about the best autoresponders for affiliate marketing, let me warn you of some to stay away from.
This isn’t because they are bad in themselves. Some are excellent–for other purposes. It’s just that they don’t allow affiliate marketing.
The autoresponders below are being recommended by other bloggers as the “best autoresponder for affiliate marketing,” despite the fact that several of them strictly ban affiliate marketing!
MailChimp. Who hasn’t heard of them? But apparently, some haven’t heard of their Acceptable Use Policy, which states:
“[W]e do not allow businesses that offer these types of services, products, or content” And among them is “Affiliate marketing”
[MailChimp’s Acceptable Use Policy prohibits affiliate marketing.]
Countless affiliate marketers have been banned for trying to use MailChimp for affiliate marketing. I would advise you to stay away from them at all costs. If you aren’t banned yet, it’s only a matter of time–a short time. You have been duly warned.
MailerLite advertises itself as an Aweber alternative; (that’s how I found them). And they do have many features that Aweber doesn’t have. Reading their comparison chart, I was motivated to sign up with them. However, upon reviewing their terms, I realized it wouldn’t work for my purposes. They don’t allow affiliate marketing.
[SendPulse’s Terms of Service Policy prohibits affiliate marketing.]
5. Does ActiveCampaign Allow Affiliate Marketing?
I was going to put this as the #3 best autoresponder for affiliate marketing for its advanced segmentation and automation, but since their terms strictly prohibit it, I could hardly recommend it as such.
Their Acceptable Use Policy states that they “do not allow you to use our Services to…Send messages regarding…affiliate marketing”.
[ActiveCampaign’s Acceptable Use Policy prohibits affiliate marketing.]
But some think affiliate marketing is sometimes allowed because one of their help articles says “You can include affiliate links, with some restrictions.”
However, this is not an exception to their ban against affiliate marketing. It’s only saying it’s not necessarily against policy to include affiliate links in your emails.
What’s the difference? In short, you can occasionally share affiliate links if it’s helpful to the reader, but you cannot promote your links or the products/services they link to (AKA, marketing).
But since it’s too easy for an affiliate marketer to slip from the sharing into the promoting mode (and it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the two), I’d caution you against using it for that either. Especially because they say they “actively monitor” your account.
6. Is ConvertKit Affiliate Marketing Friendly?
While there is no ban on affiliate links in your emails, there are limitations to how often you can post them and what kind of affiliate marketing is allowed.
ConvertKit specifically prohibits, per their Acceptable Use Policy (in addition to the other things they prohibit in general):
“CPA affiliate type sites or similar affiliate type of sites, network marketing sites, affiliate educational offers, insurance sales or promotions.”
“Regardless of your own business, we don’t allow any affiliate links related to education, loans, online pharmacies, or “get rich quick” types of software.”
But that’s not all. They also want you to use their services primarily (~70%) to promote your own business and website and do affiliate marketing only secondarily (~30%). In their words,
“…if you aren’t sending any content about your own business — but instead you are solely sending emails including affiliate links for diets, software upgrades, and trainings — that wouldn’t be considered a good use of our platform. If you don’t personally have any business or content outside of affiliate marketing, that content on its own wouldn’t be a fit for ConvertKit.”
Moreover, even when you do send affiliate emails, they can’t be entirely about your affiliate offer. Quoting their Acceptable Use Policy, affiliate links must be “properly marked and used responsibly. However, we do not allow content that is 100% affiliate based, including selling other tools, software, ‘business in a box’, etc.”
If you don’t want to be limited in this way, ConvertKit isn’t for you, and you should check out the other autoresponders in this review instead.
Due to these restrictions, I am not recommending ConvertKit as one of the “best autoresponders for affiliate marketing.”
F. Summing up
In this article, we’ve looked at some of the key points for choosing the best autoresponder for affiliate marketing, reviewed the 7 top choices, and know which ones to avoid.
You should now be equipped to choose the right one for you.
And if you are still undecided, take my recommendation and start with GetResponse. Or, try them all! They’re all free so you have nothing to lose! You really can’t go wrong with any of them.
FAQ: Affilate Marketing Autoresponders
Q: What is the best autoresponder for affiliate marketing?
A: In general, GetResponse is my No. 1 recommendation for affiliate marketers.
SendX and EmailOctopus are especially affiliate-friendly autoresponders.
For those seeking simplicity and medium automation, Aweber is recommended.
Q: What are the free autoresponders for affiliate marketing?
A: GetResponse, Aweber, and EmailOctopus all offer forever free plans, meaning you can use their services without charge for as long as you like. But unless you upgrade, you’ll be limited in the number of subscribers and features available to you.
Q: What are the best autoresponders for deliverability?
A: GetResponse. It has an average deliverability rate of 99%. But as mentioned above, other affiliate-friendly autoresponders like SendX, EmailOctopus, and Aweber also have high deliverability rates.
Q: What is the best autoresponder for WordPress that works for affiliate marketing?
(If you’re new to affiliate marketing and looking to get started, or are trying to understand the key terms and concepts, see our previous post here.)
I. What are “Affiliate Links”?
Since we’re going to spend the rest of this time learning looking at ways to promote affiliate links, let’s make sure we know what we’re referring to and how to acquire them.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you are given a unique URL (exclusive to you) that contains your referral ID or username.
When people click on an affiliate link, they are redirected to the sales page (usually containing promotional material) on the merchant’s website.
Here’s a couple of examples from my affiliate links:
[Clicking on the affiliate link redirects to VidScribe’s website.]
Affiliate links also install a cookie in the visitor’s browser (when clicked) which enables the merchant to give credit to the affiliate for the sale. Unfortunately for the affiliate, if the customer blocks or rejects the cookies, he likely won’t get credit for the sale.
II. Ways to promote your affiliate links on your website
Do you need a website to do affiliate marketing? No, but you’ll be missing out on a lot if you don’t have one, as you’ll see when reading this guide.
Here are the top ways to do affiliate marketing on your website.
1. Writing blog posts or informative articles
This is one of the best methods overall. It gets you plenty of search engine traffic, provides readers with a lot of value, helps build your credibility, and gains the trust of your readers. So they are more likely to follow your recommendations and buy the products you are promoting (AKA, a higher conversion rate.)
What to do: Share your affiliate links in your blog posts by recommending products in your posts or integrating your links with your content.
This is a subtle, but popular and effective subtle promotion method. Many people look for product reviews when interested in buying a product because they want to learn more about it and hear other people’s experiences with it. Often this will influence their decision on whether to buy it.
What to do: Write a review of your product sharing your experience with it, giving your honest views on it, what you liked about it (or didn’t, but be careful with the latter). Give an overview of the product’s outstanding features, and direct the user to where and how they can buy it, or learn more about it on the merchant’s website.
[Speechello: Example of a product review page for affiliate marketing.]
3. Product Tutorials/How-To Guides
What to do: Write an in-depth guide on how to use a product or some feature of it. This is especially effective if you thus showcase the product’s use and features as the solution to a problem, to help your reader do something they want to get done.
4. Product Comparisons
A product comparison is like a mini-review of several products focusing on their similarities and differences in chosen aspects.
What to do: You can use a product comparison to highlight the advantages of certain products over others or to demonstrate the uniqueness of each.
A checklist is one common product comparison method.
An affiliate banner ad is a clickable image (ad) that contains your affiliate link.
Some affiliate programs provide you with premade banners. All you need to do is add the code to your website. If you use WordPress, you can do with the Custom Html block (or Shortcode).
III. Ways to promote your affiliate links that don’t require you to have a website
1. Email Affiliate Marketing
Your email list is your most valuable asset. Building an email list allows you to contact your audience directly and personally without depending on search engines and social media algorithms, hoping your audience will see your content. It’s one of the most profitable forms of marketing.
What to do: Create a landing page (you can do that with Aweber or Leadpages) offering some valuable freebie (like an ebook) that they can receive only by submitting their email address. This kind of landing page is called a squeeze page, and the offer is called a lead magnet.
If you’re a newbie and looking for an easy way to get started, Covert Commissions provides you with done-for-you squeeze pages and done-for-your automatic email campaigns promoting your affiliate links. All you need to do is add your Affiliate ID in your dashboard and connect your autoresponder (like Aweber).
If you have a website, you can use pop-ups as well as landing pages.
And yes, you can do email marketing even if you don’t have an email list of your own. No, I’m not talking about spamming. That will get you in plenty of trouble. I’m talking about running email solo ads and safelist marketing.
a. Solo ads
One of the best places to buy solo ads is Udimi. It gives many sellers to choose from, showing their average conversion rate and other ratings. It also gives you free live-time tracking for all clicks on your links. Even better, you can choose to have them write the solo ad for free if you don’t have your own.
b. Safelist Marketing
A safelist is a mutual mailing list for marketers. Since all the members have agreed to receive marketing emails, they can’t get marked as spam.
The major downsides of using safelists are that (1) you will receive a stream of emails in return that can quickly take up your time, and (2) with all the other marketing emails they receive each day, you’ll get a much lower conversion rate. But I guess you get what you pay for, and it’s usually free to join.
For the second reason, I would advise mostly advertising free products to generate leads for building your own email list.
You must go where the people are if you are to succeed. And nearly half the world’s population uses social media. If you’re not using social media to promote your business, you don’t know what you’re doing.
Two different methods of promoting your links on social media are available to you.
1. The Direct Method: This is where you directly share your affiliate links and pitch a sale.
2. The Indirect Method: Send them to a landing page (such as a blog post, or product review) to learn more, and this page contains your affiliate links.
What to do: Share posts on Facebook in groups, in your bio, and your regular posts. Some groups allow you to promote your affiliate links but be sure it’s ok so you don’t get banned from the community.
You’ll be more effective if you regularly share posts that provide value to your followers/readers, rather than just annoying them by spamming their feeds.
Tweets being as limited as they are, you may want to use the indirect method instead of sharing your links directly. You can also add your affiliate website to your bio.
3. Instagram
As popular as Instagram is, it’s a bit trickier to use for marketing than others. Only those with 10 thousand or more followers can share links in their feed, put links in your bio, and direct people to go there.
Reddit apparently does not allow for affiliate links, so use the indirect method on Reddit and link to your blog posts or landing pages that contain your affiliate links.
Try to be helpful when sharing links, as simply link-dropping will not be appreciated.
5. Medium
Medium allows affiliate links, but you must clearly disclose your affiliation on whatever page you share your affiliate links on. It’s not the most affiliate-friendly platform, but it’s popular enough to give you a good chance at making sales.
3. Video Platforms
a. YouTube
YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world, you don’t want to miss out on using it. In fact, for many YouTube is their primary way of making a living.
What to do: You can promote your affiliate links as resources in your video descriptions, or with popups during the video. Use YouTube to create product reviews or tutorials.
b. Rumble, Vimeo
Vimeo and Rumble are YouTube alternatives and Rumble allows you to monetize your videos.
c. Webinars (or live videos on social media)
Webinars have the highest conversion rate of any marketing method. If you’re trying to sell a high-priced product, your best bet is to do a webinar on it.
You don’t have to go live if you don’t want to. Many webinars are pre-recorded and replayed multiple times.
d. Never forget to share your videos on other platforms as well.
4. Advertising (besides Solo ads and safelists)
a. Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
With Search Engine Marketing, you’ll pay for ads that will appear at the top of the search results when people search for certain keywords.
You must verify that it is allowed in the terms of the affiliate agreement since some affiliate programs strictly prohibit you from using keyword bidding to promote your affiliate links.
b. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
In addition to SEM, you can pay for other ads for your affiliate links. You can purchase PPC ads from Google and social media platforms.
c. Free Advertising methods
In addition to safelists, you can get free advertising for your affiliate ads or banners.
You can either get a set amount of credits per month or earn ad credits for viewing other’s ads.
d. Traffic exchanges
What to do: For every site you visit, you get that many guaranteed visits to your site.
To do this, you’ll need to join a network like Traffic Splash.
5. Ebook
A clever way to promote your affiliate links is through an ebook. If you offer the ebook for free, it will serve double-purpose as a lead magnet as well as a marketing tool.
If you’re looking for an easy way to make and design ebooks (including some DFY), I recommend using Sqribble.
Not a writer? No problem. Affordably hire someone on Fiverr to write an ebook for you.
6 & 7. Comment on blogs and forums
Only provide your affiliate links in blog comments if they are relevant and helpful, else you likely won’t get past moderation or spam filters. Even then they may not allow it, so it’s better not to link directly.
The same applies to commenting on forums.
8. Referral link sites
Some websites allow you to share your referral and affiliate links directly on their platform. In fact, that’s the whole purpose of their platform.
With Invitation, you can easily share your affiliate links and get free traffic automatically. It’s like a social media site for link offers. Sign up here.
Conclusion
Have any other ideas? Let us know in the comment section below! And don’t forget to subscribe and share this post onsocial media!
A. Affiliate Marketing Made Simple: Introduction to Affiliate Marketing for Beginners.
Are you here to learn about affiliate marketing or interested in tapping into this lucrative billion-dollar industry but don’t know where to start? In either case, this affiliate marketing guide is for you.
Affiliate Marketing Keyword Definitions and explanations.
1.What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an earnings-sharing marketing model in which a person earns a commission (for a sale, usually) from a merchant for promoting that merchant’s product(s) online. Affiliate marketers direct potential customers to the merchant to get a product, and if they do, the merchant rewards the affiliate.
2. How does affiliate marketing work?
Merchants want to reach, and sell their products to, as many people as they can. Through affiliate marketing, they incentivize people to promote their products, by rewarding them for certain actions they get a consumer to do, such as making a purchase, clicking a link, or signing up for a program.
When you sign up for an affiliate program, you are given a unique URL or referral ID. When someone buys something using your link, you are credited for the sale and paid your share of it.
The three most common types of affiliate marketing models are:
1. Pay Per Sale (PPS): in which the affiliate usually receives a percentage of the sale proceeds, or else a fixed dollar amount. PPS is the most common and profitable type of affiliate marketing program.
2. Pay Per Lead (PPL): where the affiliate is paid for getting a consumer to sign up for a program/product, or enter their email address. The affiliate is paid even for these free sign-ups because it is likely the customer will upgrade to a paid product, or at least the merchant has the opportunity to continue to advertise to them.
3. Pay Per Click: in which the affiliate is paid each time a person clicks on their ads or views their site. (In hopes that a worthwhile percentage of them will make purchases.)
3. Who are the parties involved in affiliate marketing?
As far as the affiliate program alone is concerned there are only two parties involved: the merchant and the affiliate. But for the program to be worth anything, you of course need a third party: the customer. Often, there is a fourth party involved, the affiliate network.
a. Who is the merchant?
The merchant is the businessman or company that creates the whole program. They own the products and pay affiliates for bringing them sales.
b. Who/ what is an affiliate marketer?
The affiliate marketer is the person (or sometimes a business or organization) who is paid a share of the profits that he brought to the merchant by promoting his products online.
c. What is an affiliate marketing network?
An affiliate network acts as a middle-man between the merchant and affiliate. It provides a platform for managing and advertising the affiliate program, paying affiliates, keeps track of the sales, and often also traffic brought by the affiliate.
d. Who is the customer or consumer?
The customer or consumer is anyone who purchases or signs up to receive a product or service provided by a merchant. There are also potential customers, who haven’t yet made a purchase, but might, so the merchants and their affiliates advertise to them in hopes that they will land a sale.
4. What is an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is a performance-based marketing program which means the marketer only gets paid when he produces the desired result to the merchant, which usually means sales.
5. How does an affiliate marketer get paid?
Merchants or affiliate networks keep track of the purchases and sign-ups that occur as a result of using an affiliate’s link or ID, using software, cookies, and other tracking technologies. They are then credited with the sale and paid out at the time and method set by an agreement.
Sometimes affiliates get paid immediately; other times the payment is delayed up to 30 days (or more), especially for newbies.
Payment methods include anything from PayPal, to direct bank transfers, checks, cryptocurrencies, and credit points, but usually in cash.
6. Why should I be an affiliate? Is it worth it? Is affiliate marketing right for me?
Affiliate marketing is for everyone! You don’t need any educational qualifications or prior experience. Affiliates are just ordinary people trying to make a living, or some money on the side.
There are many advantages to affiliate marketing.
13 reasons to be an affiliate marketer:
1. You can generate passive income, the ‘holy grail’ of making money. You can literally make money while you sleep. While you do need to put in some initial work, once you get things in motion, automation can help you do most of the work.
2. No customer support is necessary. The merchant handles all the customer support issues, inquiries, or refunds.
3. It is convenient and flexible. You can adapt it to your schedule, platforms, and methods. No office hours. You just need a device with an internet connection.
4. You can work remotely. Work from home or anywhere you want. You don’t have to go anywhere, so long as you have an internet connection.
5. The rewards are performance-based (which is why affiliates are sometimes called performance-marketers) so the more sales you bring, the more you earn.
6. No stocking, shipping, or handling. You don’t need to buy or pay for any product, or send it to customers. Just refer them to the merchant, and they handle the rest.
7. Low to no-cost to start up and run. It’s possible to market products without spending a single penny. In any case, the costs, if you have them, are inconsiderable compared to the costs of starting a business with products of your own.
8. No experience or educational requirements. Though it is recommended to read or watch educational resources, (including those on CyberMarketSpace–that’s what you’re doing right now, after all!), and talk to those who are already affiliates.
9. You’ll have time for doing other things. Time is more valuable than money, and you don’t want to spend your whole life just trying to make bucks. Making passive income will enable you to use your time in other important or enjoyable ways, such as spending time with your friends, families, doing your favorite hobbies, going on vacation, etc.
10. Be your own boss. No employer around to tell you what to do!
11. Make unlimited income. There are no caps on how much total money you can make.
12. Minimal time necessary. Apart from the initial work of setting up a website and writing posts and emails (if you choose to do things that way), technology and automation will carry you the rest of the way.
13. You can sell any kind of product you want. Nearly every major online business has an affiliate program. There is an affiliate program for every type of niche and product out there.
7. How much money can I earn as an affiliate marketer?
The sky is the limit! With diligent and intelligent effort, you can even become a millionaire, as some have. Individual results, however, will vary depending on several factors including your niche, the programs you join, and your marketing tactics.
B. How do I become a merchant?
If you’re interested in becoming a merchant and having affiliates promote your own product, here are the basic steps to follow.
You must:
1. Come up with a product idea.
The way to do this is to find a problem that people want or need to be solved and creating a solution (your product!) to solve that problem.
2. Research to find out if there is a big enough demand for your product.
If there isn’t, you won’t make a profit. There needs to be people to be looking for your solution, or else be persuaded that they need it before they’ll be interested in buying your product.
3. Create your product.
How you do that will depend on what your product is. It may be a book, software, or physical product. You have the idea; now you need to make it a reality.
4. Test your product.
If your product doesn’t do what it’s supposed to, you won’t a profit, and you may gain a bad reputation.
On the other hand, having happy customers is a wonderful and fulfilling experience, and makes it likely that they will recommend your product to others, even if they don’t become affiliates–and that is the most valuable form of promotion.
5. Find affiliates to promote your product.
If you use an affiliate network for your affiliate program, others may find it when searching for related programs in that network. But since it can be hard to get recognized as a newbie, consider asking affiliates who promote similar products, or write on topics related to your product, if they’d be interested in promoting your product as well.
You can also ask product reviewers to review your product. People with product review sites or YouTube channels are very often affiliates of the products they review. You can further incentivize them by giving them a free product, or sample of it, for them to review.
C. How can I be an affiliate marketer?
How can you take advantage of the financial opportunities available as an affiliate marketer?
How to become an affiliate marketer: a step-by-step guide for beginners in 2021.
1. Decide what niche and audience you will market to.
What is a niche? Your niche is a specific market category that your website or business is centered around.
A niche is not the same as a keyword, though it may be represented by one. For instance, “love” is not a niche. But “online dating site” is a niche, and a highly competitive one at that.
You should choose a niche that is profitable, that you have a special interest in, and that you have some knowledge about, otherwise you won’t make any worthwhile profit, or you’ll lose interest in it or burn out.
It’s important to choose a specific focus for your online website/business, rather than everything at random because if you don’t, you’ll have to try to beat all kinds of competitors at once, and you’ll lose the advantage of having an engaged, focused, and interested audience.
If you choose a niche so broad, like cooking or pets, you’ll have too much competition. Narrow your chosen niche down to the point where the competition is not too high, but also not so narrow that you get little traffic. This is why it’s important to do keyword research.
2. Pick your platforms and methods for promoting products.
Platforms and methods for promoting affiliate products include websites, email lists, social media, ads, content marketing, product reviews, webinars, etc. It’s best to integrate and use more than one, but focus primarily on one.
3. Build your website.
Is it possible to do affiliate marketing without a website? Yes, it is, but you’ll be severely limited in your potential, and long-term success. Moreover, some affiliate networks and programs require you to have a working website in order to apply, and some even have traffic minimums.
After that, choose a good theme, and customize it if and how you wish, and you are pretty much done, so you can then focus on producing the content. (Of course, you can tweak it whenever you want, or change your theme entirely.)
You can also hire someone from Fiverr or Upwork to build a custom website for you.
4. Choose which products to promote and the programs you will join.
Having chosen your niche, you must then choose (if you haven’t already) what kind of products to promote, and which product programs to join. You can search for affiliate programs using your search engine. You can just ‘DuckDuckGo‘, for instance, “dog training affiliate programs,” or, and this is preferable, you can search an affiliate network for affiliate programs in your niche, getting the details there.
5. Join an affiliate network and relevant programs.
Most affiliate programs involve a network, so you’ll need to join one or more at some point.
Clickbank is one of the largest and most popular and they offer a variety of physical and digital products, but you needn’t and shouldn’t limit yourself to any one network. WarriorPlus and JVzoo are popular sites for digital products (and digital products give you a much higher commission than physical products.) A couple of other big ones are CJ Affiliate and ShareASale, and there are many others worth checking out.
Amazon and eBay have their own affiliate programs, but they pay very low commissions, so you’ll have to get a lot of traffic and sales if you’re going to make a decent profit.
Upon joining ClickBank, you are automatically approved for promoting many products. Other networks and programs require approval from each merchant before you can promote them.
When requesting approval, you are more likely to be accepted if you tell the merchant how you intend to promote their products and give them your website so they can verify that you can drive sales.
6. Promote your products
There are many ways of doing this.
One of the most popular ways to sell affiliate products is to write or film a review of the product and link to it with your affiliate link.
Email marketing is the most profitable way of making sales. Build your email list by offering something valuable (called a lead magnet) on your website to subscribers, such as a free ebook, in exchange for subscribing with their emails.
You can share posts on social media. But since some social media sites (like Quora and Reddit) ban affiliate links, you may have to promote them indirectly, by linking to your website for more information or to read your product review, which then contains your affiliate links.
If you don’t feel up to writing the content yourself, you can hire content writers cheaply from Fiverr and Upwork.
7. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
To get traffic to your affiliate links, and build your email list, you’ll have to get people to visit your site. The biggest and most valued way of getting traffic is through organic search engine traffic. By writing on topics related to your niche, you can attract visitors because they’ll find your site when they search using certain keywords.
But getting to the top of the search engine rankings is something you’ll have to work for, using various techniques. These include writing posts focused on certain popular keywords, getting backlinks to your site from other websites, writing long-form content, and other techniques which are beyond the scope of this post.
D. Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a profitable business enterprise in which everyone can be involved and in which everyone wins. The customer gets a good deal (especially if the affiliate offers special bonuses and discounts); the merchant makes a bigger profit, and the affiliate gets a part of that profit without all the hassle. And it can be done by anyone with any interest and background.
But if you’re still overwhelmed with getting started, let me offer you a way to jump-start your affiliate marketing career. For a limited time, I’m offering you a unique opportunity to get a completely Free and done-for-you affiliate marketing system. It’s called Covert Commissions. Try it out here:
But if that’s not what you’re looking for let me refer you a couple of other resources.
Wealthy Affiliate. They not only train you but give a website you can get started right away! In addition, they have a very friendly user community. It’s also free to join.
Affilorama. It’s another source for free affilliate marketing training. You can sign up for free and get access to over 100 video and article lessons that will teach you everything from the basics to more advanced tactics.