“Don’t be afraid to be alone, be afraid to not try”, this is what beginners in affiliate marketing may often feel like. But you should never be afraid to be worth nothing and have zero experience, you just need to know what to arm yourself with if you are worth nothing (yet!). So, any newcomer can immediately take some affiliate sources of traffic into their arsenal. And there are places where you don’t have to pay anything at all. Sure, free traffic sources exist but, of course, you should understand that mainly, selling anything on them is more difficult and it’s also difficult to drive a lot of leads with them. But in 2022, it’s easier to start with these traffic sources and if you try, you can even get additional profits.

However, if you want to dive into affiliate marketing immediately and play the game very seriously, then don’t waste time on this article. If your strategy at first is “Going slowly doesn’t prevent arriving”, then feel free to read on!

Free traffic sources in affiliate marketing: pros and cons

So, free (or semi-free, relatively free) affiliate marketing traffic is real and you can find it too, as well as easily measure and evaluate your results. But beforehand, we must also evaluate the pros and cons of such traffic sources. So, let’s see.

Pros:

• The ability to provide a relatively high conversion rate, ONLY WHEN you’re using your personal platform (website, social networks) that’s well-designed and of high quality in all respects;

• A high ROI is very much possible – the total profit can be a multiple of the investment.

• Start-up costs are either minimal or none at all.

• These traffic sources still provide the acquisition of valuable skills, since free affiliate marketing traffic is about gaining experience and skills. You can further apply this experience and skills in the big game (i.e., paid traffic sources), as well as in the same free resources.

Cons:

• The risk of getting blocked is very high. Your account can get banned not because of moderators or algorithms but because of complaints from users of the selected site/social media platform. You need to be prepared.

• It will take a lot of time. When you’re alone and have zero experience, you will most likely spend a lot of time choosing traffic sources, preparing mailouts, and so on.

• Scaling is difficult. If you’re lucky with the approach you take on one site/social media, then there is no guarantee that you will be as lucky with it on a different website.

Free traffic sources for affiliate marketing: website overview

SEO traffic

In short, the path you need to take here will look like this. Create a website that is relevant to the topic of the promoted offer and wait until it starts to attract your target audience. You need to have some technical background in order to get good prospects in SEO optimization of a personal site. It’s important to produce high-quality and unique content and find the right semantic core using Google Trends and Yandex Wordstat. You will also have to figure out SEO tricks on the go, such as buying and using links, etc. (details on all of this are easy to find online). As for the design, you can get by with templates that different online website builders provide or you can also take something from stocks, and edit those templates, if necessary.

SEO presents a relatively free traffic category, as you need to pay for domain and hosting activation and, most likely, also for buying links. But the main resource you invest here is your time. And here’s how many details this fits in:

1. independent website and content creation

2. searching and mastering SEO theory

3. SEO is a tool that brings slow results. You will see the effect of your SEO efforts within a few months.

Blogs

You need to create your blog on one of the platforms out there: Reddit, Blogger.com, Liveinternet, Yandex.Zen, and so on. On this platform, you need to write native articles about your offer and attract leads. In affiliate marketing, such traffic sources only work for white products.

You need to post at least three articles weekly. How quickly your blog can develop directly depends on the chosen offer and the interest of the platform audience in the content. But in general, blogs can be categorized as free affiliate marketing traffic sources.

One of the most popular resources is Yandex.Zen, but it also has its flaws, such as its algorithm. It’s known for not driving that many impressions and even blocking impressions to certain channels. In addition, moderation is strict here – people get blocked for attaching certain links to their articles or for using non-unique images.

You can succeed on Zen in a couple of months, but you can also lose your audience just as quickly. Irregular posting can reset your good karma here. Breaking through the fierce jungle of competition on Zen is possible only by being original, having completely unique content, and posting frequently. Free affiliate marketing traffic sources are free because you definitely need to have your own original ideas, creativity, skill, and time to succeed.

Social media pages

Social networks are a resource for extracting both paid and free traffic.

Let us briefly outline your strategy here.

At the very beginning of this path, you need to draw up a portrait of the target audience and, based on this, choose the right social network.

Then, O

of course, start with the elementary details: fill your account with content and photos, add other users to your friends. When the audience is already attracted, advertise the offer organically and not aggressively. You need to subtly show how the product solves certain problems of the target audience.

It’s also an effective strategy to create accounts on different social networks and advertise them on one another. When creating content, follow the rules of the social network so that you don’t get banned. In the same way, you can promote communities. It’s a natural strategy for such traffic sources.

And how can you self-promote for free here?

1. Regular and engaging content and organic reach growth

2. Ambush marketing – writing comments that provoke dialogue and suggest expert opinions in any community or personal account where your target audience is the most active

3. Mutual PR – negotiate with the owners of other accounts (similar to yours, of course, so that the owners have some interest in collaborating with you) about mutually advertising each other.

Messengers

This works the same as with social networks. You need to create a channel, fill it with content, promote it, and, when you have enough impressions and audience, start advertising your offer.

A big advantage of instant messengers is the ability to establish organic direct contact with users. Also, these free affiliate marketing traffic sources allow you to collect a database of phone numbers and accounts by using special services (such as TargetHunter) and launch a mailing list (by the way, such services do provide a free trial period). If you have at least a really small budget to use here, you can afford such a base.

Free promotion methods here are the same as for social networks:

1. Ambush marketing

2. Mutual PR

Commenting on forums and social networks

Basically, this is that same ambush marketing, only as a stand-alone method of promotion. Platforms include anything that allows a free signup process and communication between users. Comment on topic boards, social networks, or articles on various blogs or other media resources.

It’s important to remember that when commenting on social networks, you need to avoid getting banned too. Here, the main rule that such free affiliate marketing traffic sources suggest is that your comments should be a lively dialogue, absolutely natural. When you promote your offer, your comments should look like a recommendation. Just help people by talking about how you dealt with their problems (for example, prostatitis, liver diseases, obesity, etc.)

To develop your products on such boards, you can create two accounts – one for commenting about your offers, and one for responding to those comments.

Listing websites

These free affiliate marketing traffic sources involve placing offer ads on different websites and platforms. If you want your ad to be found by the largest number of people organically achievable, use hashtags and, of course, make your ad interesting. How can you make them so interesting? You can at least offer a discount and use more live, non-staged photos of the offer.

What are the benefits of such free affiliate marketing traffic sources?

• they always have interested customers with the intention to buy something;

• publishing your ads is free;

• message boards have high positions in search results.

Survey sites: Quora, Otvet Mail.ru, and others

These are very simple. The first thing you can do here is to find questions in the search and recommend your offer in your answer. The second thing is to sign up for the site, ask questions, and answer them yourself. It’s best if you add a link to your offer in your comments. And, of course, always remember to make your questions and answers as natural as possible. The most useful answers get to the top, which works very effectively for free advertising.

AND by the way! Here is an article that can be useful to you if, as we said in the first paragraph, you have zero experience so far. A good campaign approach is the most important step in monetizing a good offer, which is why we suggest you read our article called “How to find good campaign approaches for affiliate marketing”.

We asked an experienced affiliate to share their experience on the topic:

Evgeny Toporkov, founder of ZeonAds agency, affiliate since 2016

A USP is always a good way to get traffic for relatively little money.

But before you start, there are a number of factors to consider:

1. Choosing a social network.

If you reach your target audience, then it is important to understand how the user will see your offer and take action on it. There are social networks in which there are much fewer ways to convey information to the user than in others. Consider this before choosing a platform for work.

2. Reach your audience, find your touchpoints.

Once you’ve chosen the platform, it’s now important to understand how to reach the user and how to get their attention. On different sites, this can be done in different ways, so test different methods and choose for yourself the one that gives the most conversions with the least number of bans because, in this case, costs play a big role.

3. Choosing advertising equipment.

The quality of your advertising equipment affects the work you do a lot. This includes accounts, proxies, and software for automating your work.

Sometimes software you use is leaky and the social network sees that the actions your accounts take aren’t performed by real people but by machines. And in this case, social networks quickly ban such accounts, so keep this in mind.

Also, the work of the accounts themselves is affected not only by their quality but also by the quality of the proxies on which they run. Do not spare the money to search for the best solution and software for you, because this is what will bring you money.

Conclusion: Free and relatively free affiliate marketing traffic sources aren’t just some easy-money platforms and they will require you to immerse yourself in theory, get some patience, and a lot of time. However, there are pretty big prospects here. Good profits and high ROIs are very much real if you manage to get over all obstacles successfully.

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