How Much Does It Cost To Start Affiliate Marketing

The costs of starting with affiliate marketing can range from $0 to $500 monthly, depending on the type of traffic and online assets you use to get offers in front of your target audience.

To understand how I got this answer and how much does it cost to start affiliate marketing, please continue to read the article for a breakdown of the cost.

What do you need to start affiliate marketing?

To start an affiliate marketing business, you need two things:

1. An affiliate product to sell.
2. An audience who is interested in your product.
3. A landing page. (Optional).

A product to sell.

The first component is affiliate marketing, which is a product to sell. You need to find something you can sell as an affiliate, and when people buy from your link, you can get paid a commission.

You can sell two types of products online as an affiliate: physical and digital.

Physical products.

These are affiliate products people can order online and receive at home. Products like books, furniture, clothes, computers, phones, etc.

You can become an affiliate and promote products from favorite stores like Amazon, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Wayfair, etc.

Digital products.

These are products that the customer can download files onto their computer or consume the content online. These can be e-books, online courses, software, etc.

The good news is that you can promote these products for free. You can find these products for free on sites like amazon.com, impact.com, or clickbank.com.

So, finding an affiliate product to sell is free, and your current cost is $0.

If you are new, I recommend starting with digital products. You can start with Clickbank or Warrior Plus.

How to promote Clickbank products.

How to promote WarriorPlus products.

A landing page.

A landing page is where your prospects will land before they go to the sales page. To build your list, you can use this page as a pre-sale or squeeze page.

There are a lot of landing page builders in the market. For me, these three are the best, depending on your situation.

Not interested in blogging.

If you are not interested in blogging (I recommend a blog for affiliate marketers, but it is not mandatory).

My recommendation is systeme.io. You can get it for free here; even if you decide to upgrade, it is cheaper (between $0 to $97).

Get systeme.io here.

If you are interested in blogging.

If you are interested in blogging, I recommend using the thrive architect plugin; I say this for those interested in blogging because it is a WordPress theme.

You can get thrive themes here.

Thrive suite costs $299 per year.

An audience who is interested in your product.

Now you have a product and a landing page, and it is time to find people who can buy your product.

There are two ways to do this: you can pay to get people to your landing page or create content and attract people who want the product you promote. The first method will cost you money, and the second will cost you time.

Free method to build an audience.

This method will cost you $0 but will require you to invest much time. The method is simple. You create a social media page, X, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.

Depending on the product you want to promote, let’s say, how to make money online, you start creating content around that topic.

Find a bigger account in your topic, check out the type of content they create, and create the same content( do not copy their content but create similar content). 

Start following their followers ( follow people who follow the big account in your topic and not the big one). Some will follow you back.

All social media platforms will let you add a link to the bio and add the link to the landing page ( most social media do not want you to add affiliate links).

You will start making money if you do this for three to six months.

Start a blog.

Another way to build your audience is to start your blog. If you like writing, this can be a great way to build an audience and make affiliate sales.

To start a blog, you will need three things.

A domain name.

You can get a domain name for $10 a year at Namecheap.

Get your domain name here.

A hosting

You can get a hosting for $11 a month.

You can get hosting here.

A theme.

This will give your blog a good look and help you create landing pages.

I recommend thrivethemes.

A keyword tool.

You will need a keyword tool; the best is Ahrefs.

You can get it for $99 here.

For about $110 to $200, you can start a blog that can help you to make affiliate commissions.

Learn how to start a blog here.

Start a YouTube channel.

If you like creating videos, I recommend starting a YouTube channel. Creating a YouTube channel is free, but you might need a good phone or computer.

If you can read this, you are probably set to go.

I recommend having a good microphone and editing software.

You can get a microphone from Amazon.

I use Camtasia to edit videos.

List Building.

Another way to build your audience is to build your email list. This is where you collect email addresses from your prospects and then send them promotional emails to sell affiliate products.

This can be done using a website, social media accounts, events, in-store signup sheets, etc.

To build an email list, you need an autoresponder.

At the moment, Aweber is the best autoresponder for affiliate marketing. Aweber will help you to have your email marketing campaigns on autopilot and ensure you send targeted emails at specific times based on subscriber behavior. 

How Much Does It Cost To Start Affiliate Marketing?

It costs between $0 to $500 to start affiliate marketing; this will depend on the tools you use to start affiliate marketing. If you use paid traffic, the cost will increase significantly.

My recommendation is to start building your audience for free, and when you make some money, invest that money into the paid traffic.