The answer to the question: can you start affiliate marketing with no money is yes. You simply join an affiliate program of your choice, get your affiliate link and promote this link all over the internet. That is the short answer.
Choose a niche
The first step is to choose a profitable niche. There is a ton of niches out there but ideally you want to choose one that you like and are familiar with and most important, one that will make you money. There is no point to spend time promoting something that has a very small audience.
A good way to find a profitable niche is by looking at some blogs who make money. Some bloggers post their income and I found this post with a list of 200 blog income reports. It is just a matter of scrolling to find something that will interest you. Here is the link to this blog post. You can also make a search about blog income reports to find more.
Find an affiliate program
Now you want to find an affiliate product to promote in regards of the niche you are going for. It could be either a physical products or a digital products.
For physical products, Amazon, Ebay, Walmart for example have affiliate program. You just need to apply and get the affiliate link related to the product you want to promote.
For digital products, the best choice for beginners is Clickbank. Clickbank has a ton of products and often more than just one in any niche. It is easy to apply and get the affiliate link. Some product maker has very complete and comprehensive tools that make your job easier. Just visit the join venture page when you choose the product you want to promote.
There is another type of affiliate program. It is Google adsense and the like. You need to write content for this to work. If you publish content on a blog, you just have to insert a code in your blog and Google adsense will insert related advertisements through your content without you to do nothing more than inserting the code once.
Post your link all over the internet.
The easiest way is posting on social media. You can join multiple Facebook groups, make a name for yourself in the groups, gain authority and then post your affiliate link as a recommendation. You can do the same with comments on blogs in your niche and forums. Any platform you can comment on it will do. It is free.
Youtube and videos
You can make videos on Youtube. If you are not shy it is easy. You just talk about the product in front of your cell describing the product, talking about the good and the bad and telling what you want your viewer what to do at the end.
If you are shy or do not speak English fluently, you can make videos using this website, Invideo.io. Invideo has a ton of free images and videos you can arrange on a time line. You just lay over some promotion text over the graphic with a nice music in the background. That is it. Check it out.
It goes for physical and digital products. For physical it is better to have one in hand but for digital you take your inspiration from product the sale page.
Can you start affiliate marketing with no money blogging?
Yes. WordPress.com is a free blogging platform. Blogspot.com also. You can post your content there no problems.
But maybe the best option is Medium.com. You need to know that Medium his a huge authority site. This means that any content that is published on their platform has a big weight on Google search. Even a beginner with an excellent high quality article has a good chance of showing up in the first search page of Google for a low keyword difficulty the article is about.
But what if you have 7 dollars a month to spend?
That would be the best move to do. Take this 7 dollars a month, find a domain name and a web hosting and start your blog. Take into consideration that a blog is an asset. It is a business that get more value over time if you work on it and post high quality content regularly.
I gave you blog examples at the beginning of this article. You can find inspiration there and you will be able to see first hand how successful blog owners make money.
I recommend that you get your feet wet and check out Siteground the hosting company of choice. Register your domain name there, install WordPress and start posting content.
Disclaimer. The Siteground link is an affiliate link and if you make a purchase I will get a commission.
I wrote an article on this blog on “how to start a blog step by step” to get you going. Check it out.
Good luck with your journey.
Chriss Lance