how much money you need to start affiliate marketing?
You must be tired of your current financial situation and you want to earn a living online? You heard about affiliate marketing and you are wondering! how much money you need to start affiliate marketing? Continue reading to get answers to your questions.
I have prepared a list of all the expenses that affiliates need to cover in order to get started successfully. Plus, I also included some useful tips on what you should do if your budget is limited. How much money should be invested into this business in general. How much money should be invested into this affiliate marketing in general? At the end of this post, I will share my thoughts on whether or not it’s worth investing in additional tools like courses, tools and software programs.
And if I haven’t covered something here, feel free to ask us questions in the comments section below – we’re always happy to help new affiliates out! By the end of this post, you will know exactly how much money you need to start affiliate marketing as well as which tools are worth investing in and which aren’t. So let’s get started!
How Much money you need to start Affiliate Marketing?
The cost to start affiliate marketing depends on the way you want to look at it. You either consider affiliate marketing a side hustle where you dedicate little time for. That is if you only want to earn some extra dollars from it. Or you want to build a proper business and create a brand that leads to a consistent monthly income.
If you want to try affiliate marketing and treat it as a side hustle you can start without any investment. It is free to join affiliate networks and you can use YouTube, podcasts, social media, and other websites that allow you to promote the products and services. If you choose this route you only use free traffic and the results often take time and are not satisfactory. You may want to check this post: How to start affiliate marketing without a website? But, I think this is not the ideal way to start affiliate marketing.
The most effective way to build a successful affiliate marketing is to create your own brand. To build a brand, you have to invest some money and a lot of time into it.
Here, I will give you the minimum money you need to start affiliate marketing. Watch this Video Here.
How much money do you need to start affiliate marketing?
Basic Affiliate Marketing Expenses
You first need a domain name, it is advised to get a .com or .net domain name. You can get a cheap domain name from Namecheap domain names starting from $5.98 a year if you are a new customer (first year). Or from Godaddy it starts from $12 a year for a domain name.
The second investment is web hosting. You can start by hosting your website on Bluehost on a shared hosting that is cost effective (at $2.75 a month) for the first year or two when you don’t have much traffic going to your website. When you start getting more that 30,000 visits per month to your website you should upgrade to better web hosting options such as VPN or cloud hosting.
You also need a logo for your brand. If you are good at design you can make your own, if not hire a freelancer to do it for you for $5. You can hire a freelancer on Fiverr, Upwork or TopTal. When you are just starting you don’t need the most professional logo in the world. You can make your own on Canva.
If you decide to go with a personal brand you have to take good quality photos of yourself to add to your social media accounts.
If we add up all the costs we already mentioned. The bare minimum you should invest in affiliate marketing is $43.98 for the first year. But, there are additional costs if you want to scale up quickly. Let’s look at the other expenses, that need to be taken into account when you want to grow your affiliate marketing business.
Optional Affiliate Marketing Expenses
You will find that to get results faster, you have to spend money to earn money there is no way around it. And that’s why we call affiliate marketing a business. But the expenses are still much lower than starting an ecommerce business. For example starting an Amazon FBA business costs at least $3000 to start. That is to start your own brand (or called private label) business on Amazon.
Affiliate Marketing Website Expenses
Apart from the domain name and the site hosting you need to build your website, design it and optimise it. There are many options for building/hosting your website: (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress,…). WordPress gives you more flexibility to design your website and add advanced website features. If you choose WordPress you will need:
Page Builder
A page builder such as Elementor they have a free version and pro version depends on what you trying to do with your website. (Check Elementor price here). There are other options such as gutenberg, Elementor and other builders.
Theme template: you can choose from the free or paid options. You can find templates on wordpress platform or through third party websites such as Envato themes, add more (price range)
Plugins
you will need many plugins to run your website. Most of the plugins are free but some paid plugins will improve your website time and security better than those that are free.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO optimization is a must to drive free or what we call organic traffic to a website. You probably won’t need it when you first launch your website. But, you will realise it is a necessity as soon you start looking for ways to get traffic to your website.
Web Design and Optimization
You may choose to design and optimise your website yourself. I chose to learn all by myself and design and optimize my own website when starting out. If I was able to do it, you can too. Or you can pay someone to do it for you. You could choose a cost effective option that is hiring a freelancer on freelance platforms mentioned in the basic expenses section. Or go for more professional agencies who offer high end design services but obviously it costs much more than hiring a freelancer.
Images and Graphics
You can start with free stock images and design your own graphic using Canva but if you want a professional looking website you have to spend on paid images and graphics). Storyblocks
Traffic
(paid adds, backlinks, shout outs…) its hard to estimate how much you need to spend here. With advertising you have to run many tests and see what works and also depends on which platform you choose to run adds on (I will be making a video about ads soon)
because an average affiliate marketer makes around $250-$750 per month (according to some research)
Email Marketing
ClickFunnels allows you to create a funnel to capture people’s emails so you build a database of emails. The email list you collect will allow you to market to those people in the future.
Other Tools
Link/ URL Shortener
You need to shorthen links to add them to the different platforms. Short links look better and give more trust. A free option that is well know is Bitly.
Link Tracker
You also have to track your affiliate links, so you know where the sale came from.
Keywords Tools
You can do research using free tools. You can watch my video where show you 12 free keyword research tools for blog posts. For YouTube SEO, you can you use the keyword research tools dedicated to this particular platform, TubeBuddy or VidIQ.
These are the most common expenses you should include when planning an affiliate marketing campaign. Even though some of them may seem expensive, they definitely worth it in the end. That said, if you do not want to invest money on any of these things, there are always other ways to invest or do keyword research and come up with a good strategy.
So, let’s see what is the minimum investment you need,
Expenses All Affiliates Need to Cover | the basic costs of starting affiliate marketing
We know that affiliate marketing can be expensive. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of the top expenses all affiliates need to cover when they’re starting out. You’ll also learn about what tools are available and how much they cost so you can make an informed decision on your investment. Plus, we’ll answer some common questions like “can I make money with affiliate marketing?” and “how much should I invest in it?”
Hosting
Host is required for all tracking tools to work properly. Website: You can use low-cost services like Weebly or WordPress. Also, if you have a budget of around $300, it’s possible to have your own website built and hosted by a web development shop.
You need to have a website that is user-friendly and looks professional before you start promoting other people’s products and services. Luckily, nowadays there are many tools available that can help you create an awesome looking web page at no cost. For example, if you want to turn your
1. A hosting service – As we’ve mentioned earlier, you need a domain as well as web hosting for your site. Investing in these two items can be expensive because it is usually $10 – $15 per month. However, there are many hosting companies that offer cheaper plans depending on your needs, so you can always check out the prices and pick one that fits your budget.
2. A good website design – For any affiliate marketing campaign to be successful, you need a proper website that will catch your consumers’ attention. Therefore, invest in a good website design that will make your site look professional and interesting.
Traffic
Traffic is the number one expense, since without traffic there will be no sales. Since this is the number one expense, it depends on your traffic goals and what level of traffic you expect to get. But in general, it takes around $1.00 per day for someone with decent skills to create a site that gets about 20,000 visitors per month using SEO or $5.00 per day for PPC traffic.
Tracking tools
You’ll need a tracking tool to track responses and sales that determines what keywords are bringing what volume of sales so you can optimize your placements and also determine which products should get priority for placement next season. Your tracking tool also needs ability to run split-testing. Tracking tools include Google Analytics, WiseOwl, and Clickpath (for CPA).
Tracking Tools: You’ll need a tracking tool that enables you to see what is working and what isn’t. It should also be able to run split-testing on your campaigns, enable you to A/B test campaigns, and show the value of different keywords. This takes around $100 – $400 or so depending on what you need. You can find a list of the top tracking tools here: http://www.affiliateblogonline.com/top-tracking-tools/ Hosting: Hosting should be anywhere from $12 – $25 per month, but just like with anything else, you get what you pay for.
Landing page builder
A sales page – To sell products on your website, you need a sales page that will convince your visitors to buy. Therefore, it is better if you invest in a good sales page that convinces customers to make an order or sign up for freebies. A professional copywriter can create an effective sales page for you, but the price usually varies from $1,000 to $5,000 depending on the number of pages.
Images and graphics
If you’re on a budget, you can use free graphics like icons and backgrounds from sites like DaPulse.net or iStockphoto.com. You’ll also need photos of yourself and your logo created; this is where hiring a graphic designer is a must.
Media kit – To network effectively, you need to have a good media kit that presents your brand well and shows the benefits of working with you or using your products or services. Investing in a media kit can be expensive, as experienced designers usually charge from $50 to $100 for creating one. However, you should remember that a proper media kit can bring you a lot of new business because it makes your brand look professional and interesting.
SEO and Keyword tools
We talked about those in the section above and how important are those tools to get people to visit your website.
PPC
Advertising – Advertising is extremely important when promoting affiliate products, but cheap advertising is not always available. For example, advertising on Google Adwords can cost from $1 to several hundred dollars per click. Therefore, if you want your affiliate marketing campaign to be successful, you need a good budget for advertising on various sites and using different types of media.
Email Marketing
There are many options here depending on what your needs are. Email List: An opt-in email list is the most important part of affiliate marketing. Publicity: You’ll need to hire someone to get publicity around your launch so people know you exist and have something worthy of buying. This could be anything from AdWords campaign to PR releases.
Outsourcing
At some point of your business journey you will need help. If you want to grow this into a real online business and expand to more affiliate brands and maybe you own brand. You will have to hire at least one person to help you with all the things that need to be done as part of the business. You can hire:
A Content Writer
Good content is essential to any affiliate marketing campaign, so you should invest in a good content writer who has the necessary skills to create well written content for your website. Hiring a freelance copywriter can cost from $15 per article to $30 per article. However, you should remember that even if your content is very good, if no one reads it or links to it, it will be useless.
A Virtual Assistant
A VA who can help with any tasks that you don’t seem to find time for. Or outsource the things that slow down your progress. For example design of the blog graphics, answering comments,…etc.
A Link Builder
Another thing you should invest in is a link builder who can find sites related to your niche and use them for backlinks. Although this job can be done by an experienced affiliate marketer, it is better if you hire a link builder simply because affiliate marketing tasks are usually not his main job.
Summary
It’s true that you can do a lot with a small affiliate marketing budget, but at some point you’ll need to start paying out of pocket. If your goal is to make money from your blog this year, don’t expect it to happen without spending any money. Eventually, if you want to build an audience, you’ll need to start paying for web hosting, domain registration and either pay a monthly fee or purchase a plugin that costs money.
