Do you want a comprehensive list of free traffic sources for your affiliate marketing campaigns in 2022?
Well, I can tell you for free that you can attract all the free traffic you want online. The main question is, are you patient enough to see some results?
There are many ways to get free traffic. I bet you only know a few of them.
You can try out the common ones before going to more complex techniques.
Let’s start from the basics.
Free Traffic Sources For Affiliate Marketing
TD; LR Summary
- Pinterest: You can use Pinterest to generate traffic for your affiliate links by sharing visually appealing images in different categories. To make it work, start with improving the quality of your images, leveraging SEO, and joining group boards.
- Reddit: Share relevant content, learn to draw attention, and be active on the platform to make it big on Reddit.
- Email marketing: Mail marketing is one of the most profitable forms of marketing your affiliate offers. It’s a free traffic source and gives forth an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. To build an email list, choose an email marketing service and create compelling content.
- Medium: Build an audience by connecting with other influencers in your niche, post unique stories
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before talking about traffic, let’s understand what affiliate marketing is and its mode of operation.
If you read this guide, you will understand that affiliate marketing is a process where affiliates promote affiliate products and earn commissions based on their sales.
In that case, there are three key players here; the affiliate marketer, the affiliate merchant, and the affiliate network. To succeed in affiliate marketing, have a good offer and a quality traffic source.
What are free traffic sources?
These are sources that don’t require you to pay for traffic. They may require a small initial investment, but you won’t pay for the traffic coming in.
You don’t pay for search engines traffic. You just need to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) tools and create regular content that search engines will like and send traffic your way.
11 free traffic sources
Apart from blogging, there are many other free traffic sources that you can leverage to market your affiliate offers.
Let’s look at some of them:
1. Pinterest
Are you familiar with Pinterest? It is an image-sharing platform that can easily help you generate traffic for your affiliate links.
It works by allowing you to share visually appealing images in different categories.
Here is how you can do this right:
Work on your bio
Your bio is the first place people look when following you. They will read the first few words and instantly gauge whether to connect or not. So, make your bio as specific and compelling as possible. Make it unique, too.
Simplify what you do into a few sentences and include a call-to-action at the end. The CTA can either include an affiliate link or a link to your affiliate site.
Improve the quality of your images
People will only click on visually appealing images. That means poor-quality images will not give you the traffic you need.
You don’t have to use an expensive camera for that. You can even download free photos on Unsplash, customize and upload them into your profile.
Join group boards
You can also join several group boards related to what you do. If you do so and pin your images every day, you might get several repins and increase traffic.
The more repins you have on your images, the more people will see your pins in their feed.
Leverage SEO
To appear on Pinterest search results, optimize your bio and any other text part of your pins for the keywords you want to rank for.
For example, if you are a lead-generation expert, include that in your bio.
2. Reddit
Are you on Reddit?
It is a popular site that began in 2005 and is among the best free traffic sources. It consists mainly of social news, opinions, and discussions. Recently, they introduced an application to enhance its ease of use and boost its user base.
If you share an idea or opinion, people can either upvote or downvote it. Upvotes mean your post is good and relevant to the audience. Downvotes can impact your post negatively and reduce traffic to your site.
To make it big here and get a ton of traffic, follow these steps:
Share relevant content
The most important aspect here is to share content that your audience likes and can relate to. Essentially, aim to solve a problem by introducing new opinions and techniques.
If someone can read the value of your posts, they can upvote and hence give more traffic.
Learn to draw attention
Make your posts compelling and readable. Think about it. A blank text won’t attract the attention of someone scrolling through your feed.
However, if you can bold some sentences and highlight others, then the content will be easily readable. You can also put content in point form. Easy-to-read content drives traffic to your affiliate links.
Be active on the platform
Creating content consistently will increase your following and, hence, more traffic. Consistency brings positive results. Don’t log into the platform today and return after a week. Spent a few minutes every day creating posts and commenting on others’ posts.
3. Build an email list
Mail marketing is one of the most profitable forms of marketing your affiliate offers.
It’s a free traffic source and gives forth an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. That means it is more profitable than Google and Facebook ads.
The challenge always lies in building an email list. If you have a list of about 10,000 subscribers, making $50k a month is easy.
So, how do you build a list and drive free traffic for your affiliate offers? Here are some steps to follow:
Choose an email marketing service
The first thing is to decide on the right email marketing service. There are several to choose from.
So, check out their features and pricing plans and see if it matches your needs. I will advise you to start with GetResponse since it has a free-forever plan.
Collect email address
Once you have an email service and have it all set up, you will need to collect prospects’ email addresses ready to order your services. You will create a landing page and an opt-in form that automatically captures their emails.
It is easy if you have a blog because you will only need to install an opt-in form into several blog posts and collect addresses.
Craft compelling emails
The next thing is to just craft emails that talk, walk, and sell your affiliate offers. Create a sequence of emails and use the automation feature on GetResponse to send on autopilot. With automation, you can create and send up to 8 emails in a sequence.
4. Write an eBook
The good thing about an eBook is it can generate passive income for you and establish you as an authority in a particular niche. It doesn’t have to be challenging to come up with one.
Here is how to do it:
Choose a topic
Of course, the first thing is to decide on the topic to write about. Choose the one you have a lot of information about because it will be easier to research and create content. It shouldn’t be a broad topic either. A specific and unique topic will do.
Create content
With a good topic, choose MS Word or Google Docs to plan out your content in terms of topics and sub-topics.
You can add the main ideas to each subtopic. Research and create content based on your plan after that. It shouldn’t take time to complete if you do thorough research.
Add visuals
Visuals and proper formatting of your content make it easy to read and understand. And if the reader understands the thoughts you are passing along, he can make a decision easily.
So, add illustrations and images, and format your content for easier readability and direct traffic to your affiliate links.
Market it
The next thing is to just market the e-book on social media, forums, and with close friends. They will read the e-book, click the affiliate links, and purchase your offers. That’s free traffic right there.
5. Craigslist
Another on the list of free traffic sources is Craigslist. I bet you don’t have a lot of information about this site. Founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark, the website has become a popular source of classified ads. Businesses list ads here, and customers bid on them.
After scanning the platform a little bit, it seems they don’t allow hyperlinks but allow plaintext links. Nevertheless, here is how to make it big here:
Understand the rules
There are many rules to follow when posting an ad there for free targeted traffic. To avoid getting banned, read and understand them before proceeding.
You can find most of these in the help section of their website. If you happen to break any of the rules, the team at CL can remove your ads and even ban your account.
Understand your audience’s tone
Apart from following rules, you also need to target the right people to get clicks. There are only two targeting options available here; location and category.
So, ensure the text captures the audience’s tone and makes them click on your link.
Choose the right location
There are a couple of locations to target when it comes to Craigslist. You can even place your ad in several locations and target the local audience. If you are promoting a location-sensitive affiliate product, set your location right.
6. Medium
Medium is a popular story-sharing platform. It has a high DA and receives over 100 million organic visitors every month. That means it harbors a huge potential for affiliate marketers.
There is a lot needed to make it through. Here is how to get it right:
Build an audience
You will need an audience to get traffic to your stories and hence affiliate links. You can build an audience by connecting with other influencers in your niche. You will need to have a few posts for them to decide to follow you.
Post unique stories
If your posts are generic, not many people will follow you. However, with unique stories, people will find a reason to follow you and click on your links. The easiest way to create unique posts is to share your experiences after using a service or tool.
Be active on the platform
Post regularly if you want to build an audience fast. You will also rank high on Google with more than one post. Log in to the platform every day, like and comment on stories to get others to follow you.
7. YouTube videos
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world after Google. It harbors a user base of about 2.6 billion people in a month. That means it is a powerful site to leverage for traffic and affiliate sales.
Here is how to make it big here:
Upload quality content
People like quality videos. They don’t want to strain when watching a video. So, something above 1080P is good enough.
YouTube also likes high-quality videos. You can either invest in a quality affordable camera or use a phone if the camera quality is high.
Undertake YouTube SEO
Most YouTubers fail to get this on-point, yet it’s highly essential for their YouTube channel. YouTube users will usually key in search phrases related to the solutions they want.
You will appear in search results if you can optimize your video title and description for these keywords.
Be consistent with content marketing
Post content consistently. If you post three videos in a week, you will easily beat someone posting one video a week.
Besides, YouTube likes fresh videos. Hence, you will rank faster and boost traffic to your affiliate links.
8. Quora
Quora is a popular Q&A site and can be a great addition to your affiliate marketing resources. I’m sure you have ever come across Quora search results on Google.
The site receives over 200 million visitors from Google every month. That’s sufficient traffic to make you want to try out the site.
But to make it here, you will need to do a few things:
Select unique interests
After joining Quora, the first thing you will do is to choose topics you like. That means any time you log into your app, the topics you choose will be in your feed.
Choose only topics you want to create content about. Too many topics can distract you and can’t bring in targeted traffic to your affiliate links.
Optimize your bio
You can also optimize your bio for the keywords and search intent your target audience is looking for. You will need to develop unique and interesting prepositions to make prospects click on your links.
Create unique content
Your ideas need to be unique. Yes, give people a reason to click through your affiliate links and purchase your offers. To do that, research any topic before answering.
Create long-form answers, too. They help make people think you are an expert in that topic and hence click through any link you give them.
Be consistent
You can’t generate traffic with a single Quora post. But if you consistently post content, you can attract a ton of traffic to your links.
You don’t have to create questions yourself; take time to answer the already-ranking questions.
9. Start a blog
Starting a blog is perhaps the most common free traffic source. A blog will allow you to promote a broad range of products.
You will only need to create a blog post reviewing a certain product and insert an affiliate link to direct readers to it.
The problem with a blog is it takes time to get results. So, it requires patience. If you start a blog today and create content consistently, you will see results in the next couple of months.
Here is how to do it right and get traction within a couple of months:
Target long-form keywords in your research
If you want to rank fast, take keyword research to the next level. Target long-form keywords because they tend to be less competitive and easier to rank.
Use a combination of search engine optimization tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush to unearth less competitive keywords and create content around them for organic traffic.
Update content consistently
Search engines like fresh content. So, if you want to rank easily, focus on updating content regularly.
You can develop a content plan to enhance this; just create a template and plan content for a whole month or year.
Identify content gaps and fill them
Don’t just create content that you research online. Sometimes, it is worth thinking outside the box and coming up with new ideas.
Research these content gaps and aim to fill them. By doing that, you will be operating a blue ocean with less competition and rank easily.
Build your email list
It’s also important to build a great email list. You can use it to bring back readers to your posts and market your affiliate offers. Just subscribe to an email marketing service, create forms, and embed them into your blog posts.
10. Social media sites
Social media is also a great free traffic source for affiliate marketing campaigns in 2022. Almost everyone is on social media these days. So, you can target almost anyone with proper research and content.
Here are some of the social sites you can leverage for more free traffic:
According to recent statistics, Facebook has about 1.84 daily users, making it the oldest and most popular social site.
With Facebook, you can create a profile and add up to 5000 friends. You can also create a page, join Facebook groups, and create your private group.
To generate free traffic here, create a profile, add a few friends with whom you share similar interests, and join as many groups as possible.
You can share your affiliate links in these groups by being active and helpful to the members.
TikTok
It’s now the most popular social application among Millennials and generation Z. The social app allows you to create short videos or do a duet with someone.
TikTok resulted from the merger of two applications; Bytedance and the Chinese version known as Douyin.
To make it big here, you just need to upload videos consistently. Find a niche and stick to it. Aim to make your videos as entertaining as possible.
You can then direct people to click the link on your profile to your affiliate website store.
Most people know Twitter when it comes to trends. These trends can be politics, sports, or just something controversial. The platform has a user base of about 353 million users who log into the app every day.
Learn to use hashtags well to attract the right people to make it here. If someone wants information regarding a particular affiliate product or tool, they will easily get it via a popular hashtag.
11. Blogs Commenting
The easiest way to get quality backlinks on your website is to comment on blogs and insert a link back to your site.
Yes, just find relevant blog posts, write a helpful comment and insert a link. The owner might approve it if the blog post is valuable and not competitive to him.
Why is blog commenting important for search engines?
One of the essential aspects of SEO is the number of backlinks a post has. Search engines trust posts with many backlinks and drive traffic to them. Most importantly, the blog should have a higher DA than yours.
For example, if you leave a comment on Neil Patel’s blog and a link back to your site, it will bring in some traffic that lands on that site to yours.
Topics & Questions
Let’s answer a few questions here:
Conclusion
If you’re looking for free traffic sources to your affiliate links, consider trying Pinterest or Reddit.
Both platforms have their own unique advantages and disadvantages, but if you can learn how to use them effectively, they can be powerful tools in your marketing arsenal.
Additionally, email marketing is still one of the most profitable and effective means of driving traffic to your offers. By building an email list and using a service like Aweber or Getresponse you can ensure that your affiliate marketing efforts pay off big time.
Have you tried any of these methods for free traffic to your affiliate offers?
There is no need to plan a huge budget as an affiliate marketer. Just keep the consistency, and you can attract your targeted audience without putting in a lot of effort.
