Paid advertising is definitely a great way to drive traffic for your affiliate marketing business. However, if you are not in the position to spend money on getting traffic, do not worry. There are many platforms through which you can drive traffic for your website for free and in this article, I am going to reveal the 10 best free traffic sources for affiliate marketing or any business.
In fact, free organic traffic is more sustainable in the long-term. People also tend to trust those websites that they find organically than through paid ads.
What is free traffic?
Free traffic is the traffic you get without paying for it. It is also called organic traffic.
You drive this free traffic either by ranking in search engines or by making yourself visible in any other platforms like social media or Q&A forums.
Organic traffic takes time and effort to increase and it can prove very useful for your business.
#1 SEO – Search Engine Optimization
This is the most traditional way of driving traffic to your website. It is a freeway of attracting traffic to your website. In this method, you try to appear and rank at the top search results of various search engines.
Millions of people are surfing the internet using these search engines. People tend to click the results on the first page of the search engine result. Once you manage to appear on the first page of search engine results for particular keywords, your traffic increases greatly.
The two main components of getting this organic traffic are creating quality content and having a quality website. Search engines evaluate both of these factors before ranking a website. The quality content will provide value to the customer, which might help increa10s0e the number of affiliate purchases. The quality of the website improves the user experience.
#2 Pinterest
Pinterest is known as the ‘catalog of ideas’ and is one of the best free traffic sources for affiliate marketing. Pinterest is a perfect mix of search engines and social media. It is image-based and is more visual, which is attractive to people.
People come to Pinterest in search of ideas and they usually keep scrolling as they do on any other social media site. The key to making people click your posts is to make it visually appealing and give it a catchy headline. There are some tricks involved in improving your traffic through Pinterest which the beginner might find hard to understand.
Pinterest is completely worth your time and effort. Especially because, Pinterest traffic is evergreen, in the sense that it doesn’t show only the recently posted things. Even the Pin you posted 2-3 years ago can still appear on top of someone’s search or feed and drive traffic to your site. Isn’t that amazing?!
You don’t even have to have a website to do affiliate marketing if you know your way around Pinterest. You can directly pin your affiliate links and drive the traffic to those links. Some niches are more popular on Pinterest than others like DIY, Fashion, Money, Health and Fitness, and Making Money Online.
#3 Facebook
After Google, Facebook is the platform where there is the highest number of users. What’s more amazing is that unlike Google where they only come for solutions (of course it is a search engine), in Facebook people spend a lot of time ideally scrolling through the feed.
What people are looking for in this social media is to be informed and entertained (apart from connecting with friends). This makes it an amazing platform to reach out and connect to your audience. Provide them the entertainment and information that they want and you will get a trusting following.
You can attach affiliate links to your posts to drive traffic directly to the affiliate products or direct them to your website. If you want sustainable following who could be your repeat customers, you need to focus on building trust and engaging with your audience.
#3A Facebook Groups:
Facebook was born out of people’s need to be a part of a community and to engage with a community. That is why Facebook groups are very popular. Some consider it is too old for today! They couldn’t be more wrong.
People are very active on Facebook groups that provide value to them. They interact in these groups closely. As they start to feel like a part of that community, they naturally begin trusting the suggestion and recommendations made in those groups, which means higher chances of conversion for you.
Pro tip: Closed groups with the feeling of ‘exclusiveness’ make people feel special and privileged. This automatically boosts their trust and engagement in the group.
#4 Instagram
Instagram is a social media where photos and videos take the center stage. Instagram is the current ‘Cool’ platform. According to HootSuite, Billion people use Instagram every month and around 500 million people use Instagram Stories every day!
Instagram is so popular that it has created new professions: Instagram models and Instagram Influencers who end up earning thousands of dollars (sometimes millions!). That is the power of Instagram. Due to its visual nature, it allows people to connect to their audience at a personal level.
The biggest drawback of Instagram is that you cannot directly attach links to your content unless you have a particular number of followers. You have to have at least 10,000 followers to start attaching links directly to your stories. However, once you get there, it becomes very easy to drive traffic.
#5 Quora
Have you ever run a search for a question and have not seen Quora in the search results? The chances of that are very thin. Quora is the best-ranked Q&A website in Google and for good reason.
Quora is a go-to place if you want any of your questions answered. So, people ask all kinds of questions there. Whatever niche you are in, there are definitely questions related to it. And people are actually looking for answers!
All you got to do is chime in and give your answer. Keep it precise (one or two paragraphs) and throw in the affiliate link or website link where ever relevant. You can’t go spamming in Quora though. There is an option to upvote the most valuable answer and the most upvoted answer comes on top. If that answers the question for people, they are not going to read other answers.
So, make sure you answer the question and give the people want they want. This way, you get upvoted and drive traffic to your website and people benefit from your answer.
Quora is another platform where you don’t really need a website to drive traffic to your affiliate products. You can do affiliate sales by simply establishing yourself as a trustable problem solver in this platform.
#6 YouTube
This is another platform that is more than a social media and closer to a search engine. You get the benefit of both on YouTube. Being a YouTuber is a career now and people make a full-time income out of it!
YouTube is a video sharing platform that gives you great autonomy in the content you want to post (except with some restriction to the adult content of course). You can have your own following and drop in website or affiliate links on your video directly to drive traffic.
There are three mantras to get more subscribers on YouTube and that is Quality, Quality, and Quality. Quality videos are what will get you views and subscribers.
The best thing about YouTube is the attention span of the audience compared to other social media platforms. On Instagram, the average attention span of a person for one post is 3-10 seconds depending on the type of content. On Facebook, the average stands at 8 seconds. In a YouTube video, you have about half a minute to capture your audience’s attention. The sooner the find the video entertaining the longer they are going to stay around.
All things considered; YouTube is a platform that takes more effort than any other social media to keep your audience engaged. Video production takes more equipment, more effort, and energy. So, think twice before venturing into the platform.
There is one way to leverage YouTube without having to post videos and that is through YouTube comments. You can find videos in your niche and drop comments with an affiliate link in it. But make sure you are being relevant and useful or people just ignore it as spam.
#7 Reddit
Reddit is another great website to drive free traffic for your Affiliate Marketing. It is one of the world’s largest websites and is ranked fourth in the USA. People come together in this platform to discuss things and share news.
It is one of the platforms where people are least tolerant of spams. So, you need to be careful as to not come off as a spammer or your posts and comments are going to be deleted ruthlessly.
On the other hand, engaging with the community here can be very useful for you and your business. If you are actually providing valuable content and contribute to discussions, people will not mind clicking your links. So, be up and around on the website and don’t just stop by to throw in affiliate links.
#8 Email list
Email List might sound a little outdated to you. But remember, Old is Gold. And Email list is definitely gold. Ever since the beginning of Affiliate Marketing, the email list has been considered the lifeline for it. Till today, it is one of the best ways to drive traffic and increase conversions.
Email lists can be created by setting up for an email marketing service and asking the people that visit your website to sign-in or opt-in for your newsletter by giving their email. The more people you convince to give their email id, the bigger your list. Once you have their email id, you can reach out to them directly in their inbox.
The best thing about the Email List is that you don’t need to have a big list to start making money through it. Even a small list with the right audience in it will ensure recurring traffic and better conversions.
#9 Niche forums
Niche forums are those sites where posts or Q&A posted revolves around a single niche like travel or fitness. So, the people who are visiting these forums are people who seek content only in that specific niche. It is like being served your target audience on a plate!
Niche Forums are great to drive free traffic for your affiliate business. It is very easy to find those forums as well. Just go to google and run a search. You will see various forums to choose from. You can pick the one with most engagement or try your hand at multiple platforms.
What I told of Reddit and Quora holds good for the Niche forums too. Provide content with value and then add your affiliate links. Or else you might come across as spammy and no one is going to click your links.
That’s all for the 10 best free traffic sources for affiliate marketing (not that you need any more).
I hope you found it useful.
Do you have any questions or comments about this article? If yes, please comment below.
