Now that you've decided to become an affiliate marketer, the question is: do you need to have your own website in order to succeed in the business, or is it possible to make it by using a free site?
The ideal situation is to have your own website, but if you're just starting, you can use free third-party platforms that allow you to promote products, such as Squidoo and Hub Pages. These sites are relatively easy to use and can help you make a profit in affiliate marketing.
Squidoo is a site where you can create pages about any topic that interests you. Each page is called a lens. You can use it to write and article for just about any niche (but check their TOS list to make sure your topic isn’t banned) and use it to promote products sold on Amazon for a commission. It’s also a good place to promote a product you’ve written or produced. It’s free to use and can help you test your niche before you invest a lot of money.
HubPages is a site where you can earn money by writing articles on a certain topic in a niche. It’s similar to Squidoo. The site is free to join and you’ll be given a subdomain to use. You make money through advertising on your pages through Google AdSense and Amazon.
If you decide to go with blogging, there are platforms which allow you to create a free blog where you can promote different products.
WordPress is, probably, the best-known tool for setting up a blog. It’s free to use and it has many different plugins which allow you to add useful features to your blog. It also has free hosting, available at WordPress.com.
Blogger is another free tool that allows you to set up a blog. You can choose a free template and it’s very simple to use. You can also get free hosting for your blog.
You should be aware,
though, that, when using third party platforms, you’re subject to their
rules.
At any time, the rules may
change and your blog might disappear or your pages may become obsolete. You just don’t have much control over your
business when you choose these options.
In fact, the business you’ve worked hard to build can get deleted in an instant.
That's why it's a good idea to use WordPress and Blogger with another hosting service, so that you have more control over your own blog. Purchasing hosting isn’t as expensive as you might think and will allow you to have more freedom.
Also, keep in mind that the free platforms add their own ads to your pages, sometimes for products which compete with those that you're trying to promote. On the other hand, having your own site gives you complete freedom over the ads you place on it (also, all the income from the ads/products is yours!)