How Much Does It Cost to Start Affiliate Marketing?

Are you looking for more ways to make money online? Are you interested in starting your own business, chasing your passions, and totally controlling your daily schedule?

If these are what you’re looking for, then affiliate marketing is a great opportunity. But even though it has a lot of potential and is a lot cheaper to do than most businesses, affiliate marketing still isn’t free. You may be asking, “How much does it cost to start affiliate marketing, exactly?”

Well, read on to find out what it costs to start affiliate marketing across 5 different types of affiliate businesses. You’ll be able to prepare yourself for any potential upfront costs and take the right steps to begin your affiliate marketing journey!

What It Costs to Start Affiliate Marketing (By Affiliate Type)

Affiliate marketing is a fantastic online business for most people. With affiliate marketing, you can make money simply by recommending other people’s products.

If your visitors or followers click through a special tracking link and make a purchase, then you’ll make a commission on the sale. Do that enough times, and you can see how quickly it adds up!

So, why affiliate marketing? Here are a few quick reasons:

• Low-cost and low-risk – You can get started without a sizable investment upfront
• Easy to execute – You don’t need a certain degree or a lot of specialized experience
• Strong passive income potential – You can set up your affiliate business to generate ongoing income

Honestly, the list of benefits goes on. But for now, let’s dive into the different types of affiliate businesses you can start so we can look at exact costs required!

The 5 Types of Affiliates

There are five key types of affiliates, each with its own set of startup costs and potential needs. They are:

• Media buyers
• Affiliate blogger/publisher
• Social media influencer
• Email marketer
• Community manager

No matter which option you choose, you’ll have at least some expenses. They’re likely to include software tools, third-party labor costs, and possibly ad spend.

Knowing what to expect ahead of time will allow you to plan your budget and make sure you’re financially ready for whatever affiliate marketing business you start. Let’s look at the five types!

1) Media Buyers

Media buyer (PPC) affiliates promote a company’s products through digital advertising platforms like Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, or native ads. They use copywriting in their ads to attract new buyers and drive them to a sales page (also known as a pitch page). At ClickBank, we see a lot of our top affiliates making a six-figure income this way!

If you’re considering starting out as a media buyer, you’ll probably want to start with at least $2,000 set aside for ad spend. You may also want to budget for some key tools, includinng:

• A landing page builder – Between $40-$200/mo
• Ad spy tools – Between $70-$150/mo
• Third-party tracking software – $300+/mo
• AI tools for copywriting or image generation – $15+/mo

Thankfully, the only tool you 100% need upfront is some kind of landing page builder, so you could probably get started for between $50 and $100/mo, aside from your ad spend (which should probably be $100-150/day as a starting point). Given how much traffic you can drive with paid ads, that’s not a bad deal!

Overall, these tools can be pricey when you’re starting out, especially if you aren’t making a lot of sales yet. However, you’re set up for much higher levels of success as you move forward with your paid media affiliate journey. 

Beginner Cost: $50/mo for tools; $2k+/mo on ad spend

Expert Cost: $1k/mo for tools; between $5k-30k/day on ad spend

2) Affiliate Blogger/Publisher

Affiliate bloggers/publishers host their own blogs and websites. They use these websites to publish content that’s discoverable in search on sites like Google and that links out to affiliate products. It can take time to build a following and accomplish your long-term goals with SEO content websites.

Your common costs as a blogger or publisher include:

• Web hosting (WordPress starts at $5.25/mo, but it can be $30-100/mo for a large site)
• Premium themes (cost varies)
• SEO tools like SEMrush (starting at $140/mo) or Ahrefs (plans start at around $129/mo) for keyword research and link analysis
• On-page tools like Surfer SEO (Hobby plans start at $29/mo) or Page Optimizer Pro ($22 to $44/mo)
• An email service provider (ESP) to build an email list (Kit is free to start; ActiveCampaign starts at $15/mo)

Some users may also choose to use an AI copywriting tool to help with their content creation efforts. ChatGPT is free, but the paid version starts at $20/mo, while dedicated AI copywriting tools like Jasper start at $39/mo. In addition, you may want to use advanced WordPress plugins for SEO, caching, affiliate link tracking, and other tools – these are often subscriptions as well.

And if you want to hire outside help from freelancers or agencies to help you write content, you’ll probably pay at least $200-300 per article on the low end.

All of these factors can increase your overall costs as you launch your affiliate blogging career. That’s why ClickBank Accelerator is a valuable tool for many affiliate bloggers, since it allows clients to build their blogs with hosting included (starting at $47/mo).

Beginner Cost: As little as $6/mo for web hosting if you write all the content yourself

Expert Cost: $500/mo for hosting and tools; up to thousands per month on content outsourcing

3) Social Media Influencer

Social media influencers publish content on social media, usually focused around a specific niche topic or around their personality, lifestyle, and interests.

To make money as an affiliate, influencers can promote products in their content and include tracking links to them in the posts themselves, in the link in their bio, or on a dedicated landing page they create.

Social media influencing is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get started as an affiliate. You probably already have the tools you need: a phone and your free social media accounts. The only other thing you’ll probably need is a landing page builder tool, along with upgraded gear to improve your content quality:

• Landing page builder tools like LinkTree (free), Accelerator ($47/mo) or ClickFunnels (starting at $81/mo)
• E-commerce platforms like Stan Store if you also want to sell your own products (starting at $29/mo)
• Social media scheduling and analytics tools (Sprout Social costs $199 per seat/mo)
• Upgraded gear (lighting, background, etc), which will vary based on your needs (usually in the hundreds of dollars each)
• Video editing software (cost depends on the software you choose – DaVinci Resolve is free, Adobe Creative Cloud with Premiere is just under $25/mo)

Of course, the cost of working as a social media influencer can increase as you expand your reach and the amount of content you’re publishing. The name of the game with influencing is engagement, which may mean high productions and high quality video editing. Over time, you may need more expensive cameras or lighting, backdrops, and outsourcing camera work to cinematographers or post-production work to outside video editors.

However, starting is more affordable than you think! Social media can be the best way to start affiliate marketing with no money.

Beginner Cost: As little as $0 if you use LinkTree for your landing page and create all content yourself

Expert Cost: $300/mo for tools; ongoing expenses for upgrading gear or hiring filming/editing help

4) Email Marketer

Email marketers share content and promote products through email, usually centered around specific topics or pain points. Successful email marketers often have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of subscribers that trust them to provide helpful advice or insights.

There are different levels of email marketing. You can start out for free with a tool like Kit (formerly ConvertKit), which makes launching your new email marketing initiative simple and, more importantly, free. Or you can choose more advanced ESPs like Sendlane (pricing starts around $500 per year) or Maropost (pricing starts around $251 per month).

The challenge with email marketing is that you typically need at least one other traffic source to build your list. Interested individuals won’t sign up to receive your content if they don’t know what you offer or why they should trust you! That means that the cost of getting started as an email marketer is generally on top of the price I mentioned for other types of affiliate marketing. 

Beginner Cost: The cost of your ESP (can start at $0) and an outside traffic source to generate email subscribers

Expert Cost: $250+/mo for tools; ongoing expenses for outside help

5) Community Manager

Community managers connect with potential followers where they already are on the platforms they use most often.

Starting an online community can be totally free or pretty inexpensive, depending on your platform. Common ones may include:

• Slack ($8 per user/mo for basic paid plan)
• Discord (free)
• Facebook Groups (free)
• LinkedIn Groups (free)
• Forums and membership sites (hosting costs and premium membership plugins can be $180+/year)

As with email marketing, you will often need an additional traffic source to direct people to find and join your community. If you don’t have that source, you may have trouble generating the traffic you need to power your affiliate marketing efforts.

For example, starting as a social media influencer and using that presence to raise awareness of your group or community is a highly effective way to grow on a budget. Aside from that, other costs may include tools like ChatGPT ($20+ per month) to help with content generation, or page building tools like Accelerator ($47 per month) or ClickFunnels (starting at $81 per month) to help build out landing pages to link out to affiliate products. 

If you can’t – or don’t want to – only grow your community organically, then you may also need to factor in some paid ad spend to improve the reach and visibility of your group. Lastly, community moderation can take a lot of time, so some community managers will hire a virtual assistant (VA) to help with that.

Beginner Cost: Public communities are often free to start; you’ll do all the community management and advertising yourself for free

Expert Cost: $200+/mo for tools; ongoing expenses for virtual assistant and/or paid ads

Picking Your Path

If you’re just beginning your affiliate marketing journey, I would recommend starting as one type of affiliate. If you try to focus on too many different platforms and tactics at once, you’ll probably spread your efforts too thin, which means you won’t gain traction anywhere.

How do you decide? Consider these key questions:

• What’s your budget? How much money do you have to spend on your new affiliate marketing career? If money is no object, paid ads could help you start seeing results faster.
• Where do you already have connections and reach? If you’re an active member of several social media groups or already have a blog with a significant following, any of these could be the right choice for you to focus on. 
• Where do your skills lie? If you’re better at video creation than written content, you might be better off working as a social media influencer than a blogger. Likewise, if you’re great at writing content but don’t like the idea of being on camera, working as an email marketer or blogger might better fit your needs. 
• What type of products do you like to promote? Many affiliate marketers are invested in a specific niche or industry and passionate about those products. Consider what type of products you might want to share and the content that is most likely relevant within that industry. 
• Where would you be most likely to expand your reach? For example, if you like the thought of running an email list or a social media group, you might want to choose a solution that will allow you to direct customers to those platforms more easily.

By carefully considering these factors before you launch your new affiliate marketing venture, you can decide on the ideal path for you! 

Wrap-up: How Much Does it Cost to Start Affiliate Marketing?

I hope you got a lot of value from this affiliate marketing guide!

Affiliate marketing is an excellent opportunity for anyone who’s interested in building their own business online. It’s a low-capital business for getting off the ground, and you don’t even have to create your own product – just promote someone else’s!

On ClickBank, we have hundreds of Platinum affiliates who generate sales of more than $250K+ on our platform every year. If you want to get started for yourself, go sign up for a ClickBank account now!

And if you’re interested in learning more about any of these affiliate marketing strategies, Spark by ClickBank is a perfect way to teach yourself, with quality in-depth courses on SEO blogging, Facebook or YouTube Ads, and organic TikTok.

No matter what path you choose, we wish you the best of luck!