Is it really possible to do affiliate marketing without showing your face?
The answer is simple: YES!
To do affiliate marketing, showing your face is not mandatory! Many people are afraid to show their faces because of their family, neighbors, or friends, or simply because they are uncomfortable with that idea.
As you know, affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online. In fact, some people don’t even need to use their names, and they simply hide behind some brands and start making sales. However, affiliate marketing does come with “risks.” Generally, people want to know who they’re doing business with. And many affiliates choose to display their faces because they want to connect with potential customers. It’s easier to make affiliate sales.
But the good news is there are plenty of ways to do affiliate marketing without showing your face! Before diving into these, let me show you some basic requirements to do it.
How to do affiliate marketing without showing your face? Basic requirements to start
To be successful with any of the strategies I will show you, you must keep in mind these simple rules:
Select a product that doesn’t need a face to be represented
Affiliate marketers often make the mistake of choosing products that are too broad. They start by looking at what is popular and easy to sell. But it is essential to select products that are close to the niche you want to work in. You must understand the problems that people are facing in order to solve those problems. This way, you can find products that resonate with your audience and be highly successful.
For example, if you choose the beauty niche, if you consider starting with makeup brushes, that’s not a good option because you will need to show your face to demonstrate how the product works to get a better conversion rate.
However, if you go for the DIY with wooden pallets niche, you don’t need to show yourself. People are only interested in the results, not the person you did this.
In short, while selecting a product, you must be able to find a way to explain the benefits of the products to a customer without having to show your face.
Create an identity for your “brand”
To be remembered, you must create a strong identity. You can simply trick a little bit your name, select a word that means something to you, and go for an avatar… Once done, you can design a logo, generate a photo with AI from someone who doesn’t exist, or go for a drawn portrait.
To get a better idea, I have found an excellent example for the dog food niche: https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/
Plenty of sites does this and it works exceptionally well!
Give value to your audience
Once you have chosen the product you want to promote and build your brand identity, you must be sure to give value to your audience. Otherwise, you won’t get any commission! You must produce content that resonates with your audience’s problems and then offers the solution (your affiliate product).
To do that, you can simply compare your product with a competitor’s, put the product in action, gather user reviews, do a full tutorial with the product, answer related questions… Always add videos or images to support your words to help your readers project themselves with the product.
Additionally, your audience must understand what the product can do for them concretely! Your content must help them make a decision and purchase it through your link.
In the end, you must always answer yes to these questions:
- What does the reader get from my content?
- Is it beneficial for them?
- Did I produce the best content I could?
Your focus needs to be on providing high-quality content. As an affiliate marketer, remember that your objective is to convince customers that your recommended offer will change their lives. If you’re making blog posts or video tutorials, be sure that they send a clear and consistent signal about what the product can do for its viewers.
Now, we have seen the basic requirements to be successful with affiliate marketing, let’s move on to the best strategies to do affiliate marketing without showing your face.
Writing strategies for a faceless affiliate marketing business
If you are comfortable writing content, you should consider those options.
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Create an affiliate marketing blog
Most successful affiliate marketers have blogs in different niches, and blogging is one of the most affordable and sustainable ways to do affiliate marketing. Indeed, the average lifespan of a blog post is 2 years, while a post on Facebook is only a few minutes.
That’s why it’s probably one of the most popular choices of any affiliate marketers who don’t want to show their faces.
It’s easy to start a blog for less than a hundred dollars per year, including hosting, domain name, and plugins. I use SiteGround as a hosting provider, Elementor, and WordPress to build my website. You will find a ton of tutorials on YouTube to get started.
If you grow your site organically by avoiding the mistakes small business owners make when using SEO. You won’t have any extra costs! Moreover, you will attract a highly targeted audience ready to buy what you offer! That’s the beautiful thing about this method!
Again, all you have to do is to write high-quality content on low-competition keywords and add your affiliate links when necessary.
Faceless niche website examples
Here are some blogs examples who do blogging without showing their face. Some are making multiple six figures per year easily.
Expecting results
If you want to start blogging, it will take some time and effort, but it can be fun if you’re passionate about your chosen product and niche. If you’re not into social networking sites, then blogging may be another way for you to earn some extra income online.
You can expect results within 3 to 6 months with a strong strategy and dedication, but you will get results in the following years with your affiliate marketing business.
Use an eBook
If you’re looking for ways to drive traffic to your affiliate offer without showing your face, writing an ebook about something related to your niche is a great way. If your audience wants to learn how to grow vegetables on their balcony, why not start an eBook about how to do it? Or maybe how to make a vertical garden? There are tons of things you can cover in an eBook – just pick one and go.
You can either sell your book on Amazon, or you can give it away for free. I recommend giving it away because people love getting free stuff. Plus, you’ll increase brand awareness and you’ll get exposure.
When you’ve written your eBook, you can post it online where your target audience is. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc. Then add your affiliate links to each resource where you shared your eBook. This makes your eBook look like a legitimate source of information. People trust what they see, so they might buy your product based on what they read in your eBook.
The best part of this strategy is that you don’t have to spend much time or effort promoting your eBook; all you have to do is share it online and wait for the sales to roll in.
Expecting results
Depending on your promotion strategy, it could be immediate, and you can get results years after that!
Do guest blogging
If having your blog is not something appealing to you, then you can just write content and reach related blogs in your niche to get your content published. It’s a win-win situation. You can promote your affiliate links to a broader audience for free, and the blogger receives high-quality content for its blog for free! Who would say no to that?!
To find an opportunity, go on Google, find a blog and send them a brief of your content. Once accepted, start writing your content and send them.
Expecting results
When your blog post is published, you can expect results a few days after that and get results a long time after that!
It’s the best of both worlds between not having your blog and enjoying the benefits!
Social media strategies for a faceless affiliate marketing business
If you’re someone who likes to spend their spare time on social media, why not use them to earn some extra cash on the side?
So, if you like social media and master the rules, you can go for these social media strategies!
Use social media to gather an audience
Thousands of social influencers make six-figure per year (or even per month) while remaining anonymous. But it’s much easier to pull off on Twitter, where there are more anonymous accounts than actual people. And though this is harder on visual platforms like Instagram, it’s pretty easy to pull off with the examples I will show you.
Anonymous profiles outnumber real ones on social media, which means it’s not a difficult task to grow a following without revealing yourself. So how do you do it? You follow influencers with a large audience and engage with what they post. Then make sure to like, comment, and reply to every single one of their posts.
Your affiliate marketing business might get off to a fantastic start if you have a few distinct social media accounts with active audiences. You could find out what works best for you and target those platforms specifically. For example, I am a big fan of Pinterest and Instagram because I know my audience spends most of their time there.
Adding your affiliate links within social media posts or bio can be another effective way to attract potential customers and build your brand. This is especially true if you are offering something relevant to your audience. In addition, you can use social media to promote your landing page, where you can capture email addresses and direct visitors to your affiliate offers. This is one of the best ways to monetize your social media accounts.
And finally, you don’t need to show your face to make money online, all you need is creativity and a willingness to try new things.
Examples of anonymous influencer accounts
Here are a few anonymous Twitter accounts that have grown (and monetized) large followings, many in a relatively short period:
Wiz of Ecom(E-Commerce) | @wizofecom
Millennial Money Woman(Money) | @The_MMW
The Long View(Finance/Stocks) | @HayekAndKeynes
Expecting results
While social media tend to reward us immediately, you can expect to get results quite quickly. Especially with the rapid rise of short videos on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook, you can leverage them to get a lot of traffic to your offer quickly.
Use social media influencers
Social media influencers have built a massive following on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. They have managed to gain enough trust among their followers to allow them to post sponsored content without being deemed spammy.
You can find these influencers by looking for popular hashtags related to your product or industry. Once you find one, simply send them a DM asking whether they would be interested in posting about your brand.
Influencer marketing is becoming increasingly important for businesses because of how targeted it is. An influencer with 10,000 followers is much more likely to respond to your request than someone with millions of followers. This allows you to reach out to specific groups of customers rather than just throwing your ad into the masses.
Expecting results
Without creating content and growing your social media profiles, it’s a shortcut to put your link in front of potential buyers and get almost immediate results!
Video strategies for a faceless affiliate marketing business
If you love creating videos, then this section is for you! And even if you don’t have video editing skills, don’t worry; I will show you a few tricks to be successful!
Creating faceless YouTube videos
Youtube is the most popular platform for online videos. While there are many different types of videos on Youtube, some of those videos are very profitable. My two small, in a relatively competitive niche, anonymous Youtube channels combined for over $5,000 in monthly revenue.
These kinds of channels are called cash cow channels because of the way to produce videos!
I’m sure you’ve seen Youtube ads before, but did you know you can make money off of Youtube too?
Simply add your affiliate links in the description and pin a comment! You will be surprised by how many clicks on the links.
Moreover, there are multiple ways to create videos without having to show your face and pay someone a fortune. For example, you can use DoodleMaker to make whiteboard videos, Toonly to create animated videos, or InVideo to create video-based videos.
Examples of anonymous cash cow channels
Here are a few anonymous cash cow channels that have grown (and monetized) large subscribers, many in a relatively short period:
Expecting results
Comparable to blogging, having a Youtube channel might take time to grow (around 3 months), but once done, you can expect exponential growth in your affiliate income.
Pro tips: I have followed a dedicated course to start my first cash cow channel and discovered a lot, like creating a high converting script, outsourcing content, shortcutting my growth, and creating a video in no time…
Udemy
Quite similar to Youtube, you can create small free courses on Udemy and see the cash rolling in! All you have to do is answer a hot and painful question from the audience in your training. In short, you can turn your ebook into a Udemy course!
Affiliate marketers underuse this method, but it’s one of the most effective because who doesn’t love free stuff? During your training, you can just demonstrate how to use the product you offer for example. You can even give away some of your products as a bonus to your students.
You will be able to share your knowledge and help others at the same time. This is a compelling way to make money online!
PS: you can use the same video tools I shared above.
Expecting results
Once your training is published, you can see some commission arriving in a few weeks, but keep having some for a long time.
Vocal strategies for a faceless affiliate marketing business
If you have a lovely voice and don’t want to develop your video editing skills or write blog posts, having a podcast can be an excellent alternative to affiliate marketing without showing your face.
Podcasting
You can become a popular figure by creating great podcasts about topics that interest people. This way, you can reach out to different audiences, meet new people and build relationships.
You don’t even need to do anything special to make money with podcasting; all you need is a microphone and some essential equipment. And it doesn’t cost much either. You can easily record and edit using free software like Audacity, GarageBand (mac only), or Cakewalk.
Once your episode is recorded, you can just add your link to your episode description!
So why isn’t everyone doing this? Well, there are many reasons. For starters, most people aren’t really comfortable talking into a microphone. But that’s changing because technology is making things more accessible every day.
And once you start recording, you can easily upload your episodes onto platforms like YouTube, Apple Podcast, and Spotify. These platforms allow listeners to subscribe to your channel and receive automatic notifications whenever you release a new episode.
You can use social media to promote your podcast to get more followers. Or, you can simply ask your audience to spread the word.
Examples of affiliate marketer podcasters
Here are a few affiliate marketers that have grown (and monetized) large subscribers on their podcasts, many in a relatively short period:
The Blogging Millionnaire
Etsy Conversations Podcast
Perpetual Traffic
Expecting results
It can take several weeks to get some results, but the podcast market is widely underestimated and used, so there is plenty of places to take!
“Classic” strategies for a faceless affiliate marketing business
Here are some basic requirements also but extremely powerful!
Use an affiliate marketing sales funnel and email marketing
An affiliate marketing sales funnel corresponds to automated tasks that lead potential customers from one step to another, helping them convert into paying clients. You don’t need to have a website for that! Just a landing page that you put in your bio, a traffic source (like the ones we saw above), and mentioning once in a while your email list.
An affiliate marketing sales funnel is similar to a traditional sales funnel, except it focuses on generating revenue rather than building brand awareness. A typical affiliate marketing sales funnel consists of four main stages: lead generation, nurturing, upselling, and follow-up. Each step requires specific actions to optimize conversions.
Lead Generation: It is the first step in most affiliate marketing sales funnels. Lead generation refers to activities to attract potential buyers and capture emails in exchange for a freebie. It could be a free eBook, a case study, a masterclass… It must be relevant and valuable to your audience.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. Generally speaking, you can expect to make 1$ per lead per month (I’m more around 35-40$ per lead), so it’s not an aspect to neglect. You can start building your list with Systeme io for free, with up to 2000 contacts, and send unlimited emails.
Nurturing: Nurturing involves converting qualified prospects into repeat buyers. In some cases, nurturing includes providing additional information about products or services; at other times, it simply means keeping existing clients happy. For example, if you sell widgets, you might send regular emails to remind people how much they love them.
Upselling: Upselling refers to selling additional products or services to current customers. This is usually done via cross-selling or upsell offers. Cross-sell is when you offer one product or service that complements another product or service already purchased. For instance, buying a digital camera allows you to buy accessories like memory cards and lenses. Alternatively, you can purchase multiple items together and save money.
Follow-up: Follow-up is the final stage of the sales funnel. At this stage, you’re trying to turn those interested prospects into loyal customers, and you do this by offering special deals, discounts, free trials, etc.
You can easily create one from scratch using Systeme io for free or use a template. As these pages are designed to convert, you don’t need to show your face.
Expecting results
We generally say that you can make $1 per lead per month, but depending on your niche, you can make many more. For this point, it’s difficult to say, but if you have a high-converting landing page and a really good email sequence, you can make a ton of money!
Paying strategies for a faceless affiliate marketing business
Run pay ads on Google or Facebook
Paid advertising is the quickest way to make sales and generate commissions by promoting affiliates’ offers.
You can just set up a campaign on your affiliate link and run your ads! You can do it in less than 2 minutes!
Anyone can start affiliate marketing with ads and it’s straightforward to do faceless. However, this is the best way to get a ban on the platform and the affiliate program. Generally, you are not allowed to run ads on the brand name or products. The best way is to create a “bridge” between the potential reader and your offer.
It’s obviously not that simple. You’re up against some of the most skilled, seasoned, and occasionally brutal marketers in the industry who are all engaged in a zero-sum struggle to suck every last dollar from the sponsored search spots.
This strategy is not for the faint-hearted people because if you find a method or offer that works, you may rapidly scale from $10 per day to $1,000 per day. Google (or another source of bought traffic) will ensure the rest of your campaign is successful.
But don’t rest on your laurels! To be profitable, you must always test, evaluate and optimize your landing sites and ad copy.
However, some people think that advertising is never profitable and may be wrong. But, yes, you can lose a lot of cash on advertising if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Expecting results
The most significant advantage of paid traffic over organic traffic is that it provides immediate results. If you want to see how well your ad campaign performs, you won’t have to wait weeks or months for data to roll in.
You can test different ads and adjust your budget accordingly. Once you’ve found the winning combination, you’ll be able to scale up quickly and increase your spending without worrying about hurting your rankings.
Another benefit of paid traffic is that it allows you to target highly-specific groups of people ready to buy. For example, you could pay to reach men ages 18 to 34 who live within 50 miles of New York City interested in products to grow their beard.
In addition to driving qualified leads directly to your site, paid advertising can help improve the performance of your organic campaigns. By increasing your visibility and drawing more attention to your brand, you can boost the chances that visitors will convert into customers.
The Solopreneur Powerhouse is turning your solopreneur journey from a roller coaster ride into a magic carpet ride. So, ready to take the fast track to success town? Hang tight, we’re jumping into hyperdrive!
Affiliate marking works better with or without showing your face?
Commonly, it’s always easier to be successful with affiliate marketing if you show yourself. Personal branding helps businesses grow rapidly because it’s easier for people to relate to someone familiar.
Another sign that you are not a fraudster is your face. Exposing your face demonstrates that you are not concerned about anyone conducting a background check or reverse image search on you.
You see, exposing your face reveals a lot about your personality; it is simpler to win over the trust of your potential clients if they can see you.
Now, I’m not suggesting that faceless affiliate marketing won’t be successful. It can.
Identifying your audiences and clients is the key in this situation. And you can start with your specialization to do this.
Consider this:
People don’t need to see a face if they watch a cooking recipe on YouTube; they must observe the interaction with the artwork.
However, you must reveal your face if you instruct others on how to trade stocks, do SEO, or create an online business—especially if you are endorsing goods that require monthly payments.
Just to reassure you, if you are more comfortable starting without showing your face, you can. But, you can also show your face later! Nothing is permanent, and you can evolve with your business!
Let’s wrap up this on how to do affiliate marketing without showing your face post!
In conclusion, affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to earn extra income online without showing your face. However, it does require a bit of effort and planning, which means that you won’t be able to reap the rewards right away. But if you want to make serious cash from home, affiliate marketing is the way to go.
The key to success is finding products you know will sell and promoting them through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Once you build up a following, you’ll be able to promote your affiliate links directly to your audience. This will help you generate more sales and turn your side hustle into a full-time job.
