How To Start Affiliate Marketing With No Audience 2022

You don’t need followers to make money with affiliate marketing. You need a map. In this video, Alston walks through the exact model he uses to figure out what people are searching for, create content that answers it, and place affiliate links where buyers are already looking. The whole system works even if your channel or blog has zero subscribers right now.

The model is called an inverted pyramid. It starts at the top with broad questions people ask when they first notice a problem, and it narrows down to the moment someone is ready to pull out a credit card. Every level of that pyramid is a separate content opportunity. You place your affiliate link at each level and earn commissions from buyers at every stage of their decision. No fame required. No existing platform required. Just the right keyword at the right level.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The inverted pyramid model for affiliate marketing with zero existing audience
How to find a real affiliate product and a niche that pairs with it
The five keyword types that move buyers through the funnel: How, Best, Versus, Alternative, Review
Real channel examples from the video: 855 subscribers with 90,000 views; 325 subscribers with 21,000 views
Why building an email list multiplies every affiliate link you ever place
Where to publish your content with no existing platform: YouTube, TikTok, Facebook groups, Instagram, or a blog
A step-by-step action plan you can start this week, and a free tool at finder.platformproof.com that matches your skills and situation to the right income model

Why Most People Think They Need an Audience First

The most common mistake new affiliate marketers make is waiting. They believe they need thousands of subscribers before they can promote anything. That belief is wrong. It feels logical because big creators earn the most money, but the math doesn’t actually work that way. Traffic in affiliate marketing does not come from people following you. It comes from search.

When someone’s dog starts peeing on the carpet at 2am, that person is not scrolling through their subscriptions looking for a familiar face. They are typing a desperate question into Google or YouTube. They don’t care whether the channel has ten subscribers or ten million. They care whether the video or article answers their question. That gap between the question and the answer is where your affiliate commission lives. You don’t have to be famous to fill that gap. You just have to show up at the right keyword.

The Inverted Pyramid: Your Affiliate Marketing Map

Alston draws this model as a funnel flipped upside down. At the wide top are people who just realized they have a problem. They are searching broad “how” questions, and there are a lot of them. The search volume at the top of the funnel is high and the competition for those keywords is often lower than you’d expect, because most affiliates skip straight to the bottom where the commissions feel most obvious.

As you move down the pyramid, the audience gets smaller but the buyers get warmer. They have done some research. They’ve narrowed their options. They’re closer to spending money. At the very bottom of the inverted pyramid are people who have already decided to buy something, they just want one final confirmation before they check out. Those are your review-keyword searchers, and they convert at the highest rate of any keyword type in the funnel.

Your job is to create content at multiple levels of this pyramid. You don’t have to cover all five levels on day one. But understanding the full shape of it tells you exactly what content to make and in what order. Most new affiliates only create review content because they think it is the fastest path to a commission. That logic backfires. Review content is the most competitive because everyone else thought the same thing. The real opportunity for someone with no audience is at the top and middle of the pyramid, where real people are asking specific questions that have not been fully answered yet.

Step 1: Pick a Product and a Niche (and Know They Go Together)

Alston uses a specific product in this video to make the model concrete: Brain Training for Dogs, available on ClickBank, paying around $31 per sale. The niche is pet training, which pairs naturally with the product because millions of dog owners are searching for solutions to exactly the problems that product solves.

His advice is not to pick this specific product. His advice is to start with a product that solves a real problem people are already actively searching for. Don’t start with a niche you love and then try to find a product that fits it. Start with a product that addresses a clear, common pain point, and build your content around the problem that product fixes. That sequence matters because the problem is what generates the search volume. The product is just what you recommend once the searcher has found your content.

Alston also mentions Chewy.com, Amazon, and AWeber as affiliate programs worth looking at depending on your niche. The commission structures are different across all of them, and the right choice depends on the niche. ClickBank-style digital products tend to pay the most per sale. Amazon pays the least per sale but has enormous product variety. Subscription software tends to pay recurring commissions, which compound over time.

Step 2: Start at the Top of the Funnel With “How” Questions

The top of the pyramid is where the biggest pool of potential future buyers lives. These are people who just developed a problem they’ve never had before. A new puppy is chewing everything. An older dog is suddenly having accidents indoors. These people are typing questions they have never searched before, which means the keyword space is often wide open.

In the dog niche, those questions look like this: how to stop your dog from barking, how to stop your dog from peeing in the house, how to stop your dog from biting, how to stop your dog from jumping on people, how to stop your dog from licking, how to stop your dog from pulling on the leash. Alston types several of these into both Google and YouTube in the video and shows the autocomplete filling in exactly what real people are searching. That autocomplete is free keyword research. Use it before you pay for any tool.

Here is the key data point from the video that proves this works for someone with no audience: Alston shows a real YouTube channel that created content about stopping dogs from peeing at night. That channel has 855 subscribers. The video has 90,000 views. The subscribers did not drive those views. The search query drove those views. A creator with almost no audience found a question people were asking, made a video answering it, and 90,000 people found that video through search. That is the model in action.

Alston also points out that this particular channel is using automated b-roll video with text overlays. The creator is not appearing on camera at all. They are using a tool to piece together footage and narrate over it. The content got 90,000 views based purely on answering the right question at the right search term. Whether you appear on camera or not, whether you have professional lighting or film on a phone, the keyword is what matters most at this stage of the funnel.

Step 3: Move Into “Best” Keywords as Buyers Start Narrowing

After people have gathered some information from “how” content, they start narrowing their search. They’ve seen twenty different solutions and now they want to know which ones actually work. They shift from “how to stop your dog from peeing in the house” to “best ways to stop your dog from peeing at night.” That is a different keyword, and it signals a different buyer mindset.

“Best” keywords are slightly more competitive than raw “how” questions, but they’re still wide open in most niches. The person searching for “best ways” has done some reading. They’re evaluating options rather than just learning that a problem has a solution. Your content at this level gives them a curated list of approaches and, naturally, includes your affiliate product as one of the top picks on that list.

The structure of this content is simple. You’re answering the question “which of these actually works?” You walk through five or ten options with honest context about each one, and when you get to the option that corresponds to your affiliate product, you give it a thorough, credible endorsement backed by specific details. Readers who reach that point in your content are already leaning toward buying something. You just need to point them in the right direction with enough specificity to earn the click.

Step 4: Create Comparison Content to Capture Buyers Who Are Choosing Between Two Things

As people move deeper into their research, they start comparing specific products head to head. In the pet niche, that looks like “Nature’s Miracle vs Urine Destroyer” or “Nature’s Miracle vs Folex carpet cleaner.” Alston types these directly into Google and shows the autocomplete suggestions and existing results filling in immediately. People are asking these questions, and they’re asking them constantly because new dog owners appear every day.

Nature’s Miracle is a real product sold on Chewy.com. Chewy has an affiliate program. You could write or film a comparison between two products that both address the same problem, link to both via Chewy affiliate links, and earn a commission whichever one the reader ends up buying. The person reading that comparison has already decided they are spending money. They haven’t decided on the exact product yet. Your content helps them decide, and your affiliate link takes them straight to the checkout.

Comparison content tends to convert better than top-of-funnel content because the reader is already in purchase mode. Alston finds a real YouTube example of this working: a video titled “Honest Pet Carpet Cleaner Review: Nature’s Miracle vs Folex” has 7,400 views from a channel with 765 subscribers. Again, those views did not come from a loyal audience. They came from the specific comparison keyword. The pattern is consistent across every example in this video: small channel, specific keyword, meaningful view count.

Step 5: Go After “Alternative” Keywords for High-Intent Buyers Who Already Tried Something

Another keyword type that sits in the middle-to-lower portion of the funnel is the “alternative” search. Someone who tried Nature’s Miracle, didn’t love the results, and is now searching for “Nature’s Miracle alternative” or “alternatives to Nature’s Miracle” already knows what they want. They have a reference point. They’re not starting their research from scratch. They tried something and it fell short, and now they want a better version of the same solution.

This is one of the highest-intent keyword types in the whole funnel. The person is not learning that a problem exists. They’re not comparing five things they’ve never tried. They tried one thing, it wasn’t good enough, and they are actively looking to spend money on something better. If your content shows up at that moment with three or four well-explained alternatives and your affiliate links to each one, you’ve done exactly what a buyer in that situation needs.

Alston shows a YouTube example here as well: a channel with 325 subscribers whose video targeting an alternatives keyword has 21,000 views. That number keeps repeating throughout the video with different channels and different numbers, but the story is always the same. Small channel. Right keyword. Real traffic. This is not a fluke. It’s the consistent result of putting content in front of searches that already have intent built in.

Step 6: Write an Honest Review at the Bottom of the Funnel

At the very bottom of the inverted pyramid are people who have done all their research and just want a final confirmation before they buy. They’re typing “Brain Training for Dogs review” or “Nature’s Miracle review.” These searchers are the closest to purchasing of anyone in the funnel. A well-written review that ranks for the right keyword can generate consistent commissions every month for years without being updated.

Alston calls out a mistake that kills conversions at this stage. A lot of creators skip straight to review content, thinking it is the fastest path to a commission. But then they write shallow reviews that say little more than “it’s a great product, here’s the link.” That kind of review does not earn trust and does not rank well. Readers can tell it is a sales pitch wearing the costume of an opinion.

A review that actually converts is one that gives a genuine critical analysis. It explains who the product is best for, who it might not work for, what it does well, and what it falls short on. If after all of that honest examination you still recommend the product, the reader trusts that recommendation because you showed your work. That trust is what makes them click your link instead of going back to the search results to find a reviewer they can believe. The review that converts is not the most enthusiastic one. It’s the most honest one.

Building an Email List From Every Level of the Funnel

The piece of the strategy Alston covers at the end of the video is email, and it may be the most important multiplier of everything that came before it. After someone reads your content or watches your video, you don’t want them to just disappear into the internet. You want to capture their contact information so you can follow up with more help and more affiliate offers over time.

The place you send them is a landing page. It can be simple. You are not building a ten-page website on day one. You are building one page that says “you’ve got dog problems, here’s a free checklist, drop your email and I’ll send it to you.” When someone searches for how to stop their dog from peeing inside, they probably also need help with barking, chewing, jumping, and pulling on the leash. One article answers one question. An email list lets you answer all of those questions over weeks and months, with affiliate links placed naturally inside every email you send.

Alston mentions AWeber specifically as a free option to get started with email marketing. He notes that a list of 10,000 dog owners you can recommend Amazon products to will generate real money even at Amazon’s relatively low commission rates. That math works because email allows you to reach all 10,000 people with one send, recommend multiple products per email, and build enough trust over time that a large portion of the list actually clicks and buys. The email list is what converts a one-time visitor into a repeat customer who trusts your recommendations across many categories and many products over a long stretch of time.

Not sure which income model fits your actual situation?

Answer a few questions at finder.platformproof.com and get a free personalized recommendation based on your skills, schedule, and starting point.

Where to Publish Your Content When You Have No Platform

One of the most practical points in the video is that you are not locked into one platform. Alston lists YouTube, TikTok, Facebook groups, Instagram, and a standard blog as all valid places to publish content built around these keyword types. The keyword research process works the same way regardless of where you post. A “how” question gets asked on YouTube. The same “how” question gets typed into Google. People in Facebook groups ask the same question to other members. The question is the constant. The platform is just the delivery method.

YouTube is the most durable starting point because videos can rank on both YouTube’s internal search and on Google’s search results simultaneously. A single video answering the right question can drive traffic for years after upload with no additional work. TikTok and Facebook groups can deliver faster early traction in certain niches, particularly ones that are visual, emotional, or community-driven. Dog training content performs well on short video platforms. So does anything that shows a before-and-after result in a short amount of time.

The practical guidance here is to pick one platform and commit to it long enough to see results before you expand. Splitting your effort across five platforms with no traction on any of them is a reliable path to burnout and quitting. Find the platform where your target audience is most actively searching for answers, go there, and build enough of a track record there before you worry about adding a second channel.

Step-by-Step Action Plan

Here is the complete sequence from the video, pulled in the order Alston walks through it:

Pick a real affiliate product in a niche where people have a clear, ongoing problem. Note your commission per sale so you know the math before you start creating content.
Write out the specific problems your product solves. For Brain Training for Dogs: peeing indoors, chewing, barking, biting, jumping, leash pulling. Each of those problems is a separate content thread.
Type those problems into Google and YouTube with the word “how” in front. Watch the autocomplete suggestions. Write down every variation that appears. Those are real searches from real people.
Look at page two and page three of Google results for those keywords. Find smaller websites and channels that are already ranking. If they can rank, you can rank. Study what they covered and what they missed.
Create one piece of content per keyword. Video, article, or both. Answer the question completely and honestly. Place your affiliate link where it fits the context naturally, not as the only point of the content.
Repeat the process for “best,” “X vs Y,” “alternatives,” and “review” keyword variations of the same topic. Build content at each level of the inverted pyramid over time.
Add a call to action in each piece of content that sends readers to a simple landing page. Offer something useful in exchange for an email address: a checklist, a short guide, a resource list.
Set up a free email sequence in AWeber or another free platform. Send follow-up emails over several days or weeks with more helpful content, more answered questions, and more affiliate links placed in context.

Honest Drawbacks Worth Knowing Before You Start

This model works. The video shows real evidence of it working. But there are a few things Alston doesn’t spell out in this particular video that are worth knowing before you start.

First, the timeline is not fast. Ranking on Google or YouTube takes time. The channel with 90,000 views built that over a year of publishing. If you start creating content this month, you may not see meaningful search traffic for three to six months. That is normal for search-based traffic. It is not a sign the method is broken. The creators who quit in month two are the ones who look back a year later and wish they had kept going.

Second, the content has to be genuinely useful. You can follow every keyword strategy in this video and still fail if the content itself is thin or evasive. Search platforms pay attention to how long people stay on your page or video. If someone clicks your video and leaves in fifteen seconds, that is a signal that the content didn’t deliver on the promise of the title. Useful content that keeps people watching or reading is what earns the ranking. The keyword gets you the first click. The quality keeps you in the results.

Third, Amazon commissions are low. Alston mentions Amazon as a monetization path for your email list, but Amazon pays between 1% and 4% in most product categories. Recommending a $20 bag of dog treats earns you about $0.60. That math requires enormous volume to produce real income. The higher-value affiliate programs, like ClickBank digital products, recurring software subscriptions, or higher-ticket courses in your niche, are where affiliate marketing starts to feel like a real income. Start with what’s accessible, but plan to move up the commission ladder as your audience grows.

Find Your X

The inverted pyramid works in pet training. It also works in personal finance, software tools, home improvement, fitness, parenting, and dozens of other categories where people have problems they are actively searching to solve. The question is not whether the model works. The question is which niche and which platform fit your specific situation today.

If you’re not sure where to start, go to finder.platformproof.com. Answer a few questions about what you already know, how much time you have each week, and what kind of work you’re willing to do, and you’ll get a personalized recommendation for the income model that fits your actual life, not a generic answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I really need zero subscribers to start this method?

Yes. Alston shows real channels in the video: 855 subscribers with 90,000 views, 325 subscribers with 21,000 views, 765 subscribers with 35,000 views. None of those view counts came from subscriber loyalty. They came from search queries. You don’t need an existing audience to get search traffic. You need the right keyword and content that answers it well.

Which affiliate program should I start with?

It depends on your niche. For digital products like training courses, ClickBank pays around $30 to $100 per sale and is easy to join. For physical goods in retail categories, Chewy, Target, and Amazon are straightforward starting points. For software and online tools, look for programs that pay recurring monthly commissions, since those compound over time and reward consistency in a way that one-time commissions do not.

How many pieces of content do I need before I see results?

There is no fixed number. The examples in this video show that one well-targeted video can drive tens of thousands of views if it answers a specific, undersaturated question. Most people who build consistent affiliate income have created 20 to 50 pieces of content spread across multiple keyword types in at least one niche. Think in terms of months and dozens of posts, not days and a handful of articles.

Can I do this without appearing on camera?

Yes. Alston points out in the video that one of the top-ranking channels uses automated b-roll and text overlays. The creator never appears on screen. Blog posts, voiceover-only videos, and text-based content on social platforms all work for this model. Being on camera builds trust faster and can improve retention, but it is not required to generate search-driven traffic from keyword-targeted content.

What is the best platform to start on if I have no following?

YouTube is the most durable choice because videos rank on both YouTube and Google searches, giving you two sources of traffic from one piece of content. That said, TikTok and Facebook groups can move faster in niches that are visual or community-driven. Pick the platform where your target audience is most actively searching for the kind of content you’ll make, not the one you personally find most comfortable.

How do I build a landing page if I have no technical experience?

Alston mentions AWeber in this video as a free starting point for email marketing. AWeber and similar platforms (MailerLite, ConvertKit) include free landing page templates built into the tool. You don’t need to hire a developer, buy a domain, or build a website on day one. A basic opt-in page inside your email platform is enough to start capturing leads while you build out your content library.

Why does the funnel get narrower toward the bottom if the buyers are better?

Because not everyone who starts with a problem ends up buying a solution. Some people solve it themselves. Some lose interest after the first article. Some get a partial answer and move on. The deeper you go in the funnel, the fewer people remain, but those who do remain are the ones actively preparing to spend money. That’s why conversion rates at the review and comparison level are higher than at the “how” level, even though the raw search volume is lower. Fewer people, but they’re ready to buy.

Is affiliate marketing still worth starting in 2025 or is it too saturated?

The model Alston describes is not year-specific. People will always have problems. Problems will always drive search. Affiliate programs will always pay commissions to whoever helps a customer find and buy a solution. What changes year to year is which specific niches are crowded and which platforms favor new creators. The fundamentals of keyword research, problem-solution content, and email follow-up do not change. The execution changes. The model does not.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “How To Start Affiliate Marketing With No Audience 2022”, YouTube
ClickBank affiliate marketplace, referenced in the video as the source for Brain Training for Dogs at approximately $31 per sale
Chewy.com affiliate program, mentioned as a source for Nature’s Miracle and related pet product commissions
AWeber email marketing platform, mentioned as a free starting point for building and monetizing an email list