How To Start Affiliate Marketing Today In 2023

Most people make affiliate marketing way harder than it has to be. They agonize over which niche to pick, spend weeks building a website nobody visits, and wait months for a commission that never comes. Alston Godbolt flips that on its head with a dead-simple framework: find a brand new product, figure out what buyers want to know, create the content that answers those questions, and drop your affiliate link in the description. That is the whole game. In this post we walk through every step of that process, using the Ring Car Cam as the live case study.

The goal Alston sets out to prove is zero to one hundred dollars per day in affiliate commissions. Not in theory and not with some faceless dropship store. With real video content on TikTok and YouTube, a product you can actually hold in your hand, and programs you can apply to right now for free. If you have been putting off starting because the path felt unclear, this breakdown removes every excuse.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A repeatable method for picking low-competition products with proven buyer demand
The exact YouTube and TikTok research process Alston uses to generate unlimited content ideas
How to mine Amazon question sections for content angles that rank for keywords nobody else is targeting
Step-by-step instructions for finding and applying to affiliate programs beyond Amazon Associates
A lead magnet strategy that converts viewers into email subscribers so you can promote products again and again
A realistic picture of the time and effort required to hit that first hundred dollars a day
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The Product You Pick Decides Everything

Alston opens the video by showing the Ring Car Cam sitting on his desk. He bought it specifically for this case study, and the reason he chose it tells you everything you need to know about smart product selection. The Ring Car Cam was brand new. It had just been announced at CES, which meant there was real curiosity in the market but almost no content to satisfy that curiosity. When he typed “ring car cam” into YouTube, small channels with fewer than a thousand subscribers were pulling tens of thousands of views because nobody else was covering it.

That is the insight you need to tattoo on your brain. Saturated niches are not where affiliate marketers die. Saturated niches are where everyone aims. The real opportunity lives in products that are so new the big creators have not gotten around to them yet. A product announced at a major tech conference, a gadget that just shipped from a Kickstarter, a software tool that launched on Product Hunt last week. These are the openings where a channel with 79 subscribers can pull 545 views on a single video because there is simply nothing else to watch.

If you cannot afford to buy a new product right now, Alston has a free workaround. Go to your order history on Amazon, Best Buy, or Target. Every item you ever purchased solved a problem for you. That problem is your content angle. You already know the product deeply enough to make an honest review or walkthrough, and you can apply for an affiliate link without spending a cent more. Alston specifically searched “ring” inside his own Amazon order history to lock in the product for the case study. The same move works for anything you already own.

Where to Create Content: TikTok and YouTube

Once you have your product, the next decision is where to publish. Alston chose TikTok and YouTube for one reason: he likes making video content. That preference matters. Platform consistency is hard to fake, so go where you will actually show up every week.

The TikTok numbers for the Ring Car Cam at the time of the video told a clear story. A random creator had 13,000 views on a Ring Car Cam clip. Another had 32,000 views. A CES announcement clip had climbed to 1.3 million views. None of those creators needed a massive following to get those numbers. TikTok rewards content that matches what the algorithm thinks a viewer wants to see next, not content from accounts with the most followers. A product that people are genuinely searching for gives the algorithm exactly what it needs to distribute your clip.

YouTube told the same story. Alston pulled up the search results for “ring car cam” and showed channels with 2,800 subscribers at 71,000 views and channels with only 79 subscribers at 545 views. Those sub-thousand channels were sitting on the first page because they covered the topic and nobody else did. He also pointed out that people were typing actual questions into the YouTube search bar. “Ring car cam features.” “Ring car cam local storage.” “Ring car cam setup.” Each of those queries is a content brief sitting right there on screen, free, available to anyone who types the product name into the search bar.

You are not limited to TikTok and YouTube. Alston briefly mentions that a vlog format could work, Pinterest has potential, and a Facebook group in the home security space could funnel traffic to your content. The platform matters less than the commitment to publish regularly on the one you choose.

How to Mine Amazon for Unlimited Content Ideas

Here is a research trick most affiliate marketers miss completely. Go to the product page on Amazon for whatever you are promoting and scroll down to the answered questions section. For the Ring Car Cam, Alston found over 800 questions from real buyers. These are not hypothetical questions. These are questions from people who had their wallet out and still needed more information before they would click Buy. That hesitation is your content opportunity.

One of the questions he highlighted: “Does it have any local disk storage?” Another: “Can this be wired directly without an OBD2 connector?” That second question had at least 22 other people responding because so many potential buyers wanted to know the same thing. One video answering that question, titled exactly “Ring Car Cam: Can You Wire It Without an OBD2 Connector?” would rank for a search phrase that has almost no competing content and pulls in exactly the kind of buyer who is ninety percent of the way to purchasing.

Alston points out that if every video you publish starts with “ring car cam” and then a specific feature or question, you start to own that product on search. After ten or fifteen videos, YouTube and Google will treat you as the go-to authority on that device. From there you can “niche up,” as Alston puts it. Ring Car Cam content becomes dash cam content. Dash cam content becomes car security content. Car security content opens the door to a whole catalog of products in the same buyer segment, each with its own affiliate program and its own commission structure.

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How to Find and Join Affiliate Programs

Amazon Associates is the obvious starting point and Alston mentions it directly. To join, you need one of three things: a YouTube channel, a website, or an app. Once you apply, Amazon gives you conditional acceptance. You have a specific window to earn three qualified sales. Hit that threshold and you are fully in. Miss it and you have to reapply.

But Amazon is not the only option and often not the best-paying one. Alston demonstrates a quick Google search: type the brand name plus “affiliate program” and see what comes up. For the Ring brand, he checked Target, Best Buy, and B&H Photo. He also searched “tech affiliate programs” and surfaced a roundup article from Authority Hacker listing twelve programs that might carry or be relevant to the same buyer.

The application advice Alston gives here is worth saving. Do not write a lazy two-sentence application that says “I want to promote your product because it is good.” Write out your actual plan. Describe the videos you intend to make. Explain the specific content angles you researched. Tell them you will be publishing Ring-only content on TikTok and YouTube. Brands want to work with affiliates who have a plan, not people who are going to stick a link in a Reddit post and hope for clicks. A detailed application letter makes you look like a business partner instead of an opportunist, and that distinction affects who gets approved.

Alston’s practical advice: apply to five affiliate programs at once. If one rejects you, you still have four others earning commissions on the same content. If all five accept you, you can link to whichever program pays the highest commission for each specific item. Spreading across multiple programs is free insurance against any single program closing or cutting its rates.

Build Your Email List From Day One

Affiliate commissions from clicks on a YouTube description are the first layer of income. The email list is the second layer, and it is the one that compounds. Alston explains how to build it around the same product you are already promoting.

Think about the person watching a Ring Car Cam unboxing video. What other problems do they have? What else are they worried about? For someone who cares about a car security camera, the answer is obvious. They are anxious about car theft. They are thinking about valuables left in their vehicle. They want to know how to prevent a break-in. That anxiety is the lead magnet brief. Alston suggests offers like “10 Ways to Secure Your Car,” “How to Prevent Your Car from Getting Stolen,” or “How to Hide Valuables in Your Vehicle.” Any of those as a free PDF or checklist would be something this audience genuinely wants.

You give that checklist away in exchange for an email address. Now instead of hoping someone clicks your affiliate link in a video description at exactly the right moment, you can follow up with that same buyer over days and weeks. When Ring releases an updated model, you email the list. When you start covering dash cam alternatives, you email the list. When a Black Friday deal drops on the product, you email the list. One email subscriber is worth far more in long-term commissions than one video view, because you control the follow-up instead of waiting for the algorithm to serve your video again.

The Step-by-Step Action Plan

Here is the full sequence Alston runs through in the video, reformatted as a numbered checklist you can work through in order.

Pick a product. Either buy something brand new to the market or pull from your own purchase history. New products win because competition is thin and search demand is building. Your own purchases win because you already know the product and can create honest content without faking expertise.
Research content angles on TikTok. Type the product name into TikTok search and look at what is already getting views. Note the titles, formats, and engagement numbers. Anything under 100,000 views on a product-specific clip is a lane you can enter.
Research content angles on YouTube. Repeat the same search. Pay attention to the autocomplete suggestions because each one is a buyer question. Copy those questions into a spreadsheet. Each row is a future video.
Mine Amazon questions. Go to the product page, scroll to answered questions, and read through them. Pull out the questions that have the most answers or that point to common buyer hesitations. These make your most useful content because they are framed around purchase barriers.
Apply to affiliate programs. Start with Amazon Associates. Then search “[brand name] affiliate program” on Google and apply to at least four more. Write a real application that describes your content plan and platform.
Start publishing content. Aim for videos that begin with the product name so you are building a body of searchable content around a consistent keyword. One video per week minimum. An unboxing, a features overview, and an answer to each major Amazon question will get you to ten or fifteen videos fast.
Create a lead magnet. Write a free guide or checklist that solves a related problem for your target audience. Offer it in your video descriptions and on your channel page in exchange for an email address.
Follow up with email marketing. Once subscribers are on your list, send consistent emails with product tips, related recommendations, and special deals. This is how affiliate income grows from occasional clicks to a predictable monthly number.

Honest Drawbacks

This method works and the proof is in the view counts Alston shows on screen. But there are things to be aware of before you start.

Amazon Associates pays low commissions, often between one and four percent depending on the category. A hundred-dollar Ring Car Cam sale nets you roughly three dollars. To hit a hundred dollars a day, you would need to drive around thirty to forty qualified sales every day from Amazon alone. That is achievable with consistent content but it requires volume. Diversifying into direct brand programs with higher commission rates speeds up that math considerably.

The new-product advantage has a shelf life. When a product launches with almost no competition on YouTube, you have a window of maybe three to six months before bigger channels notice and start publishing their own coverage. You need to move fast and publish enough content to become the established authority before that window closes. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it strategy in the early phase.

The lead magnet and email marketing step requires a tool. A basic email service provider like MailerLite has a free tier that handles a few hundred subscribers, but as your list grows you will need to pay for a plan. Budget for that as part of the business from the start so the cost does not surprise you later.

Finally, Amazon requires three qualified sales during your conditional acceptance period. If your content is not driving purchases fast enough, you may need to apply again. Building your audience on the platform before applying, or applying to brand-direct programs first, avoids this pressure entirely.

Find Your X

Affiliate marketing works best when the product you promote connects to something you already know, already own, or already care about. The Ring Car Cam case study works because Alston could walk through a genuine unboxing and answer real buyer questions with real knowledge. Generic affiliate sites that promote everything promote nothing. Specificity is what gets you ranked, trusted, and clicked.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to buy the product before I can promote it?

No, but buying it gives you a massive advantage. An unboxing or hands-on review is the highest-converting affiliate content format because viewers can see what they are getting. If you cannot afford a new product, start with something you already own and purchased. Your order history on Amazon or Best Buy is a free content library.

How long does it take to earn the first commission?

It varies, but creators who publish consistent content around a new product with thin competition can see their first sale within two to four weeks. The key variable is whether your videos are showing up in search results. Target low-competition keywords from day one and you shorten the wait considerably.

What does Amazon’s conditional acceptance mean?

When you apply to Amazon Associates, you are given conditional acceptance rather than full membership immediately. You need to generate three qualifying sales within a set time window to become a full member. If you do not hit that number, your application closes and you must reapply. Publishing video content before you apply helps ensure you have an audience that can drive those early sales.

Can I do this without a website?

Yes. Amazon Associates accepts YouTube channels and apps in addition to websites. For the TikTok side, most brand-direct affiliate programs do not require a website either. You can run the entire affiliate business from your YouTube channel alone, with your affiliate links in the video descriptions and a link to your lead magnet in your channel profile.

How many affiliate programs should I join?

Alston recommends applying to around five programs at once for the same product or product category. This protects you if one program closes or cuts commissions. It also lets you compare payout rates and link to whichever program is paying the highest rate for each specific item you recommend. More programs mean more flexibility, not more work, because the content you create is the same either way.

What should I write in an affiliate program application?

Write your actual content plan. Name the platform you will publish on, describe the specific videos you intend to make, and explain why you believe this product is a fit for your audience. Tell the brand that you will be focused on their product specifically, not mixing it with dozens of other promotions. A concrete plan signals that you are a serious partner, and that increases your approval rate significantly.

What kind of lead magnet works best for product-based affiliate content?

Checklists and short guides that solve a closely related problem perform well because they are fast to consume and directly relevant to the product you are promoting. For a car security camera, something like “10 Ways to Prevent Car Theft” targets the same anxiety that made someone search for a dash cam in the first place. The lead magnet does not have to be long. A one-page PDF with actionable tips is enough to justify an email address.

How do I scale beyond one hundred dollars a day?

The path Alston describes is to “niche up” once you have established authority on a specific product. Ring Car Cam content becomes dash cam content, which becomes car security content, which opens the door to an entire category of related products with their own affiliate programs and higher-margin options. More content volume, a growing email list, and expanding product coverage all compound on each other. The hundred-dollar-a-day number is a starting benchmark, not a ceiling.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “How To Start Affiliate Marketing Today In 2023”: youtu.be/ncUgAyWrPSk
Amazon Associates Program: affiliate-program.amazon.com
Ring Car Cam product page on Amazon.com (case study product)
TikTok search data referenced in video: 13K, 32K, and 1.3M views on Ring Car Cam content at time of filming
YouTube search data referenced in video: channels with 79 to 2,800 subscribers ranking on page one for Ring Car Cam queries