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I talk a lot about budgeting as an affiliate marketer. I also talk about how difficult it is to do off very low budgets, however, I know that many that turn to affiliate marketing turn to it because of tales and stories of how some took they’re last $10 to their name, and turned it into millions. I won’t say that is how it will happen for you, but if all you have is $5 – $20 a day to spend, you’ll have a lot of trials ahead of you. So rather than me ranting about how you should have at least $1000 to invest, lets talk about if you only have about $100 a day to invest.

First off, you’ll need to collect the basic essential tools of any affiliate marketer. Unfortunately, many of these tools cost cold hard cash, and can cut a deep hole in your budget. Hosting, domains and tracking are a few you’ll need to succeed. Luckily, you can bypass hosting and domains by only direct linking with an affiliate link. If you’d like, you can buy .info domains for a couple bucks and pick up cheap hosting for $3 – 10 dollars a month. Keep in mind, though, that with hosting you get what you pay for, and a $3 a month host might not perform how you’d like it to. So for now, I’d stick to direct linking.

As far as tracking, I’d suggest using Prosper202. Prosper202 has it’s own downfalls – It must be hosted on your own server, domain and optimally you’ll have a SSL on it so you can automatically get pixels fired on your affiliate offer. Tracking202 is the solution for this. It is hosted on the Tracking202′s own server, which again, might not give you the best performance, but if you’re on a budget it is one of the only options you have for now.

Now here is a big decision. What do I want to market? You can go for the big niches for big dollars, but you’ll be outnumbered and outrun by advertisers that have been in the game 5 more years than you have. What I would start doing is thinking about you and your friends. Do they have any odd interests you could capitalize on? Do you or they have any hobbies that require some money to continue? Think about things you are truely interested in, then try and match an offer to it. This will allow you to cut out some of the demographic/psychographic research and  testing you’ll have to do, again, which can take a large part of your advertising budget.

Then there is the question of where or how will I market this? There are a ton of platforms to hit on. Facebook, PoF, Google, Bing/MSN, Myspace, direct media buys, etc – again, these all cost money, and can cost a lot of your budget. The best idea is to pick one and stick with it. The more you jump around, the more you have to spend. Even if you spend 1-2 months trying to optimize your 1st campaign, you’ll learn a lot that will allow you to take future campaigns further and more profitable in case your first isn’t. Be patient and continue spending time (rather than money) searching for hot trends in your niche, who’s buying and why. Apply these to your sales markets.

And if you hit your daily budget, it is time to move to the “free” stuff. I put “free” in quotation marks because I don’t believe just because you aren’t spending money, you aren’t losing money. Time is money in my book, and with free marketing, that is your currency.

Anyways, you can try blogging about the niche you are in. Promote that blog with natural links on comments and guest posts on other blogs, social media links, Digg, Reddit, etc, post on forums related to your niche. Try creating a podcast, webinar, or local interest group that will drag any extra traffic to your site. Optimize ad placements for maximum CTR. Do product reviews (great way to get free stuff – sell it to add money to your advertising budget). Reach out to local businesses in your niche and let them know their competitor is advertising on their blog (you can just throw up a “fake” ad for them) and see if you can’t get them to buy in to an ad placement.

So it isn’t impossible to advertise on $5 a day. People do it, and while you can’t realistically expect to make $500 a day off $5, you might be able to double or triple your investment, which in turn can be applied to your next days budget. I think the most important thing you really need to take away here is to reinvest everything you make – data, mistakes, and money – to the next day and the next.

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