Can I Do Affiliate Marketing [WITHOUT SHOWING MY FACE?]

A friend once asked me, can I do affiliate marketing without showing my face?

Of course, you can. But it is always better to show your face because it promotes credibility. It tells people that you are a human being, not a nameless corporation.  

There are definite reasons why someone might want to do this in an anonymous way. Maybe you don’t have the confidence to front your business or maybe you have a boss that would fire you if they found out you had a side hustle. It is not necessarily a bad thing!

If you want to do affiliate marketing without showing your face, let me show you how. I will also provide you with some tips on how to make it work better for you.

Ways to do affiliate marketing without showing your face 

Affiliate marketing is not regulated in as strict a way as you might be thinking! As such, there is no law that says you cannot do it without showing your face.

Let us take a look at the ways you can do affiliate marketing without showing your face.

YouTube

Many YouTubers put their face on their videos because apart from their content, they use their personalities as their brand. You will usually see this in channels that review toys, or people who review movies and do “reactions.”

However, this does not mean that you should follow suit. There are many YouTube channels with millions of followers without showing their faces.

Here are some examples:

• Viral Maniacs – shows a time-lapse sculpture of clay art
• Household Hackers – reviews as-seen-on-TV products used at home
• Mr Rescue – shows restoration of old toys and tools
• Ziggy’s Desk – shows how to paint expensive toys like Tamiya, car assemblies, and many more

All of these channels do not have any face reveals, but they are generating millions of views and subscribers. Their affiliate products are in the video details. They sell products that show people where to buy stuff that they use for their art.  

If you want this kind of affiliate marketing business model, you need a camera that can do a time-lapse video. This is what many artists do.

Even if you are doing videos that require someone present on screen, it is as easy as ever to hire a freelancer to do this for you. This is the beauty of the digital economy that is growing all around us 🙂

Blogging

Blogging is the oldest way to do affiliate marketing. You do not have to show your face, especially if you are merely reviewing products.

Here are the benefits of blogging:

• Easy to set up
• You own your site, so there are no rules to follow
• You can hire writers to do the writing for you
• Once you upload a post, that asset is online forever

I have to say that blogging is still much more credible if you show your face. However, I can also tell you that many people who read your blog will not even bother clicking your About Us page.

In my experience, I have sold many affiliate products from blogs, and when I look at the videos of how these customers bought from my affiliate links, they did not even bother looking at my About Me page.

So, what does this tell us?

It tells us that you can do affiliate marketing without showing your face. For as long as your blog is not too salesy, your audience may consider clicking your links and buying from them.

Make sure that your blog is niche-based. This works better than creating a blog that attempts to produce general content. The only exception is if you are writing a news blog.

The only exception to this is if you have a website that Google sees as requiring a high level of expertise. For example, if you have a site giving out medical advice you will likely rank much better if you have a qualified doctor as the author and detailed in the about page. Although that doesn’t necessarily have to be you!

Advertising with Squeeze Page

One of the most effective ways to do affiliate marketing is to create ads and launch them in social media channels and other platforms.

If a person is interested in what you offer, your ad link must direct the user to a squeeze page, and then finally to the offer.

As a squeeze page is a one-page site where you ask the customer to enter his email address before he gets to the product page.

In this affiliate marketing method, you do not have to show your face. You just need to ensure that your squeeze page is credible enough—put your brand in there and make it look professional. Once the customer clicks on your affiliate link, he will be redirected to the product site.

I want to tell you that this is a costly way to do affiliate marketing. I would not recommend advertising for newbies. It takes a lot of money to produce your first ad, much more so once you have released it. You also need to ensure that you know how to do A/B testing. This will help you understand how different versions of the same ads are performing.

Landing page

The last method that I would recommend is building a landing page. This is the most common method to do affiliate marketing, but only for single-product sites. There are many tools you can use to build a sales funnel like ClickFunnels, Instapage, GrooveFunnels, and many more.

One problem you may have, however, is that landing pages are likely to work if there are faces in there. So, while you may not put yours, you certainly have to put the faces of others.

What do I mean by this?

Landing pages are believable only if there are customer reviews on it—faces of people who say that they loved the product.

What I recommend is that you hire professional models who will give their testimonies, including their faces. While some may agree to making testimonies as written text with their images, what you really need to opt for is a video.

To do this, you have to write a script and have a model from Fiverr to do it for you. The pay varies from one model to another. Once your landing page is set-up, the next thing to do is to find ways to drive traffic to your site.

Tips to succeed with affiliate marketing without showing your face

Once you have selected the platform to use, it is time to optimize your content. Your goal is to make people buy your affiliate products.

Here are some tips for finding success:

• Instructions – provide detailed instructions about the product that you are promoting. It does not matter if you are blogging or doing YouTube videos. What matters is that the reader or viewer gets to understand what the product can do for him or her.
• Comparison – use comparison videos or blog posts to help your audiences make a decision. If your subject matter is about helmets that people can buy from Amazon, then tell people why one helmet is better than the other.
• Images – help people visualize the product that you are promoting by using a lot of images. On YouTube, it helps if you can show screen recordings of the software promoting or images of physical products that you are reviewing.
• Value – what did the viewer get from your content? Did the viewer learn anything new? Did you help the viewer learn something? Focus your content on what you can do for your customer, not how you can sell to the customer.

I want to put an emphasis on value. Always remember that if you are an affiliate marketer, your goal is to convince the viewer that the product you are promoting is a life-changer. If you make blogs or videos, make sure that the entire content sends a clear message—what the product can do to change the life of the viewer.

With face or without face, which one is better? 

Generally speaking, you are better off if you show your face. Audiences like to connect with a person—a real one, and showing your face is what fulfills this connection.

Your face is also an indication that you are not a scammer. Showing your face means that you are not afraid for people to do a background check about you, to do a reverse image search about you.

You see, showing your face tells a lot about your character—it is easier to gain your target customers’ trust if they can see you.

Now, I am not saying that affiliate marketing without a face is not going to work. It can.

The trick here is to identify what kind of audiences and customers you have. And you can do this by starting with your niche.

Think about this:

If you are teaching people how to do art, and your method is YouTube, people do not really have to see your face. What they have to see is the activity that goes on with the artwork.

However, if you are teaching people how to trade in stocks, how to do SEO, or how to build an online business, you certainly have to show your face—especially if you are promoting products where they have to spend money on a monthly basis.

There you have it, the secrets to faceless affiliate marketing 🙂

You can do affiliate marketing without showing your face. It works, but you are reducing your success rate. Over the years, people have associated faceless websites with scams. This is why doing affiliate marketing with your face is much better.

I am not saying that this is the case all the time. What you really have to consider is your niche. There are some niches where a face is required, especially so if you are promoting products about making money.

To make the right decision, put yourself in the shoes of the buyer—will you buy from the ad or content if you do not see a face? If your answer is yes, then you can definitely do affiliate marketing without showing your face.