I asked Claude Fable 5 (effort MAX), which is available during a bonus period until 7/13 15:59, the following question:
"How should a beginner with zero followers set up SNS affiliate marketing to generate their first reward in the shortest possible time?"
The answer that came back wasn't "increase your followers first" or "find a great product."
In fact, it was the opposite.
You can keep your followers at zero.
The products you should introduce are free offers where the other party doesn't pay a single yen. It might sound like a detour, but in terms of the distance to the first reward, this is the fastest way to get that first conversion.
In this article, I will introduce the reasons why and the steps you can take today, including specific offer names.
By the way, I send out AI x X monetization information irregularly on my official LINE.
→ Try joining Armadillo's Official LINE
The Time to Your First Reward is Mostly Determined by Your Choice of Offer and Platform
Claude Fable 5 MAX's answer was to combine four elements:
- Free Registration Offers: Since people don't have to pay, it lowers the resistance to signing up.
- Short-form Videos: Even with zero followers, you can reach people who don't know you yet.
- Copying Viral Templates: Don't create from scratch; reduce the number of misses by using proven formats.
- Volume: Put out a high quantity to hit a successful template.
Being strong in only one of these won't lead to your first reward. You make it easy to sign up with free offers, reach people with short videos, borrow viral templates, and finally find a hit through sheer volume. Only when these four are aligned will you get your first conversion.
Conversely, if you miss any of these four, your first reward will drift further away. People who don't succeed usually get stuck on one of the following:
- Trying to sell expensive products right away
- Waiting to act until their followers increase
- Sticking to their own elaborate, original structures
- Posting only a few times a month and complaining when they don't grow
How to Grow Even with Zero Followers
TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts distribute posts not to "the person's followers" but to an "unspecified large number of people who don't follow them yet." They show it to the first few hundred people, and if the reaction is good, they expand the distribution to the next few thousand, then tens of thousands. It's a system where growth is determined by the quality of the video itself, not the follower count.
This growth pattern is quite different from blogs or long-form posts. Blogs take months to be found via search, and X text posts won't even appear on anyone's screen unless you have a certain number of followers. Only short-form videos have the potential for a post on your very first day to be seen by 10,000 people. You can reach many people even before you have a single follower.
Don't get discouraged if one video doesn't go viral. Out of 10 videos, 9 might stop at a few hundred views, and the remaining one might grow to tens of thousands. That's how it works, so only those who keep posting despite consecutive misses will hit that one video with tens of thousands of views.
It's Many Times Easier to Get a "Free Registration" Than a "Purchase"
Getting people to pay money is harder than you imagine. The psychological resistance is completely different between introducing a 10,000 yen product for purchase and getting someone to sign up for a free membership.
Beginners should first aim for offers where the reader pays zero, or almost zero, yen. Since they can act with the mindset of "It's free, so I might as well register," the effort required for a signup is much lighter than for paid products.
In exchange, the reward per conversion is lower than for high-priced products—usually a few hundred to a few thousand yen. However, the first goal isn't to earn big. It's to experience that first reward where "someone else moved because of my introduction." Once you experience this, you finally understand what works and what doesn't. If you prioritize getting that first conversion, free offers are the closest entry point.
First, Register with These 3 ASPs and Work Backwards from the Offer List
The first thing to do is register with an ASP (Affiliate Service Provider). An ASP is an intermediary that connects advertisers with you. Registration is free for all of them, and the screening isn't that strict. For beginners, these three are enough:
- A8.net: One of the largest in Japan with a massive number of offers. If in doubt, start here. They have everything from VOD to finance.
- Moshimo Affiliate: Beginner-friendly with an easy-to-understand management screen and easy links for Amazon and Rakuten products.
- afb: Strong in beauty, health, and finance, with relatively fast reward payouts.
Once registered, look through the offer list before making a post. Check three things: the reward unit price, the approval rate, and whether you can talk about it.
- Reward Unit Price: How much you get per conversion.
- Approval Rate: The percentage of signups that are actually approved and finalized. Offers with high unit prices but low approval rates aren't as profitable as they look.
- Can you talk about it?: Have you used it? Are you interested? Can you write about it if you research it?
Work backwards from these three to decide which genre you will tackle. Deciding the video genre first and looking for offers later is the wrong order. Choosing an offer that pays well, is easy to get approved, and that you can talk about reasonably well will prevent you from running out of ideas later.
Beginners Should Choose from These Genres for the Fastest First Reward
Not just any genre will do. If you're starting out, choose genres with many free or low-cost offers and a good selection of products. The rewards are just estimates and change depending on the offer and timing.
- VOD (Video On Demand): Free trial registrations for U-NEXT, DMM TV, Hulu, ABEMA, etc. Rewards are roughly 500 to 1,500 yen per conversion. This is the easiest genre to lead to registration because you can entice people with "watch for free."
- Matching Apps: Free membership registrations for Pairs, with, Tapple, Omiai, etc. Estimates are a few hundred to a few thousand yen. Romance and dating stories go well with short videos and are easy to create content for.
- Poi-katsu (Point Activities) / Saving: Free registration for point sites like Moppy and Hapitas. Estimates are a few hundred yen, but the signup conditions are light, making them suitable for the first reward.
- Online Securities / Account Opening: Opening accounts for Rakuten Securities, SBI Securities, online banks, or credit card issuance. Rewards can be high, from a few thousand to over 10,000 yen for free account openings. However, approval conditions are detailed, and the effort to convert is higher than the three above.
- Job Change / Skills: Free registration or interviews for Recruit Agent, doda, etc. Estimates are a few thousand yen. If it reaches people who are struggling, it's a genre that easily leads to registration.
- Beauty / Health: Free hair removal consultations, cosmetic trials, etc. Estimates are a few hundred to a few thousand yen. The strength is that before-and-afters are easy to show in videos.
If you're choosing for the first time, go with VOD or Poi-katsu. Although the rewards are low, they are free to register and easiest to convert, making the path to the first reward the fastest. If you spread yourself too thin, your video topics and audience will become scattered, making it harder for the account to grow.
Copy the Templates of 10 Viral Accounts Entirely
Once you've decided on a genre, find about 10 accounts that are already viral in that genre. Instead of just looking at them, take notes in a spreadsheet on the following items so you won't get lost when making your own videos:
- What they say in the first 1-2 seconds (the hook sentence)
- Video length (15, 30, or 60 seconds)
- How captions are displayed (is the text large, where does it switch?)
- The order of the main content (does it follow the flow of Problem -> Solution -> Offer?)
- The phrasing of the final call to action (how they say "check the profile")
Especially important is the hook in the first 1-2 seconds. If you don't make them think "this is relevant to me" here, they will just swipe to the next video. Viral hooks have several fixed patterns:
- Highlighting Loss: "If you're [type of person], you're losing out if you don't know this."
- Sharing Real Experience: "I'll honestly introduce an app that gave me thousands of yen for free."
- Denying Common Sense: "You don't need to pay for [paid service] anymore."
- Making a Ranking: "My top 3 free [category] apps."
Borrow these templates and fill the content with your own words and experiences. Even for the same VOD introduction, which work you binged or what you found annoying during registration is unique to you. Borrow the structure, but provide the content yourself. Being able to distinguish this is the difference between a mere copycat video and a video that makes viewers want to register.
Without a Path, No Amount of Views Will Earn You a Single Yen
Even if your video starts going viral, if there's no path from there to the offer page, you won't generate a single yen in rewards. Surprisingly many people miss this. Just connect them in this order:
- Put one URL for a link collection service like lit.link in your profile section.
- Place the link for the offer you want to push most at the very top of that link collection. List a few secondary offers below it.
- Add a sentence in your profile bio like "Details at the link below" so people don't get lost on where to click.
- On Instagram, you can also link directly to the offer page from Story link stickers. Saving them in highlights allows people who come later to find them too.
One thing to note is that TikTok may have conditions like follower count to put a link in your profile. If you can't post one because you just started, it's realistic to start where you can place links, such as creating a path to the offer page from Instagram Reels and Stories. Just adding "Details in profile" in the video will change the number of people who follow the path.
Post Your First 30 Videos to Collect Data, Not to Earn
A guideline is 1 to 3 videos daily for 30 days, totaling 30 to 90 videos. This volume is more for seeing reactions than for earning. Don't expect too much revenue from the first 30 videos. This period is for investigating which hooks grow and which presentation styles keep people watching until the end. Treat it as data collection.
Don't just look at view counts. Record the following numbers for each video:
- Audience Retention Rate: The percentage of people who watched the video to the end. The higher it is, the more the algorithm likes it.
- Save Rate: The percentage of saves. Videos with many saves are judged as "useful" and are more likely to be distributed again.
- Profile Visits: The number of people who came to see your profile from the video. This is the number of people who reached the step before the offer link.
- Link Clicks and Approvals: Did they actually go to the offer page and convert? This is where it finally leads to rewards.
If you put out 30 videos, you'll see which templates have high save rates for your account. From there, focus on the viral templates and keep making them with the same structure. Mass-produce, look at the numbers again, and discard the templates that missed. By repeating this, you make it easier to intentionally reproduce a video that went viral by chance.
If You Just Want Rewards as Fast as Possible, There is 'Self-Back'
To get others to register via video, you inevitably need a certain number of posts and verification. If you just want cash quickly, there is a method called "Self-Back."
Self-Back is a system where you apply for an offer yourself through your own affiliate link and receive the reward. Most ASPs have a dedicated page for "Self-Back." If you make a credit card or open a brokerage account through that, the reward—ranging from a few thousand to over 10,000 yen depending on the offer—goes straight to you. Credit card issuances and brokerage accounts have high unit prices, and applying for a few can result in tens of thousands of yen. Rewards are generated from day one without posting a single video.
However, this won't become a business that earns continuously. As a rule, you can only apply for an offer once, and it ends once you've gone through the available offers. It won't become a cumulative income. Its use is to get a taste of receiving an affiliate reward for the first time. If you use that experience as motivation to continue with short-form videos, Self-Back is very useful.
Summary
The shortcut to your first reward becomes clear if you narrow down what to do.
- Choose free offers with low hurdles for signup.
- Post short-form videos that reach new people even with zero followers.
- Borrow viral templates to reduce the number of misses.
- And post your first 30 videos to collect data, not to earn. Claude Fable 5 MAX's answer ultimately boiled down to these four points.
What's needed isn't talent or initial followers. It's the judgment of which offer to choose and the persistence to keep posting even when you're not growing. If you start today by registering with one ASP and looking at the offer list, you should have your first set of data in your account 30 days from now.
Once you start earning a little, some people might feel this way:
Is short-form video really the best?
Is low-unit affiliate marketing really the best?
Of course, a strategy to gather customers with overwhelming impressions and push through is also important.
On the other hand, with high-unit affiliates, you can also achieve large sales even with minimum customer attraction.
As for what that "high-unit affiliate" is...
Oh, and I also send out various other AI x X monetization information, so if you're interested, please register.
