How long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing? It’s the million dollar question! There’s thousands of people looking at affiliate marketing wondering whether it can replace their existing income. Affiliate marketing is a referral marketing business model in which an affiliate refers a customer to a product online. If someone buys through your unique affiliate link, you earn a commission. There’s various ways to do affiliate marketing and depending on your marketing strategy, product choices and work ethic, you’ll have a different experience.
Most affiliates will struggle in the first few months. It’s definitely not easy and it takes time to build a reliable income from it. The fastest amount of time an affiliate can start earning is usually within 6 months. Some take shorter time and some take longer. But this will depend on a number of factors which I’ll cover in this article. The short version is don’t expect to make a regular income in the first instance and don’t give up the day job. But affiliates can use their online businesses to replace their income if they stick at it for long enough, and take the right action steps.
How Long Does It Take To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing – Fast Version
The fastest legit way to make money online is through using a high ticket affiliate program and using paid marketing. Paid marketing can reach a larger audience much faster than through months and years of blogging, or content creation. In the early months you’ll still need to test and measure your advertising. Not many affiliates get it right on their first try. Those who succeed, often test and measure many versions before they find the winning advert and generate consistent sales.
With a high ticket product range this testing and measuring of advertising is much more doable. You can recoup your marketing budget much more easily through selling the high ticket products in your sales funnel. High ticket products pay out much larger commissions than most affiliate products will. You can even earn 40% commissions on products valued up to $20,000. That’s $8000 a sale! Of course this kind of sales funnel needs investment. To earn those commissions you’ll need to invest in the business model yourself.
Plus you’ll need to test and measure your paid marketing strategy. This takes time and of course money. In the first instance you’ll be testing adverts which potentially fail! This is tough and even if you have a large marketing budget you’ll need to expect setbacks. But once you have a winning campaign running, your business can pretty much run by itself to a large extent. See make money on autopilot.
Some affiliates have managed to use this strategy and replace existing income inside 6 months, although this is not typical. For others it can take longer. Drive, focus and available funds for investment and marketing are all factors.
How Long Does It Take To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing – Slow Version
The slow version relies on cheap or free marketing such as blogging. It’s a much slower strategy than using a paid-for marketing approach. With paid marketing you can scale up by simply increasing your budget to reach more people (once your sales funnel is proving profitable).
With content marketing, you need to create more and more content to eventually generate traffic, leads and sales from the sheer volume of your “digital asset”. You can get lucky of course and have some content go viral, although this isn’t guaranteed. Early content too might lead to a sale or two. But generally you’ll need a lot of content to be making sales on a consistent basis.
Your content needs to get traffic too, so creating content is only part of a content marketing strategy. Once you have created a blog post, for example, you’ll need to share it and link to it. You should do this many times over several months or years before you’ll see consistent sales. This is the point where most affiliates simply quit. Unless they are invested in the long term picture, they will look to their pitiful results within a few months, deem the venture as a “failure” and quit!
But that can be a mistake. Affiliate marketing can work wonders if you pick a strategy and work towards its fulfilment. The trouble is success isn’t immediate and you need to get through this period to appreciate the rewards. Blogging and content marketing can show fruit within a few months. But it’s often much longer before you can consistently make sales and replace an income with it. Drive and consistent action are prerequisites for success with content marketing as a strategy.
How Long Does It Take To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing – Your Niche
The niche you pick is another variable which can mean your journey is either faster or slower than someone else’s might be. In a competitive niche such as dating or making money online, you should expect a tougher ride if you’re going down the content marketing route. There’s millions of blogs and videos covering all sorts of niches, so the less competitive the niche you pick, the better it is for your online visibility.
If you have money to spend on an online business, you can shortcut the content marketing minefield by using paid marketing. (See affiliate marketing shortcuts) However, as mentioned already, you’ll need a number of large value items to sell to recoup your advertising budget and make a profit. In a less competitive niche, you have more chance of finding an audience for your products or service through using content marketing.
Physical Products Digital Products Subscription & High Ticket
The product/s you choose to promote as an affiliate will have a bearing on how long it takes to make money from your strategy too. Many affiliates start off with Amazon and promote the physical products from the site. While this can give you lots of choice, and it’s easy to find a matching products whatever your niche or interest, Amazon products only pay small commissions. You’ll earn from 1%-11% commission on an Amazon product. So sell a $100 product and you can earn between $1 and $11. See affiliate marketing commission rates.
Digital products can pay much more and often pay out 40% and upwards to affiliates in commission. So for that same $100 product, you’ll earn $40 instead of $11! This means your efforts can be multiplied simply by choosing the right products. Subscription products too offer a better opportunity to affiliates to shortcut their earning timeline.
Subscription affiliate products are often memberships and business software which is used by affiliates themselves. When an affiliate is earning from their affiliate business, they will potentially use these kinds of tools for life. If you have referred those tools (as an affiliate) this means you’ll be earning recurring commissions for life too! See lifetime commissions affiliate program.
High ticket affiliate programs offer the largest payouts with some digital products paying out upwards of $2000 per sale! For what often amounts to the same amount of work, you can sell a $100 product and earn $1, or sell a $20,000 product and earn $8000! So it’s wise to educate yourself before rushing in to the affiliate marketing business guns blazing! You can shave years off your affiliate marketing journey just by using the right affiliate marketing business model and choosing the right strategy to market your products.
Your “Why?”
Your reason for building an affiliate marketing business is another variable which cannot be accurately measured in terms of time. Some people have a strong reason for getting involved in affiliate marketing. If you hate your job and have a difficult situation, you’ll likely work much harder, and for longer, than if you’re quite happy in your life just the way it is.
With a strong reason, you’re much more likely to overcome the difficulties inherent in the affiliate marketing world. If you’re simply “giving it a go” to see what it’s like, you’re much more likely to quit when you don’t see any results straight away.
Other Unknown Variables & Programming
There’s many other unknown variables within the affiliate marketing journey. Your resolve and ability to work under your own steam is a strong one too. If you need supervision constantly then entrepreneurship probably isn’t for you! There’s many distractions you’ll face when working under your own supervision and it can be easy to fall into one of several traps:
- Being a busy fool – spending time on wasteful activities instead of money producing activities
- Shiny object syndrome – buying course after course looking for the “magic bullet” will you imagine will make it all easier
- Stuck in learning mode – Endless training and studying doesn’t move your business forwards, only action does. It can be easy to think you’re progressing when you only learning – not moving your business forwards.
- Endless distractions – When friends and family know you’re working from home they will often distract you. Social media too can be a massive attention black hole which can draw your energy and waste your time!
Your own mental belief system and internal programming also is a controlling factor over the time it can take to make money as an affiliate. As Henry Ford said “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right”. Building any business is a challenge, but if you doubt you can do it, this will often stand in the way of you taking productive action. See motivational books pdf free download for some helpful books on motivation, goal setting and building belief.
Training & Support
Another huge variable with affiliate marketing is whether you get the training and support you need. Without support, you can find affiliate marketing much more difficult than with it. By following other mentors and coaches who have already trodden the affiliate marketing path, you can considerably shorten the journey.
There’s no guarantees with affiliate marketing and it’s a business in which you take 100% responsibility for your outcomes. However, with the right training and support you can shortcut your affiliate journey by avoiding many of the pitfalls you would find going it alone.
Access a video training series here to learn more.
