What are the advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing? It’s common for marketers to rave on about affiliate marketing because it serves them to do so! “Hey – affiliate marketing is great! Look how much money you can make!” But not everyone succeeds with affiliate marketing.
In fact the affiliate marketing failure rate is quite high at around 95%. That means only 5% of those who attempt affiliate marketing actually go on to make an income or make it their living. However the flip side of this coin is that nearly everyone can “have a go” at affiliate marketing, which might explain the drop out rate too.
Advantages and Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing
But affiliate marketing is a pretty awesome business model if you can make it work for you. It allows you to work from home, or anywhere, and build up an income around existing work commitments. Not many jobs offer the same versatility. There’s no income cap to affiliate marketing which means it can be incredibly lucrative.
But again, only if you can get it working for you, which many struggle with. Affiliate marketing is a performance related business model which means if you manage to sell products online, you earn income related to your efforts. This is a double edged sword which works for those who are determined enough to make it work, but not for those who aren’t.
If you are one of those self motivated types, who makes it their mission to earn from affiliate marketing, it can be a great living. But if you’re a “dabbler” who is only going to give it a couple of months and “see how it goes”, you may be wasting your time.
Advantages and Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing – Lifestyle
But I don’t want to be all doom a gloom about affiliate marketing. It’s the best thing I’ve found, and I’ve had a stab at a lot of things, including becoming a stuntman!
I thought being a stuntman would give me the lifestyle I really wanted. But it actually brought a lot of uncertainty; I didn’t get enough work to pay the bills and I had to juggle a number of other part time and temporary jobs around it, which was exhausting. Affiliate marketing was the versatile strategy I needed in those circumstances. Jacking in jobs when the phone rang for stunt work wasn’t a good long term strategy! When the stunt work finished, I was unemployed again and needing an income.
Once I found affiliate marketing I had something to build on alongside my other work. It gave me a way out of the film industry too. One of the best things about affiliate marketing for me is that it has given me more choice about my lifestyle because I’m not stressed about money constantly, as I used to be.
No employment has given the same freedom in terms of working and choosing my own hours as affiliate marketing has. It’s probably one of the best ways for anyone to build an income around existing employment as an escape method!
However..
But it definitely isn’t easy. Sustaining an income from affiliate marketing was one of my biggest struggles. Getting the right information up front is difficult because so many people are telling you what you should do. Affiliate marketing is lucrative, but this also means it’s very competitive.
There’s so many affiliates telling you that their program is best – because they earn every time someone buys it! This means as a beginner it can be overwhelming coming into affiliate marketing. At first you’ll probably subscribe to a number of email lists for information. Knowing which direction to take here can be daunting to say the least.
Even if you choose a path, it’s difficult to sustain the necessary work. Another email can swerve your off to another path. Shiny object syndrome can attack, and you can jump from one course to another with false promises of an easier ride! I did that too! I jumped from course to course, determined to learn how to earn an income online. Here’s a digital profit course review of some of the courses I took.
Even if you’re determined, and work hard, there’s a long uphill struggle before you see any results. Building an email list takes time. Affiliates with 100,000 email subscribers can tell you how much they earn, but not how long it took them to build such a list. When you start you’re starting at zero subscribers. Rich affiliates can show you their earnings too, but not show you their expenses! When some affiliates spend $20k+ a month on advertising, they may even be making a loss but showing earnings of $10k+ a month (to encourage people into their program) – (and not declaring their advertising costs)!
Attitude & Intention
The best way to do affiliate marketing is with a “whatever it takes” approach. Without such an approach you will likely not succeed with it. The long slow hill up towards even making your first sale online is too much for many people who don’t realise that the journey is a long one. But the downhill ride is so much sweeter once you have put in the work. Once things are up and running, you can make money in your sleep.
The automation of the business systems can work for you and affiliate marketing income can replace income from employment. Think about the implications of that! in a job, no matter how hard you work, you’re always going to have to keep showing up to get paid. With affiliate marketing, you can continue to get paid long after you stop working! But initially this is hard to see, especially if you have no results to show for all your hard work.
With recurring income affiliate programs your sales keep earning for you. So once you have made a few sales, you can see a recurring monthly income even if you stop!
Strategies: Fast & Slow, Cheap and Expensive
Depending on the strategy you choose as an affiliate, you could see results showing more or less quickly. With an organic strategy and low value physical products, you could be working much harder for less. But with a high value sales funnel, which pays more, you can build an affiliate business much more quickly and it can be more profitable.
The paid marketing route is much faster than the cheaper organic marketing route. So depending on your patience levels, (and bank account), you will need to choose a suitable route for you. Blogging as a strategy, for example is for the patient affiliate. If you don’t want to spend the next several months creating content for a tiny trickle of free traffic, go another route!
If you’re stuck in a career and have no time, use paid marketing to build your business more quickly. See fastest legit way to make money online.
Summary
There’s advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing. It is performance related which is a pro and a con depending on whether you can make it work for you. It’s incredibly flexible and you can choose how and where you work. But again this can be a problem if you’re not used to being self motivated and self disciplined. The earning potential is uncapped but most people who try affiliate marketing will quit because they earn nothing!
Affiliate marketing should be considered a long term plan, not a get rich quick scheme. With the right mindset and the correct affiliate marketing business model, it can work if you put the work in and keep growing. By using subscription products which pay you recurring income, affiliate marketing can be less of a challenge than by using cheap, low paying products. High ticket affiliate marketing is another consideration for new affiliates. With high ticket programs you can earn substantially more when you make a sale.
An affiliate marketing business is much like a Chinese Bamboo tree. The Chinese bamboo has a 3-5 year gestation period where nothing breaks the surface of the soil. After this, the tree can grow 90 feet tall in only a few weeks. Before quitting/starting affiliate marketing, consider the Chinese Bamboo analogy.