The truth about affiliate marketing is not always what you’ll be told just before buying a program. Affiliate marketing is tough, so it’s wise to go in with your eyes open. Most affiliates will quit long before they make any sales and many will rush in thinking they can make quick money. The truth is that to make money consistently with affiliate marketing you’ll need to put consistent work in and treat it like a real business.
With any business, you need to work hard and put the hours in. But with affiliate marketing many think of it as a get rich quick scheme. This can be a major problem and when it turns out not to be, it can be a hard reality to face. Affiliate marketing is an alternative for many seeking more choice and freedom. But there’s a price to pay with affiliate marketing and you’ll need to study it and build your business over time. It’s difficult especially in the beginning when you don’t have any experience or data to act on. You’ll need to spend months or even years before you see a regular income from it.
The Truth About Affiliate Marketing
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Affiliate marketing is a business model and anyone can learn to use it. If you are determined and persistent, and you use the right business model, you can make affiliate marketing pay! See affiliate marketing business models. There’s various ways to do affiliate marketing too. So depending on your available time and or money, you could take one of several routes.
The fastest way to generate income from affiliate marketing is through purchasing a high ticket sales funnel and using paid marketing. But you’ll need to test and measure your advertising and spend money in order to find a winning advert. This can take some time and there’s no guarantees. So while you’re spending money learning paid advertising, you aren’t necessarily earning money. This path might suit someone with little time but who has the disposable income to use for running advertising campaigns.
If on the other hand you have plenty of time but money is more of an obstacle, you can focus on building content instead. Affiliates create content in various different topics or “niches”. But there’s lots of others doing the same and not everyone can have a first place ranking for their content on Google, for example.
With fierce competition, you face going up against multiple other affiliates within your same niche. If you’re attempting to get your content found cheaply, or for free, this can be a major stumbling block.
But where there’s a will there’s a way; and there’s many other ways to get your content in front of buying customers.
The Truth About Affiliate Marketing – Rates Of Commission
I wouldn’t be doing this article justice if I didn’t mention commissions. When I started out I used physical products which pay very little. Amazon and eBay pay from 1% -11% commission on product referrals. But using digital products can change your potential earnings quite dramatically, when you start generating traction. Typically, digital products pay 20-40% commission.
Recurring commission products are worth a mention here too. If you choose recurring commission products, once you overcome the learning phase of affiliate marketing and get traction, things can happen quickly. A membership or software product can pay you ongoing income from each sale. This is well worth considering if you venture down the affiliate path.
But you still need to make the sale in the first place, which is the most difficult part of affiliate marketing, especially if you’re just starting out. Many affiliates build an email list of subscribers and after several years have email lists of tens of thousands of subscribers. With a list like this, it is so much easier to make a sale by offering products to your list. As a beginner, your list will be very small. Even after a few months you’re unlikely to have more than 500 people on your email list unless you use paid marketing and have a large marketing budget.
Most new affiliates will quit before they reach 1000 subscribers.
The Truth About Affiliate Marketing – How Much Can You Make?
So, how much does the average affiliate marketer make? According to the Affstat benchmark report (2016), affiliate’s income varies (see image above). The high earning affiliates are in a minority whereas the newer affiliates typically earn under $20,000 per year.
Affiliate income varies too and it’s not something which is stable, especially in the beginning. With high ticket products and recurring commission products though it can be more straightforward creating a consistent income from affiliate marketing.
As a beginner in affiliate marketing you should expect to work consistently for several months before seeing much in the way of results (depending on your marketing strategy). With paid marketing this can be speeded up but with content generation expect to work for a longer period before you start gaining traction.
Getting Affiliate Marketing Wrong
There’s also the possibility of working consistently at the wrong activities within your affiliate marketing endeavour. You can work for months without getting anywhere. This can be very demoralising and it’s something which leads many to drop out and quit. But if you can learn from mistakes and see them as learning opportunities, rather than failures, you’re more likely to succeed over the longer term.
See 23 affiliate mistakes newbie affiliates should avoid. To shortcut this problem it’s wise to get help from a mentor or coach. Access a free video series here to learn more about mentoring.
Marketing affiliate products and services is the biggest problem for new affiliates. It’s easy to build websites and sales funnels with pre-made affiliate websites and drag and drop software which you can purchase.
But getting people to your website and/or landing pages to drive sales is much more difficult. This is where most affiliates will struggle. There’s various marketing strategies you can use as an affiliate. See 22 ways to promote affiliate products.
- Blogging – creating content like this article for example
- V’logging – video blogging and uploading to YouTube
- Social media marketing – connecting with people through the various platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc.
- Email marketing – building a large email list and creating content to build relationships and offer value
Your Affiliate Link
When you first start out with affiliate marketing, it can be very exciting! You get your affiliate link and look for places to paste it! See where to put your affiliate link. But with only a link and no content it can be difficult getting anywhere. Why would someone use your affiliate link?
To generate sales you need to offer some kind of value first before sending people to products. You need to place yourself in-between the customer and the service somehow.
Example – A Review Website
One of the best ways you can do this is to give value and help them in some way. An review site is a good example to use. With a review website, someone is looking for information on a product or service.
After reading a review (the you have created), the visitor clicks on your affiliate link and purchases an item. Often affiliates will use review sites to give customers information on a number of products, comparing them to each other. Each product review links to the actual product through an affiliate link. So when someone buys you are credited with the sale.
Example – A Niche Website
Affiliates build niche websites too, like this one. AffiliateMarketingMentorsOnline is a niche website within the affiliate niche. But you don’t have to choose the competitive topic of affiliate marketing. There’s many niches you can choose from and ideally pick one which is much less competitive. It’s a good idea to choose a topic which you have a passion for if you’re going the niche route.
Niche websites can be built on specific keyword domain names to help them rank and get traffic (visitors) for free from the search engines. This can take some time and effort though and you should expect to work generating content for several months or years before you are generating a regular income through selling affiliate products.
An Analogy Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is definitely a tough business and not for the faint hearted. But it can be an option to escape a career and if you’re persistent you can, over time, generate a good income from it. The fact that most will give up and quit leaves plenty of room for those who are determined!
A good analogy I like is that of the Chinese Bamboo tree which takes a 4-5 year gestation period before you even see it sprouting. Most people would give up unless they knew the Chinese Bamboo operated in this way. Once it does sprout, with 5 weeks it grows to 90 feet tall.
If you can see your affiliate business like the Chinese Bamboo tree, you’ll be much better prepared for the tough times and you are more likely to see it through. Don’t expect an easy win from affiliate marketing through because it’s unlikely you’ll succeed with this attitude. But if you work consistently at it over a number of months and years, continue to water and feed it, you’ll reap the rewards!
