Can Affiliate Marketing Make You Money? [The Honest Truth]

If you are looking to earn money online, then you have probably stumbled across Affiliate Marketing. With a lot of distinct advantages over other online business models, it can be a really exciting opportunity and one that you may be looking to delve into. But one of the first questions you may ask is: Can Affiliate Marketing Make You Money? Besides, this is what its all about.

In summary, Affiliate Marketing can be very lucrative. It’s also low risk, has low barriers to entry and you can get up and running for under $4 per month. The truth is however, to succeed and generate consistent long term commissions, you will need to undertake careful research, thoroughly plan, implement strategically, and be consistent and patient.

If you are willing to take it seriously, and put in the time and effort, then there is no reason why you cannot build a considerable passive income stream on the side of your current job. Eventually, you can look to replace your full time income.

The Truth About Affiliate Marketing

Not everyone succeeds with Affiliate Marketing; that is the cold hard truth.

There are multiple reasons for this and why fail, never earning the kind of money they were initially hoping for. They either quit, give up early or fail to implement an effective approach. More often than not, the #1 reason why so many fail (and this applies to many other things in life) is due to a lack of understanding, knowledge, effective learning and an element of ignorance about what is involved and what it takes.

Despite what some may say online, its not as easy as it seems and as they will have you believe. It is not possible to make considerable money overnight with minimal work and effort; simply throwing out an affiliate link here there and everywhere simply does not work . Those who succeed with Affiliate Marketing, and any business for that matter, know this.

Instead, they take a methodical approach: undertake the right research, build an audience, create useful and everlasting content, take calculated risks and most importantly, are patient.

As such, there are many Affiliate Marketers online who have been able to earn serious money online.

Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

There are a number of benefits to building an online business that monetizes via Affiliate Marketing, here are some of them:

✔ Minimal costs to start. Building a website can cost as low as $3 per month, and you can get free traffic through Content Marketing and Search Engine Optimization,

✔ Get started right now; there’s no need to build a product/create a service,

✔ Dozens of reputable online training courses that teach you step by step how to start, build and scale an Affiliate Marketing business,

✔ Build and scale at your own pace and on your own terms, can even start whilst working your current 9-5.

✔ Work from where you like, whenever you like.

✔ Opportunity to earn income passively, without the need for consistent work to earn,

✔ Started instantaneously for anyone with a current website/audience.

✔ Millions of reputable products and services to promote across thousands of industries and niches.

Disadvantages of Affiliate Marketing

With all this being said, there are some disadvantages to Affiliate Marketing that you should definitely be aware of before you start. These being:

✘ May take some time to build an audience, drive traffic that will result in earnings and income. (This is especially true of free traffic methods like SEO).

✘ There are cases of where owed Affiliate Commissions do not get paid. To overcome this, stick to the main Affiliate Programs like Amazon, Clickbank, ShareaSale etc.

✘ Little to know influence on a service or product that you promote. Affiliate terms can change, the product may stop being sold etc.

✘ Can be competitive. The more lucrative the program/product/service, chances and the more popular the niche, the higher chances there are of increased competition. Knowing how to differentiate and overcome the competition is paramount.

How to be Successful with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is one of the best ways to get started with an online business. There are few business models that enable you to get started quickly, with minimal costs and where it does not require you to take on a lot of risk. Plus, you can leverage already successful products across a wide variety of niches and industries.

Being paid to acquire customers on another businesses behalf may sound relatively straight forward, but to truly succeed you will need the right knowledge, research, and be willing to put in the effort. By doing these three things, Affiliate Marketing can be very rewarding.

Here are some of the most important things you can do now to get started and to ensure you succeed:

• Begin in the best possible way, by learning everything that you will need to know and the steps you need to take.
• Focus on high-paying, low competition products and services. Only promote products that you believe in and will serve your audience. Preferably, only promote products you have used yourself and have personally tested.
• Sign up to the most popular and reputable Affiliate Programs and learn the terms of your affiliate agreement. Understand what is expected of you and key information like payment dates, referral requirements etc.
• Create a website/blog. Content Marketing is one of the best ways to drive traffic to products and services. Answering questions on pain-points and overcoming problems is a brilliant way to get higher conversions and referrals.
• Focus your website, blog, YouTube Channel etc on a particular niche and become a true authority on the subject.
• Create, create, create. Write/produce regular content to give yourself maximum exposure and chance of success.
• Undertake effective research and utilize comprehensive marketing tools like SEMrush. This will help you to analyse the competition, know to try and rank for and overall improve your chances of succeeding.
• Commit to the project for at least one year. Then, you can truly reflect on your progress and see whether or not it has been a success.
• Be patient and willing to constantly and consistently learn. Affiliate Marketing, like any other subject and online business, is constantly changing. Be on the lookout for developments and new opportunities.
• Recommend products/services when and where appropriate.
• Market your content in as many ways as you can. Utilize as many methods as possible – SEO, Social Media, Paid Ads (if possible) to get as much traffic as you can.
• Learn all about your target audience and where they spend their time. This way you can get your content in front of them and increase your chances of referring customers.
• Advanced: Build Sales Funnels and Email Marketing sequences to communicate with your audience. Enticing individuals with free eBooks, product offers and special promotions via an Email List can be very profitable when done right.

Final Words

Perhaps the best advice I can give you, is to equip yourself with the training you need to understand the ins and outs of the business model and the steps you need to take to build, manage and scale a successful Affiliate Marketing business.

Having been a student of the Savage Affiliates Course, I would thoroughly recommend that you take a look and sign up.

It contains all the information you need to pursue this venture and understand what you need to do. My in-depth review can give you more details on whats included and why I speak so highly of it.

Ultimately, if you decide to start Affiliate Marketing be sure to remember that its not going to be successful overnight or with minimal effort and work.

However, if you adopt the right practices and consistently develop your knowledge, you’ll soon be generating consistent commissions for years to come.