16 Reasons Why I Hate Affiliate Marketing

 

 

Recently I wrote two articles about reasons to start affiliate marketing and why I love affiliate marketing.

In those articles I explained why affiliate marketing is worth your time and effort.

I found 6 major reasons to love affiliate marketing and 28 reasons to start an affiliate marketing business.

I believe there are way more reasons to love affiliate marketing rather than hate it.

I’ve been making money through affiliate marketing since 2015 and I know many successful entrepreneurs that were able to quit their 9 to 5 jobs thanks to this opportunity.

But I think my approach wouldn’t be fair and objective if I don’t talk about reasons why I hate affiliate marketing.

Though not all affiliate marketers want to talk about those reasons.

They prefer to talk only about positive aspects because talking about negative aspects of affiliate marketing will impact their sales and the amount of money they earn.

I think you must know about all negative aspects of affiliate marketing so you decide before getting into this venture.

 

 

Reason 1 – Income is not guaranteed

Though in affiliate marketing one can make a lot of money consistently and income is unlimited, income itself is not guaranteed.

I know many affiliate marketers that started making money after 6 months of starting their business and I know affiliate marketers that are struggling to earn $1 per month.

Whatever they do nothing seems to work for them. Your income depends on many things, such as your promoted product, your skills, knowledge, experience.

You can work really hard but income will be zero $. When you start your affiliate marketing career you must understand that your income is not guaranteed.

Even if you follow the best affiliate marketing training or affiliate marketing guru, no one can guarantee your success.

 

 

Reason 2 – Income is not stable

In affiliate marketing your income is not only not guaranteed but it’s not stable too. But it’s not my definitive answer.

Sometimes your income can be super stable and your website or YouTube channel can make you money for years.

But sometimes your income can be short-term for a number of reasons.

For example, the program you promote through an affiliate program can reduce commission and a s a result your income will drop significantly.

The affiliate program you promote can be cancelled. This happens sometimes. You can lose a significant part of your website traffic which means you lose your income.

Sometimes YouTube can shut down your channel for unknown reason. Sometimes it happens.

Sometimes due to increased competition your promoted product or service can lose some attractiveness and income accordingly.

There may be some other reasons and it’s impossible to mention all of them here. But anyway, I mentioned all main reasons here.

The main idea as I said, sometimes income can be stable and sometimes not.

 

 

Reason 3 – Income can be very low

As an affiliate marketer you can earn money promoting your own product or promoting someone else’s product in exchange for affiliate commission.

Everyone tries to promote a product or service that pays high commission but it’s not always possible.

Sometimes you choose a niche, build a website, start getting traffic and in the end realize that most programs pay very low commission rate.

In this scenario the only way to earn a significant amount of money you need to get a lot of traffic, at least 1000 visits a day.

Otherwise your income will be very low. Getting that kind of traffic is not always possible unfortunately.

For example, Amazon.com pays very low commission up to 3% which makes your chance to earn a lot of money very slim.

Sometimes commission is high but traffic is low and your income is low accordingly.

 

 

Reason 4 – Traffic is not guaranteed

It’s a generally known fact that your website is not guaranteed to get traffic from Google even if you create high quality content for your website.

Over the years I’ve seen websites creating good content and getting very little traffic.

At the same time other websites with similar content were getting a ton of traffic. It’s still unclear for me even after almost 6 years of SEO experience.

Amount of content is not always equal to the amount of traffic you expect from Google.

In short, most websites are struggling to get traffic from Google. Sometimes traffic comes like a snowball and sometimes it doesn’t come at all.

 

 

Reason 5 – Traffic is not stable

Aside from getting a lot of traffic or not getting it at all, traffic is not always stable in affiliate marketing.

If you get a ton of traffic for a number of years, it doesn’t mean you will continue getting it in the next few years.

I’ve seen websites getting a ton of traffic that have never been impacted by any of Google updates.

At the same time, I’ve seen websites being impacted by almost every Google update.

In short, some websites steadily get traffic while other websites steadily lose traffic for unknown reasons. Losing traffic means losing income.

I have no explanation for this phenomenon as well as other affiliate marketers that I know personally.

 

 

Reason 6 – Affiliate sign up can be a big pain

Finding and signing up for an affiliate program can also be a big pain. Sometimes it hard to find a good program that is worth sign up.

Sometimes you find a good program to promote buy the merchant doesn’t accept you because your website traffic is low.

Most programs require at least 400 visits a day to your website before you can join their program.

That’s why if your traffic is low you should first build traffic to your blog and then sign up for programs.

Programs like Mediavine require 50.000 visits before you even can sign up. Otherwise your application will be rejected.

 

 

Reason 7 – Success can be a result of many fails prior to your success

When you plan to start your affiliate marketing career you must realize that this path is not easy.

Before you can achieve success, you need to try many things and fail probably many times. Success doesn’t come the easy way.

If you have zero patience you will earn zero $ online. If you quit too soon you will not even live up to your success point.

Quitters never achieve anything regardless of what they do, no matter, online or in the real world.

 

 

Reason 8 – Success requires 12-24 months of hard work

Affiliate marketing is not an easy way to make money online. Your approach should be as serious as to 9 to 5 job.

It requires a lot of hard work, probably 12 months to start making money or less and 24 months to start making a significant amount of money consistently.

Sometimes it takes even more than 24 months. If you don’t plan to work hard then forget about affiliate marketing. It’s probably not for you.

 

 

Reason 9 – Receiving payment can be a pain

Before you choose a program to promote you need to think what kind of payment method you prefer considering your location.

Because some programs pay only via Paypal which doesn’t work in some countries.

Making a payment via Paypal works in most countries while receiving money via Paypal doesn’t work in all countries.

Since you are an affiliate marketer you need to make sure that you can receive payment via Paypal in your country.

Receiving money via bank money transfer can be another pain if you work with Google Adsense which pays via bank money transfer only.

For example, in my country I pay taxes if I receive money from a company.

There is also a website called https://www.payoneer.com/ that allows you to set up your account and receive and send money to almost any country of the world.

The site operates in 11 languages and provides an excellent customer support.

 

 

Reason 10 – Your favorite program can stop its affiliate program

You can sign up for an affiliate program and make money and unexpectedly your favorite, money making program can stop its affiliate program and as a result you will lose your income.

This may sound unbelievable but it’s true.

It’s hard to believe why some programs stop their affiliate program though affiliates make them money?

Why Amazon.com cuts all commissions from 8% to 3% ? Unfortunately, this is our reality.

As a result of that commission cut down, many affiliate marketers switched to other affiliate programs.

That’s why it is always recommended to diversify your income and sign up for a number of affiliate programs so you can guarantee that you will not lose your business some day.

 

 

Reason 11 – Your YouTube channel can get shut down

Part of affiliate marketing is video marketing that all affiliate marketers should take advantage of today.

YouTube can send you a massive traffic, way more than you can get from your blog.

That’s why all affiliate marketers that I know try to pay attention to YouTube way more than before.

Because YouTube is more friendly than Google in terms of sending traffic. But unfortunately, YouTube is sometimes unpredictable.

It can shut down your channel without any explanation. The only explanation will be like you violate some community rules or something like that.

I heard of stories about channels that had millions of subscribers and were shut down. This doesn’t happen often but happens sometimes.

For channels making a few thousand dollars per month it is similar to catastrophe.

 

 

Reason 12 – Traffic is not always equal to sales

It’s hard to predict anything when it comes to affiliate marketing especially when it comes to organic traffic.

You may be surprised but traffic is not always equal to sales. It’s hard to believe but it is true.

Some people think if you get enough organic traffic from Google, money will come. In reality it’s not so.

I’ve seen sites with over 40.000 unique visits per month and earning $100-$200 per month.

To turn your website into a money generating machine, you need to optimize your website for maximum conversions and sales.

Your promoted product must be in high demand too. Traffic is only one side of the coin while making sales in another side of the coin.

If you follow the right affiliate marketing training, it will teach you how to optimize your website for high conversions.

 

 

Reason 13 – You can lose your business in one day

Though affiliate marketing is a great way to earn money online and you can make money for years and maybe even forever, it’s not always so positive.

If main source of your income comes from organic traffic, you can lose all your traffic due to Google update some day and your business will be destroyed.

I’ve seen such stories many times. My website lost a significant part of its traffic and my income dropped as well.

That’s why, as an affiliate marketer you need to diversify your website traffic using different methods, such as Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, email marketing, guest posting, paid advertising etc.

This will save your business from being destroyed unexpectedly.

 

 

Reason 14 – Hackers can destroy your website

As an affiliate marketer you need to choose quality, secure web-hosting for your website to protect it from hackers’ attack.

I heard of stories when people lost their entire business due to such attack. It can be your competitors or some other spiteful people.

 

 

Reason 15 – You can lose a lot of money online

When you decide to start your affiliate marketing career online you should be very careful because there will be a lot of traps on your way to success.

You can join wrong programs that promise to show you secrets of making money online and as a result you will get scammed and lose a lot of money.

I’ve seen it many times over the last 6 years online. Some people lose thousands of dollars before they find the right, legit program.

 

 

Reason 16 – Your affiliate account can be cancelled

Sometimes your affiliate account can be terminated by the merchant. This happens if you violate some rules intentionally or not intentionally.

Especially this happens often if you are an affiliate of Amazon Associate program.

Sometimes this happens in CPA marketing when you violate some rules set by the merchant.

For example, some merchants put certain restrictions when you are not allowed to drive traffic from certain sources.

This type of restrictions really annoys and don’t allow you to promote an offer in the way you want so you can monetize it.

As an affiliate marketer you have to follow those rules to avoid termination of your account and losing your income accordingly.