Affiliate Marketing: What I’ve learned in My 6 year Experience

 

 

As many of you already know, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to earn money online and especially now due to COVID-19 many start their online business because of the increased demand to buy things online.

Of course, increased demand means more opportunities but this doesn’t mean affiliate marketing is now easier now before.

Making money online is still very hard because it takes a lot of time and effort. Plus many when starting their first online venture, make a lot of mistakes and over time abandon the idea of online business completely.

I’ve been in online business since 2014 and by now I have a lot of experience and knowledge and feel I can share my experience with other people who plan to start their affiliate marketing business.

The idea of this post is to show you some real opportunities and at the same time help you avoid mistakes that will save you both your time and money.

 

 

 

Who to follow?

First of all, if you plan to start your online affiliate marketing business you need to be very careful when choosing your first instructor or internet guru.

Why it’s important? Because there are thousands of so called gurus that are losers themselves but make an impression of millionaires to persuade people to pay them.

They have never made a single dollar online  but are very good at fooling their victims. Some internet gurus are successful affiliate marketers making a lot of money online but they are not good instructors.

They can’t teach others because of using impractical approach. For example, some of them use method, such as solo ad that is very difficult to implement.

Very few people actually can get good results using this method. But those gurus actively promote this method and those who listen to them try to follow their steps and waste all their money.

At least I know many seasoned affiliate marketers who wasted their money trying to do solo ad.

That’s why you have to be very careful when following an internet guru that you want to follow.

Remember, some methods may work well for some and may not work at all for others.

Some methods need a lot of experience before you understand how they work and a lot of money to spend like solo ad.

But many gurus don’t tell you this when they try to persuade you to follow them.

They actively promote what works for them and they don’t care if this works for others, especially for beginners. So, be careful who you silent to and follow.

 

 

 

Choose the right program

When you plan to start your affiliate marketing business, you need to be very careful when you choose a program, an affiliate marketing course, training that is supposed to teach you the basics of affiliate marketing.

You can’t build a business online if you don’t have knowledge in affiliate marketing. You have to choose a course based on the following criteria:

 

• Affordable price
• Comprehensive course
• Good support

 

I will explain why this criteria is important. There are many courses online that charge $2.000-$3.000 for the course. I’ve seen even courses charging up to $5.000.

But what is the difference between courses charging $500 and $2.000? Courses charging $2.000 provide more tools but this doesn’t mean you can achieve success easier or faster.

Tools are just tools. Your success depends on many factors, some of which are in your control and some are out of your control.

In my opinion, those expensive courses are only for experienced affiliate marketers who have both money to invest in such courses and experience to get the maximum out of such a course.

I highly recommend to avoid such courses for beginners. Because I know many people who spent thousands of dollars and lost every bit of their money.

Avoid those courses. I recommend to invest up to $500. Among such courses I can recommend two, such as Wealthy Affiliate and Income School.

Both provide good training, tools and support and both ask affordable price for the course. I tried both of them and I can recommend them.

Both course provide you all you need for success but there is no guarantee that you will get there.

Because success, as I said, depends on many factors, some of which are out of control.

These my two recommended programs provide support which is extremely important for your success online but Wealthy Affiliate’s support is way better than that provided by Income School. I know it firsthand.

Especially, avoid programs that promise you success in 30 or 90 days. Always avoid such programs.

Programs that promise you overnight success or promise to reveal you some special secrets that no one knows. Those programs are pure scams.

Also, avoid programs that ask for thousands of dollars price and promise to do everything for you.

They promise to give you fully automated systems that will make you money 24 hours, 7 days a week without any effort from your side. All those systems, courses, trainings are scams.

 

 

 

Choose the right niche

From my experience I can tell that choosing niche is extremely difficult. It’s not easy at all.

You need to do a lot of research to see if your chosen niche is not too competitive, if it can be monetized (not all niches can be monetized), if it’s not too sensitive in Google’s eyes, such as medicine, low, finance.

In such niches it is difficult to achieve success because you have to prove to Google that you are an authority in that niche, such as low, finance, medicine.

This becomes more and more difficult which is why most experts in affiliate marketing don’t recommend such niches.

If you choose such a niche, you have mostly rely on paid advertising or social networks, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or any other network other than Google.

Also, avoid niches that are too completive because such niches will take a lot of your effort and time while giving you least results.

If you see that most common keywords in your niche have too many authority websites in Google search results this means you need to avoid it.

Don’t choose a niche that requires you to sign up for Amazon.com associate program. Because Amazon pays now up to 3% commission to its affiliates.

Amazon already cut affiliate commissions twice and many affiliates lost their businesses in 2019-2020.

Before choosing a niche make sure to research the market to find out if there are programs that pay at least 10% commissions.

The higher the commission the better for you. Some niches allow you to earn up to 60% commissions.

I would recommend selling digital instead of physical products.

Remember, if commissions are low as it’s in case with Amazon program, it means you need to drive a ton of traffic to your website to earn at least $1.000 per month.

Driving traffic is the hardest thing in online business and most affiliate businesses fail namely due to inability to get enough traffic.

 

 

 

Monetization

Monetization is another extremely important aspect of affiliate marketing. I highly recommend to think well when you choose your niche.

First of all, as I said, selling digital products is way more profitable than selling physical products.

Those companies, programs that sell digital products, pay way more to affiliates. You can earn $1.000 per month or even way more even if your traffic is less than 1000 visits per day.

When selling physical products, companies normally pay up to 10% which means your need a massive traffic around 2000-3000 visits a day. This is very difficult to achieve to be honest.

When you choose your niche, do some research to see if there are enough programs you can join as an affiliate.

When it comes to some niches, it’s very difficult to find a reliable program that pays good commissions.

Especially, most programs, companies that sell physical products set some traffic requirement before you can even apply for their affiliate program.

If your traffic is less than 400-500 visits a day, they won’t even accept you.

Even if you decide to join ad networks, such Ezoic or Medianet, most of them don’t accept low traffic websites.

They may not even tell you the reason why they don’t accept you but most of the time it’s the traffic reason. Fortunately, Google Adsense accepts any website with any traffic.

So, think well before you choose your niche. Some experts tell that niche is not important because any niche can be monetized.

I disagree with such an approach. Though theoretically speaking, it’s true that almost all niches can be monetized, some niches are very difficult for that.

Finally, even if you can’t monetize your affiliate website but have some content that gets some traffic from Google, you still can sell your website via Flippa.com or Motioninvest.com websites.

But for this your website must generate at least $20 per month. If your website traffic is at least 50 visits a day and it makes at least $20 per month, you can sell your website for $300-$500.

 

 

 

Expectations and Reality

If you plan to start your affiliate marketing business online you need to understand a few simple things that I’m going to share with you based on my 6 year experience in affiliate marketing.

First of all, you never know what you can achieve in your business. As I said, your success depends on the traffic.

If you can drive it to your website, your business will grow. But you never know how Google will rate your website.

I know websites that have top quality content but never rank well on Google. I know websites with top quality content that had high rankings and a lot of traffic.

They made thousands of dollars for a number of years and then lost all their rankings.

At the same time I know websites with a mediocre content that get a ton of traffic to this day.

It’s really difficult to tell which website will do well and which website will fail. Google is absolutely unpredicatble.

I know a website owner, an affiliate marketer from Finland whose English is not so good and content is no better than that on other websites, but he gets a ton of traffic and a ton of money.

I’m religious person and believe that success is not something that depends on your effort alone. This is not just my own opinion.

I have friends of mine that think the same way based on their life experience. Very often I’ve seen people doing the same action, with similar experience and level of knowledge and getting totally different results.

A friend of mine, very experienced businessman who has been making a lot of money for a number of years shares the same experience.

Sometimes he does everything based on his previous experience in the business, and whatever he does nothing works for him. Sometimes he does a little effort and gets amazing results. So, you never know what you can expect from affiliate marketing.

Having knowledge, experience and taking the right steps doesn’t mean you will achieve success and make a lot of money.

Believe me or not, but I’ve seen websites, ugly websites with thin, very mediocre content outranking websites with high quality content.

And believe it or not, those websites are still making money while those websites with a great content are still struggling to earn at least $200-$300 per month.

By this I don’t mean you don’t have to take action. You have to… but you never know how it will work for you.

Also, pay attention to the tips mentioned above. They will help you take the right decision as an affiliate marketer.

It will save you your money, time and effort.

 

My Top Recommended Programs

    Program # 1 – Wealthy Affiliate

  Program # 2 – Income School