Does Affiliate Marketing Work? Affiliate Marketing Explained.

If you’re on my blog and prepared to read my article about affiliate marketing I’m going to discuss it from different angles to explain how affiliate marketing works and what you as an affiliate marketer can expect from it.

I will tell you all the truth about affiliate marketing:

• What kind of success you can experience or expect
• How much effort is required
• How much money you need to invest
• How much money you can make
• How soon you can start making money online through affiliate marketing

I’m not going to hide anything from you. Instead I will share my experience in affiliate marketing and also will tell you about friends of mine (affiliate marketers) and some other people that I know.

Some of them are successful while others failed. But I will also tell you why they failed and what you need to do in order to succeed online and what you must avoid.

I think my article will be extremely interesting for most of you. Prepare to spend at least 10 minutes to read my article and learn from my experience.

 

Affiliate marketing explained

Affiliate marketing is a huge industry and can make you from a few hundred bucks per month to several thousand dollars depending on your approach to it.

If you are willing to spend only 2,3 hours per week then you can’t expect something big. If you are willing to spend 10 or more hours then your results can be amazing.

For those of you that don’t know what affiliate marketing means I will explain in a few words.

Affiliate marketing is when you promote someone’s service or product for a commission through your own blog/website.

If someone buys that product from your website the merchant will pay you a commission. If you promote a physical product you can earn between 5-10% for each sale.

If you promote digital products, such as PDF book, training course, tutorial, membership etc you can earn up to 75% for each sale.

Selling digital products of course can be way more profitable than selling physical products. Same efforts but paid more generously.

You can also create your own product and sell it through digital networks, such as Warrior plus, JVZoo, Clickbank.

You can also write your own book and sell it through Amazon Kindle market.

A friend of mine, a successful affiliate marketers wrote his Kindle book and is now making on average $100-$200 per month from selling his Kindle $4 book.

Some people are making thousands of dollars from Kindle market. You can sell more than one book and make way more money.

Affiliate marketing starts with a blog/website. Building a website doesn’t take much time to be honest.

You can even buy ready made website with initial content fully optimized for search engines.

Once you have it you need to continuously write content (articles) for your website depending on the niche or hobby you are passionate about.

By doing this you will be providing value to people searching for this info through Google or Yahoo or any other search engine.

Our focus is on Google and Yahoo because they are main players in online world.

If you don’t want to write articles, you can create videos and drive traffic ( visitors ) from Youtube.

Finally, if you don’t want to do all this stuff and have money to spend then you can outsource all this to other people or a group of people, professionals.

But it will cost you money, approx. $500 per month. I recommend to do all this stuff yourself. Later when you start making enough money you can outsource some of the work.

 

 

 

 

Advantages of affiliate marketing

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you can be finically independent and work for yourself and make way more money than when you work for someone.

To make money through affiliate marketing you don’t need to have your own product. You can promote products of other merchants and make a full time income.

Promoting products is free and you don’t need to pay anyone. Just make a sale and get your commission. Your yearly investment will be for website hosting and domain name.

Plus you need to pay for affiliate marketing training. All this will cost you from $300 up to $600 per year.

You don’t need to rent an office or pay salaries. You are free from all this.

And that’s why every year more and more people become affiliate marketers and popularity of affiliate marketing is only growing.

 

Affiliate marketing pitfalls

Though affiliate marketing can be a lucrative way to make money online not all affiliate marketers experience the same level of success.

Some people start to make money in the first few weeks or months while for others it can take 1,2 years or even longer.

No one can guarantee how much or how soon you will start making money.

When it comes to affiliate marketing many things are in our control but some things are out of our control as well.

But generally speaking, if you are a hard worker and a goal oriented person you will be making enough money over time.

For example, a friend of mine is making $10,000 per month. Another friend of mine is making around $5000-$6000 per month.

I’m personally making around $1000 per month sometimes $1500. See my income proof.

 

 

I recently got a message from another affiliate marketer who complained that he has been working online for 3 years and haven’t been able to make a single sale! Can you imagine?

I understand how frustrated he is but in my opinion he is definitely doing something wrong if he hasn’t made a single sale.

I made a few hundred sales over the past 3 years. I’m sure he was’t consistent in what he was doing.

He didn’t optimize his website for conversions. It’s not just about writing content and publishing it on your website. You need to optimize it and when writing you must write with intent.

You must write honestly and convincingly. Working online for 3 years and making not a single sale is definitely wrong.

Not every site you are going to launch is going to make you a ton of money.

Some websites can make you a few bucks per month, some websites can make you a few hundred bucks and some websites can make you thousands of dollars per month.

If you see that your website makes you a few hundred bucks after 2 years of working then you should outsource content for it to other people from upwork.com and and keep the rest of your profit.

Then move on and start working on a new site until you start making money from it.

If you make enough then keep working on it and make it your main focus. If you fail to achieve your goal then outsource the content and move on to another site.

By outsourcing content creation to other professionals you can free yourself and spend your time more efficiently and expand your business instead of focusing on one website that is not so much successful.

Of course, affiliate marketing is a lucrative way of making money online. But it’s not the easiest way. It’s like any business in the real world.

Can you build a business from scratch for one month? Of course you can’t. You should give yourself enough time before you start making money.

Once you’ve made your first buck online you will get a lot of motivation that will allow you to work even more hard and take your business to the next level.

The key to online success is self-motivation, patience and hard work.

Expect to work hard 1,2 years or maybe even 3 years before you can start making a solid income per month.

But some people can achieve success much faster. But it’s not a rule. Realistically speaking you need 1,2 years at least.

 

 

How to succeed in affiliate marketing

There are many different ways you can use to grow your affiliate marketing business. Some people think that affiliate marketing doesn’t work anymore. This is not true.

It does work very well if you know how to do it the right way. You can do affiliate marketing through

 

• SEO
• Social marketing
• Video marketing
• Email marketing
• PPC

 

SEO is still No 1 way to get a ton of free, targeted traffic to your online business. But it takes months, up to 1 year to start getting several hundred visitors a day.

Sometimes it takes 2,3 years. The traffic is super targeted and free. SEO works very well for some sites while it can be a complete waste of time for others.

I know people who have been writing consistently for one full year and haven’t been able to get even 5 visitors a day. It’s frustrating.

But if you create quality content and do it consistently you will get traffic, at least 200-300 visits a day.

If you optimize your website in terms of conversions you can make a solid income even with such a low traffic.

 

Social marketing can be very powerful too and you can get a lot of traffic if you do it the right way. Especially, you can get a lot of traffic from Facebook and Twitter.

Some affiliate marketers can get a ton of traffic even from Pinterest.

You can also get a lot of referral traffic through guest posting on authority blogs, through interview posts, roundup posts, from media sites, document sharing sites, such as slideshare, scribd, from Haro, Quora etc.

You can also get traffic from Amazon Kindle by creating a downloadable book and selling it through Amazon Kindle market. You can also buy traffic from Facebook.

 

Video marketing is now No 2 traffic source after Google or maybe even No 1.

It’s much easier to get your videos ranked on the first page of Youtube than ranking text content on Google.

In fact, you can get a ton of traffic from a single video. Don’t underestimate the power of video marketing because it’s popularity is only growing over time.

 

Email marketing is the most powerful marketing tool and can make you from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per day/month IF you do it the right way.

You need to create a powerful squeeze page for collecting leads and set up a good email sequence to convert readers into buyers.

I’m still learning email marketing and have never had huge success with it but I’m working on it.

 

PPC (pay per click) is a paid traffic and I’ve using this method for over 2 years now have achieved some success with it.

I’m profitable in PPC. But it’s not easy and you can easily waste all your budget.

 

All these methods described above can and MUST be used in combination in order to get maximum results. You should never focus on one method.

Some people put all their effort on SEO and forget all other methods and very often they fail.

You MUST take advantage of all these methods because you never know what method will bring you a lot of traffic. You never know.

 

Affiliate marketing programs recommended in 2018 and beyond

In order to be successful in affiliate marketing you need to learn from experienced and successful affiliate marketers.

I will show you programs that I’ve tried and know the value they deliver.

If you stick to any of them you will be successful online over time. For some of you it may be 1 year, for others 2,3 years. I can’t give you any guarantees.

But I can guarantee you one thing. If you stick to it and don’t quit in the first year you will be making money. How much I don’t know.

 

Program No 1. This program will teach you an affiliate marketing through SEO, content marketing, social marketing, video marketing. You will get high quality support (email, live chat) and training, websites, keyword research tool.

 

Program No 2. Will teach you SEO, content marketing, email marketing ( basic level), solo ads, social marketing. Support is via email only. Hosting for one website is included.

 

Program No 3. Advanced course on social and email marketing, video marketing. Support is via email.

 

Program No 4. The most expensive program that will do all the initial work for you. You will get ready made website, support and more. They provide all kind of services including website building, content research and writing, link packages, training. But it will cost you a buck. If you are willing to outsource all the work and have money to spend then this program is for you. Results are not guaranteed.

 

I’ve tried first 3 programs and honestly recommend them. The last one I didn’t try myself. But it’s owned by a friend of mine and I know it’s a solid product. It has a good reputation in online world.

 

Does affiliate marketing work?

As I said, it definitely works if you are a hard worker and a goal oriented person.

Investment is not that much to be honest compared to what you need to spend when it comes to building a business in the real world.

You need to treat your online business seriously if you want to achieve your financial goals. The amount of money you want to make online is equal to the amount of time you are willing to invest in your affiliate marketing business.

I did my best to show you all advantages and pitfalls of affiliate marketing.

If you are willing to start your affiliate marketing business choose any program from my recommended list above and stick to it. You can choose one or two programs.

I personally tried first 3 programs in order to get maximum results.

I did so because it’s hard to find a perfect program and that’s why very often you need to learn from different people because everyone’s experience is different.

Affiliate marketing is a lucrative way of making money online and if you’re still thinking of starting your affiliate marketing business I recommend to start asap.

It will give you more freedom and financial independence so you can spend more with your family and loved ones.