WHY YOU CAN’T MAKE MONEY WITH AFFILIATE MARKETING

Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketers are paid for referring new clients and customers to other businesses, products, or services, often through tracked links posted in blog posts, web pages, emails, or social media posts.1

This relationship can take multiple forms. You may partner with a brand launching a specific product and receive a percentage of the revenue generated by your referrals. Or, if you work with websites like Amazon, you receive a percentage of whatever purchase a follower makes through your referral links, even if they don’t buy the product you were specifically recommending.2

Affiliate marketing is a form of self-employment that has low initial overhead and doesn’t require a person to produce, stock, or ship product inventory.

Pros of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is ideal for bloggers, coaches, information entrepreneurs, and those who build and maintain their own digital properties such as YouTube channels3. There are many aspects of affiliate marketing that make it a good home business model, including:

• • Low overhead costs: Most affiliate programs are free to join, so your costs are usually related to your referral and marketing methods.
  • No physical products: There is no need to create a product or service because you are choosing one that already exists. You don’t have to stock or ship products.
  • Flexibility: You can work anytime and from anywhere as long as you have internet access.4
  • Supplemental income: There is passive income potential, depending on how you market your affiliate programs. It can be added to your current home business to create an additional income stream.

Cons of Affiliate Marketing

Like any business model, there are drawbacks and challenges to affiliate marketing as well, including:

• • Time: It takes a commitment and experimenting over a length of time to generate the amount of traffic needed to result in income.
  • Lost payments: Affiliate hijacking can occur in which you’re not given credit for your referral.5 Some companies fail to pay their affiliate marketers.
  • Lack of control: You have no control over the businesses’ fulfillment of a given product or service. A bad affiliate referral can ruin your credibility with followers, so it’s crucial that you research and select quality businesses.

• Competition: Affiliate marketing is highly competitive. Many affiliates promote the same products and compete for the same traffic and customers. It can be difficult to get approved as an affiliate for popular companies or products.
• Lack of ownership: The customers belong to the merchant. Your stats will let you know how many sales were made of what product, but in most cases, you’ll have no information about who made the purchase. This can make it difficult to tap into recurring sales.

Successful Affiliate Marketing

It can be difficult to earn a steady income from affiliate marketing, and even more difficult to stand out among other marketers promoting the same products. Once you’ve built up a website, blog, newsletter, or social media, there are steps you can take to become successful and generate a more reliable revenue stream.

1. Know your partners. Research each affiliate program you consider joining so that you will understand how and when you’ll be paid.
2. Build trust. Buy the products you intend to market so you can personally attest to the quality. You’ll be judged by the product or service you promote, so focus on the quality of your own brand and recommendations, not just the earning potential. Your followers will come to trust your recommendations and be more likely to buy from you.
3. Have a brand. Choose affiliate items that match your niche and the content of your blog. Don’t rely on SEO or social media alone to drive people to your website and affiliate referrals. Understand who your target market is, where you can find your audience, and how to entice users to your site.
4. Use variety. Mix and match affiliate ads so you don’t overwhelm your visitors (content-embedded affiliate links usually have the best click-through rates over image links.) Consider using a lead page and funnel system to market your affiliate business. Lure prospects to your email list with a free offer and include links to your affiliate product pages.

“People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.” ~ Lewis Cass

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  ~ Lao Tzu

“You cannot score a goal when you are sitting on the bench. To do so, you have to dress up and enter the game.”  ~ Israelmore Ayivor

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