“Is affiliate marketing worth the effort?” This is a question that too few people ask themselves. Sure, you can make money with affiliate marketing. I’m one of the many who earns a full time income with affiliate marketing and I started part-time. But was it easy to get to this point? Absolutely not!
While affiliate marketing does take a lot of effort, the basic skills required are really simple to catch on to, and by learning them, you could start earning real money in a fairly short period of time. If you find a product niche you’re passionate about, you could even earn money by simply expressing your genuine love for a product you believe in, and feel good knowing you’re sharing your experience with others who will love the product as well.
However, affiliate marketing is not worth the effort for everyone. In fact, I’d say that affiliate marketing is not worth the effort for MOST people, simply because most people wouldn’t enjoy the work affiliate marketing entails.
The Efforts Involved With An Affiliate Marketing Business
The efforts involved with affiliate marketing are actually quite simple, and they don’t need to take up your entire day. Many affiliate marketers operate their business in a different way than I do, but I’ll let you know what efforts are involved with my own methods.
First and foremost, you’ll want to find a product category you believe in and focus on it. You don’t want to spread your affiliate marketing out too much, and by focusing on one specific product category, you’ll be able to pinpoint audiences to market to and establish yourself as a trusted source on a particular subject. If you spread out too much, you’re going to need a lot more effort to attract much smaller audiences, rather than allowing your knowledge on one particular subject bring people back again and again. Here’s a bit more info on how to choose a good niche.
Next, you’ll want to target that audience and figure out what type of information they are searching for in the search engines. In order to attract the audiences most likely to be interested in your information and buy the products you’re marketing, you’ll want to entice and interest them, and figure out what type of content is best for doing just that. The single best method of attracting highly targeted and ready-to-buy visitors to your website is using the C–>T–>P–>M strategy I outline here.
The world wide web is also a fast moving mechanism all its own, with its own trends and its own life, and this is another thing to keep in mind in terms of is affiliate marketing worth the effort.
The area that really breathes life into the “Is affiliate marketing worth the effort?” question is trial and error. Successful affiliate marketing will take quite a bit of it, and you shouldn’t expect to build your website one day, and be flooded with commissions from sales the next. This is where many people give up on affiliate marketing, and get the wrong impression that just because success isn’t instant, it must not be for them. You’re not going to hit every mark from the get-go, and you’re going to need to look at your statistics to see what’s working and what’s not in terms of attracting audiences and turning their visits into new sales.
Another effort you’ll regularly undertake is promotion, and you’ll want to promote the website or blog you’re hosting regularly in order to keep your audiences reminded to come back. Using social media platforms, leave your link to interested audiences along with valuable information, and entice them to visit you over and over again.
What You’ll Be Spending Most Of Your Time Doing
If you follow the proven methods I’ve used to build my affiliate marketing business, you’ll spend the vast majority of your time WRITING. My business is all about creating content, content, and more content. Are there other ways of succeeding at affiliate marketing? Certainly, but I find that content marketing is by far the single most profitable method of affiliate marketing.
Most new affiliate marketers have no problem creating content…. at first. But 6 months in? Hardly anyone makes it that far. The reason is because most people simply don’t like to write as much as they think they do. Once writing becomes a job instead of a hobby, motivation to keep going can easily waver. As an affiliate marketer, you’ll essentially become a full time content creator, and most of that will be in the written form. Can you handle writing 1,000 word articles every single day?
Breaking Down The Question Of Is Affiliate Marketing Worth The Effort
To break down the question “Is affiliate marketing worth the effort?” take a look at the efforts I’ve laid out, and determine for yourself. In order to be successful in affiliate marketing you’ll need to choose a product category to focus on, learn about your audience, build a website or blog audiences can trust, create LOTS of content, and promote your content and your product, and with the right trial and error, you could be well on your way to receiving those commission checks from happy brands earned by referring happy customers. In terms of regular maintenance you will need to keep up with the latest online marketing trends, promote your content regularly, and continue learning about how your product category of choice is developing in today’s modern age in order to remain a trusted resource on your chosen topic.
For research, promoting tips, and lessons learned in trial and error, our many resources in education will help you to stay on top of what you need to know to make your affiliate marketing continuously the best it can be.
Success In Affiliate Marketing
For those willing to put in the effort, affiliate marketing can be a profitable business in several ways. A few of the many benefits of affiliate marketing success are:
- A job you can love – Extending your passion and love for products feels less like a job, and more like a hobby. That is until those commission checks come rolling in.
- Be your own boss – In affiliate marketing, the job is between you and the brand, and you’re your own boss determining the types of products you’re marketing, how you’re marketing them, and what type of promotion strategies give you the best chance of sales.
- Work on your schedule – Rather than adhering to a schedule that doesn’t work for you, you get to decide when and where your promotions are posted and when your content is made. You can promote and make money while on vacation, or write your latest informative blog post late at night when you can’t sleep. You’re in charge of your schedule.
The freedom of success in affiliate marketing alone is worth the effort for many. With the right knowledge, flexibility, and willingness to learn, affiliate marketing can have you on your way to success as your own boss today.