Affiliate marketing sometimes gets a bad reputation, largely due to unscrupulous ads that sound like internet scams: “Earn money online working from home! I did it, and so can you!” Despite its importance in the modern economy, most university marketing programs don’t even teach it. In fact, online marketing courses do a far better job of teaching how to create a successful affiliate marketing program.
But really, affiliate marketing is not all that new. At its core, affiliate marketing is revenue sharing—a concept that far predates the internet. Marketers have been earning commissions for referring business to merchants for a very long time. Affiliate marketing is no different; it just happens to be done online.
AffiliateMarketerTraining.com has dozens of online marketing courses that cover everything from the basics of affiliate marketing to advanced strategies that will help you fine-tune your program into a revenue generating machine.
The Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing
There are many benefits to affiliate marketing:
• Startup costs are extremely low. As long as you have the time to build a website and generate content, you don’t need much money to start an affiliate marketing program. You don’t need to develop, manufacture, or purchase products; pay rent on a lease; or pay employees. All you need is a computer, internet access, and several dollars for a domain name registration.
• You don’t need staff. You can easily start an affiliate marketing program by yourself. If it becomes successful and you want to grow, you can always outsource the work to an affiliate manager.
• You don’t need to be an expert. It certainly helps if you have a background in the products you’re selling, but as long as you’re willing to do a little internet searching, and spend time writing quality content, you can sound like an expert.
• Your work continues to pay. After your website gains traction, once you put in the work, it continues to generate returns for you as long as people are clicking your links.
• Set your own schedule. Affiliate marketing is not easy money. You’ll have to put in time, but it does offer you flexibility. You can work when it fits your schedule and your commitments to family and friends.
The Downsides Of Affiliate Marketing
Before getting into affiliate marketing, it’s important to know that it’s not easy money like certain ads would have you believe.
• It takes time to build a successful program. Realistically, it can take several months, if not years to generate the traffic and conversion rates necessary to generate significant income. You will spend a lot of time upfront building your website without seeing returns.
• It’s easy to get off track. The best way to attract readers is to create quality content that is genuinely helpful or interesting to the readers. But at the end of the day, if the reader doesn’t buy anything, you don’t get paid. It’s easy to lose track of the balance between pitching a product to make a sale and generating content for your readers.
• You will not have a steady income. If you’re used to getting a regular paycheck you can use to budget and plan your finances, then the switch to affiliate marketing may be difficult. You will have some months where sales are below expectations, but you will also have months where sales go through the roof. The important thing to note, however, is that if you notice steady declines in sales, you can change up your marketing efforts to get those numbers back up.
Learn More About Affiliate Marketing
If you’re still interested in earning money online through affiliate marketing, AffiliateMarketerTraining.com has online marketing courses to teach you everything from the basics to advanced marketing strategies.
With our online marketing courses in market research, content creation, site building, marketing ideas, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and affiliate outsourcing, you can quickly get up to speed and begin working a way to make great supplemental income with the potential to turn into your primary source of income.
If you’ve always dreamed of quitting your day job, being your own boss, and having the flexibility to work where you want, when you want, affiliate marketing can make that happen. Learn how at AffiliateMarketerTraining.com.