With so much change going on in the world, so many more people are starting to look online to make
ends meet…
So you maybe asking yourself ‘is affiliate marketing a waste of time’….
If you don’t know anything about affiliate marketing, then the first part explains what it is and how it works…
The next part shows what it is like affiliate marketing, for you to decide whether it is a waste of time or you can create a full time online business...
Let’s dive right in with the explanation of affiliate marketing….
What is affiliate marketing
You may have come across the term and found that loads of people are doing it.
You may have even seen programs to teach you affiliate marketing….
But unless you are taught the basics you maybe going up a path you are not expecting, so let’s find out what it is …
Affiliate marketing is a method of marketing that has been going on for probably thousands of years…
It is a form of marketing where you will recommend something to someone else as a solution to a problem…
You tag them, or give them a ticket, and tell them where to get it…
If they go there and purchase the product, the store owner knows that they came from you by the ticket they pass over…
At the end of the month the store owner gathers all the tickets together and pays you a fee for sending
purchasers to their store…
Before the internet it used to happen by word of mouth….
‘just tell them Sam sent you, and you will be treated right’
The shopkeeper will smile when you say this and put a tick against Sam’s name and pass him a reward next time he drops by…
Now we tend to work online it makes things more difficult and easier at the same time…
More difficult due to the fact that your articles are seen worldwide….
But easier as there are digital ways of tracking who sends you traffic…
But what does it entail, this affiliate marketing
What does an affiliate marketer do….
It’s a bit like it used to be in the offline days…
You know about something and people refer others to you if you want to know about that…
So let’s say you know about gardening….
You start a website…
It sounds techy, but nowadays it really isn’t….
And start writing about how to improve your garden to make it easier to grow what you like and how to maintain it….
You can start recommending products you have found that work for different things…
Or if you are going for just information you may place strategic adverts on your site…
But it needs to be very good information targeted at specific problems…
And ideally your whole site is about solving these problems…
So an affiliate marketer will be mainly involved in creating content for their website…
And the beauty of this is you write it once and everyone can read it, so you are not repeating it over and over again…
If you find some new information, you then update the article, so keeping it current…
You also find where the people who are interested in your topics are on the web…
Nowadays there are groups for almost anything….
And you start interacting with them…
They get to know that you ‘know your stuff’…
And seek out your site…..
But that sounds like a lot of time and effort….
Can you do affiliate marketing part time
If you already have a full time job you need to check that you are not breaching the terms of your employment by starting another business…
And that can be a scary word for some…
It can end up as a business, starting as a hobby site….
So if you really enjoy your gardening , you can start a site passing on tips to grow better or improve their garden without issue…
Learning the techniques to get you seen on search engines, like Google, when people are looking for information is called Search engine Optimisation or SEO for short…
Again this sounds techy, but really isn’t….
This is something that can be learnt and applied to your writing…
The amount of articles ( blog posts) you create also has an impact on how the search engines see your site…
But if you enjoy talking about gardening then the chances are that you may enjoy writing about it…
So can you so affiliate marketing part time…..
Yes, as there are no rules saying that you must meet these conditions monthly…
As long as you learn what to include within your articles to satisfy the search engines and write content that talks to others, rather than being all about yourself…then you can do , within reason, what you like…
Remembering that that the more articles you produce the more likely it is that the search engines will see your articles as relevant to that topic…
What about the rewards of affiliate marketing
I talked about rewards for referring people to shops to buy certain products and you will get a reward for doing this…
So how does that work…
Let’s take the example of gardening again….
When you create an article about improving your soil, you talk about using a certain type of bone meal, that you have used , and got excellent results for your onions…
You will need to put an affiliate link ( a path to the store) within your article, so people can find the product you are talking about…
To do this you need to sign up for the affiliate program for the store, it will cost you nothing to do this…if they do charge you then think twice about signing up, they maybe part of an affiliate network…
You may find some affiliate programs or networks have a certain level of entry, like number of visitors or may need to check your site is suitable first before accepting you…
Once you have been accepted, then you can copy the links to the products…
And paste them on your site….
It really is easy once you learn how to do it…
Then when people click on your link, they are taken to the store …
And the store knows they have come from your site…
So if they decide to buy the product then you are tagged for the reward or commission…
On physical products don’t expect too much reward as it is taken from the profits the shop is making on the product, rather than the overall price of the product…
Within your affiliate link is a unique identifier so they know that it is from your link they came…
But make sure you read and abide by the rules of the affiliate program or they may close your account….
Ok, it sounds pretty easy so far…why isn’t everyone doing it…
There are some downsides to affiliate marketing…
The reward is not instant, you may need to write for a while to get any return at all…
Why does affiliate marketing take time to make money
If you need something then you know the sort of product you need…
So you go shopping…
You have certain criteria to meet before you will part with your hard earned cash…
One of those criteria is that you trust the shop, be it offline or online….
Have you seen them before, do they look trustworthy ( not always a sign nowadays online), do you know anyone else who has used them….
And with affiliate marketing you are not even the shop….
You are someone whose article someone has come across while searching of information….
So again more questions come up….
Who are they , can i trust their information, are they a jack of all trades, do they know their stuff……
You need to build up a relationship with your visitor….
You need to establish credibility, you know you know your stuff, but they don’t know you from Adam ( sorry Adam’s reading this)….
In the side part of your webpage you add a bit about your accomplishments…
They read this and form in their mind a level of trust…
But you need to get the visitors there in the first place…
And if you are reliant on the search engines you are then having to convince them that you know your stuff and are trustworthy, there are so many sites being created just to make money nowadays it takes a lot more for the search engines to ensure they are serving good, useful and trustworthy information to their searchers…
So you have a delay before you get seen on the first page of the search results…
And each article is ranked on the relevancy to the topic….
So if you start rambling on about flowers and fruits when trying to help someone improve their onions, then google may not see this as being as relevant as someone who stays on topic…they will be shown ( ranked) above your article…even though their information may be inferior to yours…
So it is all about convincing the search engines and visitors that you are trustworthy, know your stuff and others like you…
Or the Know, Like and Trust ( KLT) factor….
Without this you don’t get ranked, without ranking you don’t get organic ( search engine ) visitors (traffic)…
And without traffic you have a website rather than a business….
So you can see there will be a delay between you starting to create articles and anyone clicking through your links….
But once it starts then it can build and the wave can last for years without you doing anything extra (passive income), as long as the articles you write are still relevant in the future ( evergreen)…..
So back to the main point about whether affiliate marketing is a waste of time…
Is affiliate marketing a waste of time
And the straight answer is ..it depends…
I know it seems like a copout, but it depends on what you are after….
If you need to make some money now…then affiliate marketing is probably not for you…
If you don’t want to invest any money into your business, then affiliate marketing will take a long time to give you any returns….
If you invest in good training, the tools you need to do this then you will get quicker results…
If you don’t like writing, then you may be able to do affiliate marketing, but you will probably not get the KLT factor, so your results may be poor…
If you don’t know your audience, then they will spot you as a fake and not give you any return, and affiliate marketing will not work for you…
If you won’t invest the time, then affiliate marketing won’t work for you…
But is it a waste of time, i don’t think it is…
You can learn a new skill and help others on their journey as well….
You can pass on knowledge you have to others you will never meet and affect their lives in a good way…
You can expand on your experience in certain areas and the easiest way to know whether you have learnt a topic is by teaching it to others, so creating articles about it…
But it takes time to establish yourself and build an audience, so doing this part time at the start to learn how to do it properly is a good idea….
Without this knowledge and with the amount of sites on the web nowadays, you may not get found….
And you have valuable knowledge that others can use to improve their lives…
So don’t you owe it to yourself to get trained to help others…
What’s the secret sauce to go full time with affiliate marketing
Mentoring…in one simple word…
Find a successful training or mentor and invest in them or it….
Make sure the training does work, find proof that it works for others, make sure you like the style of training, and get to trust the method they teach…
So you can see it is back to the KLT factor again….
Are there any shortcuts….
Investing in training that you like will take you head and shoulders above others who have signed up for hundreds of mini courses that only show you a small tip here and there on how to make money today….
Pick a topic you really like and know the audiences needs…
Make sure it is a buying audience , people are willing to pay money for the solution…
And there are enough people interested to give you a return…..
If you search for the topic in Google and there are ads at the top of the page…there is evidence that there is money in that niche…people are promoting the services or products…
If there are magazines on the topic or include the topic then there is interest in that niche…
If there are influencers, besides getting to know them, they will have a lot of people following them, look at what they feed their audience…
But the most important part of affiliate marketing is consistency….
You will be creating for a while, no one can tell you how long…
And it may be without any return…
But as i say above trust the method and keep finding what your audience need help with and provide the solutions, you will eventually get there…
How to get started in affiliate marketing
So if i can introduce a platform which is ideal for beginners and intermediate marketers to learn all about affiliate marketing in a very safe environment…
Where you can start learning for free and try out what you are learning…
Then invest in yourself to take your learning further and get hosting built in along with a valuable tool to help find what people are searching for…
And have a massive community to ask questions if you get stuck….
And practise your writing, style and content on the members to see what they think….
See the results people are getting with the proven methods…
When you hit the low times, and you will, then the community is there to help you….
And if you run into techy problems with your site then you have a 24/7 support team to help you out…
introducing an All in one platform, called Wealthy Affiliate….
And i definitely wouldn’t promote something i haven’t tried and it works or i believe in…
Being a member since 2015 and still learning from the weekly training, keeping you up to date with new techniques or releases….
For someone who is thinking about starting affiliate marketing, i wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the training…
And once you have learnt how to do affiliate marketing with a proven process then it will be less of a waste of time as you will see returns a lot quicker…
So if you would like to join me and over 2 million others with accounts there then follow this link….
Thanks for reading