Since the Internet became popular, people looked for a quick and easy way to make money online. Even though there have been many struggles along the way, with uncertainly in terms of programs and sites closing down, disputes between members, and decreases in pay rates, there are still thousands of people who make a full-time income online.
Affiliate marketing was one of the leading ways to make money online, and to this day, you can still find many people who are easily making six figures or higher simply by promoting others’ products and services. Although the “middle man” still isn’t cut out of the equation, unless of course you are offering your own products and services, you are still benefiting much more than through other methods, in terms of how much time you have to put in.
Along with the sense that there must be fine print with affiliate marketing, rumors were spread about how the business was run, and these are not always true. In this post, many of these will be dispelled.
#1. It costs money to get into affiliate marketing.
This is false. Although many affiliate promotion companies want to provide their service to people who have a strong background in the field, you can still get started with many individual products with a Blogger or other developer-hosted account, many of which are free. Beyond this, there may be additional costs, but getting started with a simple website reviewing products and promoting the links will be free.
#2. It takes a lot of time to maintain affiliate pages and blogs.
Like blogging, you will find that some people try to constantly update their blogs’ previous posts, while others simply write a new one, effectively voiding the older post. Similarly, this is seen in affiliate marketing. Single pages might not have to be updated for a year or more, at least until the product or service sees a major update. Other than this once-a-year update, you can simply leave the pages alone.
Management, updating links, and making sure there is a “fresh” image on the page can certainly add some time and help in the long-term, but isn’t required. As soon as you have one page done for a particular product, it is time to move on to another product/page, especially if you want to diversify.
#3. There is no money to be made, because the market is already saturated.
Often, I find it impossible to say that something is at or beyond saturation on the internet. There are really no caps on how much content can be pushed out to the public, because there will always be someone to stumble upon it. All it takes is one person to discover a page to purchase a product from, and then you will have made money from the purchase.
#4. You have to have hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to make any decent income.
Again, this might be a myth that hasn’t been dispelled enough for people to get the picture. If you are able to garner a hundred quality visitors from search engines monthly, each that has a strong interest in what you have to offer, you’re well on your way to developing a decent income. As you increase total visitors, you will see that the ratio of purchases to visitors will decrease, due to the quality of traffic also decreasing.
All in all, the ratio of traffic to sales only depends on the quality of content that you put forth and the audience that you are targeting.
#5. You have to place links to relevant content on your blog.
Let’s say that you are targeting the blogging niche, like this blog. You are suggested to stick with hosting, blog theme, and other links pertaining to the niche. However, straying from this, diversifying to products that might not be a hundred percent relevant might not do you too much harm. Visitors might be interested in the product, even though it might not be completely relevant.
#6. Fancy banners and images have to be used.
This couldn’t be further form the truth. People are more likely to click on a flashing banner and “ugly’ banner than one that is professionally created, simply for the reason that they want to see what it has to offer. There is really no need to have an ad designer create ads for you, as you can generally use any product images provided along with a simple image editor to create the ad.
#7. You have to know terms and have good copy to sell your product.
I’d have to say that this is true, as you need to know what works and what doesn’t. Giving the wrong information and not persuading your visitors to purchase the product will likely drive them away, rather than making them think about the purchase. It isn’t required that you have years of experience, as some might tell you.
#8. You have to have a lot of content to make the most form your traffic.
Having more traffic is better, but not always required. Take a look at the landing pages of many products, and you’ll generally find that there is really only one page featuring information about the product, then several sub-pages for legal and contact information. Often, the single pages do better than links in sidebars or links hidden in content, as there are less places for visitors to navigate to after reading about the product or service.
#9. You have to pay for traffic.
Similar to number four above, unless you want to quickly increase traffic to your landing pages, you don’t have to run any advertising campaigns. You could double, quadruple, and dramatically increase earnings through advertising campaigns with Google AdWords, but generally, they are not required
#10. Affiliate marketing is right for me, since I have a blog.
Not necessarily. Blogs are not the best place to dump affiliate links and banners. Focus on building up your content, then steadily integrate ads into your content and sidebars, so there is still a good balance of content versus ads and external links.