Can I do affiliate marketing? It is often asked by those seeking financial freedom in the form of passive income from home. If you are one of those aspiring change-makers, take a minute or couple to discover if affiliate marketing suits you or not.
But before we begin this article, you must first understand what affiliate marketing is. You can also start learning more about affiliate marketing by reading other articles I wrote about this business idea for passive income.
Without any further delay, let’s begin with a short overview of affiliate marketing.
Table of Contents
Can I Do Affiliate Marketing? An Overview
- Name: Affiliate Marketing.
- The First Internet Marketer: William J. Tobin (1989).
- Starting Costs: $100 a year.
- Overall Review: 4.5 out of 5.0
- Costs: 4.5 out of 5.0
- Reliability: 4.9 out of 5.0
- Long-Term Effects: 5.0 out of 5.0
- Instant Results: 2.0 out of 5.0
Few Words About The History Of Affiliate Marketing – It Began Before The Internet
Affiliate marketing is known among most people as a business that happens online. The customer clicks a unique (affiliate) link, which directs them to a specific page or the product online, and then the link owner (the affiliate) makes a small amount of money for that click after the sale is confirmed.
However, affiliate marketing may also refer to something like when a technician gives a client a discount for referring them to a new buyer. The customer is getting paid by receiving a discount towards their next purchases by referring this service or product to others. It is the same idea, just offline. This sort of affiliate marketing business is used, but difficult to be traced compared to online links.
The old affiliate marketing kind of business had its downsides; for example, you can always do a small questionnaire and ask your customers where and how they discovered you to acquire more data about where your customers are coming from. Still, you don’t possess all the necessary data as you would using an online tracking link. The internet has made affiliate marketing more accessible and more scalable, which is the most desirable for business owners to expand their businesses.
So while the story of affiliate marketing truly started before the internet ever been exist, it’s the internet that made affiliate marketing business available for everyone with great strategies and widely available as a “business model” to you!
Amazon Was The First Company To Use Affiliate Marketing, But!
Indeed, Amazon was the first company to use affiliate marketing to promote their products as a program to the general public. Their affiliate system was launched in 1996, recognized as Associates Program, allowed people to register to offer their website links. However, William J. Tobin (1989) was the first internet marketer as an individual.
As a result of promoting Amazon’s products and sharing these affiliate links, the user made a small amount of money in revenue for referring new customers. Amazon was the first notable business in the history of affiliate marketing to use “affiliate marketing” as one of their marketing strategies on their platforms widely. This matured to be a model for other companies to base their businesses on. Consequently, the growth of affiliate marketing maintains until today.
Accordingly, many companies give everyone worldwide opportunities to make money online through affiliate marketing. It might be difficult at the start, but later on, it is worth it! Therefore, the short answer to the question, can I do affiliate marketing? It is Yes, you can.
The Pros & Cons Of Affiliate Marketing
To answer the question, can I do affiliate marketing properly, we must go through some of the essential pros and cons of affiliate marketing. With these crucial points, you can build a good insight into affiliate marketing.
? Pros Of Affiliate Marketing
- Financial Stability
If well-crafted affiliate marketing can turn you into a millionaire, you will be making money while you are sleeping in the worst cases. How could that be anything but good!
- Long-Term Benefits
Imagine that someone’s decision to buy a smartphone you promoted 3 years ago was the solution to your current debt issue. How good can that be!
- Low-Cost Startup
You can start with only $10/month (the cost of building and operating a basic website).
- Customer Satisfaction Isn’t Your Concern.
As an affiliate marketer, you aren’t responsible for the product quality, problems, performance, or anything product-related, except for a few knowledge that can enable you to market it well.
? Cons Of Affiliate Marketing
- No Control Over Competition
A fierce competition should be expected from those who started before you and who have more knowledge than you do.
- You Can’t Control Affiliate Programs.
Affiliate programs often follow strict rules that you can’t adjust easily once you’ve approved upon.
Is Affiliate Marketing For Everyone?
Most of those asking “can I do affiliate marketing?” usually afraid they aren’t “the ones!” suitable for the job, but is there such a thing in the first place? Do you need to be “the one” to contribute something in the affiliate marketing field?
The answer is “YES! & NO!” there are certain qualities needed to be found in the affiliate marketer to achieve success. Nevertheless, those qualities are learnable and easy to be mastered if you were willing to put the effort required.
The Qualities Expected To Be Found In The Typical Affiliate Marketer
- 24/7 Online Availability
You won’t be able to make it in the affiliate marketing business if you weren’t ready to devote 24 hours a day and 7 days a week to your online customer base to answer questions, serve needs, and ensure the establishment of a high-quality bond with them has been made, such bond could lead you to figure out what they like and what they don’t, that will give you an advantage over the other affiliate marketers and will later be a key role to achieve success.
It’s easy to be 24/7 online (most people already are!)
Duh! It’s Affiliate Marketing, so it’s hard to imagine any progress that can be made without mastering marketing skills or having explicit knowledge about their basics.
Excellent marketing courses are easy-to-find and easy to be mastered.
Copywriting craft is the deal-breaker when the affiliate marketer finds it hard (or even impossible!) to deliver the product to the targeted customer. The copywriting-skilled affiliate marketer can be well-distinguished from his/her peer by his/her work results.
- Deal-Closing
Marketing skills are essential, but deal-closing requires a whole other different set of skills that should be learned separately.
No one is born as a “natural deal-closer.”
- People Skills
Since “people” are the ones you will be devoting most of your time to, the ones your whole mission is based on finding out their desires, and the ones you would expect to gain profits from on their actions, it’s hard to be able to control such actions without having some basic connection skills.
People skills are “skills,” and skills are learnable.
So, can I do affiliate marketing? Only if you were willing to LEARN!
Influence: Is It Mandatory, Or Preferred?
Most people choose to skip on affiliate marketing because they can’t describe themselves as “influencers” but, are influencers the only ones who were meant to succeed in the affiliate marketing business?
The answer is NO! digital influencing ability is a high-paying skill in the current tech ag. Still, you don’t necessarily need it to succeed (although it would help improve your character’s “influencing part“).
Legitimacy Of Affiliate Marketing
Legitimacy is mostly the number one concern for those asking can I do affiliate marketing?
No need to be worry, affiliate marketing is a legitimate way to make passive income online, and it certainly not a scam as what some people unknowingly describe!
Prerequisites To Success In Affiliate Marketing
Can I do affiliate marketing? Yes, But you need to make sure you have these first.
- High Traffic-Loaded Medium
This medium could be your Instagram account, Facebook page, Twitter account, personal Blog, YouTube Channel, or any digital space. Customers are willing to put a few portions of their time daily.
You don’t need to be a 10K+ owner of an Instagram page to describe it as a suitable medium. Actually, unlike most people think, follower count isn’t what defines an appropriate medium, follower continuance browsing commitment is!
- An Affiliate Niche Desired By Your Pre-Established Customer Base
It won’t make sense to work hard on building a 10K+ medium full of tech-savvies if you will promote books to them!
- An Affiliate Niche You Like!
While copywriting ability might provide a well-established exit if someone asks you product-related questions that were hard to be answered by you, it can help focus only on products you already desire and like as it would make the promoting process much easier and smoother.
The Expected Costs Of Affiliate Marketing
There is no fixed-figure an affiliate marketer should be willing to pay to receive some results.
If you were willing to pay the most basic website foundation costs (not more than a couple of hundred dollars a year!), you can be ready to move on to the make some action. Of course, more money would deliver more value, but it certainly won’t guarantee automated success.
Baby Steps To Have An Established Affiliate Marketing Business
Each successful affiliate marketer should go through five baby-steps to establish themselves in the business.
- Find a niche you like.
- Start building a digital medium to attract only those who share your same interest & opinion about that niche.
- Sign up for an affiliate marketer account in one of the well-known affiliate marketing agents.
- Choose the pre-agreed-upon niche.
- Select a product that has a high price and high affiliate percentage (more on that here).
The Process Of Affiliate Marketing
The affiliate marketing process should be smooth (but not easy) if you have well-foundation (the prerequisites & qualities we’ve mentioned before) and willingness to put some effort, time, and money on the process.
Most of those who describe the affiliate marketing path as bumpy-road are the ones who were in so hurry to make some money that they skipped the learning process, which is mandatory for each affiliate marketing success.
Reliability Of Affiliate Marketing
Can I do affiliate marketing and earn a stable passive income from home? Most hesitating people think that affiliate marketing won’t be a reliable source of income.
There is no specific answer to affiliate marketing reliability. Affiliate marketing could make you a billionaire or make you a couple of hundred dollars a month richer. There is no measure of affiliate marketing reliability. You can only rely on the effort you put into the process.
Long Term Results Vs. Short Term Results
Can I do affiliate marketing business dilemma that is hard to solve without knowing what kind of results you want? Affiliate marketing success is long-term driven. It’s hard to achieve something noticeable in your early days or even months! But with time and you can make a great affiliate marketer.
If instant results were what you are looking for, then affiliate marketing isn’t meant for you.
Other Passive Income Options To Consider
Other than affiliate marketing, there are a lot of successful ways to make passive income online. Of course, the prerequisites are different, and the whole process is also different, but there is no reason why an affiliate marketer shouldn’t try to work on them as well.
- YouTube
YouTube has over 2 billion monthly active users, from which 30 million browse the site daily. Video-content consumer business is exploding significantly in recent years, and with high-speed internet all over the globe, the need for video-content won’t be vanishing anytime soon.
You don’t need to be talented to make a successful YouTuber. There are many ways in which you can contribute to the platform without having a skill or knowledge.
Blogging is excellent art, but it can be hard at times, and it certainly won’t deliver instant results. You can start your blog in a field in which you feel comfortable writing. With time and high-quality content, you should be able to make a good living or even a fortune.
- Apps Industry
The global app market is growing more than ever, with high-quality smartphones been announced every day. There is no doubt that the app industry will go anywhere anytime soon.
You don’t need to be a skilled programmer to make an app. You can start with the idea that solves a need and find many options to handle the coding part.
Tips To Guide You Make Affiliate Marketing Work For You
As you can see, the answer to the question of “can I do affiliate marketing?” is twofold – yes, you can, and affiliate marketing works. But it works solely for people willing to put forth time, energy, effort, and willingness to learn new skills. If you want it to work for you, and you want to make sure you can do affiliate marketing, you must approach it sincerely and like a job rather than a get-rich-quick internet scam.
A personal example – When I was first really attempting to earn money online, I spent every second growing my online business. At the time, I had no jobs and no money to invest, but that didn’t stop me from going forward.
It took me 7 months before I earned my first $1.23 commission from amazon, and another 3 months before I earned my second commission and from that time, I was making enough money not to worry anymore.
Even now, most of my websites take about 1-2 years to make any real, meaningful income. But, there are a few tips worth mentioning to help assure that affiliate marketing will work for you. Here are the tips that could make it more manageable to achieve your goals:
- Build a robust, easy to navigate website. This will be the core of your affiliate marketing endeavors and designed to be professional and informational. Any site found at Wealthy Affiliate makes it simple to build a great platform you can use.
- Pick products you are passionate about and involved in. This way, you will keep yourself motivated to write about them and market them. It’s troublesome to market products and services you don’t like or believe in. Be sure to find a niche that you have some passion for and promote services and products you would purchase yourself.
- Ask for help when you need it. Another reason keeping me in Wealthy Affiliate is the amazing community they have. Whether you want to use the community in Wealthy Affiliate or find other forums with a helpful community, I advise you to have a support network.
- Never give up. The simple reality is that affiliate marketing will take time to give you noticeable results and reach your goals. If you want to succeed in affiliate marketing, you need to exceed everyone else who gives up at some point. Remember, You haven’t truly failed until you’ve given up.
The Bottom Line
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to make some passive income online. It’s not easy, it might take some time, and you might have to put some money in the process. But the promising results certainly worth your effort, time, and money, especially that affiliate marketing need isn’t going to go anywhere in the upcoming years.