A question that often comes up when people are first researching into starting affiliate marketing, is “How Can I Do Affiliate Marketing?” Many new affiliate marketers end up failing and it is down to a number of factors, including not getting the right training and support from the start.
Gem and I want to help you get started with affiliate marketing, help keep you motivated during the hard work needed to make it successful and ensure you get the best training that there is to become an authority on affiliate marketing.
Let us start by ensuring you understand what Affiliate Marketing is and how it works. We will also share with you what to look out for to avoid scams out there that are disguised as affiliate marketing.
What is Affiliate Marketing? & How to Spot the Scams!
There are tons of programs out there that claim they are affiliate marketing, but really, they are MLM schemes designed to just keep getting you to spend more money so the owners are the ones that benefit.
Affiliate Marketing is a very simple premise – you create a blog on a chosen niche. You sign up with an affiliate program such as Amazon and promote products in your given niche. If someone follows your suggestion and follows your affiliate link to go to Amazon and makes a purchase, you have just earned a commission.
It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that. See the graphic below:
If you have been checking out any other programs stating that they are offering you a ‘Done for You’ way to succeed at Affiliate Marketing, it is typically a scam and will not benefit you.
Why I say that is down to them normally employing duplicate content – which will never work out for you.
Do your research and you will definitely only find genuine products out there.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
SO, we know that affiliate marketing works by promoting products that include your affiliate link and if someone buys it you earn a commission. It sounds simple, but why do many affiliate marketers fail.
That is because of one thing – a Lack of Patience.
Whenever you search the internet for ways to make money online, you will always find people stating they earned thousands overnight or a system that will earn you money on autopilot.
So, it is natural to assume that you can earn money quickly. But they are all lies!
I know, you might be thinking that is a strong statement John!
But it is true. Affiliate Marketing is not a quick way of earning money online, you cannot just spend 20 minutes a day on it and hope for it to earn you money straightaway.
So to go back and answer the question “Can I Do Affiliate Marketing?”:
Yes, but you need to understand you will need to invest time and effort into this business model to make it work! You cannot play at this!
Yes, but you will not be earning money from it straightaway!
Yes, but you need to follow the right strategies!
You Need to Commit to Achieving this.
I didn’t earn anything from affiliate marketing for 6-months. I could have walked away after 5 months and thought affiliate marketing doesn’t work.
That is why there are so many people who fail at Affiliate Marketing, because they walked away after 3 months. They kept the employee mindset, that I have worked for an hour – I should get paid for an hour’s work.
It doesn’t work like this. That post that I earned my first commission from was a post that was 5 months old. It had crept up the google rankings and is a post that is still earning me commission now. That is the true meaning of affiliate marketing being a passive income.
How to Become Successful at Affiliate Marketing!
There are two things that you need to get your head around to be successful with affiliate marketing, other than the few above.
The Entrepreneur Mindset
Affiliate Marketing is a business model, it isn’t like completing surveys online and earning a few quid. You can earn some serious money with affiliate marketing if you do it right.
The first thing is becoming an entrepreneur. Living and breathing your business until it starts earning you money, and then scaling it so it grows, and you can start hiring writers for your business.
Understanding that you will not earn an hourly rate from this business model but understanding that this is all about the long game.
When I first started, I had a full-time job and a family to consider too. So, my spare time was limited. I needed to be practical in my planning and ensuring that the hour I put away into my business I spent it well. Whether that be learning a specific element, researching a product to review or writing an article. I needed to be productive.
That is what I mean, those are all traits of a successful entrepreneur who becomes a successful affiliate marketer!
Learning the Right Way
Something I have noticed about successful affiliate marketers is that they are constantly keeping themselves up-to-date with their niche, affiliate marketing, etc.
They are constantly learning. I myself, regularly check out webinars in Wealthy Affiliate to see if there is something I can learn and often I can. There may be a small detail that could help rankings or help conversions that I hadn’t considered or tried. You need to constantly learn.
If you are just starting out with Affiliate Marketing or are struggling to get it working for you, it might be because the training or advice you have been given was incorrect.
I would like to recommend you check out our recommended training platform for Affiliate Marketing, Wealthy Affiliate. Their training is designed for anyone, of any skill level to build an affiliate marketing business.
You will benefit from the training into exploring the right niche for you, building your own website within the platform, getting it ranked within the search engines, building traffic and writing content that converts.
This the same platform that I have used for almost 3 years now, and I would not be where I am today, without their training and help and support that comes with it.
Kyle and Carson are the co-founders and owners of Wealthy Affiliate. They have poured so much time and effort into making this the best platform it can be, they also offer their help and advice to new affiliate marketers to ensure they get started with a business that will mean, you can start saying “I Can Do Affiliate Marketing”
Let’s Get You Expert Help & Support
Another feature I love with Wealthy Affiliate, other than the training and the website tools is the community you become a part of.
Imagine being part of a community that is over 1 million users in size, where you gain access to chat with other affiliate
marketers who can help answer your questions at any time of the day. You also get a personal coach, if you follow my invitation to Wealthy Affiliate that would be Me. Anytime you feel like you need a motivation pep talk, the community and me will be there to help you.
Not sure of what niche to choose, ask me.
Not sure how you could improve your website, ask me.
That is the help and support you get within Wealthy Affiliate, and I would not have been able to say Affiliate Marketing worked with it.
Kyle and Carson are very keen that anyone who checks them out can do it without any pressure, and it is a great mentality to have. So, here you will find a link to my Wealthy Affiliate review, so you can check out more detail. But if you want to check them out yourselves, here is a link to get you started with a free starter membership (no credit card required). Explore the platform and see what you think.
Final Conclusion
The main reason why people fail at affiliate marketing is purely down to a lack of patience or following the wrong training. They give up too soon, or they are not entirely sure how to get started and that is why we fully endorse Wealthy Affiliate if you are looking for a training platform that has everything you need, including expert help and support, for getting started with affiliate marketing.
Then you will be able to say, “I Can Do Affiliate Marketing!”.
Thanks for reading our post, if you have any questions or comments to add please put them below. We will come back to you as soon as we can. Thanks John & Gem
Hello,
Affiliate marketing is quite easy to do if you have access to the right information. You also have to be mentally ready to remain dedicated and patient because every good takes time.
Wealthy Affiliate is a program every affiliate marketer who wants to achieve good success should join. It’s a community of highly successful affiliate marketers who are always winning to help. Join wealthy affiliate today, it’s surely the right step.
Hey Louis,
The premise of affiliate marketing is quite simple, but people do seem to think it will earn them money quickly and this is why a lot of affiliate marketers fail and end up not believing that it will work.
But that is because they haven’t had the right help, support and training from the start. You are right, Wealthy Affiliate is an awesome place for people to get all the help, support and training they need to see it through until they start earning money.
thanks for adding some comments, all the best
John
Great information about affiliate marketing and how it all works. How long have you been with Wealthy Affiliate? Did you find that it was much easier to learn here in the community than trying to learn how to market online?
I know I have struggled and spent lots of money on the so called Guru Trainings… Only to find that I didn’t have all of the information needed to become successful online.
Hey Brian,
I have been with Wealthy Affiliate for over 2 years, and think it is such a supportive community and training platform. It is so much easier when you have others that you can chat with, but also know that you are not the only one feeling that way (when it isn’t quite going right, at times).
Anyone who promises you a sure thing, is normally full of themselves and cannot actually back up their claims.
Kyle and Carson know affiliate marketing can work, they share their techniques and experience but are quite honest that if you do not put the work in, it will never work for you.
thanks
John
Thank you for sharing this great information about affiliate marketing.
You have a very good information to make understand new people who want to enter the affilate marketing business what to expect and what platform to choose to achieve it, for many years I try to enter the affiliate marketing business until i found WA and it was the best decision. Hopefully after more people searching for a place to learn how to become an affiliate choose WA.
Thanks for checking out my post. We try to help as many as we can find genuine opportunities to get started in affiliate marketing.
Wish you the best with your online business
John
I am currently trying my hand at affiliate marketing as well. I got into it as a way to earn some extra money and went on my way…after a bit, I began searching for my posts and was unable to find them on search engines.
This is where Wealthy Affiliate was a great asset. I could not agree more with your assessment. The community helped me learn the most important thing about affiliate marketing…patience as you called out in your post.
One question since I am still relatively new. During my searches before getting into Wealthy Affiliate I saw the acronym MLM. You used it as well in your article. What does that stand for?
Cheers!
Hey Nate,
getting your posts ranked in the search engines is an important step to monetising your website and Wealthy Affiliate are experts at making sure you are doing the right stuff to get them onto the search engines.
To your question, MLM stands for Multi-Layer-Marketing. Compare it to affiliate marketing, there is only one level.
You refer someone, they buy an item and you earn a commission from the seller.
Multi-Layer Marketing is where they sell you the lower offer and then continue to up-sell to you through the levels.
This is not affiliate marketing, and yet many MLM schemes claim to be affiliate marketing and that is why people get confused.
Think of it as a ladder, you start at the bottom. Get told you need to climb the ladder to make any real money, and then you can only promote levels you are already a member of. So a recent scam that was closed by the FTC, had a top package costing $50k. If you wanted to be able to earn a commission from that product, you needed to have owned that package. You can read my post about the FTC closing Digital Altitude, you will understand a little more about MLM schemes and how to avoid them.
Hope that helps.
John
Hi John,
A great joy has caused me to find your site because I have been looking for everything that relates to affiliate marketing. It is not easy here in Argentina to find good training and above all a good support.
There are many doubts I have without finding answers. Do you think that Wealthy Affiliate will be able to clarify the path that I have decided to undertake? Thank you very much for all the help you can give me. Regards!
Hey,
Wealthy Affiliate can definitely clarify your path, making sure you are following the right strategies, so you don’t have to waste your time on those that don’t.
My Wealthy Affiliate review is definitely worth a read.
thanks
John
Very informative. I agree with the be patient part. I’m only a month into affiliate marketing and I can see why so many lose hope. I’m not feeling that way because I have all of the proper training and know I have to be patient to gain.
This article can really help other’s to keep going even when they don’t think they are going to benefit from it. Thank you for the good read.
Thanks Tfousie,
you are right, it can feel like you have completed a month’s worth of work with no return and that is the hardest part to get your head around. Having the support of the awesome guys at Wealthy Affiliate is definitely something that helps.
thanks
John
Great tips and good info you give here.
Im in the affiliate marketing for a while now, and it isn’t too hard to roll in it.
Of course, as a beginner, everything seems hard and everything that comes at you.
But if you have the right platform, such as wealthy affiliate, you are safe.
Anyway, you will help a lot of people with this post. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Emmanuel,
We try to help as many people as we can
John & Gem
This was my major questions when I first heard of the idea of Affiliate marketing through a free ebook from a friend, after reading it I felt it was a daunting task and so I abandoned the idea. Fast forward late last year, I found wealthy affiliate and since then the understanding and assistance from the program has been massive
I have learnt that patient and consistency are very important to having a successful affiliate marketing business.Thanks for sharing your experience on this subject.
Hey Zuchii,
I know that is a hurdle many face, it is the fear of the unknown stopping you taking those first steps. But once you have taken them you never look back.
Patience is an important part of an business, it is not going to all happen straightaway, but remaining consistent and getting support are integral to not feeling alone and believing you can do this.
Wealthy Affiliate offers some great help and support to do this, thanks
John