Affiliate Marketing is so appealing these days, especially as more and more people are searching online for ways to make money from home and naturally land on a page all about affiliate marketing, but why is affiliate marketing so appealing?
The simple fact is that Affiliate Marketing is Awesome, but there are many questions around it and a few reasons why people fail…
We aim to answer all of your questions, show you why affiliate marketing is so appealing and also, what the watch-outs are too before showing you how you can get started with your very own affiliate marketing business for free.
Let’s start by clarifying exactly what affiliate marketing is…
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before I go into detail about what true affiliate marketing is, you need to know there are plenty of training platforms that are
actually scams pretending to be affiliate marketing. We have reviewed a number of them, and some have actually been closed down by the FTC because they couldn’t live up to all of their promises. If you ever find something that states you can earn money on auto-pilot or with little effort, then that is exactly what I am on about. That is why we wanted to clarify your understanding on what is affiliate marketing.
It is very likely you have already experienced affiliate marketing is some way, especially if you have every purchased a product off of Amazon.
Affiliate Marketing is a beneficial way of marketing products for both affiliates and companies themselves, as the act saves them a fortune on their marketing campaigns. It is as simple as promoting products and receiving a commission if someone chooses to buy said product through your affiliate link.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
An Affiliate Marketer signs up with an affiliate program, for the example I will discuss Amazon Associates. This gains you access to all of their products to promote via blog or on social media.
You create a blog or website on any subject you want to cover and promote products or services on it. If someone lands on your website and decides to follow your recommendation and goes to the Amazon website via your affiliate link, if they buy the product you receive a percentage of the sale price as a reward for introducing a buyer.
There are thousands of affiliate programs, and affiliate networks that house thousands of affiliate programs meaning that you can create a blog in any subject you can think of.
That kind of adds to the appeal.
Why Affiliate Marketing is so Appealing?
Affiliate Marketing is so appealing for a number of ways, let’s go through a few:
Start an Affiliate Marketing Website About Anything
The best thing about Affiliate Marketing is the fact that you can start an online business in any interest or passion you have.
Interested in golf, then you can use that. Interested in getting fit and helping others to get fit, then you can use that.
Literally, you can start a business today in anything you are really interested in and you could find an affiliate program that will fit perfectly with it.
Gem runs and maintains a wedding stationary business, and affiliate marketing runs well with that.
Why start a business about something you don’t enjoy or know anything about when you could get started with a business you know loads about and enjoy immersing yourself within that subject.
It’s a Work from Anywhere Job
Another appealing feature of Affiliate Marketing is the fact you can do it from anywhere, the only restriction is internet coverage.
Affiliate Marketing tends to go really well with travel blogging because that is one of the main benefits of an online business using affiliate marketing, you can blog about your travels and help others get started on their own travelling plans.
This is because it is classed as a passive income stream, meaning you do not need to monitor the sales. Create great content and move on, you do not need to there for someone to decide to buy something you are promoting.
You Do Not Need Your Own Products or Services
Another great thing about affiliate marketing is the fact you do not need your own products or services, because you are promoting other people’s products.
No expensive warehouse, no need for a Point of Sale system. This is often the reason why people do not think they can start their own business, because they have nothing to offer.
But, with affiliate marketing you have something that you can offer which isn’t a physical thing. You can offer help and advice about a subject you know about, that is what you need to get started with affiliate marketing.
There are three great reasons as to why Affiliate Marketing is so appealing, but what stops Affiliate Marketers from succeeding?
What Stops Affiliate Marketers Succeeding?
There are a number of reasons why affiliate marketers do not succeed, we have picked out the top three that we feel is why they do not succeed:
Think it is a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme
We mentioned earlier in the post that there are loads of programs claiming to be affiliate marketing and they all have 
something in common. They make you believe that success can be achieve overnight.
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is anything but a get-rich-quick scheme. In fact, there is no such program that can make you loads of money overnight. It is was a thing, plenty of people would be reaping the benefits.
Affiliate Marketing is a great business to get started in, it can be any subject you love but if you think that in a month’s time you can sit back and watch the money come in that is not going to be a reality.
It is going to take a lot of hard work to realise your goals. I will be honest with you, I didn’t earn anything for 6 months when I first started with affiliate marketing and it will be a long road to actually achieving a way of replacing my full-time job.
The more hours you put in, the more effort you put in the better, as realising your dreams will take hard work.
An honest affiliate marketer will tell you that you still need to put the hours in, even after you have established yourself in your chosen niche.
There are examples of where someone has got to the point where they are earning good money, they have even been able to leave their day job. So, they decide my website is making good money now, I will go on a month-long holiday. They do nothing with their website for a month, and then realise that their traffic levels drop a little because they haven’t worked on their website.
Hard work will pay off, but many do not give this any thought and the best way to describe it is they “play at it”. They do not invest the time and effort to realise it and then they decide to give up…
They Give Up Too Soon
People give up before their hard work pays off. This is normally because people think of it like an hourly-paid job. I have done an hour of work, so I therefore deserve an hour’s worth of pay.
An online business does not work out like that. Affiliate Marketing is a truly passive income, but it will not earn you money
straightaway. The harder you work in the early stages, the more likely you are going to enjoy the benefits down the road.
You could write an awesome quality post and it doesn’t make you money for 6 months, but then it starts earning you recurring income on a regular basis and could do so for years to come.
But many affiliate marketers give up after a couple of months and say affiliate marketing doesn’t work. That is why the search engines does not really trust a new website until it is about 6 months old, because a website owner still engaged in their website after 6 months is the real deal and will keep on working and understands the long-term plan of an affiliate marketing business model.
A normal bricks and mortar business will typically not plan to turn a profit in year one, and yet online we seem to think we can be turning profit immediately.
Whilst the costs are nowhere near a typical business, the main investment you need to put in with an online business is your time and effort.
If you can commit to putting at least an hour a day into learning and acting within your business, you have what it takes but you need to keep at it until all your hard work pays off!
Lack of Quality Training & Support
You will find loads of contradicting strategies online, or you are being drawn in by affiliate marketing training that is outdated or clearly not affiliate marketing.
But there are training programs out there that do help their members, and will give a easy to follow step-by-step plan to success.
The support is the key, I think anyone who cares enough will follow a structured guide, but it is the help aspect that people lack, and they feel like they are doing this all alone and that can be one of the hardest things to get over.
I am part of a community of affiliate marketers and we all engage together to help each other. If we did not have that, I would have felt like I was swimming upstream. In other words, it would have been extremely hard to keep going until the money started coming in.
We can help you get the help and support, with some awesome training to. But I think it is one of the factors as to why many affiliate marketers are struggling, and that is wrong or outdated training with a real lack of support.
What Do You Need to Succeed?
Let’s just summarise so far, Affiliate Marketing is an awesome way of building an online business in a subject you really love and enjoy. You can literally work from anywhere and enjoy the freedom that a work from home job can bring.
You also do not need any of your own products or services as you can promote other peoples and not have all the hassle that would normally bring.
But it does take long hours and hard work to become successful and people tend to give up too easily because they think it isn’t going to work – this is often because they do not get shown a proven method to follow and have a lack of support.
What I want to share with you is the fact I know how you might be feeling at this point; Do I take the plunge??
If you are just trying to piece together bits of information from Google and keep looking for those (fake) proven methods, you will look back in six months time and realise you haven’t achieved anything and you are no closer to having financial freedom.
Or you could read on, learn about how I now make money online and get all the help you need to succeed.
I was there at that point and thought there were no genuine ways of making money online until I read a review about a training platform called Wealthy Affiliate.
Things That You Need to Succeed?
I have broken down what you need to get started on the right track, and they are all things that Wealthy Affiliate will offer you in abundance.
Step-by-Step Training
Up-to-date training that all users can understand and follow. I have found and reviewed many pieces of training around affiliate marketing, and typically they are outdated and that is why they are being offered for free.
The search engines are constantly changing, the way people navigate searches is changing and you need to keep up.
That is why we highly recommend the step-by-step training available at Wealthy Affiliate. Kyle and Carson (the WA Co-Owners) do not try and confuse you or get you to do strategies until you are ready.
By the end of the first ten lessons, you will fully understand what Affiliate Marketing is, help to choose the right niche, how you are going to monetise your website and actually have your own free website up and running ready for your all-important content.
Learn from their experience and gain personal access to them to help you along your affiliate business.
Websites & Website Tools
The second thing you need for your affiliate marketing business is a website. You will find many free ones online, but when you actually start to scale your online business you find the prices start to rise rapidly. With Wealthy Affiliate, a free starter membership gains you 2 free websites with no limit on the number of users.
A premium membership adds a different level with up to 50 domains available to you, with no limit and free SSL certificates.
You will also experience some fantastic website engagement tools including a keyword research tool.
You can Learn More about the Different Membership Levels in our Wealthy Affiliate Review.
Expert Help & Support
I have already expressed the importance of the right support network. You will find no better support that from the community at Wealthy Affiliate.
If you ever feel like you are stuck, or just need a comforting word to keep you on the right track you will find it in abundance within Wealthy Affiliate. You will find experience affiliate marketers and newbies alike all engaging in the training, asking and answering questions and encouraging everyone to achieve their goals.
Are You Ready to Get Started?
Affiliate Marketing is so appealing because of the fact it can be about anything in the world. Whether you are interested in starting a business in a hobby you love, want to help people in a subject you consider yourself an expert in, or want to document your fitness plan to help other people learn from you it all leads to the same thing.
A profitable online business that you actually enjoy working on. Gem and I chose helping people and I have a background in learning and development. We love helping people, and we also understand what good training is and that is why we recommend Wealthy Affiliate.
If you think you are ready to work hard and build a business that will allow you to enjoy it and work when you want and not be dictated to by a work schedule then I highly suggest you click the button below and start a free starter membership with Wealthy Affiliate.
It is totally free, with no credit card required. You will have access to the first ten lessons of their Online Entrepreneur Certification Course and 2 free websites that are yours to keep. There will be no pressure to upgrade until you are ready. But trust me, even those ten lessons will transform what you know about affiliate marketing and you will truly understand the potential behind it.
If you still have any questions about Affiliate Marketing or Wealthy Affiliate, I would be happy to answer all your questions. Just write your questions in the comments below and we will respond.
