Is Affiliate Marketing Hard – The Truth Is…
So, you want to start earning passive income from affiliate marketing?
But you’re hesitant because you are not so sure about the amount of effort and resources you need to commit before it becomes a reality?
Here’s the thing though, nothing worthwhile comes easy, including affiliate marketing.
However, you can rest assured that affiliate marketing is probably one of the easier online business models you can start right now, but by no mean is it “easy”.
Another attractive part of this model is that you don’t have to worry about creating products or worry about customer support – all of these are taken care of by the vendor.
All you have to do is recommend the products to interested buyer, they click over to the offer page via your affiliate links, make a purchase and boom, you earn a commission.
Easy right?
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard – Not So Fast
Don’t get too excited though, while it’s pretty easy to get started and, ultimately, make a great income from affiliate marketing. There’s also the issues of affiliate programs being cut without notice or affiliate commission getting reduced by vendors.
But, of course, you can always look for other affiliate programs to join to offset any shortfall, right?
So…is affiliate marketing hard?
Yes, affiliate marketing is hard for newbie marketers with no established audience or following online.
Make no mistake, getting started with affiliate marketing is the easy part. Earning passive, livable income consistently from it, is another thing altogether.
You see, people only buy from those they trust. And, as a beginner with no audience that trusts you yet, it’s going to be challenging.
Let’s unpack this some more.
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard – In The Beginning YES
Most businesses the world over, including the big brands you know, rely on affiliate marketing to generate passive revenue for their business.
As with any other online venture, you need to put in the necessary efforts upfront – you will need to do the hard work, before you can start reaping the benefits.
For affiliate marketing, you need to first build a loyal audience. They need to trust you before you can start turning them into paying customers.
And, building a targeted audience, whether it’s an email list or social media following, takes time and effort.
If you’re going to build and email list you’ll need an email autoresponder. Getresponse is a great option and the one I use to build my email list. It has many great feature and a FREE TRIAL. Click here to check it out.
You will have to invest either time to grow the audience organically, which can take longer, or, run paid ads, to grow your list faster. But, keep in mind, this can be costly.
However, once you’ve gone past the initial growth phase and have successfully warmed up your audience to trust you, it becomes easier to make predictable income.
You can join me in this course I’m currently taking on how to build a better, more loyal audience on YouTube and via blogging. The name of the course is Project 24.
The course, so far have been detailed with a step-by-step, “hands on”, over-the-shoulder approach.
You will learn how to build an online business that allows you to earn passive full-time income in 24 months. I highly recommend it.
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard – It’s Chess Not Checkers
The problem for most beginner affiliate marketers is that they give up before they reach the critical mass of enough people who trust. This is required before people begin to buy what you’re selling.
From my experience and those of others, it takes anywhere between 2-5 years to grow your affiliate business to a point where you are able to make livable income from it.
So, you may want to prep yourself for the long game. However, be assured that affiliate marketing can definitely allow you to earn passive income for as long as possible when you set it up properly.
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard – Speed Up The Process
As a beginner affiliate marketer, there are certainly things you can do to get past the hard part quicker.
Leverage brand names to build trust faster – Truth be told, odds are, nobody knows you or your brand when you are just starting. But that shouldn’t stop you from getting started.
The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you can leverage big brands people are already used to and trust to grow your affiliate business.
For example, Amazon and other big retailers have affiliate programs you can join and promote their products. People already know these brands and trusts them and are often ready to shop on those platforms.
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard – It’s Super-scalable
You don’t need to actively trade your time to earn income from affiliate marketing unlike when you are offering a service or consulting.
Once you’ve created your digital assets – say a review site, or offer page, all you have to keep doing is send traffic (organic, paid or both) to those online assets.
The more people see your offer or read your reviews the higher the chances of clicking through via your affiliate links to the vendor sites and the more money you can potentially make.
So, simply ramp up your ads or create more content to get more people to land on your site.
Is Affiliate Marketing Hard – Just start promoting
While I don’t recommend this, since it’s more like a crash and burn kind of strategy if you don’t have an audience already.
It’s a much quicker way to start generating income, especially if you already have an audience or willing to use paid ads. Simply join the affiliate program of your choice, grab your affiliate links and start driving traffic to the offer.
With these strategies, you should get off the ground quicker with your affiliate business.
To make it easier for you to find affiliate programs to join, I’ve compiled a comprehensive list of affiliate programs (coming soon) you may want to join. Most of the programs on this list are recurring, which means, you can expect to earn a much more stable and predictable income when your referrals buy.
Wrap up: Is Affiliate Marketing Hard?
For beginners, affiliate marketing can seem hard due to lack of an audience that trusts them. That’s OK as you are just trying to figure out how to build and audience and monetize it.
However, as you get better, both in terms of building an audience and identifying what they like, you will begin to earn more income month to month.
I recommend you start building your audience as soon as you can. Create a YouTube channel or a blog and share your knowledge. As you consistently produce content, you will begin to see a gradual but steady growth in your audience.
As mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing is a long game, since it takes considerable time to build an audience that trusts you.
Check out our review of some top training courses for beginners here
