Many people have anxieties around affiliate marketing (that I’ve experienced myself). Affiliate marketing is performance based marketing in which you promote other people’s products and receive a commission. You receive this commission normally through unique referral links that you would get from the product owner. Anytime someone buys through that URL, you make money.
However, a lot of people worry about being an affiliate marketer because it can sound sleazy, bad for your brand, etc. There are many concerns I wanted to address and follow up with my opinion.
7 Myths About Affiliate Online Marketing – How to Become an Affiliate Marketer
Myth 1: You have to use sleazy promotional techniques to make money
In the past I had always thought affiliate marketing sported a bad reputation. There were a lot of people promoting products and services they had no idea about, did zero research on, and never tried. Many would spam sites with affiliate links hoping to get sales. It’s easy to tell why this would create a negative perception.
However, I’m finding the conversation is changing. People are realizing that in order to become successful in affiliate marketing, you have to be truthful and real with it. People buy from people they trust! And a lot of reputable content creators talk about how affiliate marketing is a great method of monetization as everyone wins. The owner makes money and gets advocates to promote their products for them, you make money, and the buyer gets a useful tool that will benefit their life. Even Pat Flynn loves it, and his website is all about creating online businesses ethically.
Myth 2: It’s a get rich quick scheme
Affiliate marketing is actually NOT about spamming links and promoting random stuff. Some people may think they can get rich quickly through hiring people and spamming links. Although there are those types of marketers, it takes a lot more to actually be SUCCESSFUL with affiliate marketing. You have to be passionate and excited about the products you are promoting. You have to believe that these products will truly change the lives of your customers, and you need to convey value through instructions, reviews, and guides. There are also other “active” strategies that can make you money including webinars, AMAs, and more (in another post I will get into different tactics you can implement). All of this takes time and effort.
The idea is you need to promote it like it’s your own product, and you need to become a trusted source for others to look upon. To become that respected expert figure can take time as you need to build credibility through different means.
Myth 3: It undermines your brand to promote other people’s products
Rather than attempt affiliate marketing, you might have the opinion of “it’s better to promote your own products”. Why steer people away from your site and onto other services, courses, and tools?
If you already believe in a tool and you didn’t create a better product that can be used in place of it, why wouldn’t you promote it? Your readers would benefit a lot knowing what tools you use. I actually look for bloggers and YouTubers I respect and specifically go through their resource list because I know how much it would help me out. For example, two products that have significantly boosted my site traffic are Pinterest Traffic Avalanche (a course) and Tailwind (a tool for scheduling Pinterest posts). And I only heard of these two resources through recommendations.
I also believe that if you’re constantly promoting your own products, it will actually come off salesy and self centered. However, if you’re promoting other people’s awesome creations, you show that you get help from different resources – not just your own.
Myth 4: You’ll make more money selling your own creations
You can actually make a lot more money with affiliate marketing. For example, I actually find that you can earn 40-50% commissions in course sales when you’re doing affiliate marketing for the course owner. Some of these courses cost a few hundred dollars, which will allow you to profit a lot as you can imagine. Pat Flynn even said that since 2008, 85% of his earnings have come from affiliate marketing, and that he truly promotes it as a smart way to go if you’re just starting out and don’t have a product. If you’re actually recommending stuff you love, it’ll show, and you can actually make a lot of money promoting recommended tools to people.
Myth 5: It’s difficult to find good products to promote
There are actually tons of ways to find good products to promote, and I’ll probably make a comprehensive blog post on this later. Firstly here are two affiliate marketing networks that I use: Shareasale and Rakuten Marketing. These affiliate marketing networks allow you to search within their database to find the products you like. Amazon Associates is another one to consider – you can promote Amazon products and earn a commission off purchases.
Another method is to contact the owners of products you love to see if they have their own affiliate programs. You can also browse resource lists of bloggers you love and see which products have affiliate programs and if you recommend those as well.
Myth 6: There’s too many people promoting the same product (too much competition)
Yes, there are a lot of affiliate marketers. But new sites are popping up all the time that are making money through affiliate marketing. Case in point – I’ve created niche sites recently that are getting sales, and my blog here makes a bit of money through affiliate marketing as well!
Myth 7: It‘s too late to get started
This follows up on myth 7. A lot of people might think the best time to become an affiliate marketer has passed. But you can think this way with any platform: “I can’t make a YouTube channel because it’s too late in the game” or “I wish I made an online business back when the internet first came out”. It’s easy to look at the negative side and think you’ve missed the wave.
However, as mentioned in myth 7, I’ve been able to generate income from newly created sites as well as my own site, and I really think it’s never too late to join. And to the previous example about YouTubers, I know of one YouTuber who has almost 300k subscribers, who only started a couple of years ago. There’s still a lot of opportunity out there. You just need to create quality content and become a trusted source for people!
Update:
I’ve put this into YouTube video format! If you like my stuff, please consider following me :).
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is not dead. Treat affiliate products you promote as your own product, and really only choose products that you believe will benefit your followers. Be real with people, give them value, and they generally will show appreciation back.
Comments 3
Great tips! I especially love hearing “it’s not too late”. The internet is still such a new thing even though it feels like it’s evolved quickly.
If somebody tells you that affiliate marketing is simple and it will take little to no effort at all to make a decent amount of cash online then they probably have something that they want to SELL TO YOU THEMSELVES (like a ‘get rich quick scheme’ for example, that we know just doesn’t exist!) If affiliate marketing was that simple then everybody would be making a decent income online.
On the other side of the coin, it’s not brain surgery either. If you have been trying but still haven’t generated income online then you are probably doing something wrong.
What Sharon writes about here is all correct.
Many thanks for the great article.
Author
Yes exactly! I think affiliate marketing takes more work than people think, yet it’s not brain surgery like you said. Thanks for reading and commenting!