Affiliate Marketing Myths: Build a Profitable Business. marketing has proven itself to be a legitimate way to make money online for both merchants and affiliates, with many reputable brands and companies using these types of life income ideas to push their products and brands, and a large merchant affiliate network driving sales through digital marketing and increasing brand awareness for their clients.
Online merchants pay only for performance, so they get a decent ROI and are not at risk financially. Affiliates can monetise their online presence through several digital marketing channels such as blogging, social media, and email, a common side hustle today.
So, is affiliate marketing legit? In our blog we share some myths and facts about affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing: Defined
Affiliate marketing refers to a form of performance-based marketing where one individual or company (the affiliate) refers visitors or customers to the product of another company (the merchant), and in return, gets a commission for directing a visitor or customer to the merchant’s products or services.
In order to facilitate tracking, the affiliate generally makes use of a unique tracking URL with built-in referral information. Affiliate marketing’s primary strength comes from the ‘pay for performance’ model, in which payment is based exclusively on qualifying actions (sales, organic traffic, or otherwise defined actions worked out by the affiliate program) rather than impressions or site visits.
Key Elements of Affiliate Marketing:
- Affiliates: Sell third-party products or services, earning a commission on every sale. Your marketing channels can include blog posts, social media, or every email you send.
- Publishers: The purchase flows from them; their job is to provide you with products and services for sale and the means to promote them through affiliate links.
- Tracking Links: Unique uniform resource locators (URLs) issued by the merchants to affiliates that enable the merchants to track sales and actions generated from each individual affiliate.
- Commission Structure: Affiliates get paid when they make a sale (Pay-per-Sale), a click on an advert (Pay-per-Click) or they drive a lead for the advertiser (Pay-per-Lead).
Is Affiliate Marketing Legit?
So, is affiliate marketing legit? Yes, affiliate marketing is a legitimate, time-honored digital marketing strategy. It has worked for hundreds of thousands of legitimate companies, including some of the largest brands in the world (think Amazon and eBay).
The affiliate model is performance-based. This means that affiliates earn money only when they deliver, meaning merchants aren’t out of pocket unless there is a direct sale or some other sort of action as a result of their customers visiting the affiliate’s website.
5 Common Myths About Affiliate Marketing
This is not helped by the fact that affiliate marketing has many myths about it which, whilst well known, act like conducive environments for misinformation. Here’s a handful.
1. Affiliate Marketing is Easy Money
While every transparent affiliate marketer will tell you that it’s a myth that they’re rolling in easy money, research shows that many people still buy into this oeuvre of the lazy hustler. They think it will be simple to rally up $50,000 a month without putting in much work, and that affiliate products can be made to flow with just a few simple clicks of the fingers.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Affiliate marketing is never ‘easy’ money, and it certainly doesn’t happen without putting in serious effort. Behind each sale is a considerable amount of product research, content-writing and audience-building, and the payoff is never guaranteed.
It can be a great experience, but you should also have sensible expectations of the process and start the work.
2. You Need a Large Audience
It’s also a myth that you need a huge audience. While having a larger audience may indeed increase sales, there are certainly affiliate bloggers with smaller, more targeted but highly engaged audiences who may be just as, or even more, successful. Remember: quality of engagement trumps quantity.
A smaller, more targeted group of people who trust you will jump to buy your recommendation. Niche markets, where you can develop a personal connection with your readers/viewers/followers could be a path to success — even affiliates with small audiences can achieve big things.
3. It’s a Get-Rich Quick Scheme
Based on this myth, it’s not difficult to see why people believe that making money with affiliate marketing is easy. Why wouldn’t they think it is? After all, you’re seeing this macho self-made stuff and think: ‘Wow, he’s buying and selling online. I can do that in my spare time and make some money. Affiliate marketing sounds great.’
But if you can build up a profitable affiliate business, it’s going to take you some time. You are not going to be an overnight super-millionaire. There’s some serious work required to make it work.
You’ve got to participate in affiliate marketing training. You’ve got to create some great content, and you’ve got to convince people to get out of their bed and pay attention to you.
Almost all affiliates will grow their business slowly, and earning big bucks can take months or years of serious grind. Expectations and stories about affiliate marketing tend to be inflated. This makes having a bit of reality check essential.
Approach affiliate marketing with a long-term mentality, not as a get-rich-quick strategy.
4. You Need Your Own Products
The lie is that you have to make your own product; the truth is that you promote other people’s products and earn their commissions as a reward. You never have to carry inventory or worry about customer service. As long as you can lure a reader or a visitor from your website to click on an affiliate link and buy from the seller, you make your commission.
The affiliate can both create his own brand, and sell products across all of these different niches, choosing topics upon which he wants to have control and authority, but without the time (or technical know-how) to create the products themselves. Affiliate marketing is a very accessible form of marketing in this regard.
5. All Affiliate Programs are the Same
Anyone who points to an affiliate programme as supporting evidence of this myth is, in essence, pointing to one that stands alone. There are countless variants – with different commission structures, different payout periods and methods, different levels of support, and different terms of service. Some programmes more highly reward affiliates, whether in terms of higher commissions or recurring revenue.
Others cut higher commission rates, but come with more help on the marketing side of things.
5 Facts About Affiliate Marketing
Several key affiliate marketing facts you should do your homework on. Here are some of the most significant.
1. Performance-Based Earnings
The key aspect of affiliate marketing through performance-based earnings is that affiliates are paid only for completing a given action: a sale, a lead or a click, and thus merchants are paid only for actual sales, generating actual leads, or for click-throughs. The merchant pays only for the actual result. This is important in aligning the interests of a merchant and an affiliate, since the commission is based on an actual sale.
If an affiliate doesn’t sell, nothing is owed. This allows a company minimal risk for financial expenditure, and it encourages the affiliate to actively promote.
In addition, the pay-for-performance system pushes the affiliates to not only enhance their organic traffic from SEO, but also its quality, making affiliate marketing more targeted and effective. In my opinion, performance-based earnings represent a good option both for advertisers and for affiliates.
2. Variety of Platforms
Affiliates can promote products on a wide variety of platforms and with a wide variety of business opportunities, to make affiliate marketing work best for them and their audience. Platforms can include blogs, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, email newsletters, YouTube, and podcasts.
Each of these different platforms offers different business opportunities for engagement and opportunity to create content and offers to be an affiliate. Because affiliates have different strengths, they can take full advantage of the diversity and engage different demographics who are online in different places. The variety of places possible to perform affiliate marketing makes such business flexibility easier, more enjoyable and more successful for everyone involved.
3. Low Start-Up Costs
Minimal start-up costs, one of the main benefits of affiliate marketing is the minimal start-up costs required. Whether due to lack of capital or limited work history, many prospective entrepreneurs are unable to pursue business avenues with higher costs, such as inventory, storefronts, or product development. With affiliate marketing, you do not have to buy and sell any products. Essentially, you get paid for advertising other people’s products or services.
The primary start-up costs of an affiliate business are typically a website (or blog) and the money you invest in marketing tools (or advertising). Because the financial commitment was so low, this allows more people in, where they can test different niches, get up-and-running online, without massive amounts of capital behind them. All in all, the low start-up costs to affiliate marketing make it an appealing prospect for earning a living.
5. Multiple Commission Structures
There exist several commission structures in affiliate marketing that afford affiliates different avenues to earn income depending on the nature of their promotional activities. Among the different models, pay-per-sale (PPS) – where sales generate revenue for affiliates; pay-per-click (PPC) – where revenue is generated through affiliate commissions whenever visitors click on an affiliate link, independent of whether or not the resulting sale is successfully completed; and pay-per-lead (PPL) – where affiliates earn compensation per lead (sign-ups and inquiries, for example) are the most common.
This flexibility lets the affiliates choose between commission structures according to which structure best fits their marketing strategy and audience. Similarly, such a diversity of commission structures will also invite and encourage more affiliates with varying talent in marketing who can earn more money.
Is Affiliate Marketing Legit?: FAQ
1. Is it worth it becoming an affiliate marketer?
If you enjoy educating, informing, and entertaining individuals, affiliate marketing can become an enjoyable experience for content creators.
2. Is there a downside to affiliate marketing?
While affiliate marketing can create an excellent learning experience and open new opportunities, if a partnership ends, it can end your business.
3. Is affiliate marketing a pyramid?
Affiliate marketing is a real business model and not a pyramid scheme.
4. Is affiliate marketing risky or not?
One of the highest risks of affiliate marketing is the potential for fraud such as cookie stuffing and creating false leads.
5. Can you make $10,000 a month from affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing takes work, but with consistency and continuing to learn, you can make $10,000 a month with a plan.