Cashing In on Affiliate Marketing

Exploring the Upsides and Downsides

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Earn $800 in one week.

How did I earn $150 in one hour?

Earn $5000 by just using your mobile …

Recommend and earn quickly …

These kinds of titles can be seen everywhere in almost all the social media platforms these days. I hope that you guys also must have gone through posts, articles, videos, reels or shorts titled as these at least once in a day. These are the trending captions in the recent days using which the influencers are actually earning a lot. They also trigger the eagerness of the public to earn more money without much hardworking effort. Among the methods that are suggested in these posts or videos, the most popular trick that is suggested in almost all these contents is the “Affiliate Marketing”. We can see quite a lot of posts or articles that show Affiliate Marketing as a savior to earn money quickly in Medium platform as well.

After seeing so many posts with these titles, I have a question,

Can we actually earn quite a lot of money with Affiliate marketing or Ghost marketing as all these people say?

Have you ever thought whether this is true or not?

Let us try to find the answers for these questions in this post.

First of all, let us try to understand what affiliate marketing is. Then let us see what are the upsides and downsides of this concept and how we can earn money with affiliate marketing as a side hustle without getting into any troubles.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

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Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy in which businesses or product owners reward individuals or other businesses (affiliates) for driving traffic to their websites or generating sales and leads through the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

It is a very common strategy to earn income or commissions by recommending other organizations’ or people’s products or services. You will be paid in accordance with the traffic you generated to the third party website. With the use of this marketing strategy both parties involved will gain benefits.

More the traffic, the more the payment will be.

When we see this strategy on the surface, it might seem simple. Yes it is an easy to start method but of course there are a lot of things that we should consider before getting started with affiliate marketing. Choosing a better product and better method of promotion will surely help you to earn a decent amount of money in this affiliate marketing approach. And to start with this marketing strategy you must have a proper place such as a website, blog, podcast or social media where you can reach your audience and recommend products.

Now let us see how this affiliate marketing typically works:

Key players in this strategy are:

• Affiliate company/ Product owner — The individual or company that wants to sell the products or services or to increase their sales.
• Affiliate/ Affiliate marketer (you and your site) — The individual or company that wants to generate income by recommending products or services of the Affiliate company or Product owners.
• Customer — Audience of your site who will be visiting the websites of the affiliate companies or making purchases with them. Your audience whom you have converted as the buyers of the product owners or affiliate companies with which you partnered.

The affiliates search and find a proper company or brand which offers affiliate programs or partner programs and then join with that program. Then they choose the products or services that they want to recommend and create unique affiliate links for themselves.

As I mentioned above in this article, you should have a platform or place such as a website where you will be posting the affiliate links for the products or services that you recommend for your audience. Then your audience will click the link that you provide and enter into the affiliate company’s site to check the recommended product or service.

Once the audience make a purchase at that website by entering through your affiliate link, it will be tracked and saved under your affiliate account. At the end of the month (or any period as specified by the affiliate company), you, the affiliate will be paid with the total commission (or a predefined reward) earned by increasing the sales of the company. For example, if five of your audience have made a purchase at the affiliate company’s site by entering through your affiliate link, then you will get the commission for all those five purchases.

These commissions can be a percentage of the sales amount or a predetermined amount per each sale. It varies depending on the affiliate program that you join.

This is how affiliate marketing works simply.

Now let us dive a little deeper into the concept and see why everyone is talking about it and why people are continuously giving an overhype for this strategy recently. Also let us see what kind of drawbacks or problems are there in this marketing strategy.

Upsides and Downsides of Affiliate Marketing

Reasons for why people prefer and are attracted to this affiliate marketing strategy in a huge amount are as follows:

• Low barriers to entry: Affiliate marketing is easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection and a platform for promotion. There is no need to have an investment or prior experience or any kind of specialized skills to participate in this affiliate marketing when you have a blog, social media presence, or website. Also there are a lot of educational resources available these days to train you with affiliate marketing. So even if you are someone who is completely new to this marketing strategy, there is nothing to worry, a wide range of support is available.
• Way to make passive income: This is one of the biggest reasons for why everyone is fantasizing this strategy. Affiliate marketing paves the potential to earn passive income. As everyone who does affiliate marketing says, you can earn while you are sleeping too. Once you set up and share affiliate links to promote the products or services, you can continue to earn commissions on sales and leads generated by your content, even while you’re sleeping or doing some other activities.
• Flexibility: Affiliate marketing provides flexibility to work from anywhere in the world and also you, the affiliate can choose the working hours considering your work-life balance. So even if you are doing a 9 to 5 job or if you are a mom struggling to do works in the day time, you can start doing this affiliate marketing by adjusting your work time to night or whatever the time that is suitable for you. One more thing to add on here is you have the flexibility to choose as many products as you wish to promote. You can choose products from different niches too depending on the platforms where you share your content.
• Scalability: It is relatively easy to scale affiliate marketing. As you gain experience and build your online presence, you can increase the number of affiliate programs you participate in, which would potentially increase your additional income. Moreover the present digital marketing tools and analytics platforms make it easier for affiliates to track and analyze their marketing efforts which allows continuous optimization and improved performance as well.
• Comparatively less work: Unlike running a traditional business, affiliate marketers have comparatively less work. Affiliates do not need to create their own products or services and also affiliates do not have the need to provide customer support. They can focus solely on marketing and recommending the products or services to the customers.

All the above mentioned factors make this affiliate marketing more popular among the people and other than these there are many benefits that the affiliate companies or the product owners can also gain through this marketing strategy such as:

• Cost effectiveness: Product owners or the companies need to only pay for actual results (sales or leads). They don’t need to invest upfront advertising costs since the promotions will be done by the affiliates.
• Potential for high ROI: With the recruitment of numerous affiliate marketers, the sellers can actually increase their reach and sales tremendously. Even if some affiliates do not produce any sales, your company or brand name will get a higher reach.
• Reduced risks: Since affiliates take on the marketing costs and risks, product owners or the companies can focus clearly on product development and customer service.

Right, so far things are good. Now we should think about the downsides of this affiliate marketing too. Knowing the negative side of affiliate marketing is important if you want to get into this strategy. Whatever the process that you are going to try, please make sure that you completely understand both its pros and cons before starting on with the process.

The downsides or challenges of affiliate marketing are:

• Income uncertainty: Affiliate marketing income can be unpredictable, especially for beginners. Quality of your content, the competitiveness of your niche, product that you recommend, changes in the affiliate program’s terms and conditions and the trust of the audience on you are the key factors that impact your success in this marketing. If you are a beginner do not think that you will get hundreds and hundreds of dollars in just one day. Things might take time and you need to be patient to build a substantial income stream. Also incomes might vary from month to month. It won’t be same in all the months.
• High competition: In the positive side of affiliate marketing, we discussed that it has low barriers to entry. When something is easy to start, then many people will try to do that. So the competition will be really high. In some cases, the same audience will be shown up with the recommendation of the same product or service by different affiliates. The affiliate should find a unique way to stand out in this heavy competition.
• Dependence on affiliate programs: Your income relies on the affiliate programs you’re a part of. When an affiliate program changes its terms and conditions, discontinues a product, or shuts down, it can impact your earnings. Partnering with several affiliate programs might help you to mitigate this risk.
• Product quality and reputation: Do not recommend products that are not useful to the people or the products that are of low quality just to fill your wallet with some extra money. The people to whom you are recommending these products are your audience, someone who trusted you and your site, someone who admired your content and then became a fan of you. So when you recommend some low quality products to them, then their trust in you will be broken. Then you are not only going to lose your extra money but also you are going to lose your valuable audience. And your reputation will automatically be damaged.
• Compliance with regulations: Affiliate marketers must comply with various regulations and disclosure requirements, especially regarding affiliate disclosures and data protection laws (may be specific to certain countries). If you fail to comply with these regulations you will end up in facing legal consequences.

How to do affiliate marketing without getting into any traps?

I can see most of the influencers or online personalities these days speak about this affiliate marketing and in some cases they give an overly positive or glamorous portrayal of affiliate marketing, which actually creates unrealistic expectations among those who are considering it as a potential income source or those who are searching for a new way to earn some extra money.

It’s important for individuals interested in affiliate marketing to approach this strategy with a realistic understanding. It is true that affiliate marketing can be a legitimate and profitable endeavor, but it’s not a guaranteed path to quick wealth, and whatever the path you choose to earn money often requires hard work, dedication, and a solid strategy to achieve success. Do not believe the fake announcements of getting million dollars over the night.

Success requires a considerable amount of time and effort to be invested.

To succeed in affiliate marketing without getting trapped into these overhyped promises, you should consider the following points:

• Do your own research: Do not completely rely on whatever these online celebrities are saying. Note down the platforms they suggest or the ways they suggest, do a research on them by yourself carefully, understand the ups and downs and then decide whether to proceed with it or not.
• Set realistic expectations: Understand that affiliate marketing can take time to generate a significant income. Be prepared to face the potential setbacks and a learning curve. Expect less, especially at the beginning stage.
• Educate yourself: Make sure you learn about affiliate marketing more and more. Consider joining the reputable affiliate marketing courses or training programs that provide valuable insights and guidance to improve your marketing skills.

To succeed in affiliate marketing by overcoming the challenges, individuals and businesses should focus on providing value to their audience, building trust, and continuously improving their marketing skills. It’s also wise to diversify income sources and not rely solely on affiliate marketing. Even in affiliate marketing, try to diversify the programs with which you are going to work. It is also crucial to stay informed about industry trends and changes in regulations to maintain a successful affiliate marketing business.

Affiliate marketing can be a legitimate and rewarding way to earn income, but it’s merely important to approach it with a balanced perspective and a willingness to put in the adequate amount of time and effort to make it sustainable and long lasting.

I hope that I covered almost all the important things that a beginner should know about the affiliate marketing and I hope that this post will be beneficial to many people who are confused in deciding whether to choose affiliate marketing as their side hustle or not.

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