Is Affiliate Marketing Dead- My Honest Opinion

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Affiliate marketing is among the best ways to monetize your website.

Right now, millions of dollars are being earned by publishers. Some are making $100 per month while others are making $80,000 per month.

The difference?

A lot of content?

Nopes.

A lot of good content targets the right keywords.

Though affiliate marketing has existed for a very long time, the internet has changed a lot.

Related:

Is affiliate marketing dead?

The most simple answer is that it is not dead, but had changed drastically over the years.

The way people used to make money with affiliate marketing had changed. Right now, just having a basic account with an affiliate program doesn’t even guarantee you will earn any money at all.

The solution?

There are a few techniques that you will need to learn and apply. You must be willing to adapt to new trends and ideas so that you can reap the benefits of affiliate marketing.

That being said, let’s see some statistics to understand how affiliate marketing will perform in the future.

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Statistics for affiliate marketing

A few years back it was easier to make money with affiliate marketing. Now, since there is more competition, it has made many people drop the whole idea of affiliate marketing.

So, how come there are people who are making $80,000 per month, while others are barely making any money.

Well, the simple reason is: People believe that if there is more competition, they won’t be able to make any money.

My dear friend, though it might sound counterintuitive, more competition is always better. If there is more competition, it means that a lot of money is being made.

According to Statista, here is the general trend for affiliate marketing:

As you can see, by 2022 spending on affiliate marketing will be 8.2 billion in the US only.

If more money is being spent, it means you can make more money.

This is the most simple truth of making money online.

Since the trend is increasing, it means that the market is expanding.

This is why bloggers who focus more on affiliate marketing are generating a massive amount of money.

Is affiliate marketing worth giving a try?

With so much money being spent on affiliate marketing, now is the right time.

Many people think that making money with Google Adsense is easier than affiliate marketing.

On the surface, it sounds easier. But if you go deep into the mechanics of affiliate marketing, you will see that more money can be generated from your affiliate links than your usual Adsense Ads.

So, what should you do?

Well, let’s see a survey about revenue ranking for publishers. Shall we?

Image source: Viglink

As you can clearly see, Google Adsense and affiliate marketing are the most common ways of monetization for publishers.

So, the best thing you can do is to use a combination of Google Adsense and Affiliate marketing.

Now, you can also use other ad networks to increase your earnings significantly.

The most vital thing is to get the MOST out of your traffic. Though getting more traffic is the goal for many, getting more qualified traffic is far more important.

1 single person with a buying intent can be worth thousands who are just looking for free information.

With 1,000 impressions, you can get earn around $3-$10 with Google Adsense. But one single sale from the right Affiliate platform can help you earn $100.

This is crucial for bloggers who get little traffic.

No wonder why you can see bloggers who are generating only 20,000 monthly pageviews earning a full-time income.

How much time does it take to make money from affiliate marketing?

This is really a tricky question. If you search online or ask successful bloggers, you will get all kinds of answers.

Why is that so?

The simple reason is that everyone’s journey is different.

One thing is really important here:

The way other people started their blog or earned money is different. If you try to do everything that they said, you are not guaranteed to earn a full-time income.

That’s why you should always do a lot of trials and find out what works best for YOU.

So, how long can it take for a new blogger to earn at least $10,000 per month with affiliate marketing?

Well, it can take anywhere between 10-24 months depending on the amount of time INVESTED.

Someone who dedicated 20 hours per week on his blog will get results must faster than someone who only invested 10 hours.

That being said, let’s see how you can increase your chance of generating more money with your affiliate links.

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Best Practices for affiliate marketing

People who started affiliate marketing earlier have a definite advantage as they have everything set up.

But it doesn’t mean you should drop the idea of affiliate marketing or that it’s already too late to start.

It’s never too late to start a blog and make a full-time income.

So here are some best affiliate marketing practices that will be really useful in 2021 and beyond.

1.Focus on a single niche

If you try to promote too many products you may end up earning very little.

The trick is to find a few products(1-5) which are related to a SINGLE niche and promote the hell out of it.

For instance, if your blog is about BLOGGING, the only one thing you can focus on is:

Helping people to start their blog by suggesting a SINGLE hosting company.

Here the hosting company becomes the only product that you will promote. Your whole foundation or call to action should be focused on helping people to start their blog.

Now, it doesn’t mean you should ONLY focus on 1 single product. Though this will be your main product, there are other related products that you can promote.

For instance, a website that is focused on blogging will produce these types of products:

Themes and plugins
Keyword tool
Email Marketing company
Writing tool etc…

So what yo should do, if you want to promote more than 1 product?

Then you should:

2.Choose an affiliate program

If you have more than 1 product that you will be promoting, then it will be wiser to join an affiliate program.

Having 5-10 different accounts with different companies is not a smart way to do affiliate marketing.

You will end up losing so much time, that it would have been better you didn’t do affiliate marketing in the first place.

Actually for you to know what’s working and what isn’t you should be tracking everything by measuring clicks, conversions, and sales of EACH product.

This is where using an affiliate network such as ShareASale will come in handy.

It will give you all the data you need to be able to increase your earnings.

3.Focus on value

Providing valuable content to your audience is really crucial. Actually, the better you can explain the importance of a particular product to your audience, the better chance you have to generate a sale.

People who visit your blog are searching for valuable information which will solve their problems. So, if you can help them in a precise and SIMPLE way, they will listen to you.

Usually, someone needs to read your blog at least a few times before they start to trust you.

If they trust you, they will surely buy products or services that you recommend.

One thing I have learned during the past few years

“The more value you can put out in the world correlates with how much money you are making”.

This is why I try my best to create content that will help people in their bogging journey. As you can see, I am not a good writer at all. But I try to provide as much value as I can for my readers.

Now that you have created valuable content for your audience, the final step is to get eyeballs to those awesome content.

4.Be aggressive with your promotions

If you wait for people to come and read your content, you will keep on waiting for a very long time.

Many people think that they will create a few blog posts and out of nowhere, there will be a tsunami of traffic.

Well, even I used to think like that.

But it never happens.

No one came to visit my little blog, in which I invested so much time and effort. And waiting for organic traffic takes forever.

Though organic traffic from Google brings the best ROI(Return on Investment), it will take at least 10-18 months before you start to get significant traffic from Google.

The solution?

Use Pinterest.

Why Pinterest?

Because it works more like a search engine. For instance, 1 single pin can bring traffic to your blog for at least 6-12 months.

I am sure you will be really amazed by its potential.

Final thoughts: Is affiliate marketing dead?

As you can see, Affiliate marketing is not dead. It’s just evolving.

And the awesome thing is: If you get started right now, you will have a better chance of earning a full-time income in 1-2 years.

I am sure you must be thinking that affiliate marketing is really complicated.

Trust me, it’s easier than you think.

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See you soon!