So you’re here because you’ve seen the flashy ads and the hyped-up videos telling you how much money you can make with affiliate marketing and how easy it all is…
You end up watching some of their videos, you believe them and then you scroll down to the description and you see a $5,000 course you need to buy to learn how to do this.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with coaching and charging people for knowledge you’re sharing with them that can help cut their learning curve and make them more money…
But there’s this lingering doubt in the back of your mind and you’re asking:
Is affiliate marketing the real deal or just an elaborate scheme designed to part you from your hard-earned cash?
I get it, it’s super confusing. Like trying to find your way out of a maze without a map.
And affiliate marketing has really gotten a bad rep…
Because there are a ton of junk get-rich-quick scams out there promising some kind of “hidden code” or “secret back door” to instant riches that people end up falling for and wasting a lot of money on.
So I’m going to give you my honest opinion that’ll hopefully help you separate fact from fiction.
And if you’ve been following me and you’re thinking to yourself:
Simon, you post about affiliate marketing non-stop on your blog and YouTube channel – you’re just like every guru out there.
Sure, I love to talk about affiliate marketing, but I’ve been in the space for over a decade and I’ve built multiple affiliate sites in different niches and earned millions in affiliate commissions.
What I’m trying to say is I have a lot of experience and I know what I’m talking about. And I’ve seen it all – the good, the bad and the downright ugly.
And no, I’m not here to push you into a course. I just want to share my personal experience with you before you even think about getting started.
Does Affiliate Marketing Really Work?
The short answer is yes.
Then why do you look at the success and failure rate of people who start affiliate marketing businesses and it says that 95% of them fail?
The moral of the story, does it work?
Yes.
Does it work for everyone?
No.
Is affiliate marketing easy?
Yes and no.
Let me explain…
Affiliate marketing is super simple – you recommend other people’s products online and earn commissions on each sale.
And if you want to know more about what affiliate marketing is and how it works in detail, then make sure you watch this video:
And the cool thing is you don’t have to invest that much upfront and there’s minimal running costs too so you can make like 90% profit margins, which makes it really easy to start and the barrier to entry very very low which is why a lot of people try it.
So in theory, it’s easier to start than other online businesses, but it’s actually harder to execute than a lot of other businesses and it’s more about investing your time.
Who DOESN’T Affiliate Marketing Work For?
I’ve worked with a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs in this space now for over 10 years and I see a lot of people fail and I see a lot of people succeed.
So what actually separates the winners from the losers?
Well honestly, I think the biggest thing is…
1. Giving Up
So everyone online makes affiliate marketing the easiest thing ever to do.
“You get everything set up in 4 steps then you get the keys to the Lambo next week.”
If it was that easy, every single person on the planet would be doing it.
All good things worth doing take time and effort to get good at. It’s not like you can just stumble upon something one day and then you’re rich. That’s just not how the world works, unfortunately.
I see a lot of people get attracted to the idea of affiliate marketing and living the laptop lifestyle with the freedom and flexibility that comes with it, so they try it out and quickly realise it actually takes a lot more time and effort than they think and give up within a week.
It took me 2 weeks to make my first sale and 12 months to replace my full-time income.
There aren’t many people out there who would keep putting the work into something they don’t know for sure will get results.
But that’s one thing that separates the winners from the losers:
Winners don’t give up.
I know someone who worked on his affiliate marketing business for 6 months without making a single penny.
It looked like he was “wasting a lot of time” building out his website, researching keywords, finding winning products and creating content…
But things started to pick up at the 6-month mark and now he’s making at least $40,000 each and every month.
Imagine if he gave up 5 months in?!
2. Rushing The Process
The other thing I see a lot is people who try to rush the process.
So many people get hyped up from short-form videos or YouTube videos and they’re like “I’m gonna start affiliate marketing”.
They dive in head-first and create a site in a random niche topic they have zero interest in or knowledge about because they think that’s where all the money is.
Then they fill out their website with low-quality copy-and-paste content from somewhere like ChatGPT, spam it with a ton of affiliate links and then wonder why they’re not getting any traffic or sales.
So they don’t make any money and quit altogether and say:
“I tried affiliate marketing and it doesn’t work.”
Obviously, if you do it that way you won’t succeed in anything, will you?
If you put an hour and a half of work into something it’s never going to work. You can’t shortcut the process.
That’s like trying to learn piano and giving up after 3 lessons because you can’t play Beethoven yet.
Or quitting the gym because you went twice and you don’t look any different in the mirror.
If you take your time to actually learn the skills that are going to move the needle for you in affiliate marketing then you have a way better chance of succeeding rather than just rushing every single step of the process hoping to strike it rich overnight.
3. Focusing On The Wrong Things
I see a lot of people failing because they focus on the wrong things.
They are so fixated on either finding these high-ticket affiliate products or magical affiliate programs that are going to make them a millionaire overnight.
Then they think all they have to do is spam social media with affiliate links, everyone’s going to be clicking and buying and they’re gonna be laughing all the way to the bank.
It’s never going to work like that…
There’s so much more that goes into building a real affiliate marketing business and making commissions consistently:
There’s understanding search intent, product relevancy, giving effective calls to action and so on…
Finding that magical winning affiliate product doesn’t automatically mean you’re suddenly an internet millionaire. I’m sorry to break it to you.
Who DOES Affiliate Marketing Work For?
Now let’s talk about the traits of the people I see who actually succeed in affiliate marketing.
1. Mastering Skillsets
They focus on mastering the skills required to run a successful affiliate marketing business, like:
- Website design
- SEO and ranking
- Traffic and lead generation
- Strategic content creation
- Consumer psychology
- Marketing and sales etc.
There’s are a lot of moving parts when you’re building out your affiliate marketing business that not a lot of people talk about. They make it seem super easy, but you have to do everything yourself because you’re a one-man band.
It might sound overwhelming but the skills you actually learn while you’re building your own online business are considered high-income skills.
So you can take these skills and move them into anything else
If you decide down the line that you don’t want to do affiliate marketing anymore, or if it didn’t work out for you the way you wanted it to for any reason.
Let’s say, for example, you get really good at web design.
Great! You’ve learned that skill from starting your affiliate marketing business.
Now you can say, “Hey, look at all these websites I’ve built, can I do this for you? I’ll build a website for you to the same quality for $3,000.”
Or, once you’ve mastered getting top rankings in Google, you can contact local businesses in your area and offer them your SEO services to help them get more customers through the door.
That’s when you can start an agency, build up a list of clients and go on to do all those things you would have never been able to do if you never learned these skills.
I truly believe that if you learn even just 1-3 of the high-income skills affiliate marketing teaches you, you will never have to work a 9-to-5 again.
You might not be an affiliate forever; you might be a freelancer or start an agency.
There are so many different options and directions that you can take these high-income skills to make a high income without having to clock in at a regular 9-to-5.
2. Addicted To The Hustle
I see a lot of super successful affiliates treat affiliate marketing like a video game. In a way, they’re almost addicted to it.
The guy I was talking about earlier on, who didn’t make a single sale for 6 months before his business took off, treated it like an addictive video game.
He wanted to get better and better, move on to the next level, learn a new skill and really push himself to understand what makes a great content strategy or what makes up a great sales funnel.
And if you think about it, it is kind of like a game.
So you’re putting all these puzzle pieces and skills together until they’re all perfect, and you max level. Now you’re winning the game of not having a 9-to-5 and making $10k a month.
Now the next level is scaling up and figuring out how you get to say, $20k a month or whatever your goals may be.
It’s a pretty cool way to look at business and life in general I think.
But if that’s not really the way you like to look at things, or if you like the security of knowing you’re going to get your paycheck every 2 weeks at your job, then this probably isn’t the business for you.
Because you are going to experience rollercoaster income in the beginning and you don’t know how many sales you’ll get or exactly how much money you’re going to make next month.
You just don’t know. There’s so much uncertainty.
But if you can handle that, then you are probably built for some form of entrepreneurship.
Which kind of brings me to my next point…
3. Always Improving
The people I see succeed are always improving, learning and getting better.
They don’t just stop after they’ve built an affiliate website to $30,000 a month and say “OK, that’s it, I’m done. Time to go to the Bahamas and retire.”
Because your business is never “done”. There’s always new directions and angles you can take and new income streams you can build.
And there are times when something will go wrong, and you want to be prepared for it.
They’re looking at it in a different way. They’re saying:
“Okay, I’m making this much money a day. How can I actually improve it by 10%? How can I improve it by 20%?
Let’s try finding a higher-paying affiliate program, let’s go after more buyer keywords, let’s publish 20 more posts on the site or videos to the channel.”
This isn’t like your typical 9 to 5 – there is a direct correlation between the amount of effort you put into your business and the amount of money you make.
And that’s why entrepreneurship in general was really attractive to me because I was working this call centre job where no matter how much effort I put in or how hard I worked, I still got the same paycheck at the end of every month.
So I was always looking for a way out and I like the fact that the amount of time and effort I put into my business is going to reflect the amount I get out income-wise.
And that kinda ties into the next point…
4. Creating Multiple Income Streams
Those who go on to make the most money are those who are always creating multiple income streams.
People like to say, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” and that goes for affiliate marketing too.
Because things can and do go wrong. I had to learn this the hard way.
Long story short:
I was earning a reliable $3000 a month from a website I hadn’t touched in about 3 or 4 years. Everything was ticking along nicely, until one day out of the blue, the affiliate program I promoted on that site suddenly shut down and my income dropped to almost zero overnight.
Thankfully I had a portfolio of sites by then so it wasn’t such a big deal but, whether it’s a Google core update, maybe the main affiliate program you were promoting gets shut down, maybe a competitor outranks you, whatever it is, you always want to diversify your income.
That could mean you promote multiple products on one website.
I think it’s good to focus on one website built around one niche in the beginning and build it up to say 100,000 pageviews or $10k a month income first.
Then you can build out a site in a new and different niche and repeat the process so you end up with multiple sites in multiple niches generating money from multiple income sources.
Does Affiliate Marketing Work: Bottom Line
That’s my honest opinion of whether affiliate marketing works or not.
I hope I gave you a little bit better understanding of how hard it actually is but also how easy it can be at the same time if you commit to it.
I would say don’t start affiliate marketing if you can’t commit your time, get bored easily or don’t really care about running your own business.
You should be motivated by working for yourself, have an actual interest in the niche you’re in and look at it kind of like a video game because the more time and effort you put in, the more you’ll get out and it’s up to you how far you want to take it.
You have to be up for a challenge and be able to take on risks a little bit if you want to go full-time.
You just don’t know when something’s going to shut down or go wrong, and you might lose income for a week or two or a month. You have to be okay with those ups and downs.
And if you’re like “You know what? I believe I have what it takes to make $10k a month online and beyond” then follow this beginner’s step-by-step guide: