Hands down, affiliate marketing is the MOST lucrative to make passive income online. Most people often ask us “Is affiliate marketing worth it?”. The simple answer is YES! In fact, we’re generating full-time income from affiliate marketing. We already made a ton of money from various affiliate programs such as Bluehost, Semrush affiliate program, Jasper, etc. Here’s one of the earning reports. So yes, affiliate marketing works like a charm. If you’re wondering whether affiliate marketing is for you or not, this post is for you where you’ll discover;
The major advantages of affiliate marketing The downsides of affiliate marketing How to start your own affiliate marketing site for just $35 and much more
Are you ready to find out the affiliate marketing benefits? Let’s jump into the details.
Benefits of Affiliate Marketing: 8 Advantages of Affiliate Marketing
1. Affiliate marketing is cost-effective
Selling affiliate products is one of the most cost-effective ways to monetize a website and earn passive income. It literally costs zero dollars to join an affiliate program, promote it and make money. At most, you need a website to educate your audience but it costs just around $35 a year with Bluehost. Also, millions of people are spending money to purchase products from various categories. According to Statista, in the US alone, affiliate marketing spending is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2022, compared to $5.4 billion in 2017. The more people spend on purchasing products, the better scope you’ll have as an affiliate to promote great products and generate income. If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to make some extra money, affiliate marketing is definitely worth considering. It’s easy to get started, and there’s HUGE potential to earn good money.
2. The sky’s the limit to earnings
One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that there’s no limit on how much you can earn. In case you’re curious, here’s a general breakdown of how different levels of affiliates earn in a month.
Entry-level affiliates make anywhere between $500 thousand to $1500 a month Full-time affiliates make anywhere between $2000 to $20,000 a month (An example is Anil Agarwal from BloggersPassion who generates over $16K/mo) Expert affiliate marketers earn between $30K to $100K and more in a month (Examples include Pat Flynn, Adam Enfroy, etc)
What’s the bottom line? Your affiliate earnings MOSTLY depend on your niche, its profitability, the volume of traffic from Google, and how smartly you promote your products. Make sure you’re promoting products that are in demand and that offer high commissions.
3. Earn recurring commissions
The best part about affiliate marketing is that there are a couple of affiliate programs that offer recurring commissions. With recurring commissions, you earn a commission every time a customer makes a purchase, instead of just earning a one-time commission on their first purchase. For example, Jasper AI (AI writing tool) offers a 30% recurring commission for life. That means if someone purchases Jasper through your affiliate link and whenever he pays for Jasper’s plans, you’ll get a commission (as long as they pay to Jasper AI, you’ll earn commission). Isn’t that great? Because you only refer the customer to a product once, you’ll be making repeat commissions whenever he makes a payment. Here are a few recurring affiliate programs in case you’re interested.
ConvertKit Jasper GetResponse Kinsta Cloudways Mangools SpyFu
So if you’re looking for a SOLID way to boost your affiliate marketing earnings, consider finding an affiliate program that offers recurring commissions. It could be just what you need to take your affiliate earnings to the next level.
4. You don’t need to be an expert
Affiliate marketing is actually pretty simple. Essentially, it’s a way to earn a commission on sales made through your website. For example, let’s say you have a blog about running shoes. You could sign up to be an affiliate for a running shoe company (say Adidas), and then every time someone clicks on one of your links and makes a purchase, you earn a commission. The amount of commission you earn will vary depending on the company and the product. The best part? You don’t need to become an expert in ANY thing as there are a ton of people who’re using affiliate marketing to make money. You don’t have to become a fitness expert to promote running shoes as anyone who’s running a fitness blog can promote affiliate programs related to shoes. But having prior marketing or selling experience definitely helps as you’ll find it easy to attract new customers and generate more sales for any program you want to promote.
5. Big returns in the long run
One of the major reasons most people (including bloggers and marketers) spend thousands of dollars on affiliate marketing is that it gives you huge returns. Most people spend a ton of money on various aspects of affiliate marketing including;
Content creation SEO Offering special promos, discounts, and coupons Running paid ads Giveaways and contests, etc
All these things cost you a lot of money but they can help you build an audience, educate your audience about the products, and ultimately help you with more sales. So if you’re someone who’s thinking about whether or not to spend money on content creation and SEO, don’t think twice as it’s a safe bet as long as you’re consistent. All in all, affiliate marketing has been proven to generate a HUGE ROI (Return on investment) than most other monetization strategies.
6. You don’t need an inventory
As an affiliate marketer, one of the biggest advantages you have is that you don’t need to have any product inventory. That means you don’t need to worry about storing products or shipping them to customers. Instead, when a customer buys a product through your affiliate link, they are taken to the retailer’s website, where they complete the purchase. The product vendors will deliver the product (online or offline). In the end, you simply earn a commission on each sale. Also, you don’t have to worry about major things like manufacturing, shipping, or customer service. You can just focus on finding the RIGHT products that your audience will love and promoting them through your blog or social media channels. Best of all, the product developers and vendors provide you with all the promotional materials you’ll ever need to promote their products. Ultimately as an affiliate, you can focus only on promoting your affiliate links. The product creation, inventory, delivery, etc will all be taken care of by the product vendors. So if you’re looking for a lucrative monetization source that doesn’t require any inventory, then affiliate marketing could be an excellent option for you.
7. Offers flexibility
One of the biggest benefits of affiliate marketing is this: as an affiliate, you can work whenever you want, promote ANY kind of product you want, and earn how much ever you want. In case you already don’t know, affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing in which a business pays its affiliates for each successful sale they generate. Because affiliate marketing is based on sales commissions, it offers great flexibility in terms of when and how often you work. As an affiliate, you can choose to promote products that you are passionate about and you can literally work from anywhere in the world. You can also work as little or as often as you like, making it an ideal side hustle or full-time job. So if you’re looking for a flexible way to make money online, affiliate marketing may be the perfect option for you.
8. A ton of products to promote
Last but not least: as an affiliate, you can literally promote thousands of products. There are a wide range of affiliate networks where you can find products including; The key to selecting the right products is to know what you’re passionate about, and what your target audience wants, and go for products that are already best-selling in the category.
How to Create Your Own Affiliate Marketing Website on A Budget?
If you want to be a successful blogger, you need to have a platform where you can promote your affiliate products. Here’s where a blog or website comes in handy. The best part? You don’t have to invest thousands of dollars to start a blog as you can get started with a budget as low as $35! Here’s how. Bluehost is the web host we’re going to pick to create your affiliate marketing site. Why Bluehost? Bluehost is probably the most popular web host in the world which is used by over 2 million sites and it is recommended by WordPress itself. The good news? Bluehost offers a Basic plan that costs just $35 per year and offers a free domain. To get started, click on this special link to visit the Bluehost website. Once you’re on their site, go to their pricing plans which look like this; As you can see above, Bluehost offers four different plans. But for starters, the Basic plan is more than enough and it lets you install 1 website along with a free domain. If you go with their 12 months plan, it costs just $35.40 for 1 year! Have a look; See that? It also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. So if you’re not happy with their features or service, you can get a full refund within 30 days. So go ahead, grab Bluehost web hosting along with a free domain and start your affiliate marketing journey from today. In case you need any help in launching a site with Bluehost, mail us at [email protected] and we’ll help you along the way.
Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing
Although there are a ton of advantages of affiliate marketing, there are a few disadvantages as well which we’ll discuss in this section.
Doesn’t give you a fixed income
Most people who’re planning to quit their jobs to jump into affiliate marketing should consider one thing: it doesn’t give a fixed monthly income. Why? The reason is simple: affiliate marketing is a performance-based model, so there’s no guarantee on how many sales you can generate in a month. Obviously, the commissions you make from affiliate marketing totally depend on the number of product sales. The more sales you generate, the more you can earn. It’s as simple as that. So if you’re looking for a fixed income, affiliate marketing might not be the right business model or monetization source for you.
Huge competition (plus freaky Google updates)
One of the biggest disadvantages of affiliate marketing is that there’s a huge competition out there. With so hundreds and thousands of affiliate marketers promoting the same products, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. You’ll need to be creative and use effective marketing techniques if you want to succeed as an affiliate marketer. Also, you’ll need to choose your products carefully. Additionally, Google frequently rolls out freaky algorithm updates. The majority of the people lose a major chunk of their traffic when Google rolls out major updates. Here’s how the traffic drop looks like if you’re hit by Google updates; So there’s no guarantee that you’ll be getting first-page rankings and even if you do, it’s difficult to maintain those rankings.
Takes too much time
If you want to make a decent income from affiliate marketing, you need to build an audience. It can take time to build up a significant following, and there is no guarantee that you will ever see any real results. Also, if you do start to see some success, it is important to remember that the earnings are often relatively small (for most people). For these reasons, affiliate marketing is not for everyone. However, if you are willing to put in the work, affiliate marketing can be a great way to generate income. You need to consistently put in effort for at least one or two years to see decent income. Here are some of the frequently asked questions about the benefits of affiliate marketing. Related Resources: That being said, there are many full-time bloggers who earn over $100,000/mo from affiliate marketing.
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Final thoughts on the advantages of affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a SOLID way to earn money by selling other people’s products. The good news is affiliate marketing is growing and anyone can become an affiliate marketer. The key to affiliate success is to find the right niche, promote helpful products and drive more search traffic. So what do you think about the benefits of affiliate marketing? Did you find this post useful? Have any questions? Let us know in the comments.
