So you’re thinking about becoming an affiliate marketer? You probably have seen some YouTube videos with people in Ferraris and mansions talking about how they made $10.000 in a day while laying on the beach.
This definitely is possible with affiliate marketing if you do it smart but there are a few things you should expect when you start promoting affiliate products on the internet.
The truth is almost nobody talks about what to expect when you start because it doesn’t hype people up. I’ve seen a few YouTube channels where they have videos of maybe the first two weeks and after that, they stop making videos. Honestly, I’m guilty of doing that too (I’m working on making new videos).
So as someone that went through both the good and bad of affiliate marketing, I thought it would be a good idea to show you what to expect when you become an affiliate marketer.
So here are:
9 Things to expect when making money promoting affiliate products
1. It definitely isn’t a get rich quick scheme
If you have never worked as an affiliate marketer and you started a brand new website don’t expect to make money after three months. Affiliate marketing definitely isn’t for people that need cash quick. Depending on your niche it can take 8 to 14 months before start seeing sales.
This might turn you off especially when you see people on the internet making $10.000 in their first two months doing drop shipping but you have to realize what you’re building with affiliate marketing is a high ranked website with a passive income stream for the long term.
Most of the other method requires you to be an active participant in your business and a lot of the revenue goes back into marketing. You don’t pay for the marketing of affiliate products when you have a high ranked website.
2. You’ll learn things you never expected to learn
When you start you might think you’ll make content about your niche and that is the only thing but you’ll learn so much more than you expected. You’ll learn so many skills that you could easily make a business out of.
Expect to learn about:
- Creating professional looking websites
- Sales Psychology and how to craft well-written sales letters
- How to optimize a website for search engines
- photoshop
- Video editing
- High-level content marketing
- Pay-Per-Click Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- How to scale a business
- How to manage yourself.
I’ve seen a lot of people that started out as affiliate markers and created their own businesses while having their affiliate website as a passive income stream on the side. The value of learning affiliate marketing goes way beyond making money with affiliate products.
3. The steps to succeeding are simple but it isn’t easy
The steps to succeeding as an affiliate marketer are really simple I could probably explain within 30 minutes but that doesn’t make it easy. Most people quit within the first three months. The first six months I thought about quitting at least three times a day.
Your biggest enemy when starting most of the time is yourself. People (including myself) often come in with the wrong expectations when it comes to how long it takes to make money and how much you’ll make in that time. This can create a lot of doubt in your mind.
4. It Will Confront You With Your Bad Habits
Affiliate marketing is a legitimate business so you’ll have to treat it like one or you won’t succeed. This means all the bad habits that you might not have been aware of will come to the forefront. You’ll have to deal with those habits to be able to succeed.
I remember having a lot of bad habits my main ones were:
- Negligence
For the most part, the content I put out was very valuable from an educational standpoint but there was always something off. Sometimes it was how I presented it other times I didn’t pay attention to the spelling there was always something. - Stubbornness
I thought I knew everything better because I watched a few videos on the internet. Being an entrepreneur you have to be stubborn but you also have to be open to feedback. - Staying up too late
- Always giving 70%
I never did the most I could. The videos I made were mediocre compared to what I know I can make. I wasn’t even close to being consistent, I basically always did a little above the bare minimum.
After a while, you realize you’re only hurting yourself and your money with it. The moment that happens you’ll start to change quickly because you know what you’re losing out on.
5. You’ll have to sacrifice a lot in the starting phases of setting up your business
Especially in the beginning creating an affiliate marketing business will cost a lot of time and energy. This means there will be a lot of stuff you won’t be able to do anymore. Sometimes because you have to make time in other situations because it can influence your performance.
Right now I’m in a 30-day challenge to create some momentum in the beginning of the year.
Since I’ve started I:
- put my social life on a hiatus
- Stopped watching a lot of my favorite series
- drastically cut down on my other hobbies
- Go to bed earlier
It won’t be forever but there will be a lot of times where you’re going to have to disconnect from everything to get the ball rolling.
6. People won’t understand what you’re doing
Online marketing has been around for a while now but most people still don’t understand what it is and what you can do with it. I remember when I started people weren’t really positive about it. Most people I knew thought that I was being scammed especially since it takes so much time before you see results.
People would also try to give me advice based on their own jobs. Most of them meant it well but it created a lot of doubt in my mind. They’d say things like:
“…Shouldn’t you already be making money?..”
“…Maybe you aren’t good enough at affiliate marketing?…”
“…Aren’t you afraid you’re just wasting time?..”
You need to understand that affiliate marketing is really unique when it comes to the process of succeeding. The only ones that can give you legit advise are other online marketers.
7. It’ll solidify your self-belief
Affiliate marketing will force you to believe in yourself and what you’re capable of. There will be a lot of things that’ll test you on the way but the moment you go through all of it you’ll a lot of faith into what you’re capable of.
I remember after making my first sale looking back at what I’ve done and realized how much I could do if I just put in the time. All of a sudden you see all these other opportunities and you’ll start to tell yourself “I can do that too. I only need to put in the energy and the time.”.
8. Being social is a skill you can lose
The first 5 months of my affiliate journey I basically locked myself up in my man cave worked the entire time and didn’t talk to anyone. This obviously isn’t necessary but I was so enthusiastic I went overboard. I accomplished a lot in those 5 months but I also lost some things.
I remember going out after those 5 months and I could barely hold up a conversation. I hadn’t heard my voice in a few months that’s how far overboard I went. I learned that day that being social is a skillset. There has to be a balance between working and social activity because trust me not knowing how to have a conversation sucks.
9. You’re probably should’ve aimed for more
Everybody that start with affiliate marketing has a specific goal in mind. It could be to become a digital nomad, have passive income, make $10.000 a day or something else. The moment I made my first sale and looked at what I did for it I realized I worked with that specific goal in mind but I could’ve done so much more if I only was aware of the possibilities.
I just wanted to live in a warm country near the beach and enjoy my life. This quickly turned into acquiring as many different income streams as possible and create real wealth.
Here you have it. This is what you can expect from becoming an affiliate marketer. The good, the bad and everything in between. If by any chance you’re interested in becoming an affiliate marketer I’d take a look at my wealthy affiliate review.
Wealthy Affiliate is an affiliate marketing training platform that has +1.4 million members and is active in more than 193 companies. High-quality training can drastically cut your learning curve and get you where you want to be that much faster.
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That’s all for now. If you have any questions or you just want to show some love leave a comment underneath in the comment section.
See you at my next post!
