Although it isn’t as easy to make money with affiliate marketing as it used to be a few years ago, it’s still the best and easiest way of making money online. The problem is that the times have changed and if you want to do the things the same way as they were done a few years ago, you will fail. There are a few open secrets that you must know to succeed online with affiliate marketing.
Attitude
In the past, to make money online selling affiliate products, you needed to send some good traffic to your landing pages, and then some of the traffic converted and you made some money. But the times have changed. People nowadays are more skeptical and do not fail as much as they used to, for all the make money quick programs, courses, bots, etc.
They are actually scams. None of those methods work, and the people who make money in this way are only the creators of those products. Fortunately, fewer people buy such products nowadays.
So, the first thing you need to understand, is that the only way to make money online with the affiliate marketing, is to take it seriously, and take it as your own business.
You need to create your online business. To build a successful online business, as any business, you need to put a lot of effort into it. You need to work hard. You should give up hopes of easy and quick money, and decide right away that you’ll work hard to succeed, and that you don’t give up till then.
There will be many obstacles on the way to success online. Many mistakes, procrastination, failures, etc. But if you have the proper attitude, you won’t give up easily and you’ll succeed one day.
But, it takes time and it’s a gradual process. It won’t happen overnight. The good thing about building the business online is that it’s cheaper to start, and once you succeed, you’ll have lots of freedom. You’ll be able to work whenever you want, and you’ll be able to outsource a lot of work, so you’ll have more free time. But till then, you must work hard.
Time
You’ll need to spend a few hours every day, especially in the beginning, to learn and to build your business.
Some people expect that they can make money online working just an hour a day. Maybe it’ll be possible in the future, when your business is established, but in the beginning you’ll need to sacrifice your free time to building your online business.
Lots of people spend hours in their day jobs, traveling to work, running their businesses, so why some people expect that online is different?
The advantage of the online business is that you don’t need to waste time traveling to work. But, in the beginning you must find at least 2-3 hours a day for your online business.
Money
It costs a lot of money to start a brick-and-mortar business. Why do you think it’ll be free online? It isn’t. You must be ready to spend some money too.
You must have a website. Don’t believe anybody who tells you that the website is not necessary for affiliate marketing. It’s not true. The website is the most important real estate online, which is a must. To have a website, you must buy your own domain, and you must pay for web hosting.
You better forget about free web hosting and domain. You might start with that to learn, but you’ll need your own domain in the long run.
There are two ways of getting traffic to a website. Free traffic through SEO, social media, etc., and the paid traffic.
If you use free traffic, you need to dedicate more time to create content. You’ll save money, but you’ll have to work more. If you use paid traffic, you’ll need to work less, but you’ll need to invest more money in your business. Either way, you’ll need to invest time and money. If you’re aren’t ready to do that, you’d better forget about affiliate marketing.
Education
To succeed in affiliate marketing is not hard if you’re ready to invest time and money, and you know what to do. To know what to do to be successful, you need to educate yourself.
I have been trying for years to make money online, jumping from one opportunity to another. Going from one course to another. Trying many different techniques. I have succeeded with some, but only temporary.
Then one day, I found the Wealthy Affiliate Community, and I learned from the experts in affiliate marketing how to create the online business that will last and make me money for years. The business that will survive Google updates and all kinds of changes and fluctuations in the online world.
So, to save time, it’s very important to find a mentor/mentors who are affiliate marketers themselves, and to follow in their footsteps.
There are a few online affiliate marketing communities and some of them are good. Some are not. You need to do your own due diligence to find the best place for you to get the affiliate marketing education and guidance.
If you want a shortcut you can read my review of Wealthy Affiliate, to see if it’s good for you. The good thing about the Wealthy Affiliate is that you can try it for free.
White Hat SEO
SEO means search engine optimization. It’s the most important thing to get free traffic from the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. You must learn SEO to succeed online.
Learning SEO is not hard, but you must create valuable content to rank well in the search engines. The search engines want to rank the content that is good, so people who use their search engines, will be happy.
To create such content, it takes time. You must do some research and then you must write good articles. This will take time.
Doing things that get you good rankings, through SEO is called white hat SEO. Some people are impatient and want to trick the search engines, applying different gray and black hat SEO techniques.
It’s important that you never do such things. The search engines are very smart nowadays, and sooner or later will catch you and all your efforts and good rankings will be gone. Your business and earnings can plummet overnight. I have learned it the hard way, so you better never do it. It’s really important to stick to white hat SEO only.
Summary
I have written about things like attitude, time, money, education, and SEO, which are open secrets to success in affiliate marketing.
I haven’t written about any specific techniques, methods, etc., because if you don’t get right first, the things I wrote about above, no techniques and methods will help you. You need the right foundations first.
I could write about more things, like different traps in online marketing, the need for steadiness and determination, but these things are necessary to succeed in anything in life. They are obvious, although unfortunately lacking in many people.
The most important thing is to find the online mentor and/or affiliate community. All the things I wrote above, I learned from the Wealthy Affiliate. I have learned from them many more things, like content creation, social marketing, paid marketing, and a lot of more. I could go on and on, but it’ll be better if you check them out yourself for free here.
codevonish says
An excellent approach; I like the build up to WA. I have tried the WA affiliate program, worked hard at it, even devoted a website solely to market WA, but the hard truth is that there are a lot of people looking to make money on line, but they lack the investment and have built their hopes too high. I am happy I am a producer of products and is hard at work building the business. I am happy to produce and happy when there is a sale, plus online helps brick and mortar and vice versa. Not giving up but it is hard work. Best of luck, thanks for sharing.
Chris says
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Faheem says
Yeah, I like the attitude you’re promoting. Even if you sometimes slip up, as long as you are hardworking and consistent you’ll get there. I feel like it’s not necessarily a matter of how much time you can put in. Rather, it’s the amount of quality content you can constantly push out. It’s interesting though, if you sacrifice a few hours a day, let alone more, in physical life you are unlikely to the same results you can get if you sacrifice the same amount online. Online income as is, is broken, in how it doesn’t have to follow the same restrictions a and regulations a physical income faces.
Chris says
Yes, you’re right. It’s not about how much time we put in, but it’s about the amount of quality content we create and consistency.
Thank you for the comment.