Affiliate marketing it touted as one of the easiest ways to make money online, but when you actually start, it can feel completely overwhelming and confusing. If you’re one of those people looking to get started you may be wondering how hard is affiliate marketing?
It’s not that affiliate marketing is that hard, it’s that it isn’t an overnight process where you could make $100’s of dollars overnight. Instead, it takes time and effort to establish yourself as an affiliate marketer. This is the reason why many people give up and claim that it’s extremely difficult – because they didn’t give themselves enough time to truly learn the ropes and build their business.
Why Is Affiliate Marketing So Hard For Some People?
There isn’t just one answer to this question. Affiliate marketing could be difficult for people for many reasons. Let’s take a deep dive into each of these reasons.
They Aren’t Patient Enough To Build An Audience
As an affiliate marketer the smartest thing you could do is build an audience through YouTube or a blog. Yes, there are ways to make money via affiliate marketing other than building big audiences, but they aren’t efficient, and you’ll likely have to do them every day for years just to make a decent amount of money.
Building an audience is scalable, which makes affiliate marketing a semi-passive business eventually.
For example, once you have 300 blog posts on your site, you should be able to get a good amount of organic traffic, driving traffic to your affiliate links.
The same concept goes for building an audience on YouTube. Or you can go all in and do both.
The point I’m trying to make is that if you want to make money with affiliate marketing, then you need to be patient enough to build an audience, and this likely won’t happen over night. It may take you a year, or even more, but if you stick with it and keep working at it, eventually you’ll see the fruits of your labor.
They Don’t Have The Knowledge To Build Content That Adds Enough Value
People think they can add a couple of blog posts to a blog with the title, “Best Microwaves 2022”, and then proceed to make a lot of money. You could certainly get lucky with a post like this, but it isn’t the way to go.
What you want to do is add value. You should answer certain questions about different products that aren’t found on the internet.
Questions like, “does this _____ microwave have a delay start feature?”, or “does this _____ microwave overheat easily?”. This gives your audience a reason to trust you, and ultimately choose your affiliate link when they’re ready to buy.
When companies have Black Friday deals, or holiday deals, it’s a good time to push out content related to these types of products, because people are actively looking for information and alternatives.
So if you’re the person who made 5 blog posts with the title, “Best Microwaves 2022”, and none of those blog posts had any valuable information, then you probably won’t make much money.
It’s not too late though. Start using the strategies above, and apply it to your content. If you do this, then you’ll be well on your way to making affiliate marketing much easier for yourself!
How Can You Find Valuable Questions For Products?
One way I get questions in regards to products that aren’t answered frequently on the internet, is by using keyword chef. This gives keywords a score, and the score is based on keywords that rank #1, but are on forums like Quora and Reddit. It gives you an opportunity to elaborate on these topics, and give your audience valuable information.
They Stop Working Because They Think There Is Too Much Competition
People often get overwhelmed because they think too many people are doing affiliate marketing. But you can’t look at things this way. You have to look at it in the sense of how many affiliate marketers are in this niche and have 100 blog posts, or 100 YouTube videos.
When you do it like that, you’ll actually begin to notice that the competition isn’t as high as you once thought.
Focus on your own output, and not everyone else.
How Long Does It Take To Build Traction When It Comes To Affiliate Marketing?
This all depends on the methods you plan on using. The main two methods to use for affiliate marketing is either A. Starting a blog, or B. Starting a YouTube channel. There are different time frames when it comes to being successful on each. Let’s take a look into them.
Starting a Blog
If you’re blogging, then it could take anywhere from 6 months to over a year to make money. This is because if you start a brand new site, it could take a little while for your site to get crawled by Google, and as long as it takes to get crawled by Google, it takes just as long to build authority.
Also, how focused your blog is on a specific topic will really help you in the long run. For example, if you start a blog on basketball, but have a bunch of posts about football, Google will be confused and you’ll have a harder time ranking your site.
Creating a YouTube Channel
When creating a YouTube channel, you can start making money a little bit sooner. This is because people tend to search for terms on YouTube within certain time frames because they want to get the latest information on something.
So let’s say you did a review of a newly released laptop, you have the chance to of someone landing on your video if they search for a video of a review on that same laptop.
You’ll make optimum amounts of money once you have subscribers, but you’ll be able to possibly make some money off the bat with YouTube.
Niche And Quality
It’s important to keep in mind that the quality of your videos, along with the niche you’re in, will determine how much traction you’ll get from your affiliate marketing efforts. So make sure you do heavy research when choosing a niche, and also study the very best content within the niche in order to become successful.
In Summary
People think affiliate marketing is an overnight thing, but in fact, it takes a lot of time. Many people give up and claim that it’s too difficult because they didn’t set themselves enough time to truly learn the ropes.
I always say this on other blog posts, but to build a business out of thin air and surpass the competition, it’s going to take hard work. If it was as easy as the “gurus” say it is, then everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have to go through all the trial and errors.