You may not have heard of it before, but one of the most popular ways for people to generate an income online is to use what is known as ‘affiliate marketing’.
Some of the more vocal affiliate marketing experts out there promise that it gives you the chance to make an income in the millions. But what is the reality behind this dream? With that said, let’s take a closer look at the success of affiliate marketing.
Before we can figure this out, however, we need to be clear about exactly what affiliate marketing is and how it works.
Although it sounds complex, affiliate marketing is a relatively simple way of generating income that has been around for quite some time. The idea behind it is simple: all you need to do is use a given platform to promote other people’s products, which, if it leads to a successful sale, gives you a commission. The idea here is that you, as the affiliate marketer, are being thanked for your help in getting the producer a sale and is based on the idea of revenue sharing. Although it can get very complex at a high level, this basic formula is the key to it no matter what the scale of the business is.
You can notice affiliate marketing schemes on any number of platforms online, such as news publications, independent blogs and even social media. Blogs are a particularly good place for affiliate marketing as links to products can be seamlessly integrated into the contentwithout being too obvious.
But what is the actual success rate of these affiliate marketing schemes?
The success of an affiliate marketing scheme will depend on the type of product that is being sold to the end user and the type of industry in which you are using affiliate marketing. For example, while it might be perfectly reasonable to include a link to a relevant book in a blog post that a user can buy through an Amazon affiliate link – and which has a fairly high chance of success in terms of buy rate – this might not be the case if the product linked to is an expensive item.
Similarly, affiliate marketing tends to be more successful if the product is quite niche, where it might be difficult to find recommended products. In these circumstances, affiliate marketing links can be seamlessly integrated into written content.
In addition to having the right product, you also really need to know your audience. Knowing how engaged your audience tends to bewith content will be key to seeing a high click-through success rate in an affiliate marketing scheme. As such, it’s important to build up high levels of trust with your audience so that they won’t hesitate to check out any products you suggest to them.
As you can see, affiliate marketing schemes aren’t the easy money makers that their advocates will have you believe. They take time, careful planning, a lot of effort, and a huge amount of patience to be successful. Without any of these four, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever see the levels of success you were once promised.
