I’ve played around with affiliate marketing, with varying degrees of success. A family member of mine used to be a super affiliate. He told me his ad spend could reach up to $600,000-$900,000 per month on Facebook ads. The last time I spoke to him, he wasn’t in the industry anymore. He was a bit cagey about why, in the sense that he seemed to be blaming Facebook and their account policies. But in reality, there are bigger, global reasons why affiliate marketing is no longer what people who make money online should be looking to do, and they don’t all relate to the internet. Buckle in, because this post is going to be a bit more complex than most.
Affiliate marketing doesn’t work because most things are too cheap
This isn’t intuitive unless you’ve run a website, your own business, sold drugs, or some combination of these things. Most people who visit websites aren’t buying anything. Most people (in America or Canada) need at least $2,000-$3,000 per month to feed themselves. Earning $5 profit per sale, you’re looking at needing to make up to 600 sales per month. For this to happen from your blog, you’re going to need to get a ton of traffic, 60,000 pageviews bare minimum. To earn $5 per sale, you either need a high commission or a product that costs more than $25. Finding something that fits both of these criteria and monetizing them is going to get trickier and trickier as goods get cheaper with each passing year. The people who work in science and technology are good at their jobs. I remember when I was younger, a microphone would cost $90. I just ordered one for $20 on Amazon. This is why in the future, you’ll likely need to do the work of creating your own product, and pushing it until it loses market share or proves itself to be a poor tool.
Selling products on your platform is the way to go
Nowadays placing your bets on any given platform is risky business. You never know what’s going to happen. It’s best to be on several platforms so that you don’t find yourself shut out of your entire business just because you got banned. Additionally, when you build your platform, you can establish multiple streams of revenue while establishing direct lines of communication with your customers. This blog doesn’t have a newsletter yet, but it will when the coinciding YouTube Channel is ready. When I have my YouTube Channel and newsletters fully prepared, I’ll be earning money in at least two or three different ways. Regardless of how it goes, I’ll have numbers on my side. Eventually, even the ad revenue from blogging alone will be enough to pay for small expenses. I plan on selling my digital products for $50–150 apiece. If I sell any at all, I’ll be laughing to the bank because I live in a 3rd world country. Although the fruits of selling your own product my not taste quite as sweet so soon if you live in a rich country, things shouldn’t be so bad if you do a good job.
It’s better to sell ad space and create products in-house
Part of the reason affiliate marketing is so tricky is that most businesses fail. When you’re affiliate marketing, you take the risk that the product sucks. When you build your platform and products, you offset and hedge against the risks that come with running a single platform-dependent business. You can sell ad space on your site for big bucks. This is because you’ll be able to cut out the middlemen that are ad networks. In addition, ad networks are paid on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis. When they are paid on a cost-per-action basis, they do not guarantee profitability. Sell your ad space, create your products, and take the risk of seeing if those are profitable, rather than doing all of that hard marketing work for other people.
If you’re going to affiliate market, run ads and find some way to create a list/get value
Affiliate marketing is by no means dead. It’s one of the fastest-growing industries out there. It just isn’t the way most people are likely destined to make money online. Most people are into fashion, toys, software, personal finance, and courses when you take a look at the entirety of their businesses and how they make money. Some people host masterclasses and webinars instead of courses because one-on-one training is better. But generally speaking, most people will not use Affiliate Marketing as their primary way of earning money. The affiliate marketing pie simply isn’t big enough for everyone to make a living. It’s like the music industry: you need talent and money for optimal results. The money buys traffic and the talent converts it. You want to buy traffic that will impulse buy things and give up their data. This is often in the beauty, sweepstakes, health, and adult niches. Capturing their data is key, otherwise, all you’re doing is gambling on the quality of the traffic of your ad network.
Overall, affiliate marketing isn’t dead, it just isn’t the main way to make money online. Nowadays, the main way to make money online is quite naturally e-commerce or services (of any kind) delivered over the internet. E-commerce refers to both physical and digital products. In today’s world of online celebrities, you’re also in charge of establishing your audience. My marketing channels are a blog and a YouTube Channel, other people’s might be an Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest page. Affiliate marketing can happen on any of your marketing channels at any point in time, just don’t make it your main thing. The numbers are on my side here. Affiliate marketing is a smaller industry than the music industry, and we all know how hard it is to make money in that game. Don’t make it your main focus unless you have some sort of insider knowledge or are a marketing expert.
By Rising Current on .
Exported from Medium on November 8, 2024.
