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Is Affiliate Marketing Legit?
How Does Affiliate Marketing Works?
Can You Really Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
What Are The Risks Of Affiliate Marketing?
If you are interested in becoming an affiliate marketer or interested in learning more about affiliate marketing, i bet you are looking for the answer to the above questions.
Actually, it’s not difficult to understand the concept of Affiliate Marketing.
In this article, we are going to discuss how affiliate marketing works, and with some statistics to explain why’s affiliate marketing is a legitimate and lucrative online business.
You should have a good understanding and have the answer about “ Is Affiliate Marketing Legit?” by the end of this blog post.
So let’s get started, and read on to learn more about affiliate marketing!
First of all, What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is the practice of earning a commission by promoting the goods of another individual or business.
The affiliate marketers simply find a product they want to sell, promote it in this form of online marketing via a blog or social media, and receives a portion of the profit from each sale they make as a result of this affiliation.
Furthermore, as an affiliate marketer, you have the option of working with a variety of affiliate programs to earn a commission fee.
Is Affiliate Marketing A Pyramid Scheme?
“No,” is the answer to this question.
There is no such thing as a pyramid scheme in affiliate marketing. It’s a proven, long-term business model that’s been around for nearly two decades.
Affiliate programs are now available from a wide range of companies, including Amazon, Target, Walmart, Nike, Dyson, and etc.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Works?
This affiliate marketing model is quite easy to understand. Here’s a short overview of how it works:
- When you join an affiliate program, the affiliate merchant or network will provide you with a specific affiliate ID, which is your unique affiliate link for the product you choose to advertise.
- You promote the goods by using the link in your sales page (and/or any other marketing effort, like the post of your blog and social media).
- Customers visit your sales page read your content They are directed to the merchant’s website after clicking your special affiliate link.
- Customer purchase the product you promoted via your affiliate link
- The merchant checks the affiliate ID and identifies the source of the referral after your blog visitors complete the purchase process.
- You earn the affiliate commission from the merchant
On the other hand, it’s important to remember that affiliate marketers aren’t selling anything.
To put it differently, I may better explain affiliate marketing by comparing it to the work of a house salesman (or some other commission-based job).
The house salesman does not own the house he sells, but he receives a fee for closing the deal and bringing money into the company.
How Affiliate Marketing Is Growing
Since its rapid development in the 2010s, affiliate marketing is still one of the most popular sales drivers and passive income businesses.
The statistics below show how affiliate marketing is growing and help you get the answer of Is Affiliate Marketing Legit.
1. Affiliate marketing is a multi-billion dollar industry
2. 81% of advertisers and 84% of publishers in the U.S. have turned to affiliate marketing
3. Search interest in “affiliate marketing” is up over 200% since 2015
4. Largest affiliate networks have 100K+ active affiliates
5. Using a price comparison website is the most common affiliate activity for web users in the UK
6. 85% of online shoppers check Google for information before making a purchase
7. 81.4% of affiliates promote B2C products or services
8. Content and blogs generate almost 40% of affiliate publisher commissions in the U.S.
9. 71% of affiliate publishers in the U.S. work with 3 or more networks
10. 35% of affiliates make at least $20K in annual revenue from their affiliate marketing efforts
Source: https://supermetrics.com/blog/affiliate-marketing-statistics
Can You Really Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
“Affiliate Marketing has made businesses millions and ordinary people millionaires.”
– By Bo Bennet
According to AffStat’s benchmark survey, 35% of affiliates reported earning at least $20,000 per year from their affiliate marketing activities.
And the figures are keep going everyday.
Broadly speaking, affiliates are classified into four categories based on their monthly income:
- Total beginners: who are mostly losing money due to the start-up fees and testing.
- Low-level affiliates: who earn up to $300/day;
- Intermediate affiliates: who earn from $300- $3,000/day;
- High-level affiliates: who earn >$3,000/day;
However, affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
In fact, you will not become wealthy overnight.
And, as a beginner, don’t believe someone who tells you that you can raise $1000 or more in a month from nothing.
The true success story is, some bloggers put in a year’s worth of effort to get a significant successful result.
So, if you want to earn money online from affiliate marketing, you need to put in your work, be diligent and patient.
If you want to learn more about actual success stories from people who are making a lot of money, click here.
How Much Do Affiliate Links Pay?
How much can you earn from the affiliate links?
In fact, the range of the commission rate of each affiliate link is very high.
For example, Amazon pays its affiliate marketers from 0%-10% of each sale.
Other affiliate programs from TripAdvisor pay up to 50% commission for every confirmed booking referred by their affiliates.
Here is some example for your heads-up:
- Amazon Associates – Up to 10% on any qualifying product sale
- Solvid Affiliate – offer a 20% commission on all purchases
- Clickbank – Maximum of $150 earned per referral sale, regardless of product.
- Nike – Earn up to 11% commission on all valid sales
Does Affiliate Marketing Still Work In 2021?
Affiliate marketing is worth well over $8.2 billion in the U.S., according to the 2022 forecasts.
And furthermore, as the Awin report said – it’s still rising at a rate of about 10% year over year.
And these results are based on data collected prior to the covid-19 pandemic, that is before the digital channel became the new standard for a large portion of our everyday lives around the world.
As a result, the rising rate of affiliate marketing will be skyrocket even further in 2022.
Here is more statistic proof from Salesforce insights about the trend of affiliate marketing:
In comparison to 2019, the number of people who participated in Cyber Week in the US (which was influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic and is a kind of Black Friday Sales but online rather than in-store) increased by 22% and made $10.8 billion in the US online sales.
Do You Have To Have A Lot Of Money To Start?
I believe you will totally agree that most businesses need both startup costs and cash flow to start and keep it growing.
How about Affiliate marketing?
The good news is that it can be started at a low cost or even for free, which allowing you to get started easily and with minimal effort.
Moreover, most of the affiliate programs are free to join, and no need to produce a product on your own, or buy an inventory.
But the success of affiliate marketing depends on your blog or website, and even your social media’s traffic, and it is just like another form of business, you need to invest some amount of money to grow it.
For example, while you start your blog for free, and won’t cost you anything, but it takes a cost on your time.
And you may need to spend money on pay-per-click marketing, social media ads, email campaigns, and etc to generate traffic to your blog.
What is The Advantages Of Being A Affiliate Marketer?
There are almost no obstacles to being an affiliate marketer.
You don’t need a lot of money to get started in comparison to other businesses. What you need is a computer and access to the internet.
You even don’t need a website to start your affiliate business, some affiliate marketers have success via social media. Ideal for tight-budget businesses.
You don’t have to be an affiliate marketing expert to be successful.
In addition. you have complete control over which campaigns to test and which learning approach to employ.
For example, some vendors and merchants will provide you with all the marketing materials you’ll ever need.
There’s no need to create any additional promotional materials. You can just get started and start collecting commissions right away.
The job of an affiliate marketer is to link a seller with a customer. Once you direct your audience and make the sales, the seller handles any consumer complaints.
You don’t even have to be concerned with customer service after the sale.
Affiliate marketing is a form of performance-based reward. What you put into it is what you will get out of it.
Improving your marketing skills and creating engaging campaigns will result in significant revenue increases. You’ll finally be rewarded for your excellent work!
At little or no cost, you can easily scale up or down your affiliate program. It also provides you with a cost-effective way to expand your market.
Moreover, you have the freedom to work on your own time and in any setting you choose.
Affiliate marketing allows you to earn money even when you sleep.
You can see continuous returns on your investment of time into a campaign if you put in an initial amount of time and cost. You are paid for your work even after it has been completed.
What Are The Risks Of Affiliate Marketing?
Remember, all kind of business has risks, there is no exception for affiliate marketing. When using affiliate programs to monetize your website, there are some points to consider and avoid.
To be successful in affiliate marketing, you must first search, then test, promote, and test again.
Finding the right affiliate program for your website takes time and effort. And you may lose that money if you don’t have patience for the testing.
You can’t just place the banners on your pages and expect the affiliate program to start making money for you.
One common strategy used by successful affiliate marketers is to maximize their chances of winning the commission.
That means creating specially dedicated posts for those affiliate programs and promote the advantages of the affiliates’ goods or services to the consumers.
Not all affiliate programs, even those that you believe your target audience will be interested in, will be beneficial to your business.
For some programs, you must provide millions of free ad page views in order to earn $10 in commission.
You can also apply to and use 20 affiliate programs, including well-known brand names, and still earn very little money.
The main risk of affiliate programs is that after you’ve sent an advertiser sales or leads you’ll not receive the commission you are entitled to.
My experience with an unpaid advertiser has been unfortunate. The main contact person left after a few months and we never got paid again.
Vendor of the affiliate programs, such as Amazon, can modify their commission structure very easily, or even stop without any notification.
What used to be a high revenue source can decrease quickly, and you can’t do anything about it.
To Concule…Is Affiliate Marketing Legit? Yes.
I hope you found the answer of this question is “Yes” after reading this article.
And if all the above figures and discussion can’t show that affiliate marketing is one of the legit online businesses to join in this new digital era, I don’t know what would.
The business model of Affiliate marketing is absolutely legitimate, and people are profiting lucratively from it and reach the dream of financial freedom.
But remember that isn’t to say that scammers aren’t out there trying to take advantage of people and steal their money.
And In affiliate marketing, there are many examples of people quitting when they can’t earn what they expected after a few tries.
Persistence and a positive attitude are required for affiliate marketing success. You cannot assume that you will get rich overnight.
To be successful, all you have to do is try, and try — and there are plenty of ways to do so. Especially if you pay attention to the industry insights and top trends of your niche and understand the need of your audience.
Want to Learn More About Affiliate Marketing?
If you want to learn more about what is affiliate marketing and want to become a successful affiliate marketer, i highly recommend you to take a look at one of the biggest and legit affiliates marketing learning programs – Wealthy Affiliate.
There are plenty of REAL successful stories from Wealthy Affiliate, and best of all, it’s free to join their starter account!
Do have any good or bad experience with affiliate marketing? I’d love to hear from you in the comment box below. If you find this post helpful? It will be great if you’d SHARE it with your friends!
