Is affiliate marketing worth it in 2023? If you want to know an in-depth answer to this question then you’re in the right place.
There are so many lies about affiliate marketing on the internet – it’s not even funny. I’ve seen so many people blatantly lying about affiliate marketing, not knowing anything about it themselves.
And the short answer to this question is it’s worth it if you are willing to learn affiliate marketing skills and create helpful content that solves people’s problems, then yes, you should start affiliate marketing and you can promote affiliate products.
But if you are not creating content, if you are not willing to learn digital marketing skills, and if you want something that is simple, then absolutely no, affiliate marketing is not worth it.
And now, we’re going to dive much deeper and dispel all those myths. I’m almost 100% certain that the absolute majority should have seen at least one ad about affiliate marketing in a few recent days or even in a few recent hours.
And it is insane how it is being painted, is the easy online business to start.
So now I’m going to be explaining everything, how it is, based on my experience and all my knowledge.
So, let’s discuss whether affiliate marketing is actually worth it for you or not.
Let’s start with a very, very short discussion of what affiliate marketing actually is. I’m pretty sure you know, but let’s recap this.
Affiliate marketing is basically a business model where you market the products of other individuals in exchange for the commissions from the sales.
Basically, you market the product, someone else buys this product and you are getting a percentage of the sales because you marketed it. This is a simple explanation and as an exact explanation, as it can get.
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Is Affiliate Marketing Easy?
But is it really that easy as it sounds? Well, and the answer is well, if it sounds too good to be true, most likely it is.
There are many pros and cons of affiliate marketing and it is not an easy online business model.
Do you know why?
Because of the name itself, affiliate marketing.
What you are doing in this business model is you are actually marketing the product as I explain more in my affiliate marketing PDF for beginners.
The only thing that is different in affiliate marketing is that you are not marketing your own product.
So basically, you are not wasting the time in the actual creation of the product or perfection of the product, you only focus on marketing.
And guess what you need to do in order to succeed in this business model, you need to market the product.
And if you have no idea how to do digital marketing, how do you think you are going to make money from affiliate marketing?
But again, let’s just simplify some stuff and let’s imagine that, okay, you can do marketing, you know some fundamentals about marketing and you are willing to do marketing in order to make money from this business model.
So, okay, let’s discuss how affiliate marketing is actually done.
Affiliate Marketing Business Model Explained
First, you’re choosing an affiliate product, and you are given basically your own link, which allows the owner of the product to track the sales; so, whether it’s coming from you or from other people.
Now that you have a link, you need to actually market this link. And to market this link, you need to put this link in the places where people can actually click this link and you will generate sales.
Historically, there have been two groups of places where you can market your product. Well, technically there are three. The third is basically paid ads. So, let’s just ignore this for the moment and only focus on free marketing places.
So, the first place to market your product is to go to the places where people who would be interested in this product, or rather interested in this niche would gather. And these are places like specific Facebook groups or the Quora question threads or forums or discord servers, or YouTube comment sections, or Instagram comments or things like that.
Basically, the place where you think that people who might buy this product would gather, and you’re sprinkling your link here and there, organically or not, that’s all up to you.
Sounds easy enough, right?
All you need to do is just find places where these people gather enough. You can just Google it or just ask around or just go around just to find these places. It might take a few hours, but it’s easy enough, right?
Well, that’s what the majority of affiliate marketers and affiliate marketing coaches are actually teaching you.
Affiliate Marketing Is Not As Easy As It Might Seem…
And you know what, yes, it works, if it was 2012. In this day and age, this method is absolutely outdated because no matter where you will go, if you drop an affiliate link, just like that, out of nowhere, you will be banned immediately.
No matter it’s a Facebook group or a discord survey or thing like that; or if you will not be banned, most likely, nobody will click that because a majority of people actually know how dangerous the unknown links can be.
And affiliate links usually look pretty sketchy. So that’s what affiliate marketers are actually teaching you, which is wrong. And they are not doing this themselves because it worked in 2012 but it hasn’t been working for years now.
So that’s an awful place to start with.
Okay, what about the second spot?
So, second place is instead of going and finding the places where those people are gathering up, you’ll create this place. Basically, you’ll create a community where these people will actually gather up.
And in order to build an audience, you need to make content and it can be any type of content. It can be text content, whether it’s a Facebook group based on status updates and things like that, or it can be a website blog where you just type out the different blogs and people are just looking for it on Google.
It can be static visual content, like an Instagram photo, or just any type of photo or infographics for Pinterest and things like that. It can be audio content.
Let’s say a podcast about a certain topic where people are gathering up and in the description, you have the links to that. And it can be, of course, video content, like YouTube videos, like this one or a TikTok video.
But you’ll probably see the problem immediately right here. In order to market the product, you need to create content.
Why You Need To Succed in Affiliate Marketing?
So, in order to be a marketer, a successful marketer, you need to develop affiliate marketing skills like email marketing, copywriting, SEO, lead generation, and more.
In addition, you also should create helpful content to solve problems that your audience has.
And that’s where the main problem with affiliate marketing rises.
In recent years, making content has become so easy. No matter whether you’re creating text content, because even AI is smart enough now to write an entire blog, no matter whether it’s photo content, because, with tools like Canva, it’s incredibly easy to create an amazing post.
And no matter whether you’re creating a YouTube video, because there are so many templates and apps and services that are creating YouTube videos for you, that it has become incredibly, incredibly competitive.
And your review of some product might never be seen by anybody. So now, instead of focusing on marketing the product, you need to focus on marketing your content in order to market this product back to those people.
Do you see how complicated it becomes?
Do you see how difficult and how complicated it becomes for anybody who is just a beginner?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t say that it’s impossible to do, but if you’re looking for an easy way to make money, well, affiliate marketing is not it.
It’s not easy. It was in the past, well, comparatively speaking at least, but now it’s not anymore.
Affiliate Marketing Requirements
So, if you’re looking for an easy way to make money online, well, affiliate marketing, isn’t it because, in reality, you either need to be paying for ads or to influencers or to other people to promote this product.
And why would you even do that for other people’s products? Unless they’re paying a lot in commissions, or you need to be creating the content yourself.
And in this case, you’ll probably focus on other things to make money from and not only on affiliate marketing.
The reality is that if you have not done anything online and you are just starting, affiliate marketing is an awful business to start with.
But there is one group of people for whom affiliate marketing is not just a good way to make money, but it’s an essential way to make money from.
And if you’re not doing this, if you are in this group, and you are not doing affiliate marketing, you are basically committing a crime of self-harm basically.
And it is the content creators themselves.
Let me explain.
If you are creating the content, regardless of affiliate marketing or not, like for example, I do, you might as well put affiliate links in your descriptions
You’re basically losing nothing. You are creating content anyways. You’re not creating content for affiliate marketing; you are creating content for the sake of creating the content and affiliate marketing will be just an added bonus.
I’ve been putting a bunch of different affiliate links in my descriptions for years now and believe it or not, even if I’m not talking actively about the products, I’m still generating some sales.
It’s not a huge amount of income, but it is an income nonetheless.
So why would you not do that?
Affiliate Marketing Is Worth It If You Learn The Skill
I hope this answers this question, and this is coming from my own experience and from my own pain with affiliate marketing.
And by the way, if you think that you need to be a big content creator to start making an affiliate income, no, you don’t. I am a small content creator and I’ve been making income from affiliate sources since I had a very small website.
So, you don’t have to be big in order to start making income, if you are making content from affiliate marketing.
Well, I guess this will be for today.
