Whenever you land on any make money online, internet marketing, or affiliate marketing site trying to sell you something, you’re usually going to get fed a bunch of hype about the “laptop lifestyle” and “passive income" dreams.
Unfortunately, a lot of unscrupulous copywriters and marketers have made millions of dollars by selling people a dream, but refusing to back up the claims that they made in their sales letters and advertisements.
As the years have passed, people have become leery of the “passive income lifestyle” because of all the hype and misleading claims.
A majority of those people have written it off as a dream, and refuse to entertain the thought of being able to legitimately make money from anywhere in the world, and truly control the amount of money that you make.
There’s nothing wrong with those people.
If you’re constantly fed hype and lies about products trying to sell you on the laptop lifestyle, you’re going to become jaded. That’s easy to understand.
What’s hard to understand, though, is how so many people have completely written off making money online or building an affiliate marketing business as a pipe dream.
Even though some copywriters and marketers have tainted the industry with their sales messages and advertising, making huge claims that they can’t back up, affiliate marketing is still a viable business model.
When you take the time to understand how the industry works, and how you can actually build a business around affiliate marketing, you can start to work through some of the hype you’ve read and been conditioned to ignore.
By getting past the hype, and realizing that there is actually work involved (like building any type of business) and that you can get rich, but it’s not going to happen overnight, you’ll start to realize the power that affiliate marketing has.
It is one of the simplest, and most cost-effective business models you can pursue, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that becoming successful as an affiliate marketer is easy.
Before buying some program that is guaranteeing you to become an overnight millionaire, while only working 10 minutes a day, stop yourself.
Then spend some time learning about the affiliate marketing industry itself, and how so many people are building real businesses around the model.
When you do, you’ll start to realize your dreams are possible, as long as you’re willing to work to achieve them, and give yourself some time to learn the process.
The Principles Are Sound
Affiliate marketing isn’t really different than any other type of business, at the core of the model.
The main difference is that the business is built around a website, instead of a brick and mortar business. This aspect is what makes affiliate marketing so lucrative, because you’re not limited to your local market, and can reach new customers from all around the world.
Stop and think about how brick and mortar businesses actually work.
They buy products at a low price, and then resell them at a higher price in order to turn a profit and keep their doors open from month, to month and continue paying their employees.
They typically have a sales team or customer service representatives who help them sell those products to customers that walk through the door or call them on the phone. Most times, they’ll have a website to help them sell the products, too.
Their business model revolves around them selling products for a profit and usually paying their sales team a commission. The more products they sell, the more money they make.
Except, most times, those businesses are limited to selling only to the people in their local area.
Amazon changes that, and makes it possible to sell to people from all around the world.
They also make it easy for people to build a business around their model, without having to take the financial risk of sourcing the products they’re selling.
By becoming a part of Amazon’s sales team, you can collect commissions on products you’re selling, and never have to touch the inventory yourself.
Since it’s all based off the internet, you have access to a huge market (the entire world) and can control your income by getting your website in front of more people than you would if you were working for your local brick and mortar store.
When you think about it like that, Amazon is a digital brick and mortar store, and their affiliates are their sales team.
As time progresses, and you begin seeing success from the effort you’re putting into promoting products through Amazon’s Associates (affiliate) program, you’ll end up collecting data that will allow you to eventually become your own digital brick and mortar business, and continue scaling your income even more than what you can achieve solely as an affiliate.
I hope that makes sense.
In essence, you’re becoming a part of Amazon’s sales teams, and using a website to make sales instead of having to buy or lease a brick and mortar building, purchase inventory, hire employees, and do everything else that comes along with running a business.
You get to sidestep all of that hard work by becoming an affiliate and building a website.
As an affiliate marketer in Amazon’s Associates program (or any other affiliate program), all you have to do is promote their products, and get paid.
You don’t have to deal with customers, inventory management, accounting, or anything else that tends to bog down most traditional businesses.
The best part about being an affiliate marketer is that you can build a website from any laptop, which actually opens the door to you working on building your business wherever in the world you’re currently located.
There is work involved, though.
Just like any other business, you have to put in the time and energy to become successful, but the sky is truly the limit. The more you’re willing to work, the more money you’re going to end up making.
That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing.
Your average Joe can become a millionaire using the internet, and they don’t have to reinvent the wheel because the principles have already been proven by brick and mortar businesses, and the Amazon Associates program is one of (if not the) largest affiliate networks still operating today.
I’ll repeat it again, though, you do still have to put in the work to succeed. There’s no free ride in business, and affiliate marketing is no different.
What To Expect In Your First 12 Months
Knowing what you’re getting yourself into before you start is half the battle.
When you know what to expect as the months pass, you’ll be prepared to tackle the obstacles facing you head on, and keep from getting frustrated because results aren’t coming quick enough.
Affiliate marketers typically depend on the major search engines (read: Google) to drive traffic to their websites, and for good reasons.
Imagine, for a second, that you’re selling dog collars on your website.
Which scenario is going to be easier?
- Tracking down every place on the internet you think people who would be interested in purchasing a dog collar spend their time, and then getting your offers in front of them while they are actually in the mood to buy one? Or trying to convince them that they need the collar you’re selling?
- Or sitting back and waiting on the search engines to send traffic to your website, from people who have specifically typed in “best dog collar for great danes” and are already in the mood to buy, just looking for a recommendation of which collar to purchase?
In the first scenario, you’re going to have to keep putting in the work to continue driving traffic to your website, while the second scenario sends traffic to your website 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.
I’m not a betting man, but if I had to guess, I’m going to assume you’re fairly smart and can see why search engine traffic is so popular among affiliate marketers.
Here're the traffic stats for one of my own affiliate sites
Relying on the search engines for traffic does have its downfalls, though, and one of the major downfalls is why so many marketers tend to bail out on the business model just before they start seeing success.
That downfall is what’s typically referred to as the “sandbox”.
If you’ve never heard the term, or are unfamiliar with what the sandbox is, here’s a link that explains the theory in great detail.
In short, it’s built to keep people from being able to manipulate the search results, but has a dual function of causing people to bail out and think that the business model (especially relying on search engine traffic) is hogwash and a scam.
If you’re able to push through the standard waiting period that major search engines will put your site through (usually 3-5 months), the end result is pretty astonishing (without trying to hype it up!) and consistently blows our mind for what we personally believe is possible.