Affiliate programs are not a new idea. They’ve gained a form of rebirth lately due to the ease with which the internet lends itself to their use, but in the end the idea of rewarding somebody for bringing business to you is as old as business itself. I can easily imagine merchants in ancient Egypt or Greece paying others to support their businesses. It’s neither revolutionary nor particularly risky in most cases as all you have to do is run your business and hope people follow it to your Seller.
While there is money to be made in affiliate marketing, keep in mind that there are pitfalls that you have to watch out for as well. It’s easy to get involved in the excitement of a new business, invest yourself and your time into it, and see small or no returns on your efforts, so pay careful attention to what you’re looking at and how you approach it.
First of all, any article, blog entry, or casual mention of “affiliate marketing” will probably get several comments inviting the author to join their program, that many of them are scams or sound too good to be true, but this one is different and worth trying for a small investment. Let me say now, I’m not interested in joining your affiliate, so please keep any comments to a discussion of the article.
That being said, they are right that a lot of affiliate programs sound too good to be true. They promise quick returns for minimal effort, simply putting a banner ad on your website or posting it on a social networking place. These will often be accompanied by testimonials that prove that with hardly any work you can make remarkable amounts of money. Even if this is true of some people, the odds are heavily against you, and the more a company tries to assure you of the safety of their investment, the less trustworthy they likely are.
It’s also worth noting that affiliate programs are a form of work. You are working for another company to advertise their product, service, website, etc. If you get a job in an office, do you pay your employer for the privilege of working there? Then why should you pay for the honor of being an affiliate to another company? If they’re asking you for an investment of your capital in order to work for them, consider that perhaps they’re not making enough on the click-throughs to otherwise make a profit, so why would you?
The truth is no matter what you become an affiliate for, it’s going to involve hard work like any business. It’s a marketing technique like any other, and the company you’re working for will expect you to spread the word about their company by any effective means. It may be traditional methods like email marketing, SEO, or even display marketing. It might be in the form of reviews or clever blog entries. But the point is that there is no easy money to be had, and it will require effort on your part.
Tom McCarrick said:
I think afflilate marketing is a great way of earning money – for the vendors. When you think about it, they have all their marketing done for them by their affiliates. It’s not easy to succeed as an affiliate only, unless you have a large list of subscribers, or you are getting lots of traffic to your website.
tom
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 pm
admin said:
That’s right Tom. One of the things that’s never mentioned is all the FREE BRANDING benefits that are realized from all the ads that are put up, all the FREE PR from posting, etc.
Affiliate programs greatly benefit the company running the program and most affiliates make little to no money.
The major flaw is the inability to track sales based on branding and PR.
That said, there are affiliates that make money, and some of them make decent money. I have done so myself.
One of the main points to the article though is that you shouldn’t believe the way over-hyped claims of how easy it is to make lots of money.
How do you make money online?
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:48 am