Is it worth your time to jump into bite-sized affiliate marketing at this point in time?
You will see a lot of statements claiming that affiliate marketing is dead. Or simply does not work. Or is not worth the time you are going to spend on it.
There was even a Medium writer who wrote that “affiliate marketing rarely works.” (Note: https://medium.com/@artturi-jalli/the-untold-truth-about-affiliate-marketing-e60f38aa80b3 )
He had been an affiliate since 2020 (four years at the time of writing this). So, he should know, right? If he could not make it work, how would you?
Before you believe such claims and give up before you even start, let us dive in and take a closer look.
Are they lying about their income?
Some could be lying about their real numbers. Maybe their purpose is to sell an affiliate marketing course. It sounds a lot better to tell prospects that they make $7,000 in five minutes rather than $5 in seven weeks.
The latter sells no courses.
But let us start with the affiliate who made this claim. He is still an affiliate. If affiliate marketing rarely works, why is he still doing it?
This makes no sense.
If you learn about such claims, then look at the arguments used. Look at what the person making the claim is doing. Do his acts contradict his claims?
This particular affiliate writes that intuition does not work with affiliate marketing.
As proof, he gives an example where he uses logic. He also claims that you need a huge audience. 20,000 visitors to make $300.
This would be enough to put most people off.
But that is because he only looks at affiliate marketing from a blog or website. It has been clearly proven many times that email marketing is the best way to make any sales. Sure, you can have reviews on your blog.
But use them in combination with emails.
One email subscriber you send to such a review is easily worth 1,000 random visitors. Now you just need 20 visitors to make $300. Is that possible?
Assuming you are promoting a $120 info product with a 50 percent commission rate, you only need five out of the 20 (25 percent) to buy.
Yes, it takes skills to write the emails and the reviews in such a way that it is possible. But you can learn that. Study the best emails you receive or buy courses from email marketers whose emails you like.
One thing is theory, though.
Let us take a real example. Email marketer Britt Malka had a brand new list with only 182 subscribers. Yet she made $700.50 in two days by sending emails to that list. (Your affiliate link to Small List Email Maestro by Britt Malka)
That is more than $300 for every 91 subscribers.
This number does not even get close to 20,000 visitors. Now, you may be wondering where these amazing subscribers came from. Good thinking.
They came through other affiliates to Britt’s list because they bought one of her courses.
They were buyers. Not random visitors. And that makes a huge difference.
You could argue that the easy days as an affiliate marketer are gone.
There was a time, 15 to 20 years ago, where an affiliate could pick a product, run an ad and make thousands of dollars. It was truly easy money for the people who dared to risk a few dollars. Since then, the price of ads has gone up,
It has also been harder to buy ads, assuming you wanted to pay the prices.
Facebook and Google have been known for banning accounts for not sticking to their immense ruleset, some of which are unwritten. In that sense, if affiliate marketing is not dead, it is definitely beginning to smell funny.
Back then, an affiliate marketer could work 15 minutes per day.
Talk about bite-sized affiliate marketing here. They could snap a few product images from a sales page, paste them until their own blog and send traffic.
Even if ads were cheaper. Even if Facebook and Google did not ban accounts easily. Even if those two issues were easy to deal with.
Affiliate marketing as we knew it a long time ago is dead.
Because of trust. Or lack of it, rather. Today, consumers are more skeptical.
Since it was so easy to create affiliate pages with fake reviews, giving five stars to junk products, sleazy affiliates did it.
Do a search for “[product name] and ‘review’” or “is [product name] a scam, and you will find plenty of such sites. The affiliate marketers are praising the products without ever having gone through them. They stay silent about the bad points and tell you to buy.
Naturally, you can fool consumers once, twice, maybe even three times, but there comes a time when it is no longer possible.
Trust is gone.
And this hurts all affiliate marketers. Now it takes a lot more to convince your audience that you have their best interest in mind.
Your responsibility here is to always have their best interest in mind.
One glitch, one little promotion of a product you know is bad, but it can make you a bunch of easy money, and the trust you worked hard for is gone.
Instead of sending traffic to a blog or homepage directly, you must aim to collect as many visitors as you can and make them join your email list.
While you can make sales directly from a blog or a Medium article, your chances are at least 10 times higher from an email.
A writer of a blog post is more or less unknown to the visitor. If you show up in their inbox every day, they will get to know you and eventually to like and trust you as well.
And that is where sales can take place.