Ultimate List Of Questions To Ask Before Becoming An Affiliate Marketer
Thinking about becoming an affiliate marketer but you have some questions right? We have taken the most commonly asked questions from around the web and compiled them here in this article. Some may even be questions you have not thought to ask. So grab a coffee and let’s get started.
Can Beginners Do Affiliate Marketing?
Yes, beginners can do affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is for anyone who can put in the hard work and dedication to a site. You also need patience, some time (Believe us you can make the time), and a clear idea of why you want to start your business.
It is tougher to start when you don’t have a built-in audience. Most people in the business do not start out with an audience so you are in good company. You will build an audience over time by creating valuable and engaging content on a website.
Can Anyone Become An Affiliate?
Yes, anyone can become an affiliate. There is a low barrier to entry. The minimum requirements are low enough that just about anyone can join. However, There is a lot to learn about affiliate marketing but it can be done!
As far as if anyone can become a part of a specific program, everyone has the ability to become an affiliate for an affiliate program as long as they meet the individual companies’ specific requirements. Like having so many visitors to a website or having a certain number of posts on a website.
Is Affiliate Marketing Still Profitable In 2022?
Yes affiliate marketing is still profitable especially in 2022. Most companies now have affiliate programs. It is still a growing market. The tactics change and there are more rules (“Guidelines” is probably more accurate) but affiliate marketing is still the best way to make money online.
Can You Start Affiliate Marketing With No Money?
Yes, it is very possible to start affiliate marketing with zero upfront costs.
However, there are things where having some seed money will be of benefit to you. For example, building and hosting your site or buying a domain name. The things we just listed are the most basic of things that you will need.
You can get hosting for free, but instead of getting a real domain name you would get a sub domain like yoursitename@wordpress.com vs yoursitename.com.
For some this is perfectly fine especially if you are just starting out but it has its limitations. Some Affiliate programs and ad networks won’t accept subdomains. It takes longer for subdomains to rank in the search engines if at all. It really does look as professional either.
Related Article: Can You Affiliate Market For Free?
Do Affiliate Marketers Make Money?
Yes, they do. Some make hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is possible to make millions as there is no income cap. There is a ton of potential in affiliate marketing, but don’t expect to make that kind of money overnight if you are new. Not all people who set out to affiliate market make it to that point because they give up to early. Usually between the 3 and 6 month marks. They forget that building a business takes time and effort or they think it is a way to get rich quick.
The biggest issue is building traffic and an audience.
Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It?
Well how you define “worth it” is up to you but let us put it this way
A normal person works 30 plus years hopefully saving for retirement. If it took 5 years with affiliate marketing to do the same thing would that be worth it?
For us the answer was and is still yes. Absolutely.
Like any other business you will get out of it what you put in to it. If you are willing to commit to the time and energy that it required you will be successful. Not everyone has lots of time to invest but if you are productive during the time you can commit you will still be successful it just might take a little longer.
Related Article: Is Affiliate Marketing Dead? 2022 And Beyond
Is Affiliate Marketing Easy? Is Affiliate Marketing A Hard Job?
That really depends on your definition of easy and how much technical expertise you have going in to affiliate marketing.
Once you really get going, we would say it does in fact get easier and then,
eventually, it just becomes easy.
That is not to say it is difficult either, but just like anything new you need to educate yourself first.
Affiliate marketing can be hard, at first, because all the information you need to learn can be a bit overwhelming in the beginning.
We think it is easier to run an affiliate marketing online business than it is to run a brick-and-mortar business but it is still a business and requires your attention.
What Are The Basic Requirements For Affiliate Marketing?
- Internet Connection
- Computer (or laptop, tablet, mobile phone)
- Basic Computer Skills
- Someone or something to teach you how to do affiliate correctly.
What Skills Do I Need To Be An Affiliate Marketer?
One misnomer is that you don’t need special skills. That is not entirely true.
You 100% need special skills,
BUT …
you can also 100% learn those skills.
How fast you learn and how you learn do factor into how much time it will take for you to fully educate yourself on the subject and then master those skills.
First off all you need some basic computer skills like being able to turn your computer on and off and how to use the mouse.
Then it helps to know how to
- Navigate Websites.
- How To Use Search Engines Like Google.
- How To Use Email.
- Copy And Paste.
How Do You Become Successful At Affiliate Marketing?
- Time
- Patience
- Effort
- Determination
- Perseverance
Number one is important because an affiliate site can only run if there is content. You have to take time to do research and create content for your site. Otherwise nothing happens.
Number 2 on the list is patience. If you are not a patient person now is the time to start learning. As we have repeatedly said it takes time to run a business and grow an audience. It takes time for the search engines to index your articles and even longer to get that same article ranked. Google can take the longest time when it comes to ranking.
Number 3 is effort. Nothing we do in life gets done with out putting in the effort. Writing 9 article in one year will not get your site anywhere. You need to post a minimum of once a week. Recommended is two to three times a week to see some success between 6 months to a year.
Number 4 Determination. You be able to keep going even when it seems like nothing is working. That first 3-6 months is like the proving ground for beginners. You will work and not much will happen. You will need to be determined to see this through ass success is just on the other side.
How Do I Start Affiliate Marketing As A Beginner?
Our best advice is to find a mentor or an honest source to teach you how to affiliate market correctly.
We do have some free information on this site (including this post) so check out the links in this post or browse the site.
We do have one place in mind if you are ready to get started. It is where we learned how to do affiliate marketing correctly. It is also where we still hang out to help others and keep up with the latest “in the field” data, tips and tricks, news and technology, and updates.
Related Article: The Ultimate Guide Of Affiliate Marketing Tips and Strategies
What Is An Affiliate Program?
An affiliate program is a way of setting up a marketing campaign. It is run by companies who have a product or service to sell. They set up a special program where they contract out to people to spread the word about their products/ services and pay a commission based on performance.
Some companies join an affiliate network who make the job of setting up this whole process easier. Ie Awin, ClickBank, CJ Affiliate, Rakuten, etc.
Related article: Which Affiliate Program Is The Best For Beginners?
What Is An Affiliate Network?
An affiliate network is a market place for affiliate programs. For an affiliate it is a place to find multiple programs to join all in one place.
For companies, affiliate networks help run the affiliate program for them.
What Is An Affiliate Disclosure?
An affiliate disclosure is a statement that you place on any page or post on a website that contains an affiliate link.
While we don’t need one for this page this is what ours looks like.
It must be at the beginning of an article or just above where you place your first link.
Do You Legally Have To Disclose Affiliate Links?
Yes, to make your site compliant with the search engines and governments you need to have to have an affiliate disclosure on your site and you must have one for every post and page where there is an affiliate link. To clarify you don’t need on for every link just every page where you have at least one affiliate link.
How Do Affiliates Get Paid?
Affiliates are paid a commission on items and service sold through an affiliate program or affiliate network.
The commission rates vary from program to program. When you get paid is also different and varies from program to program.
Is There A Cost Associated With Signing Up For An Affiliate Program?
For the most part there are no fees to sign up for an affiliate program. In our opinion, with a few exceptions, you should not pay to be a part of an affiliate program.
Here are the exceptions.
Awin charges 5 dollars to sign up to their affiliate network. You get the money back when you make your first commission.
There are some membership sites where you can only be an affiliate of the program if you are a paid member. So in that case you would be paying to sign up for the affiliate program.
What Is A Commission Rate?
A commission rate is the percentage of a sale that an affiliate earns. The rate varies for each program.
Can I Do Affiliate Marketing Without A Website?
Is Affiliate Marketing A Pyramid Scheme?
No affiliate marketing is not a pyramid scheme.
There are some companies who use affiliate marketing in their programs that are pyramid schemes, but in general that is not what affiliate marketing is.
Affiliate marketing is where you make a commission promoting other people’s products.
A pyramid scheme requires people to recruit others and create downlines of people who do the same thing. Affiliate marketing does not have downlines.
How Do I Drive Traffic To My Affiliate Website?
First you want to be using and utilizing SEO practices (Search Engine Optimization) to gain free traffic from the search engines.
Then use social media platforms to do the same. With social media, using clever, unique, or beautiful graphics helps you to drive traffic to your site.
Creating an email list and executing email campaigns can drive traffic back to your site.
Guest posting is a popular way of creating backlinks and gaining traffic.
Answering questions on Quora can create a traffic flow back to your site. Make sure to optimize your profile.
Last you can pay for ads to drive traffic to your website.
Why Do Affiliate Marketers Fail?
The number one reason is that people believe affiliate marketing is a way to get rich quick. In today’s world of instant gratification people believe that they can create a couple of articles and that this will make them rich. As we have hopefully proved at this point that is just not the case. Having the right business mindset is essential for any entrepreneur.
Going with the number one reason is reason number 2. People just give up too soon. Again, not having the right mindset and thinking that results should be instant have a significant impact on people giving up.
Number 3: The wrong niche. Often times people do not do significant research in to their website topic before they start. There are a lot (millions) of niches out there, but on some rare occasions there is not a significant audience to market to, therefore, no profits to be made.
How Do I Create An Affiliate Website?
Do You Have To Pay Tax On Affiliate Marketing?
Yes you must pay all taxes related to earning money even with online sales. When you earn an income you must pay taxes. The good news is because it is a business you will have write offs as well.
We must note that we are not qualified to give legal advise. You may need to talk to an account or attorney.
What Are The Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing?
It can take longer than people expect to see results. While you will get results quicker than any other business people still expect it to happen over night or even within a few months and that is just not the case. When you are just beginning, it can take weeks to get your site indexed. It then takes 3-8 months to get a single article ranked. For reference this site has been operating for 9 months and we are just seeing rankings for posts created in the sites first month. Our other site is almost 2 years old and articles just started to really rank a couple of months ago.
Not all affiliate programs are created equal in terms if commission. For example Amazon keeps cutting its commission rates where people earn pennies on a sale. To make that profitable you need thousands of people viewing a post to earn any decent income. Other programs pay more but it can be harder to get them to click and buy when an item has a high price tag.
Conclusion
There is quite a lot of information contained in this page and you may need to read it over and possibly over again. That is ok as it this post is not going anywhere and neither are we. Using this article and others available on the site you can quickly master creating your own affiliate marketing business. Just make sure you are well informed before you start on your affiliate marketing journey.
If you have a question not covered in this guide, please feel free to leave it in the comments below.
You can create your free starter account here to see if it’s a good fit for you.
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