Affiliate Marketing is one of the famous ways of making money online. Today, we’re going to debunk the myths and scams about affiliate marketing. This industry has been around for a while now and is highly marketed, so obviously, some myths about it are being spread either by marketers who want people to sign up for affiliate marketing or by people who couldn’t achieve success in affiliate marketing or by people who are just bored.
So, here we are going to bust the top 10 most common myths about Affiliate Marketing:
Table of Contents
#1 Affiliate Marketing myths- It is saturated.
Affiliate Marketing has been around for quite some time now and there are a lot of players in the market. That leads many people to think that the market is too competitive and newcomer does not have much chance to make real money out of it.
This is not true!
Let’s go over some stats. Shall we?
For the past two decades, the number of Internet users in the world has been increasing constantly. For the next few years at least, this graph is only going to grow. According to Statista, the number of internet users has increased from 1,100 million in 2005 to 4,131 million in 2019.
While the internet has been around for 2 decades, the rage of internet shopping is relatively new and is growing tremendously. Oberlo says that $2.8 trillion was spent by customers shopping online in 2018. The amount is expected to double in 2021.
Yes, there is competition in the affiliate marketing space. But that doesn’t mean there is no space for newcomers. The competition only indicates that there is enough demand for it.
#2 Affiliate Marketing can make you rich quickly.
Who does not love a ‘get rich quickly’ scheme?
That is why many genuine money-making ideas are marketed as ‘get rich quickly’ options and end up being classified as spam.
This is the most infamous Affiliate Marketing myth spreading around the web by internet marketing biz op sellers. They say you will get rich fast with messages like “make 10,000 in 30 days” and so on. Don’t believe the hype! Affiliate marketing will NOT make you rich quickly. It does happen if you have the money to spend on personal coaching but overall it’s a slow process.
Just like every other new business, it takes time, effort, and investment to get started and establish a successful affiliate marketing business. Even after you set up your site and put up affiliate links, it could take long before you make any real money of it.
Ask yourself, if you see a random website advertising a product, will you go buy from it? Probably not.
There are a lot of things that go behind a successful affiliate business like building trust with your audience, building relationships, and networks, choosing the right affiliate programs, marketing the right products, providing your customers with up-to-date information in your topics, etc.
It takes anywhere from 3 to 6 months to start making money through affiliate marketing when it is done right. And, yes, if you continue putting effort into learning more and implementing proper strategies, you can become rich through affiliate marketing.
#3 People need the luck to succeed in Affiliate marketing Game.
Every field involves a tiny bit of luck to reach the top.
Affiliate marketing is not like spinning the wheel hoping that you will land a lottery.
The term ‘affiliate marketing’ itself says that it is not a gamble. It is ‘marketing’. For a person to market something, there are a lot of components that need to be understood:
- What is the product/service that people want?
- Who is likely to purchase the product?
- Where can you find these potential buyers?
- How can you convince them to buy what you are selling?
With affiliate marketing, people need to know how internet works and people behave online:
- What are the people on the internet looking for?
- In what niches people are ready to buy online?
- What keywords do they search for?
- What type of content and ads can keep the attention of the buyer?
- How to make an internet user trust you enough to buy what you recommend?
To succeed as an affiliate marketer, you have to understand and be aware of all these factors that influence your sales. There are proven models and strategies that can be followed to become a successful affiliate marketer.
It takes hard work and continuous learning on the job to get there. Only people who do not understand how this works will deem it as ‘luck’.
#4 Traffic = Profit
Driving more traffic is the ultimate marker of success for an online business. Right?
Wrong. Traffic ≠ Profit
You can have million visitors to your page and only 10 of them clicking your affiliate link to buy. On the other hand, somebody else might have a website where they get barely 1000 visitors but 40 of them end up buying through their affiliate link. Who is making more profits here?
So, high traffic does not guarantee you more profits when it comes to affiliate marketing. There are a lot of other factors that influence your profits:
- You should attract the right kind of traffic.
- If people are looking for only free information in a particular, you might not be able to make much money out of it.
- Your site should be optimized for converting your traffic into leads or buyers.
Traffic is a good indicator that your website is attracting eyes. But if they come only to analyze the product you have and not buy it; you are not going to make many profits.
#5 You need to have a social media following to have a successful Affiliate marketing business.
There many ‘influencers’ on social media platforms that make good money as affiliate marketers.
That being said you DON’T NEED to have a social media following or even a social media presence to run a successful affiliate marketing business.
Even famous social media personalities fail to make money through affiliate marketing. It is because people do not necessarily associate famous people with quality products. People are looking for a source that they can trust. You can build this trust even without social media through your website.
It is, however, possible to drive more traffic and potential buyers through social media as so many people are active users.
#6 People do not trust content creators who put up affiliate links.
Many people believe that the moment you start putting up affiliate links, the audience becomes a little skeptical about you. It is true to an extent.
It is true that as long as people feel like you are a salesperson who is looking to sell products to earn money, they are not going to buy from you.
However, there is a better way of selling affiliate products that people actually love rather than throwing sales pitch after sales pitch at your customers. It is called connecting with your customers and providing value.
People actually want to buy products online and they are looking for a trustable source. As long as you are that trustable source, they will not have a problem with you putting up affiliate links. Make sure the product/service you promote solves some problem of your audience and disclose that it is an affiliate link. People online appreciate an honest and detailed review. Give them these and they will happily click your affiliate links.
#7 It takes a lot of technical IT skills to become an Affiliate marketer.
NO. It doesn’t.
All you need to become an affiliate marketer is to know something about marketing (just a tad) and your way around the internet. You can learn everything else on the go. There are YouTube videos, online courses, e-books, etc, that will teach you the rest.
Many software has been developed to make creating and running a website as easy as creating content in a word file. You don’t have to know coding or any of the complicated stuff to handle WordPress or publish posts via Blogger.
Besides, there is always an option to hire a freelancer to do a work that is beyond your technical capacity or those works which you find too time-consuming. Many companies even provide ‘ready-made websites’ for your affiliate marketing business.
#8 It is all about organic traffic.
This is a myth that has to be busted for people entering or already in the field of affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is NOT just about organic traffic. There is nothing wrong with using advertisements to make more people notice you.
When we say ‘organic traffic’, it indicates the traffic that comes from search engines like Google. With so many websites fighting for position on the first page of the search results, what is the odd of your website finding a place there?
Your audiences are everywhere. You can find them on Facebook groups, Instagram, niche forums, and even on other websites. You might put up great valuable content but still fail to get traffic if you solely depend on organic traffic. Adverting and targeting other ways of attracting people to your website can help kick-start your traffic or boost it tremendously.
Of course, organic traffic is good. But solely on SEO to drive traffic to your website is not good because it takes a lot of time (years sometimes) and search engines can change their rules for ranking overnight.
#9 Affiliate Marketing business is a passive income stream that you can set-up and forget about.
When you go searching for ‘passive income ideas’ online, you can find affiliate marketing as one of the most recurring suggestions.
However, affiliate marketing CANNOT be a 100% passive income stream.
Don’t mistake me, it is a passive income stream just not ‘set-it-up-and-forget-it’ kind of passive income stream.
When you are going for a job, you get paid for the days you are presenting in the office and working. This is an active income stream. With affiliate marketing, you can make money not only while you are actively working on it but even while you are sleeping.
It takes a lot of effort to set up your affiliate marketing business. As you start to understand the tips and tricks of the trade and start building trust with your audience, it will get easier to make more money with less amount of work. If you started with putting a full day of work into it, you could keep your business running with 2-3 hours a day and take a few days off without hurting your business.
There is one option to make it a completely passive income: hire a team!
#10 You need a Blog or website to be an affiliate marketer.
Website and blogs do allow you to connect with your customers and establish yourself as an authority in your area. However, you don’t NEED it to become an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate marketing is all about trust and you don’t need a website to make people trust you. There are so many ‘influencers’ who make money selling affiliate products without having a website of their own.
You can establish yourself as an expert, make people notice you and build trust via other platforms as well. There is LinkedIn, Facebook, Quora, Instagram Pages, Pinterest, etc. where you can reach out to people. Create posts and share the tips and hacks you know in a particular field. As more people find it useful, you are going to get noticed. You can monetize this traffic by throwing in affiliate links related to your area.
That is all for this list. I hope it helps bust some of the myths about Affiliate Marketing for you.
