7 Myths About Affiliate Marketing (Kill Them if You Want to Succeed)

“You’ve got a new sale”.

This is the most amazing thing you see as a notification in the morning on your phone.

I still remember the day when I first got my affiliate sale. It was overwhelming and I was on top of this world.

That was the ahaaa moment of my life.

90% of the blogger people jump into affiliate marketing for ONE reason: to make money.

There’s nothing wrong in that.

In fact, if done right, affiliate marketing can become a money printing machine.

But here’s the thing: there are so many myths around it.

So in this post, we’ll discuss some of the worst myths about affiliate marketing that need to be debunked so you can actually start making money from it.

Are you curious to find them out?

Let’s get started.

7 Dangerous Myths about Affiliate Marketing

1. It’s Easy to Start

If you think affiliate marketing is an easy way to start and make money then here is one fact for you.

Did you know that of all the people who try affiliate marketing, only around 3% make sales?

Before you even start an affiliate marketing business you need to accept that it could take up to a year to make a single dollar out of it.

Many people think that affiliate marketing is all about grabbing links from Amazon, JVZoo or ClickBank and suddenly they will start making money with it.

They feel that they will start pushing this link on social media sites, video sites and soon they are going to make thousands of dollars every month.

Wait!!

If you want your marketing strategy to work, you need to be familiarized with the process and put in immense efforts.

It’s not an easy task to bring more customers and convince them to find time to visit your website and indulge in your products and services. You will need to monitor how many of your customers are clicking the links of your affiliate programs and how many of those are actually following through to purchase.

Here are the few things, you need to consider before you think it is easy to start.

To set up an affiliate marketing site, you need to do a lot of research, planning, thinking and use a lot of time and some effort.
You need to figure out what your niche is. What are you passionate about?
You need to write relevant content for your blog and decide on the type of content you will use for your blog.
You need to figure out who your audience is.
If the chosen niche is already existed then how to become successful at it.
You need to find a good and reputable affiliate program to join that sells the products you want to promote.
You have to note which strategies are working and which are not.

So, affiliate marketing is not an easy task.

Maintaining it requires time, effort and resources. Your site has to be updated regularly with fresh and relevant content.

In the field of marketing, selling is an important skill that has to be learned.

You have to know what your customers actually want. And they are usually not very good at telling you so you will have to dig more to figure it out.

In order to be successful, you need to accept that there are no shortcuts. You have to work for it.

Bottom line: If you go into affiliate marketing thinking that money will come quicker than in more conventional businesses then it will be a big failure.

So, first try to understand what your customers really want and design a great marketing strategy.

And in this process, don’t lose patience. Be prepared for obstacles and setbacks.

Maintaining an affiliate site or blog requires commitment more than you think.

2. It’s a Get Rich Quick Scheme

It is one of the biggest myths of all.

They think that it’s an overnight success.

Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. Of course, there is money to be made, but earning a full-time income could take years.

Top affiliates which you see around you are doing this since years, they have mastered the copywriting kills, website optimisation skills, team development skills and above all, they have trained themselves to become one of the top players in the world.

Before you start to make money, you need to produce highly trustable and useful content and build some authority within a niche.

There’s nothing ‘quick’ about affiliate business. Affiliate Marketing is all about building an audience who trusts you on your advice and the products you promote. It takes at least two years to know the rules of business to make good enough money.

The one reason most of the bloggers fail in this field is they give up.

Yes, many bloggers give up once they see that they don’t make any money after a couple of months. It takes time for the search engines to trust a new website and start to rank it higher.

You may have to work for up to a year before your business starts to earn any commissions. Remember, this is a field just like any other, so it requires doing your homework. You need to have an out-of-the-box thinking.

Bottom line: To earn online, you need to build trust and this takes a good amount of time. Making money through affiliate marketing is like working in a full time job. It will benefit you but you need to spend time and money on it initially.

So, If you think affiliate marketing is going to make you rich overnight, then that is not going to happen. But the truth is, that if affiliate marketing is done right then it makes you rich.

3. You Need a Blog or Website

Most of the people think that they need a blog or website to start affiliate marketing.

But in reality, you don’t need.

If you have a blog or website, then it is absolutely okay. But never keep a reason for not having a website to start the business.

Usually, most of the people follow the path of creating a blog or website to give value to their business as it gives a chance to communicate with your target audience and showcase your products and services.

And you invest on your website and spend hours choosing over themes, plugins and colours. It will cost you thousands of dollars.

You will wait for traffic, clients and sales.

But what if, if you don’t need a website to get started!!

Yes, if you are clear about these three then you can start affiliate marketing straight away.

What type of business you want to get in.
Maintaining consistency.
Getting yourself in front of your target audience.

How you can get target audience?

Be active on Facebook and LinkedIn groups related to your business. You can share tips on what you learnt. This will get you more contacts. Because you are helping others with valuable content. You are solving the problems of others.

When you give value to your target audience consistently, people are bound to notice you.

Money is in the list, not in website or blog. Collect email addresses by offering users something of value that helps them in solving a problem in exchange.

Collect email addresses by offering users something of value that helps them in solving a problem in exchange.

Bottom line: All you need is email list. Provide tips in Facebook and Linkedin groups and tweet the hacks you learnt. If your tips and hacks solve the problems of users, they will contact you directly.

Pro Tip: You can start pinning some attractive images on Pinterest and insert your affiliate link with then to generate good sales.

4. You Can Make a lot of Money Through Affiliate Marketing Without Learning

“Learning is the EYE of the mind” – French Proverb

That’s so true.

Without learning the basics of selling, it is never possible to make even a penny. It is not at all a complex subject. What you need to do is work hard over a sustained period of time, just like you would with any other kind of business.

I read many books every month to keep me updated and in the pace to do things in a better way.

I attend many conferences around the world to learn the things directly from the experts.

Here are some of the conferences I have attended so far.

Here are some of the things you need to learn:

You need to know what kind of affiliate programs gets success.
How to promote the products and avoid spamming?
How to build up relationships with the customers?
How to market properly and effectively to get visitors attract to your affiliate programs?
You need to know the interests of the audience. For what problems they looking for a solution? Can you solve their problem?
How to find an affiliate link for any product?
How to find new products to promote?
You need to find out affiliate programs to join that sells the products.

And much more.

There is a big difference between purchasing a product from a shop having lots of choices and purchasing an affiliate product from a blog.

Bottom line: Start investing money on yourself to learn the basics. You cannot succeed if you don’t now that basics. Start reading good books and attend good conferences.

5. The More Website Traffic You Get the More Money You Can Make

No, you don’t need a million website visitors to make million dollars.

Even if you’ve a loyal fanbase 1000 people, you can make millions. That’s the truth about making money online.

Usually, most of the people think more website traffic leads to more conversions and thus more money.

But the truth is website traffic is usually not the problem when it comes to online marketing. If you are diverting so many visitors to your site but there is no conversion then what is the use of that traffic?

The main issue online business face is conversions. There are several mediums you can use to get website traffic like LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, or setup Google Adwords etc. But when people come to your website or landing pages etc, how certain are you that they will take the next step?

Then you may be wondering how to get conversions.

Do extensive research and figure out what your ideal prospects want.

So that, you can create something that will help them. There is a chance that your offer will resonate with the individuals who are looking for the solution to a concerned problem. So that, you can convince your prospects to take up your offer.

In Affiliate marketing, you need to aim to achieve a relevant number of quality visitors rather than large numbers of uninterested visitors.

Bottom line: The success of affiliate marketing is not based on the amount of traffic you have acquired, but it is based on the conversions you get. It depends on your ability to create recurring revenue in your business.

6. Affiliate Marketing is only Suitable for Smart People

While the name affiliate marketing gives the vibe of a highly professional marketing subject, it is not necessarily the one that can only be pursued by smart people with an academic association with business studies.

I know some of the best affiliate marketers who have finance background, hotel waiter, sky diving expert, a marketing background and from many non-IT fields.

Affiliate marketing has more to do with intuitive and creative skills than the knowledge of several technical words that are not used in daily life. To become highly skillful affiliate marketer, you need patience, perseverance and passion to learn new strategies.

It is all about finding the right offers to promote to your target audience. You don’t have to be smart to successfully make money with affiliate marketing.

Bottom line: Affiliate marketing is more about brains than qualifications. As long as you have desire to learn new things, and passion to succeed in the field, you can always take up affiliate marketing.

7. Affiliate Marketing Can be Completely Automated

Affiliate marketing takes a lot of time and effort.

If you try to automate every single step of the process, you will end up creating an impersonal, unprofessional relationship with your customers.

Unfortunately, there are a number of ways you can streamline the process using automation:

Using social aggregator tools that help in scheduling your social media posts.
Using automated email workflows to monitor customer engagement.
Segmenting emails to promote your content.

It’s not good to use the automation at every step.

It destroys the relationship with customers.

Bottom line: Even the most efficient affiliate marketing strategy takes time and resources. You need to dedicate good amount of time to do all the tasks by yourself or you can hire an affiliate marketer. Automation kills the trust.

Conclusion About Affiliate Marketing Myths

Affiliate marketing is all about trust, relationships and the ability to sell without sounding like an idiot. If you know how to sell stuff with your content, you can make a TON of sales.

The best part is, you can make money even while you sleep.

That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing.

But just make sure to the affiliate marketing myths shared in this post to make more sales.

So what do you think?

Did I miss any other affiliate marketing myths?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

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