We all know this feeling of fear before starting anything. Every rookie affiliate before starting skeptically asks the question: "Is it even possible to make money with affiliate marketing?". Short answer - yes, we will analyze it in more detail in the article. Several affiliate marketing success stories will show and help you to start earning money and build up new income.
Let's dive in!
What is the success rate of affiliate marketers
There is no exact percentage or figure, it may take a few years for the gem to become solid. For example, there are no exact statistics for the affiliate conversion rate, but according to some data, the affiliate conversion rate varies from 4% to 17%.
It all depends on your ambitions and desire to develop in this area. As usually happens, from 90% to 95% of newcomers fail and leave the sphere after the first unsuccessful campaign.
It is difficult to give an exact figure of success because as a niche affiliate marketing is still growing and developing. Looking at Google Trends data for the key query "affiliate marketing", we will see rapid growth of requests over the past six years, to be more precise, interest in affiliate marketing increased by more than 300% in the period from 2017 to 2021, this is often associated with the growth of the e-commerce sector (rapid pace of Amazon for example) and media attention.
All these years physical stores have been looking for a way to sell their products online. To date, more than 25% of brands use bloggers in their affiliate marketing campaigns. Of the respondents surveyed, more than 80% launched an affiliate marketing program to improve website traffic and increase sales. In addition, more than 80% of advertisers allocate about 10% of their marketing budget to affiliate marketing, it's more efficient and lets off the money bags questions!
The best thing is that creating an affiliate marketing program can lead to increased brand awareness, improved lead generation, and increased sales without huge advertising costs. However, a successful affiliate marketing program depends on several factors, which include choosing the best brand partners who are in the same niche or target the same consumer profile!
Based on this, we can safely say that affiliate marketing provides good opportunities for earnings. There is demand and there is supply. The main thing for us is to stick to the plan and follow successful business models that can bring money, then our success rate may be close to 100%!
How hard is it to be successful in affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a simple business model that has been around for a long time. Previously, like 20 years back, when there was no Internet or mobile phones, there were sales representatives who represented several different companies or products. Perhaps once you heard a knock on your door, and there was a person behind it offering to buy you a product to facilitate your daily life, and if you bought something, he received a commission or money checks. The Internet has only simplified and scaled this process. Now a sales representative is an affiliate marketer who provides information and recommendations to make life easier for the buyer and the business.
It's indeed a simple business, but do not confuse simple with easy. The concept of affiliate marketing itself is simple and we can see a lot of success stories, but in reality, the model "promote other people's products using a website or your blog and get a commission from each sale" turns out to be quite difficult for many. If we turn to statistics again, according to the data, the total cost of affiliate marketing in the United States will increase to $ 8.2 billion by 2022, but only 10% of partners are responsible for 90% of all clicks and conversions.
There is a huge gap between successful partners and all those who want to become a partner, waiting only to get their first affiliate sale.
Why is this area an impenetrable wall for some, while others earn large monthly commissions, which continue to grow over time for many years building unprecedented income?
Most often the obstacles are:
- Spread across niches or incorrect location in a niche
- You or your marketing campaign don’t provide enough added value to differentiate yourself
- Confusion or not understanding your job versus that of the seller you’re promoting
- You’re violating the Federal Trade Commission (American GEOs)
- Promoting the wrong affiliate programs that may cause harm to privacy and money for your clients
- Lack of education and understanding of how marketing works
- Trying to afoul TOO MANY options
Struggling to find a niche? We will help you!
Success stories from the world of affiliate marketing
The easiest way to learn from the experience of those who have succeeded in the business. Each success story carries invaluable experience, tips, and parting words that will help you succeed and increase your chance of success several times. We have selected for you the best stories in which people share their path in affiliate marketing and years of experience. Different projects have different goals, but they are united by the fact that affiliate marketing has changed their lives, allowing them to earn a decent living.
Success story that inspires: My Affiliate Marketing Business Earns $500K/Year Profit [No Employees] - Spencer Mecham, Founder of Buildapreneur
Spencer Mecham started his journey a few years back in 2016, at that time he worked at a digital marketing agency, where a colleague showed him a way to monetize content using affiliate programs. There was an idea - why not try it? He spent almost two years preparing to launch a blog about the stock market, engaged in web design and development, and created dozens of backlinks.
And what do you think? - In the first two years, none of this gave results. Then an attempt to poke Instagram - unsuccessfully.
As often happens, success comes with 99% hard work and dedication and 1% luck. Thanks to countless attempts, luck turned its attention to Spencer Mecham.
"One day I decided to create some videos about my Instagram page. After creating the videos, I posted them on YouTube and added links to them from Instagram. Unbeknownst to me, one of these videos appeared on YouTube and gained hundreds of thousands of views."
The more you expose yourself or your content to the public, the more chance you have of being noticed.
In 2018, thanks to a video about his real estate portfolio, in which he mentioned the company he uses to search for deals, Spencer Mecham received an offer and the first check for $ 2,000. He found a money tree and started to see potential income coming toward him.
He quickly switched to YouTube, and from that moment on it became his main source of affiliate income. At the moment, Spencer's turnover has grown significantly, amounting to 500 thousand dollars a year!
Success story that inspires: How I Started A $500K/Month Website About Online Casinos - Jan Kovac, Founder of Casino Guru
The Jan Kovac Casino Guru project is a website that provides information related to online casinos. The business model on which the site is built in SEO optimization as a source of traffic. People are looking to get the information they need on the website and follow the affiliate link to the online casino. According to the recommendation of Casino Guru, the website is free to use.
The company generates about 500 thousand dollars of income per month and has more than 50 full-time employees! And also the company ranks 3rd in the world in this segment and is aiming for the best! Casino Guru has a few big affiliate marketing offers with top casinos.
The secret of Casino Guru's success is that they have created a system that models all relationships and information about online casinos in the form of structured data.
"As an example: almost every online casino has a list of countries whose residents it does not allow to play. To collect this information, we created a database table casino_restricted_country and filled it with 1 entry for each casino and each country that is in its limited list. This has helped us to separate the information itself from how it is displayed on our website to our visitors. As a result, we have shown great flexibility and agility in changing the appearance and operation of our website. Most of the changes are software changes, no data changes. If we had chosen an HTML-based system for each page, such as WordPress, we would have been much less flexible."
This model is difficult to implement because it requires high analytical skills and expert knowledge, as well as extensive software development!
Success story that inspires: I Make $1,350/Month With A Hiking Advice Website [Side Hustle] - Asen Stoyanchev Founder of Gear Up Hiking
Asen Stoyanchev Founder of Gear Up Hiking is the creator of a niche partner blog that offers simple and effective tips for novice tourists and outdoor enthusiasts. The blog has reviews of outdoor activities, and little-known tourist places around the world, it's free to read for anyone.
"A few months ago, we were honored to be mentioned on AdventureJunkies.com, their list of the 50 best travel blogs to subscribe to in 2021. We are number 14."
At the moment, the website brings in an average of $ 1300 per month, with traffic from 20 to 30 thousand per month.
Asen Stoyanchev currently has a full-time job in an IT company. Partner mapping for him is Side Hustle, which he became interested in 2018 when he read several success stories of young people who changed their lives thanks to affiliate marketing and niche sites.
"I liked the business model and how it can provide financial freedom if a person is skilled and persistent enough"
Asen Stoyanchev started his first blog in 2018. The topic was reviews of action movies, and later he sold this blog for $ 3,000. With this money, he bought a ready-made niche website with good potential. Then he bought gearuphiking from HumanProofDesigns for $ 1,700, which had several articles in the Google top. To improve not only his skills but also his business model, Asen Stoyanchev went to get an education in the field of online marketing.
After the purchase of the website, a content placement schedule was drawn up for 1 publication per week. To simplify the task of writing articles for himself, he started writing based on keyword research. Asen found a phrase that people typed into Google, I wrote an article around it if I believed that the article would get a rating based on competition. From the first time, of course, nothing came out, but he continued to try. Everyone who does SEO knows that it takes time!
The strategy for the growth and promotion of the blog was to write more SEO-optimized content. Everyone involved in affiliate marketing and SEO will tell you that it all comes down to quality content that ranks and gets good backlinks.
What worked for Asen was focusing on so-called keywords like “low-hanging fruit” and “long tail” - phrases that people are looking for with low competition and a decent search volume.
How affiliate marketing success stories help webmasters
Any blog owner or webmaster in search of a winning model for monetization of their portals is wondering: how does it pass? The easiest way would be to refer to the experience of other successful affiliates. Recycling not only success stories but also turning to their designs or approach to push your blog or website is a great opportunity to raise your quality bar. Successful cases can significantly improve the quality of product presentation, raising the level of the entire affiliate marketing sphere in general. Success inspires development!
Tips from successful affiliate marketers
Spencer Mecham, Founder of Buildapreneur:
Lesson #1
Prioritize just a few goals, breaking them into time segments. Cultivate concentrated fortitude and try to the very end. This avoids the distractions that usually confuse new business owners when they are chasing a lot of opportunities.
Lesson #2
Traffic is the most important part of any business. Target audience research is required. Find the platform where your audience is located, master this traffic source, and watch the influx of potential customers in the foreseeable future.
Jan Kovac, Founder of Casino Guru:
Lesson #1
It is better to have 2 times more traffic, monetized by 70% than 2 times less traffic, monetized by 95%.
Lesson #2
Whatever functionality is hidden behind the product - the wrapper can be repulsive! It was pretty bad in terms of informativeness, and it wasn't very visually appealing. Neither I nor the other founder are web designers and did not have the necessary knowledge about what a real user experience is
Lesson #3
Entering an established niche with a large turnover, it is not necessary to come up with a completely new business model, it is necessary to find a simple solution that optimizes existing schemes.
Lesson #4
Avoid unreliable offers in pursuit of profit. Be fair, adhere to moral values, and never abuse the situation for your benefit. You have one name and one reputation, and it accumulates over time.
Lesson #5
Become an expert in all the key areas you are involved in. Gain experience.
Lesson #6
Ask more questions, and don't preach your opinion! Be simple, be open-minded.
Asen Stoyanchev Founder of Gear Up Hiking
Lesson #1
Don't give up after the first failure, most of it is a walk uphill. It may take a few years, but then it's a silky smooth road to financial freedom.
Lesson #2
Avoid aggressive use of black hat SEO, because this is one of the most common reasons why Google punishes your site.
Lesson #3
Focus on providing useful and original content that users like.
Lesson #4
One of the most important lessons I learned at the very beginning was that this online business requires patience, sacrifice, and dedication. This is not an overnight or get-rich-quick scheme.
Conclusions
If you were looking for inspiration to start doing affiliate marketing, we hope the success stories were useful to you!
The right approach to affiliate marketing can be quite profitable and life-changing! Put your head on a money way and don't let money block your vision!
Let's repeat some points that are observed in all successful affiliate stories:
- Choose one offer, traffic source, and strategy and stick with them until they succeed.
- Don't give up after the first failure! It's more like walking uphill than sprinting.
- Constantly study, and become an expert in the field that you have chosen as a niche.
- Be based on the quality of the content, not its quantity!
Let us know in the comments which story inspired you! Feel free to ask anything!
FAQ
What does it mean to be a successful affiliate marketer?
A successful affiliate marketing specialist is someone who has a formidable influence, attracting traffic through affiliate links. The most important influence and content that a specialist provides for monetization.
How difficult is it to succeed in this field?
Affiliate marketing is a simple business model, but this does not mean that it is an easy earning scheme. Only a few percent of beginners are trustworthy and monetize their content. The difficulty is the fact of constant development and competition with existing marketers.
What qualities should an affiliate marketer have?
Affiliate marketing is a very competitive environment, to stay afloat, you must first have a thirst for new knowledge. The organization is essential for any kind of business, there is a mess in the head - a mess in business. Consistency and focus will keep the existing traffic, and creativity and selectivity will help attract a new audience. The world is changing rapidly, and it is important to be able to adapt quickly, but at the same time, endurance and patience will allow you not to get lost in information flows. Remember that perseverance and determination will help you achieve your goal!
What metric measures an affiliate marketer's success?
There are several metrics that marketers need to track. Click traffic is an indicator of conversion rates, showing the number of clicks on affiliate links for a certain period. Also important is the conversion rate - the percentage that determines the ratio of the number of visitors to your site who become paying customers, compared to the number of people who simply click on affiliate links, but never convert.
It is also worth considering the CLV - customer lifetime value, this is the amount of money that the customer should spend on the product. This is a cool metric that helps you determine the total amount of income that you will receive from a client during his solvent period. Along with CLV, it is also worth considering AOV - this is the average cost of an order or the cost of a service, which helps to determine the value corridor that your customers spend on a product in one visit.
Gross orders and Net orders. The first is the total number of orders that your affiliate campaign brings; the second is the number of returned or canceled orders.
Well, in the end, it's worth making a total, usually, it's ROI - return on investment, showing whether your campaign expenses bring a positive, break-even, or negative result.
What people are included in the top 5 most successful affiliate marketers in the world?
John Chow is probably the most famous name in affiliate marketing, he has been in this field since 1999. Today, his website is visited by more than 200 thousand people, who declare him an income of approximately 100 thousand dollars a month on affiliate marketing.
Pat Flynn is the founder of the Smart Passive Income blog and many other resources that were founded after the 2008 economic crisis. He quickly started making money on affiliate marketing, talking about the finance and financial instruments. Now his blog brings in 145 thousand dollars a month.
Jeremy Shoemaker - founder of the website shoemoney.com, where he describes in detail his path in affiliate marketing. His website is visited by more than 30 thousand people a month and has a reputation as one of the best blogs dedicated to affiliate marketing.
Darren Rowse - launched his blog in 2004 ProBlogger.com, which is still one of the most popular blogs about affiliate marketing with an audience of more than 29 thousand visitors a day!
Finch Sells is the youngest from this top, the founder of the Sells website. It sells premium content, including its “Complete Guide to Affiliate Marketing”, but also has many resources, articles, and links that will help you get started in this field.
How do you constantly multiply your achievements?
Be consistent and patient. Find a niche where you will be an expert and work on creating high-quality content. Any niche has bridges to other niches that can be connected through problematic issues of buyers. Keep the content rolling - profit would not keep you waiting.
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