Making money with affiliate marketing is a dream for many people. After all, who wouldn’t want to get paid for promoting someone else’s products? But how fast can you really make money with affiliate marketing? How do you become successful as an affiliate marketer?
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In this guide, we’ll explore those questions and more.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each customer brought by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
The business pays the affiliate a commission, or percentage of the sale price, for each customer referred by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
Affiliate marketing is a common way to monetize online content. For example, a website might post links to products it has reviewed or products it thinks its readers might be interested in.
If someone clicks on one of those affiliate links and makes a purchase, the website owner would earn a commission from that sale.
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make money online, but it’s not without risk. Building a successful affiliate marketing business takes time and effort, so don’t expect to make money online overnight.
Now that you know what affiliate marketing is let’s take a look at how you can become successful as an affiliate marketer.
How Fast Can You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
The answer to this question depends on several factors, including your experience level, the affiliate marketing programs you’re promoting, and the quality of your marketing efforts.
If you’re just starting as an affiliate marketer, it’s going to take some time to build up a blog, YouTube channel or both. Commonly, these are the two best ways to promote affiliate programs online.
You’ll need to grow your audience and establish yourself as an expert in your niche before you can start making significant money from affiliate marketing.
The best way to see how long it takes to make money with affiliate marketing is by looking at what other people have done. So let’s take a look!
3 Examples Of Blogs Making Money With Affiliate Marketing
To get a better understanding of how affiliate marketing works, let’s take a look at some real-world examples of people who are making money with this business model.
1) Adam Enfroy Blog
I admit my interest in promoting affiliate programs through blogging grew after seeing Adam Enfroy’s success with his blog. He took a different approach to blogging compared to other people.
Adam treated his blog as a business from the beginning. This helped him build a six-figure business quickly. He started his blog in January 2019.
June 2019: After only six months, Adam’s blog made $11,609, with 70% from coaching and consulting services and 30% from passive income, mostly through affiliate programs.
He’s known to have scaled up his website to make over $100,000 per month within one year. So, how long did it take him to make money with affiliate marketing? Not even one year!
Here are some of the affiliate programs he used to make money:
- Bluehost
- ConvertKit
- SiteGround
2) Alex and Lauren
Alex and Lauren of Create and Go are full-time bloggers who make a living through affiliate marketing. They started their blog in 2016, originally to teach others how to start a blog.
They eventually realized they could make more money by promoting some of the products they were already using to run their blog. This led them to start their own affiliate marketing business.
Alex and Lauren made $30,000 in their first month of blogging. In September 2019, they reported making over $100,000 per month from their blog.
It took them three years to reach this level of success. However, it can take much less time if you have the right strategy and mindset.
In 2021, the Create and Go website made $972,369 from affiliate programs. Out of this, $445,457.72 was from affiliate programs.
Here are some of the affiliate programs they use:
- Bluehost
- ConvertKit
- Canva
3) John Chow
John Chow is a full-time blogger and internet marketer who makes most of his money through affiliate marketing.
He was making around $2.000 from his blog in December 2006. In 2007, he made over $27,000.
John’s affiliate marketing strategy is simple: he promotes products he uses and loves. He also has a blog and YouTube channel where he talks about the products he promotes.
If you’re looking for someone who makes a lot of money from affiliate marketing, John Chow is a great example. He makes over $40,000 per month from affiliate commissions!
Here are some of the affiliate programs John Chow uses:
- Aweber
- Bluehost
- WP Engine
As you can see from these examples, it is possible to make a lot of money with affiliate marketing. However, becoming a successful affiliate takes time, effort, and consistency.
3 Tips To Succeed As An Affiliate Marketer More Quickly
If you’re looking to make money with affiliate marketing, there are a few things you need to do:
TIP 1) Find A Good Teacher
Making money with affiliate marketing doesn’t take long if you have the appropriate strategies and mindset.
People often take a long time to make money from their YouTube channel or blog because they have the wrong mindset. Often this happens because they listen to the wrong online influencers.
One common misconception influencers tell beginners is to build their YouTube channel or blog around their passions. So, people spend months producing content without seeing a dime.
But, they don’t tell you that you need to have the right mindset from the beginning. This means you shouldn’t treat your blog or YouTube channel as a hobby.
You need to think about how you can make money from your content. What affiliate programs can you promote? How can you monetize your blog or YouTube channel?
So, be careful about who you listen to online because following bad advice takes just as long as following good advice.
Usually, a good teacher is someone successful with their online business. They may show their monthly or yearly income reports or have students following their online courses and showing results.
The best teachers help their students achieve success. They guide and teach them how to treat their YouTube channel or blog as a business, not a hobby. This way, they can achieve better results.
As soon as you have the right mindset and strategies, making money with affiliate marketing will be a lot easier. And it won’t take long to start seeing results.
TIP 2) Pick a Money Making Niche
You should create a blog or YouTube channel around a profitable niche. For instance:
- Health and Fitness
- Technology
- Making Money Online
- Pets
- Fashion
- Beauty
Even though some niches are competitive, you can always find less competitive sub-niches. For example, in the pet niche, you can make a YouTube channel initially around Bulldog Puppy Training where you can promote relevant affiliate programs.
Once you build your authority on that sub-niche, you can focus on another section of the same market, such as bulldog food and toys, or pass to another dog breed.
I prefer to focus on popular niches because there are many products I can promote as an affiliate. And by sub-niching, I can focus on less competitive markets at the beginning until I build my authority. “Or,” if that sub-niche doesn’t work, I can test another one.
TIP 3) Don’t Name Your Channel or Blog Your Sub-Niche
You want to ensure that you come up with a name for your channel and blog that is unrelated to your sub-niche. For instance, this could be your name, like “PeterCarson .com,” or for a YouTube channel, “Peter Carson Reviews.”
Many influencers tell people to build their blog or YouTube channel around their niche topic. That’s why you often see blogs called:
- Paleodiethq. com
- Laptopreviews. com
Besides sounding terrible, the problem with doing this is that you can’t expand to other markets. After a year of writing, you realize that no one likes your blog called “Paleodiethq. com.”
Now, you can’t pass to another diet (sub-niche) because of your website URL. On the contrary, if you build a website with a brandable name, you can easily change your blog’s focus.
For example, if I started a blog called “PeterCarson. com,” and then I realized that no one likes my Paleo diet blog posts, I could quickly start writing about something else like “How to start the Ketogenic diet?” or ” How to lose weight with the Atkins diet?”
Last Thoughts
Making money with affiliate marketing can take a while. But to speed up the process, I recommend finding a good teacher online. You can search for one through YouTube or Google.
I say this because there’s nothing more detrimental to your success than following bad advice. Also, make sure to choose a profitable niche and to name your blog or YouTube channel something brandable.
By following these tips, you can make money with affiliate marketing a lot faster. Also, don’t give up too soon!
If you are patient and follow good advice, you can make money with affiliate marketing and replace your 9-to-5 job sooner than you think.
If you have any comments or questions, please let me know. I’ll be happy to help!
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Biography
Jordan Alexo is a digital marketer who’s been making money online since 2011. He specializes in self-publishing, content creation, and teaching others how to do the same thing he does best! He inspires you on his website with strategies that have worked for him and product reviews that help you grow your online business.