Can you make money with affiliate marketing? The business model has definitely become ubiquitous over the past decade. Technically, anyone could start it with little preparation at no cost. But you know the rule – you don’t generate revenue by selling what everyone else is selling, using the same selling technique everyone else uses. It’s hard to find your own affiliate marketing style that’s irresistible to people. To find something that makes people think it’s worth investing money in.

So it’s no surprise that those who don’t have enough time to put in all the effort drop out easily. And it’s a shame that they’re often disillusioned by the whole concept of making money by promoting other people’s products.
If you are competent enough to work systematically, you know you’ll be able to outperform others and, yes, you can make money with affiliate marketing.

How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

Unlike any other businesses, you don’t have to start-up at the ‘startup point’. Signing up with an affiliate program, virtually, is all the ‘preparation’ is. When your application is approved, you’re already good to go – start promoting products on seller’s behalf anywhere and by any method so long as permitted by the agreement. Without having to take the important startup process – researching and learning – affiliate marketing is so easy for anyone to try light-mindedly then to give up.

The fact that many affiliate programs keep your affiliate status valid indefinitely probably does not help, either. You quit for now because you’re not making any money, but you might try again in the future when you feel like it.

You Are Not Selling
You may have heard this before. As an affiliate marketer, your primary focus should not be on “selling” but to focus on helping others. Because you’re not a seller. You’re not contracted with any seller as a sales representative, and you have zero obligation to sell third-party products. You’ll certainly be rewarded by a seller if you successfully get someone to purchase their product through your affiliate link. But your affiliate agreement should state that you mustn’t appear as if you are a part of the selling team. As a third-party affiliate, you should be making your position clear that you are only there to help other users by recommending products.

Problem Solving
All the products and services in the world are created and sold to solve problems, right? Like, food to stop hunger. And people continuously innovate to provide us extra comforts…like a gourmet food range, automatic parking system, or AI-generated chatbot for cost-saving and accuracy at the same time.

This is more so with affiliate marketing. We’re not sellers, we are in fact at the opposite end, i.e. users. We need to help fellow users by giving advice and telling them about our experience with the products. That will help sellers sell, and your affiliate commission only comes in as a result of that.

Forget About The Money
If you do something just for money, you’ll unlikely to see positive results. People pay in exchange for a product or service when they feel the price is fair. If your mindset is simply about transferring money from someone else’s wallet to yours, no healthy trading relationship will exist… Universe doesn’t allow it, to put it spiritually!

Our own happiness and success are primarily dependent on giving and, only unselfish mindset can see what others really need. When you’re able to genuinely help, that’s when the money starts to come in.

You Have To Love What you Do
Money and Love Affiliate Marketing
You won’t go very far by doing something that you don’t like just for the money. Although money can motivate you and you might see a short-term success if you’re lucky, it’s generally unlikely and it’s definitely not sustainable.

Choosing a niche is very important with affiliate marketing to start with. You should be prepared to learn about the niche inside out. Means the niche should be something you love, something you’re passionate enough to spend money yourself for and willing to research, hear other people’s opinions by reading user reviews & comments continuously. Because people buy your ‘absolute confidence’ in your niche, and the only genuine factor to gain confidence comes from your passion!

Be Yourself And Believe In Yourself
You don’t have to try to be perfect to gain trust from others. You certainly shouldn’t try to be someone else rather than you. People see through you if you pretend. The only way to stay unique is to be yourself and be sincere. There are so many others, but you are the only one (stating the obvious!)

And more importantly, believe in yourself – if you don’t believe in what you are or what you do, you will never believe in your income!

Negative Product Reviews
Helping others means that if you wouldn’t buy a product, you tell your readers so, and tell them why. That’s another way to gain your trust, but here’s my dilemma. I’m a strong believer of the Law of Attraction and Positive Thinking. I don’t personally like to pick up a scam product only to criticise from top to bottom. You always find positives in a negative element, but that’s not always the right thing to do (“He’s a murderer but has a very good heart!”) So I choose to ignore scammers completely instead. Though if I had a bad experience by losing a lot of money to a scammer, I’d be prepared to warn others.

Never Stop Learning
Earning passive income through affiliate marketing is a great thing. Once you successfully refer someone to join a membership, you’ll receive a recurring commission – monthly or yearly – as long as your referral keeps paying the membership fee. But you should never overestimate inviting words such as;

  • Traffic analytics
  • Autopilot
  • Earn while you’re asleep
  • All-Done-For-You system.

It’s not that easy! A lot of people are led to believe that affiliate marketing is “All-Done-For-You”, simply join, never learn, fail… and simply quit. You need to keep learning – you need to keep analysing the referral traffic such as by using custom links and see where your referrals come from. (e.g. Via your website? Via your social media posts?) You also need to keep yourself updated with latest technique – whether the SEO if blogging, or copywriting if you’re sending email swipes.

Can You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?
Yes you definitely can, as long as you maintain your mindset genuinely to help others, and take the right steps to learn. In this way, you won’t have to find money but money will find you.