As bad of a name as affiliate marketing perhaps justifiably gets, all’s not completely lost for those who want to try their hand at it with the aim of making a success out of it. I’ll briefly get into the reasons why affiliate marketing has built up such a bad name over the years, but the main discussion point of this particular post is that of how you can make a success out of it.
How NOT to approach affiliate marketing
There might be a bit of irony to this given the fact that the manner through which you came across this post is probably exactly what I’ll be warning you against doing on your quest to crack the affiliate marketing game, which is NOT Googling it. Okay, so perhaps it’s okay to Google it as part of your research, but most of what you’ll come across by way of the information which will supposedly help you will be of no particular help at all.
Instead, what you’ll likely get by searching online for information about how to make it as an affiliate marketer will be some offers which will firstly have you parting with some money for some tools, training material, etc, and secondly you’ll eventually be led down a totally different tangent in that you’ll end up perpetuating what is really just an affiliate marketing industry pyramid scheme structure. You’ll likely learn that most people don’t really make any money via the affiliate marketing itself, but rather make money teaching people about affiliate marketing in various different ways that include training courses or e-book manuals.
Don’t go down this road which will essentially have you earning money by selling information about how to make money with affiliate marketing, where the product or service being marketed via what is otherwise a legitimate affiliate marketing structure is that of the affiliate marketing training or information.
Cracking it
If you are going to be led on what is wild goose chase via all those affiliate marketing training programmes you might find too irresistible to sign up to, let that be a lesson to you, for all the advice given proves not to work out in the end.
The only reason why these marketing channels discussed to death such as PPC advertising and e-mail list building won’t seem to work quite as well as they used to anymore is because of saturation, but that’s only one possibility. The other possibility is that you’re simply trying to sell the wrong product to the wrong people.
Otherwise all it takes to crack the affiliate marketing game comes down to one very simple principle, which is that of identifying a target market which already has something in common each of the people who belong to it buy and then assuming the role of that markets’ supplier. It’s as simple as that, but only in concept because it is indeed a challenge getting people to switch from their trusted and regular retailer to someone else who is clearly trying to make some money.