Is affiliate marketing stable?
- Thread starter Moneyrunner
- Start date
Neither college or AM is the answer.
OP, you should really think about what you want to do, and what you care about. AM as a job is a mistake, it's a lifestyle and if you don't like it (working a lot, isolation, risk taking, no safety net) then you don't want to pursue it.
The guys who make serious cash around here own a product or service and leverage affiliates. There are some, but not many affiliates who are banking hard and big.
OP, you should really think about what you want to do, and what you care about. AM as a job is a mistake, it's a lifestyle and if you don't like it (working a lot, isolation, risk taking, no safety net) then you don't want to pursue it.
The guys who make serious cash around here own a product or service and leverage affiliates. There are some, but not many affiliates who are banking hard and big.
Owning a product or service is great, but super pubs who know how to advertise those products (and many others) make a good chunk too.
And how many guys become super pubs out of all the people who get into AM?
1%? 0.5%? 0.0001%?
This guy wants to know if AM is stable. Thinking you're going to be a superpub isn't looking for stability, it's chasing delusion.
Super pubs make a small % of the people that try to get into AM, but I'd say we're well represented here. And I wouldn't call it chasing delusion. Over time you learn how the industry works, how advertising works and you drive greater volume. Of course the majority never truly learns, but you'd be surprised how many affiliates work and bank hard.
Also, having your own product or service that sells requires the same skills that you need to sell someone else's product or service at a lesser margin. As an affiliate, there's just more convenience and less hassle to advertise for someone else's product. The idea that you'll make more money just by having your own product in lieu of being an affiliate for a product is ill conceived.
I don't debate that. In fact, I specifically mentioned it.
But he is looking for something stable. AM and IM for the average guy aren't stable. The average guy around here probably makes $2k a month.
I never told him to do the latter. I just said that was where the real money is.
My advice to him is to do soul searching, because AM ain't easy. I know people who started 3 years ago and who haven't made $30k in a year yet.
Yeah but I would definitely encourage him to pursue AM. It's not entirely impossible if you can seek capital to start off with. I'd say it's a better investment than having it sit in your bank, trading or even developing a product.
As Dr. Ngo said, it boils down to three things:
-Traffic
-Tracking
-Optimizing
1. Master getting quality traffic at a low cost. Find various sources and build an ad copy that rocks.
2. Master tracking various kinds of data (gender, age, dma, education, etc.)
3. Master analyzing that data and eliminate different audiences that don't perform (purchase your product/service). Advertise to those that only do and improve upon step one.
You learn how to do those 3 things consistently and you'll excel in this industry.
There's no course to recommend.. there's just you reading readily available information and putting it into practice..
You need to trust yourself and not second guess every decision you make. Since I'm assuming you don't know peeps, it will be trial and error for a while. You're gonna get some advice but NO ONE(who isn't trying to scam you) is going to spoon feed you.
and to answer your original question, it's not a matter of whether AM is stable or unstable, but rather of how much time and effort you're willing to sacrifice in order to make it worth your while
You need to trust yourself and not second guess every decision you make. Since I'm assuming you don't know peeps, it will be trial and error for a while. You're gonna get some advice but NO ONE(who isn't trying to scam you) is going to spoon feed you.
and to answer your original question, it's not a matter of whether AM is stable or unstable, but rather of how much time and effort you're willing to sacrifice in order to make it worth your while
Well to be completely honest I already know what I'm going to do, I was just asking it to see what people thought. All I know is that in life you can get whatever you want as long as you are willing to work for it. Affiliate gives me the opportunity to be as successful as I want and I plan on working hard at it to make it work. Thanks for all your comments everyone!
Not exactly. It's normal for any newbie to wonder whether it's worth his/her while to get into the industry.
Here's a course for you since I'm feeling nice:
1. If you have capital, great. If not, work toward getting around $5-10k before considering moving forward. Otherwise, you'll gain little experience, data and waste your time.
2. Decide whether you want to work mobile or not. I'd recommend working off of mobile when you're more experienced, but many people choose to work differently.
3. Find a broad niche that you can gather interest and research for (finance, dating, gaming, etc.)
4. Pick an offer to run.
5. Find suitable traffic sources to drive traffic to your offer (research what kind of ad networks offer quality traffic with volume availability)
6. Build ads that you can track on your backend. And if there's data that you can't track (like age or gender), then build multiple ads and segment them by your tracking preferences (e.g.: Ad 1 = age 25-28, Ad 2 = age 29-32, etc.). The kind of data your ad network can offer to you varies across each network, so determine what you need to track individually.
7. Analyze: Find which kinds of audiences work best with your offer and optimize your ads to target only those audiences.
Expect a negative return from the beginning. Whenever I work in any kind of niche, hitting -50% ROI off the bat is great because it means I'm that much closer to breaking a profit. As you get advanced, you'll want paid intelligence tools that break down pre-existing data on various offers/niches for you; improving your campaign efforts from the very beginning.
Once you've gotten to the later stages, feel free to PM me for help on optimizing your campaigns.
Affiliate marketing is not stable, heck IM as a whole can go up and down depending on your actions. If you have a passion for IM then it doesn't matter if it is unstable. Just don't think you can hop right into AM and have a solid income. As Guerilla said, it requires working a lot, isolation, risk taking, and has no safety net.
If your customer doesn't know who 'you' (your company/brand/you/etc) are, your business is probably not stable.
The house always makes more. Leveraging your own time for set margin vs the potential ability to leverage many other peoples time and resources for controllable margins? I'd go with the latter.
It's about control. Being an affiliate is handing control off to others, and although some can do very well they're essentially the equivalent of a worker bee flying flower to flower. It pays to own the Hive.
@OP
If you want stability, get a job.
There is no stability in working for yourself. That's the beauty of it -you have the right to both fail spectacularly and succeed spectacularly rather then be stuck in the mediocrity of stability.
It has nothing to do with IM; it's about entrepreneurship. It's not a fit for everyone. You need to think on your toes, be willing to take risk and see opportunity where others see nothing. You need to switch from the mindset of taking, consuming and being taken care of, to giving, providing and caring for yourself.
Your success in AM and IM is going to be defined by the way you think because you ever even begin any strategies or tactics. Judging by your posts, you don't have the mindset of an entrepreneur.
This can change -but it's hard to do if you aren't already so inclined to some degree. You need to undo the buckle, loosen your grip and let yourself fall.
If you want stability, get a job.
There is no stability in working for yourself. That's the beauty of it -you have the right to both fail spectacularly and succeed spectacularly rather then be stuck in the mediocrity of stability.
It has nothing to do with IM; it's about entrepreneurship. It's not a fit for everyone. You need to think on your toes, be willing to take risk and see opportunity where others see nothing. You need to switch from the mindset of taking, consuming and being taken care of, to giving, providing and caring for yourself.
Your success in AM and IM is going to be defined by the way you think because you ever even begin any strategies or tactics. Judging by your posts, you don't have the mindset of an entrepreneur.
This can change -but it's hard to do if you aren't already so inclined to some degree. You need to undo the buckle, loosen your grip and let yourself fall.
Someone tell these peasants they're literally looking at a window that can reach a few billion people.
[FONT="]Affiliate marketing is very good source of earning but nothing is stable. No campaign will stay for ever. Try to gain skills and look for new products to promote, fresh angles, new ideas etc. you will definitely be able to stable your income somehow.[/FONT]
Google is highly unreliable. If you want constant income you should do a job or some other business. Keep affiliate marketing as part time business to earn some extra money.