Why is affiliate marketing so easy but yet so hard? (2024)

FAQs

Is affiliate marketing really that easy? ›

While you won't need to outlay money, what you will need to get started is time. Affiliate marketing is a skilled practice, and learning the ropes can be a slow, hard slog. So be prepared to spend a lot of time, rather than a lot of money, at the start of your affiliate career.

Market and competitor saturation is the hardest part of affiliate marketing. This is also a common reason why affiliate marketers fail. Potential and existing online marketers struggle with this factor because the industry keeps growing yearly. The more competition the industry has, the lesser their income will be.

The challenges of affiliate marketing include the difficulty of finding quality products and services to promote, the need to build a large and engaged audience, and the need to continually adapt to changes in the market and the products and services being promoted.

Not Having A Clear Niche

One of the main reasons people fail at affiliate marketing work is because they try to be everything to everyone. They don't focus on any one thing, and as a result, they don't build up the expertise or authority required to succeed.

Blogging remains one of the most effective and user-friendly ways to dive into affiliate marketing. It involves creating a blog around a specific niche or topic and incorporating affiliate links naturally within your content.

As an affiliate marketer, you will need to work hard and promote many different products in order to earn good money. Also, there are many other affiliates out there promoting these same products, so generating affiliate marketing sales via your links can be very competitive.

But truth is, more than 95% of newbies fail to do affiliate marketing with success. People start out with very high expectations and end up in giving up because the money making part of their affiliate business is just not lifting off.

However, affiliate marketing also comes with some challenges and drawbacks. One of them is the high level of competition and low conversion rates in many niches and markets. Depending on your niche, you may face hundreds or thousands of other websites that are promoting the same or similar products or services as you.

Higher profit margins

Dropshipping is known for better profit margins compared to affiliate marketing.

Is there something better than affiliate marketing? ›

Both affiliate marketing and dropshipping have the potential to be profitable business models, but dropshipping tends to have better profit margins. With affiliate marketing, the brand that hosts the affiliate program controls how much money you earn based on sales or traffic generated.

How much do beginner affiliate marketers make? Affiliate marketing commission rates start as low as 1% of the total sale price of a product but beginner affiliate marketers can make up to 30% commission per sale.

How long does it take to make money as an affiliate marketer? Based on my experience and speaking with many affiliate marketers, on average, it takes around six to 12 months to start earning money as an affiliate marketer and around two years to earn enough money to quit your day job.

Conclusion. Affiliate marketing is worth it if you enjoy creating content and want to inform, educate, or entertain people. It's also an excellent and legitimate way to earn passive income online without the complexities or demands of other ventures like ecommerce or freelancing.

The reality is that 80% of affiliates earn between $0 and maybe $80,000 per year. And there's nothing wrong with $80k a year – that's a bloody nice income. 15% of other affiliates earn somewhere between $80,001 and maybe $1 million per year.

Affiliate marketers get a successful conversion rate of 0.5% to 1% per visitor. However, this is a rough estimate, and our data shows that conversion rate increases as affiliate marketers gain more experience.