Affiliate Marketing Business Myths

Many things can refrain you from getting started in affiliate marketing. You may have heard someone say that you need to be an expert in your niche to make money with an affiliate marketing business or maybe you heard that it’s hard to find a profitable niche.

Some myths are paired. They complete each other so I put them together to avoid redundancy.

*May contain affiliate links. Clicking on the affiliate links will most likely result in the same price you would pay elsewhere or you may get a special offer using those links.

Let’s debunk some myths here.

The first myths are the ones you probably have heard from people trying to sell you a training or a revolutionary way to make money online: IT’S EASY AND EVERYONE CAN DO IT.

I’m going to burst your bubble here, no it’s not THAT easy and no, everyone cannot do it. Hear me out. Affiliate marketing is not super complex. When you have the proper step-by-step training you can build your business without too many problems. Where the problem lies is when you have a hard time learning new things or you have a hard time transferring what you have learned into real actions.

It also depends on your background. When you already know about businesses and you have built a website before and you know all the terminology related to an online business, like SEO, PPC, CPC, CTR, audience, bounce rate, Opt-in page, conversion, etc of course it’s going to be easy for you to jump in the affiliate world.

Was school easy for you? You struggle to learn in school? Is it hard learning things? For some people, learning new things the traditional way can be very challenging. All brains are wired differently. What is a piece of cake for one person, can be a highway to hell for another. I know people who struggles. It can get hard just to understand everything you have to do even more if you are not at ease with a computer.

Some people like a challenge. When you start at zero knowledge but you know how to turn on your computer and use Google, you are qualified to give it a try. Keep in mind that you will spend a lot of time on the computer building your business. If you like being active, this might not be the best solution for you.

Remember, to start an affiliate marketing business, you have to be teachable. That means that you can learn and take what you have learnt and use it. Creating a successful online business requires you keep learning, all the time. Everything is changing on the internet, you have to be ready for that.

You need to put in the efforts. Nothing happens overnight, like magic. This is why people don’t succeed. They have been told that it was easy, everybody can do it, but they didn’t know about the amount of work that has to be done to become successful, so they quit.

Here is my recommendation to get started on the right foot, for free.

Get to know what you are getting in to.

Second myths are YOU DON’T NEED TO PUT IN A LOT OF EFFORTS and you can BUILD YOUR BUSINESS SPENDING ONLY 20 TO 30 MINUTES A DAY on it. You have heard them, right? This goes along with instant gratification. You want to stay away from that when you are building a sustainable online business.

For example, you are watching a free training webinar where the host talks about how easy to build money online with that one simple thing. All you have to do, is to spend 20 to 30 a day watching the training and building your business. Then you are thinking: “This is perfect! I’m so busy with my life and I want to make more money fast, I’ll do it!”

What the host didn’t tell you is if you to spend 20 to 30 minutes a day on your business, it can take a year before you get to earn some money. It’s totally doable, but it will be longer before you get the results, unless you have money to buy ads.

Depending on what you are going to do as an affiliate to be promoting products, know that you only own your website and your email list. You may what to start building that first.

So let’s put you in the situation where you want to build a website and grow from there. First, you want to learn what you have to do, how to look for a niche, where to find affiliate programs, how to build a website, etc. OK, so you have a step-by-step training program with many lessons to help you build your business.

Generally speaking, most lessons, on different platforms are about 20 minutes long, not including the task you have to do to get started. This means, on day 1 you watch lesson 1. On day 2, you do the task for lesson one. Day three, you watch lesson 2, and so on.

Now you have to create content for your website, to get ranked good with Google, you want to write about 2 or 3 posts every week that are longer than a thousand words each. Oh and then when you have something that looks like a website, you want to get active on social media, to attract more to your website.

You spend a couple hours per week creating your pages, creating publications, posting them and taking parts in groups, commenting on others’ publication, answering comments… Oh and then there is the part that you start with Facebook ads!

There is a ton of information you have to learn. It’s super fun and exciting because you are building a business that will help people solve them problems. Yes, I’m talking about building trust with your audience and promoting GOOD products. Stay away from the spammy, crappy, cheap stuff that doesn’t deserve to be bought.

Unless you have a very restricted schedule, you will easily spend over an hour a day to get started, so for the first 6 months. And some overtime on your weekends, you know, spending the whole day watching training and reading to build your business. You have kids? You have a busy schedule? You don’t have the time? So do others and they still manage to make it in the affiliate marketing world.

The fewer hours per week you spend on your business, the longer it will take you to see the results. But 20 to 30 minutes per day really? With all that has to be done?

You want the results? Be consistent and put the efforts in.

Third myths are IT’S HARD TO FIND A PROFITABLE NICHE and YOU HAVE TO BE AN EXPERT IN YOUR NICHE. The good news here are that it’s easy to find profitable niches and no, you don’t have to be an expert. That’s the great part about affiliate marketing.

If you need more information on niches, read this here.

There are thousands of niches where you can earn money with affiliate marketing. Make some research before choosing one you like to see if people are known to buy in that particular niche. There are so many niches to choose from. Pick one that you like and see what the affiliate programs are like and if there are plenty of products to sell. That is a good sign when there are many companies selling different products in a niche.

You don’t have to be an expert to promote the products. The best thing is to try the products you are promoting. Start with products or services that you already use. Are you an expert to tell me that X products is the best one to do X because it does X and other products don’t? Nope! Do you have to be an expert? No.

What you want to do is to learn in your niche and know more than the average Joe. Once you have that knowledge, you make it your own and share it with your audience. It’s a learning process, a work in progress. What you need to do is to bring value to the people who are going to read your articles.

Practice makes perfect. You don’t have to have all the answers. Nobody asks for perfection, Provide the best valuable information to your audience. Put yourself out there as an expert. You will become one over time.

Fourth myth is MORE TRAFFIC, MORE MONEY. No. It you do have the right people going on your posts and they leave, even if you have hundreds of visitors per day, if they don’t find what they are looking for on our website, they will leave and your conversion rate will be low. That means you have high traffic, but no one clicks the links or buy from your links.

You need to define your audience. Who is your client, your avatar? Are you targeting the right people. Who are the buyers for the products in your niche? Know the demographics, it will be easier to create content that convert.

Your traffic should increase as you grow your website. If it doesn’t, you might have to figure out what you are doing wrong, starting with SEO.

Read this post I wrote on SEO here.

Fifth myth are that affiliate marketing is 100% PASSIVE INCOME. Absolutely not! Unless you pay someone to do al the work for you, yes, otherwise, you better get ready to work for your money!

The passive income comes when your website has a consistent and growing number of visitors every week and that you have earned your first commission. That commission can be earned while you sleep, while you are on vacation, while you are binging series on Netflix or even when you are at work. That what passive means here.

The things are that passive, doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. You have to put in the work. Yes, I have said it already, but it’s true. It’s a business. You want it to grow so it becomes a source of income.

The more work, articles you post, emails you send to your list, posts you create on social media, the more your business will grow and better are the chances that you will earn constant amount of money, everyday.

It’s just not a real passive income. You work for it. It becomes passive the day you earn enough money to cover more than all the hours you spend building your business.

The only real passive income is investing in the stock market on autopilot, meaning that every week, or month the same amount of money gets taken from your account and is used to buy stocks without you having to worry about anything. Yet, you have to set up your accounts. It’s only once it’s on autopilot that it’s becoming a real passive income. Let the magic of compound do the rest.

What is your opinion?

The sixth myth is that AFFILIATE MARKETING is the SAME as MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING. I am more than happy to tell you that these are two completely different.kinds of businesses. The only thing they have in common are that you are promoting someone else’s products.

You can read this article to know more about the differences between affiliate marketing and MLMs.

The main difference are that with MLM, you HAVE to BUY the products and SELL them directly to people. You choose a company with products you like or you get recruited by a distributor (which can be called an affiliate within the company…)

It will cost you a few hundreds or even a thousand dollar to get started and you have to buy every month, even if you don’t sell anything, in order to make sure you keep your right to be a distributor.

With affiliate marketing, you don’t have to buy anything and you PROMOTE the products to your audience, without direct sells. It’s a good place. You don’t have to ask your family and friends to buy your products and eventually loose your friends because you always only talk about the products you HAVE to SELL. Affiliate marketing is the way to go when you don’t have too much money to pay for anything upfront.

There are a few expenses that comes with every business you want to build, some are bigger than others. Affiliate marketing is a cheap one to start. This article could be interesting for you. It talks about the costs to build an affiliate marketing business.

The seventh myth is you can BUILD YOUR BUSINESS ON SOCIAL MEDIA. I mean, yes you can, but it’s dangerous. Why? Because you don’t own your social media accounts. They can be shut down at any moment for any reason. You want to have a back up plan, especially when you are growing your business and getting more followers.

Think about it, what will happen if your accounts get shut down or you get banned from any platform? You are an entrepreneur. You have to think like an entrepreneur. The best way to back up your business when it’s mostly based on social medias is to create an email list. Yes, an email list where you send newsletters every once in a while to keep in touch with your audience and give them some exclusive content.

How do you feel about a company that doesn’t own a website? Does it seem as professional as the other company that has a social media presence AND a website?

OK, here is an example. You are on Instagram. You see some ads, you follow some people and suddenly, there is a company that starts following you. It’s often something to make money online, make money on Instagram, DM for details. Sometimes they have many posts on the profile, sometimes they don’t. No email, no website in their bio. Do you trust it?

Now, here is my profile on Instagram. I put a little description of myself and the purpose of my page. You can see I also have a Linktr.ee/Cynenligne there. Here is what it looks like:

I like Linktr.ee to be able to promote what I have to offer. I wrote beside each link what it is, so no confusion on where to click to get what you want. Keep in mind that you are building a brand, an image, your brand, your image. You want things to be clear, to keep it simple.

There are very few “companies” following me on Instagram that have a website in their bio, or a Linktr.ee where we can get something for free and register to their email list. It’s a minimum to build your credibility with your audience.

You can read about email marketing in this article I wrote here.

Remember, there are various type of people in this world and the more you want to grow your company, the more you have to go where your costumers are. With that said, many people won’t DM, direct message, you to get more information.

Create a website where they can find almost all the information they need and then, they will send you a message. Think about everyone. There are introverts, autodidacts, anxious people, performing people who won’t bother DM you just to see what you have to offer.

Of course, if your target audience are people between 18 and 25 years old, you are fine like that. Just DM me. Tell me, do you really want to scare away everybody else? Put all the chances on your side and build your business and your presence ONLINE, not only on social media.

Here comes one last myth for now: AMAZON HAS A GREAT AFFILIATE PROGRAM. Is it often pushed has an easy way for beginners to get started. I don’t totally agree with that. Let ‘s see why.

First of all, you need a website. Not a website with 2 or 3 articles, no, a real website. Aim for a minimum of 15 posts to have more chances to be approved. It’s super easy to get started with Amazon, you simply fill out the form and voilà! You wait for your approval.

There are real downsides to be an affiliate for Amazon. One are that you have 6 months to make your first sale from an affiliate link and two, you have a cookie duration of 24 hours. This means, if someone clicks your link, doesn’t buy right away, 24 hours pass and he or she goes back on Amazon and buy, you don’t make any money.

Let’s talk about the commission. With Amazon, since you will be promoting physical products, you will earn about 2 to 3% commission on every sale.

Some great affiliate programs don’t bother on how long it takes you to make a sale and they even provide a cookie duration up to 180 days! The best part is, there are some digital products you can promote, or even go directly with the company that sell the product (once you have a great website with good traffic) and get a better percentage. So you can get commission as low as 2% and get up to 90%.

There are other options available out there. You can read more in this article I wrote here.

Keep in mind that with Amazon, you need a functional website and regular traffic, so you can have a positive conversion ratio.

These are the myths I wanted to debunk today. I hope you enjoyed your reading and you can leave me a comment and share this post.

You can read about more affiliate marketing myths in part 2.

Let me know if you have heard about those myths before in the comment section.

Let’s get started,

Cynthia