What you should know about affiliate marketing

If you are a YouTuber you would have noticed there's a lot of hype about affiliate marketing and how people are making millions. This is just another opportunity for people who want to make a living on the internet but not many people know how much work it involves.

If you do not know what affiliate marketing is it can be explained as the selling and marketing of a product on behalf of a third party and you are paid according to your sales performance.

The first perception that the blogger gets is that they can add a product to their Blog and just leave it to make money automatically. There are hundreds of affiliate offers on the web that you can exploit as a blogger but it is not as simple as that.

Some of these Affiliate programs are easy to join where others can become a bit tedious because of selection criteria. This is understandable seeing that you are selling someone else's product and they have to look after their product image.

Unfortunately, some of the Affiliate marketing guys on the web are not playing the nice game and can very easily give a product a bad name.

The first thing you as a blogger must understand is that being an Affiliate marketer is very hard work and you have to be on top of your game 24/7. If you are not willing to make this type of commitment then do not get into affiliate marketing.

I can, however, suggest that you study everything surrounding affiliate marketing so that you can become familiar with strategies, processes and other necessities of the game.

Affiliate Marketing a Real Business

Remember when you move to Affiliate marketing you are moving away from being the social blogger and your blogging becomes a business. That is exactly what Affiliate marketing is. It is like opening up your own business and you have to pay the same attention to what you are doing then you would have if you had a street corner shop.

As for the millions that get generated, you must also know from the start that it is not that easy. Yes, some of his guys have made a lot of money but there is another 95% who has made nothing on affiliate marketing. You will also see that some of these guys have been busy online for the past 15 years so it did not happen overnight.

It does not mean that you cannot make a success of a business in affiliate marketing as it will all depend on your knowledge and your input.

Preparing to become an Affiliate Marketer

If you are really interested in Affiliate Marketing the best option is to follow a couple of the successful Affiliate marketers as they have been in the game for a very long time. 

Once you have followed them for a while you will realize how much work goes into Affiliate marketing and if you are still keen then I would suggest that you do the following: 

• Read as much as possible about how to start affiliate marketing and from this build up your own strategy. Although similar not all Affiliate Marketers will give you the same advice. You will always pick up something new that you like and might want to implement in your own strategy. 
• See what software they are using and can you afford to maintain this as some of this can become expensive especially if you not in the USA. You will realize that using the software just makes your life easier as it takes away some of the manual labor you have to put in.
• Learn everything you can about setting up a Blog or website with visual content that can attract your audience. Always remember that you are now in the marketing game and what people see must grab their attention. Your whole life from now on depends on how much you can draw attention to your posts.
• Look at Affiliate marketing programs available and then visit forums to find out how successful they are before you step into any agreement. Also, make sure that the affiliate programs you are considering are related to the country you live in.
• Plan plan plan. Remember this is a proper business and need a proper business plan before you start. Make sure that you have taken into consideration all aspects of what you are about to do.
• Create and prepare as much content beforehand as you can because you will be so busy marketing the product that you will have very little time to create new content.
• Find out as much as you can regarding social media and other marketing techniques because you will have to have a good understanding and marketing strategy in place to be successful.
• Don't spend money on something you don't understand. There are many affiliate marketing tools out there but if you don't know how to use it you will be casting many dollars in the wind.

If you have gone through all this and you still feel that Affiliate marketing was made for you then go for it. Just remember it is gonna cost you a lot in time and also some money because "Money Never Comes for free". Somewhere along the line, you gonna have to lay out some cash to step up your efforts.

Make sure that you are prepared to manage your business and your time in a totally different way than you are used to.