Easy money with affiliate marketing, does that exist? In the article below, I answer the question whether affiliate marketing is the way to make money easily and quickly. This in response to the below mail that I received this week:

‘Hoi Thijs, I read on the internet that it is fairly easy to earn 3.000 euros per month through affiliate marketing. I would like to work abroad with a laptop on the beach and enjoy life. Can you help me with this? What do I have to do to get this done? Greeting Pim (name has been changed)

There is no such thing as a free lunch

A widely used American expression is ‘There is  no such thing as a free lunch’. This is also the case for affiliate marketing. Below my reaction.

Hi Pim,

You read a lot of stories on the internet about passive income and making easy money with affiliate marketing. These are sites that are trying to sell you an online course. You are being misled by these parties. Successful affiliates are working full-time on their website / app or e-mail base. They create valuable content, ad value for their visitors and are technically skilled. To score well on the right keywords in google you will have to invest a lot of time in your project. And then there is still a big chance that you will not win from your competitors.

There is no trick or way that I can teach you how to earn 3000 euros per month with an affiliate site. This is a matter of trying, testing, make mistakes, become an expert in the industry you work on, make hours, get relevant links to your site, add value, be smarter than the existing sites etc. etc.

Look at the largest apple blog in the Netherlands http://www.iphoned.nl -> they have written more than 10.000 quality articles about apple products, this is appreciated by google with high positions in their search engine. If your expectation for starting an affiliate site matches the above, we can schedule a call. Then it is useful for me to know what your plans are and then I can look specifically at the optimization possibilities.’

Ok so it’s not easy …. but can you make money with affiliate marketing?

You can certainly make money with affiliate marketing. Within the affiliate market there are lots of different websites / e-mail base owners and apps active. Some earn a few bucks in the month others earn 10,000 euro’s per month. This article is intended to give people who want to start as an affiliate a more realistic view . You can earn a good living with it, but that does not happen by itself. There are many people who start and give up. To save you this disappointment it is good to know that you will have to work hard for it. Below some cons and benefits that you can include in the consideration to start.

Benefits

1 Low start-up costs
2 No fixed workstation -> only an internet connection is required
3 No customers -> you send visitors to an advertiser
4 No invoice relationship with the advertisers, you will be paid by the affiliate network
5 Scalable -> more traffic leads to more income but not to more work

Cons

1 Depending on the conversion of the advertiser’s website
2 The advertiser determines whether the realized affiliate order is accepted or rejected.
3 Depending on the tracking / measurement of the network and the advertiser
4 Much competition in google from both affiliates and advertisers
5 Depending on google. With a google update, your website can suddenly be seen as less important. Which directly affects your income.