PROS AND CONS OF BECOMING AN AFFILIATE MARKETER

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to begin making money online, and many people are very successful at it. For a lot of individuals, affiliate marketing has enabled them to supplement their income or replace their full-time job altogether. On the other hand, there are still a significant amount of people who have no idea what affiliate marketing is or what it entails. They begin the endeavor with high hopes of writing an email or two a week and seeing the PayPal deposit notifications start rolling in only to be sorely disappointed, eventually quitting before they see any substantial results.

In order for you to make an informed decision about whether or not you should become an affiliate marketer, let’s take a look at some of the pros and cons.

Pro #1: Affiliate Marketing Has No Initial Start-Up Cost

You can become an affiliate marketer without any financial investment. Just choose a product that you like and start promoting. There are any number of ways to get your chosen product or service in front of the eyes of potential buyers for free; though it may take some trial and error to discover what works the best.

Pro #2: You Don’t Have To Create Your Own Product

Affiliate marketing allows you to cash in on the knowledge and creativity of others without having to put in all the work to create products yourself. You get to reap the benefits of earning commissions on another person’s work, which saves you a ton of money and time.

Pro #3: You Don’t Need A Website

Most affiliate products do not require you to have your own website. You only send traffic to your affiliate link and earn commissions when someone makes a purchase.

Later on, you will want to have a squeeze page and autoresponder, and possibly a personal website as well, but these are all insignificant expenses that almost anyone can afford.

Now that we have touched on a few of the pros of affiliate marketing, let’s look at some of the cons:

Con #1: You Will Need To Be Self-Motivated

Working from home in any sense requires you to be extremely self-motivated. You will not have anyone looking over your shoulder telling you what to do and when to do it. You will be in charge of your own activity or non-activity. Your ultimate failure or success will depend entirely on you.

Many people find it difficult to keep themselves on a schedule and put in the work required to succeed at affiliate marketing. Know this ahead of time – you will need to put in the work required to reap the benefits.

Con #2: It Takes Time To See Results

In most cases, you will not see instantaneous results. It has been said that people will not commit to making a purchase before they have seen your offer an average of 7 times. You will need to establish relationships with your prospective buyers before they will click your link. This step may take some time, and you will have to work at it every day. Once you have built a solid foundation with your followers, though, the rewards will be substantial.

Con #3: There Is A Learning Curve

Be prepared to put in a good amount of time learning how to be successful at affiliate marketing. Again, this is something that you will need to do on your own. There is no one going to force you to do it. There are many aspects of marketing online that most people don’t have any experience with or much knowledge about. Just like any other kind of career change, there will be a period of on the job training. The only difference is, when you are your own boss, you are in charge of your training.

Research other successful affiliates, study what they have done to become leaders in their niche. If you can do so, buy some training courses. Educate yourself on what is working and what isn’t so that you can avoid any potential time-wasting activities. Knowledge is power, so be sure you are always learning new and better ways to build your affiliate marketing business.

We have touched on three pros and three cons that can help you make an educated decision on whether affiliate marketing is right for you.  Anyone can become a successful affiliate marketer if they are willing to put in the time and effort it takes to obtain the results they desire. Hopefully, you now have a clearer picture of what this type of marketing entails.