That is the question. Recently as you may have read I have been dabbling with affiliate marketing. From my fortnight of play and testing I have made under $100/£50 (at the current exchange rate :0 @ uk>usa.) Now that’s not a lot of money, but then I haven’t exactly spent lots of time on it (maybe 5-10 hours.) The thing is if you think about it, stand back and objectively look at both sides of the affiliate ideology, there is a fine division between affiliates and sellers.The sellers allowing affiliates to be middle men can’t really loose out as they invest little time setting it up and essentially get the affiliates time spent for free. They do however swap this for commissions and lack of control of the ways in which their products are being sold online (this is also how it works in real life affiliate situations.)
The Affiliates want to make their share, they work hard (or not) and get a small cut - and mark my words it is pretty small. A lot of small cuts do make a large cut, but is it really that possible to become very rich as an affiliate?
In every market, business or field there will always be success and failure, the highly successful and the complete belly floppers. Now the successful in affiliate marketing (notably the big ‘make money online blogs’) do make for quite large payouts, with some bloggers apparently making 25k+ a month from affiliate work. I am sure there are the odd few making even more than that too, but think of how many affiliate marketeers there are making just a bit?
There are aspects of affiliate marketeering that I do like. The hours - suit you, the product - you can pretty much choose - from rc cars to radiators, the tools - payperclick, microsites, forums, redirects, shorturls for affiliates. Its a fun game, mixing in cool opportunities like ebay commissions, widgetised selling blocks etc. easily up-scaleable too.
I suppose acting as an affiliate is the modern day equivalent of door to door salesmen. You get a companies ware’s and try and sell as much as possible promoting it across the world in order to get your cut.
I will probably continue to dabble in affiliate marketing, promoting products I believe in, but as a path to billions I can’t see it being as simply universally expandable as investing or selling your own services and products (and using affiliates rather than being one). I almost would say that you should do 80% of the sales work in house, allowing you to maintain a lot of the control and a fair amount of the revenue. Affiliate marketing from a business point of view should also be thought out before rushing in, as for high high end products with certain aspirations and values - you shouldn’t let just anybody go around selling your products for risk of contamination of brand.
Agree with what I am saying? If not comment below, if you do then why not read something else?:
- 5 Things to know before starting up an eVenture
- Successful Business Strategy
- Hyperlocal - selling to your next door neighbour’s online