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
..and so should everyone - I don’t mean to sound big headed or arrogant but I am a little. If god had google reader he should add my feed first - you know why? because if he had done he would have seen that resting on the seventh day is lazy and if you just push yourself you can get a fair bit more done.
But then I am guessing god probably wouldn’t bother with affiliate marketing, start-up business’s and generally online eVentures. Its a shame because I would love to read a few good comments from god, his take on the legality of selling links for seo purposes, or whether there’s any possibility that ethical business will actually get you anywhere in a field where all the big corporations got big by being unethical and generally evil.
To be honest I think if god were a human he would probably be ceo of mc.donalds or similar - lets face it - Beard *check*, law evading power *check*, rules the world *check*. In fact screw posting on my blog for him above I am going to post something for humans down here 
My Affiliate Test with CJ.com and facebook ads:
I have started messing about with CJ.com product links on facebook ads (the newly realesed glorified facebook flyers pro.) With mixed results. It would seem you can get the impressions but the clicks are sparse. CTR 0.02% within the first 4 hours - 30k views 7 clicks…pretty shocking considering that’s about as targeted as you get. Short of chasing the next man with a bald hat on and no glasses and selling him a hat/glasses combo I couldn’t really do much more.
So Why the poor poor ctr? I put it down to facebooks audience - the people tend to want to be communicating, networking and are effectively engaged in that - if your half way through sending a message or poking your mate in the face you don’t really want to click a ‘buy this now’ link. That and the fact that they are probably over the bombardment of advertising since facebook flyers pro started poking them in the face.
But as with all things you gotta give em time! - More in a few days