Before I started affiliate marketing, I wondered whether one can make it a career and make sufficient money to live a good life. Three years down the line I’ve gathered enough information which I want to share with you and help you get started if you’re interested.
Yes, there are lots of people doing affiliate marketing as a career. The majority of online publishers are affiliate marketers, with some engaged as full-time careers. Surveys show that about 9% of these publishers make more than $50,000 annually in revenue from affiliate marketing alone. And that was in 2016.
However, there are affiliate marketers who are in the corporate world managing various affiliate marketing campaigns for companies. There are over 6 million employees related to the affiliate marketing industry, and that number is growing at a crazy rate.
Today, there are about 174,059 brands engaged in affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products. These companies rely on other 55 companies globally to create the tools and platforms they need to run profitable and efficient campaigns with close to 7 million workers in total linked to the industry as a whole, globally.
In addition, affiliate marketers make up to millions of dollars in revenue from assets such as blogs, social media accounts, and youtube channels. Moreover, most online merchants (65%) make a good income from the activity of these affiliate marketers as well.
They reportedly make between 5% to 20% of yearly revenue from independent marketers affiliated with them. That is a margin most businesses cannot ignore. Hence, more businesses and brands are adopting affiliate marketing strategies to boost their business and become more profitable.
While you may not need to go for a job interview to become an affiliate marketer, research has shown that your level of experience as an affiliate marketer is linked to just how much you are able to cash out from your business. The survey showed that the majority of affiliate marketers had been in the game for five or more years.
Today, there are 11,400 affiliate programs in the United States. The reason is that affiliate marketing increases customer revenue by 58%, and 40% of marketing professionals preach that affiliate marketing is a skill that everyone needs to develop.
Is There A Future In Affiliate Marketing?
Yes, there is a great future for affiliate marketing as an industry and affiliate marketing as a career. Affiliate marketing is widely recognized as a highly effective marketing strategy across the world. However, it is also thriving every year, with major market players like the US, UK, and Japan giving a large portion of their marketing budgets to that section.
A survey revealed that 90% of marketers and retailers think that affiliate marketing is a crucial element of their marketing plan. Of those surveyed, over 80% of them have an affiliate marketing program in order to improve the traffic to their websites and boost sales.
In addition, more than 80% of advertisers allocate around 10% of their budget for marketing to fund affiliate marketing. According to Statista estimates, the estimated cost of affiliate marketing within the United States alone could reach $8.2 billion by 2022, that’s up to over 7.4 billion by 2021. From $2.5 billion as of 2012, the amount spent on affiliate marketing increased every year, suggesting that more companies are using affiliate marketing in their campaigns.
It is now estimated that over 80% of brands have affiliate programs, which is insane when you consider the popularity rate. Affiliate marketing only became mainstream two years ago when the first companies implemented it as a marketing strategy in the 1990s. The market only exploded over the past decade.
The statistics showed that in 2022 the affiliate marketing industry is predicted to grow to an estimated value of 12 billion. The American affiliate marketing market is estimated to be the biggest and the leading one worldwide, having 39% of the market share.
Affiliate marketing is effective because about 65% of affiliates promote their links through blogging which is an effective form of content marketing when it comes to capturing leads and converting them into customers in the buyer’s journey. Also, a whopping 94% of affiliate marketers use multiple affiliate networks.
This means that the average marketer promotes more than one product or service. The results are loud and clear. Affiliate marketing has a good future. Today, between 15% and 30% of sales revenue can be attributed to affiliate programs and is responsible for 16% of global sales revenue for eCommerce.
Based on Google Trends data, worldwide search for the keyword “affiliate marketing” has steadily increased in the past five years, peaking at 100% in June 2021. The steady increase could be due to the growth of eCommerce, as businesses, including those that solely have physical stores, began to explore how they can promote and sell products and services online.
How Good Is Affiliate Marketing As A Career?
A career in affiliate marketing is very bright. Affiliate marketing offers you the ability to operate on your terms and at your own pace. Through this kind of business, you earn money while you sleep. The idea behind this type of business is quite straightforward, but the method of running this business differs between individuals.
It’s one of the most successful online businesses that produce an income that is passive. You can quit your 9-5 job to launch this venture, make a lot of money, and have a relaxed life. Affiliate marketing needs a minimal or no investment to begin. It is possible to run the business from any place around the globe.
The earning possibilities with affiliate marketing are limitless. Since you don’t have the bind of any organization, you could be an affiliate of multiple companies. In this way, even if the revenue from each affiliate website is modest, the total revenue can be substantial.
The best part about affiliates is the opportunity to earn residual income, in that you can sit on the beach in some exotic spot while someone purchases via your affiliate link and does not have to be in the area or do everything.
How Much Can You Make With Affiliate Marketing As A Career?
Are you curious about what the typical monthly earnings of affiliate marketing are? Affiliate marketers can earn thousands of dollars each month, however, the statistics vary. Many affiliate marketers make more than six figures through passive income-generating affiliate programs.
Here are some statistics on the median income of affiliate marketers. Based on PayScale, the average annual earnings from affiliate marketing are $51,217. The lower 10% of affiliate marketers make $37,000, while the highest 10% earn $71,000.
The affiliate marketing industry can yield a lot of money. However, it requires the commitment of time and cash to create a successful business. Make sure you do your research before joining the affiliate marketing trend. Traditional ads and the sale of your products could be helpful if affiliate-marketing revenues are dwindling.
Glassdoor’s affiliate marketing income statistics put potential earnings even higher. The annual average earnings of affiliate marketers are $65,800, ranging from $42,000 at the bottom and $83,000 at the top of the spectrum.
ZipRecruiter is the most reliable projection for passive income from affiliate marketing, at $154,700 per year. ZipRecruiter estimates average monthly earnings from affiliate marketing at $12,892 and the average weekly income of $2,975.
Whatever forecast you choose to go with, it’s evident that affiliate marketers are doing extremely excellently indeed. Some make millions of dollars every year which have convinced me that affiliate marketing goes far beyond a career.
Top Career Affiliate Marketers
1. Kyle & Carson
Two friends, Kyle and Carson, in the year 2005 started a keyword list platform to help internet marketers. They had a huge database of most used keywords for Pay-Per-Click campaigns that internet marketers used for their businesses.
As several people and themselves saw tremendous success with their tool, they created a training platform to teach others to replicate their methods to their success. Now, they have an affiliate marketing training platform and a forum where members could interact to share ideas and get help. With feedback from members and increasing membership, it has expanded providing up-to-date training and state of the art tools for anyone to succeed online.
Today, it’s an understatement to say that Kyle and Carson have achieved their vision of building an online training platform. They’ve created one of the best all-in-one training platforms and communities to help anyone who wants to start affiliate/internet marketing.
Their platform is over 13 years now with over 1.2 million members who have achieved different levels of success in affiliate marketing around the world. The platform has diverse backgrounds from ethnicity, religion, education, working-class to retirees who are making passive income online. The best part is you can have premium access to the platform to test it for seven days without any financial commitment.
Learn More About Kyle & Carson.
2. Luke Kling
Luke has been working in the affiliate marketing business for over seven years. He began his career with XY7 (an affiliate marketing network) as an affiliate coordinator when fresh out of high school. Ian worked for XY7 through the beginning of his first year in college, when he decided to stop and concentrate on his studies.
Luke realized that he could not afford his tuition and rent in his sophomore year of the university unless he increased his loan or found work. So, in the end, despite it being an extremely unpopular option, he returned to work at XY7 in the role of an affiliate manager.
In his final year at college, and he is very accomplished, Luke was in charge of several accounts for the network at XY7; among the accounts was Peerfly.
Learn More About Luke Kling
3. Ian Fernando
Ian Fernando is an Affiliate Marketer from New Jersey working in the field since 2007. Ian has over a decade of experience working as an online digital marketer and, more specifically, an affiliate.
In addition to the work-related aspect, Ian enjoys traveling and hopes to have more time to spend on that. Ian’s father traveled the world when he was younger, which always encouraged him to pursue his goals. Since he was a college dropout, Ian was not prepared to work in this field. He enrolled in Management Information Systems back in college, attended school for three years, and resigned.
Ian earned his hard-earned money online by selling his old items on eBay. It began selling items he found around the house, but he soon stepped it up by visiting the flea markets, purchasing items in bulk, and reselling them on eBay. The most pressing issues were customer service and deal negotiation.
He was introduced to affiliate marketing and began building several niche websites. Ian monetized via eBay, LinkShare, or ShareASale. He was highly pleased with the business model because it didn’t require dealing with support for customers anymore.
Learn More About Ian Fernando
4. Charles Ngo
Charles Ngo is an internet marketer who is a speaker at affiliate marketing events and a blogger sharing his knowledge and experience in the field of online marketing. He earned his first million from the affiliate marketing business in 2007.
His ingenuity and ability to forecast the latest trends in digital marketing with such precision has awed the experts of tens of thousands across the globe and encouraged affiliates from all backgrounds to follow his suggestions. He works alongside his team, gives seminars, and maintains an online blog.
Learn More About Charles Ngo
5. Pat Flynn
Pat Flynn is a father, husband, entrepreneur, and husband who lives and works in San Diego, CA. He runs numerous successful online businesses. He is a professional blogger, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal best-selling author, and host of the Smart Passive Income and the AskPat radio shows.
Flynn is the founder of Smart Passive Income. Smart Passive Income makes money through the affiliate market, sales of books, and course sales. He has also created niche websites that produce passive income streams. The additional income is derived from sponsorships for podcasts software, apps, and other programs.
Pat started his online marketing journey by launching greenexamacademy.com, which helps people pass the LEED exam in the architecture industry. The blog’s readers suggested Pat convert the notes into an easy-to-read ebook.
Learn More About Pat Flynn
Is Affiliate Marketing a Get Rich Quick Scheme?
No! Absolutely not in the usual sense of getting rich quickly. But you can definitely start making money the same day you sign up for your first affiliate program.
The affiliate marketing industry is one of the fastest ways to make money, especially if you already have an audience or a community that depends on you for recommendations on a particular niche. With such an audience, you could simply share a link, go to bed and wake up with some good online money already flowing in.
For this reason, most new affiliate marketers give up because of the extreme learning curve and the difficulty in building the skills and knowledge needed to start making a consistent income that is also reliable for full-time purposes.
However, having a good training platform that literally holds your hand in step-by-step tutorials makes it easier. To give you a feel of that, check out these four steps to creating a successful business online.
Tips In Building Affiliate Marketing As A Career
1. Your Niche is Critical To Your Success
Your niche can either save you or drown you. The truth is that every affiliate marketing journey starts with a niche. For most people, it is only a passion, and it sort of builds up like Pat Flynn. You could start writing a blog, and with its success comes various opportunities naturally. Affiliate marketing is one of them.
2. Content is the Lifeblood of Your Business
You do not want to joke with your content engine unless you are running paid ads. This is because the content is the engine of your business. You may have come across the famous Bill Gates quote, “Content is King”.
That paper was more than a paper as it predicted the world we live in right now. If you can master your content game, you can build not just an affiliate marketing business that thrives but almost any business you want.
3. Get Into a Community of Affiliate Marketers
Affiliate marketing is not only lonely but can quickly get frustrating with the long curve to go through. Sharing your experience with others and getting real-time feedback on what you are doing is one of the best support systems you can have.
The truth is, affiliate marketing is growing like a wildfire, but quite a lot of people do not yet know it exists, and you may not have anyone within your immediate network to help, support, and guide you.
There are lots of online forums, blogs, and youtube channels to help new affiliate marketers to get up to speed on how to grow their businesses. Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best platforms for online marketers and affiliates out there. You should check it out because it has helped me a lot in my journey.
4. Never Stop Learning
While you can readily get a course in marketing or even digital marketing, there is yet to be a formal education set out for prospective affiliate marketers. Therefore, all you learn as an affiliate marketer is going to be from your research and learning.
There is a lot of material on affiliate marketing that you can access at a premium and free. YouTube is a great resource. But you can also pay for online courses to get better insights. You can buy a coaching program or get into an affiliate program if you have the investment funds.
Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best affiliate marketing programs to help you get up to speed and start making some income within your first months. Most affiliate marketers do not make anything in their first months, but with coaching and a streamlined training program, you can benefit from years of experience at a fraction of the cost to learn and build your own business.
5. Work With Systems: Less Work, More Productivity
Once you sign up for an affiliate program, you become not only a marketer but also a business person. Your business earns commissions for selling other companies’ products and services. You may choose to promote your links using Facebook, paid ads, youtube, or even through blogging. They are your business’ marketing channels.
As you grow as a business, you need more elaborate and intricate systems to streamline your operations and predict your income flow. You should be able to run your business with robustness if you develop the systems necessary to grow.
Where To Start Your Affiliate Marketing Career (Recommendation)
There are several platforms on the internet to get started, but most are likely to confuse you than simplify things for you. Others may provide you with good training resources but don’t provide you with the tools you need to set your business rolling in just a few steps.
I was caught up in that web of confusion as a beginner myself until I found this platform. The platform doesn’t only have amazing training resources in simple language to understand, but it has a community of affiliate marketers, live chats, weekly live stream training, private message feature to contact other affiliate marketers, website building tools, and a whole lot more.
I call it an affiliate-marketing-business-building suite. The best part is that you can try it out without any financial commitment. After one week of the test drive, you can decide whether to keep all the premium features or have a limited package. Click here to start your test drive.
And when you do, I’ll be there in the community to help you in your journey. I remember my starting journey as if it were yesterday. The best time to start your affiliate marketing career is now.
Over To You!
Have you tried affiliate marketing before? Kindly let me know your experience and whether you think it can indeed be a career.