Can Affiliate Marketing Make You A Millionaire?

Yes, affiliate marketing can make anyone a millionaire. It has already made lots of people millionaires and even multi-millionaires. Most people ask if affiliate marketing can make them millionaires, and that is the right question. However, they do not consider the other side of affiliate marketing.

Benign affiliate is not just about recommending products and services online. It is also about marketing, and that is the hard part. Anyone can copy a link and post it on their Facebook, but only an authority can post such a link and get hundreds of sales a day.

Once you understand how affiliate marketing works, you should be able to answer this question on a personal level. But on any day, affiliate marketing can make you a millionaire.

Affiliate marketing is not a new concept. In fact, the concept has existed since 1989. It has made a lot of waves with a high adoption rate for people looking to make money in the online space.

It was popularized by the online e-commerce giant Amazon when it introduced its affiliate program. It has since become the most prominent affiliate program and one of the most preferred affiliate programs for both beginners and experienced affiliate marketers.

You may have other questions about affiliate marketing. This is the right place to get started with affiliate marketing. Let’s continue with other questions people commonly ask after, “Can affiliate marketing make you a millionaire?”

How Much Money Can You Possibly Make Doing Affiliate Marketing?

$65,000 is the average earnings of affiliate marketers, according to Glassdoor. The earnings range from $42,000 to $83,000 a year. Experienced affiliate marketers make over hundreds of dollars to millions a year. It’s amazing how much you can earn with affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a very flexible source of income and depending on how good you are, the niche, and various factors, you can make more or less the average. However, making a million dollars from affiliate marketing is more than possible.

Smart Passive Income legend Pat Flynn is a perfect example of an affiliate marketer on steroids who makes over a million on commissions from sales.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing has existed for a few decades. Referral marketing has also been here much longer and is similar to affiliate marketing. It is easy to get confused trying to differentiate between affiliate marketing, referral marketing, and network marketing in most cases. The key similarity between them is that they are all direct forms of marketing.

Affiliate marketing rewards people for generating sales for a business such as a SaaS company like Notion or an eCommerce company like Amazon. This sounds a lot easier, but it isn’t. The system works in a way that is easy for both the affiliate program and the affiliate marketer. When you join an affiliate program for your favorite product or service, you are given different marketing tools, including banners and tracking links.

These tracking links are unique to you and will alert the referral network or program of your referral. If a sale happens from that referral, your account is credited with the commission due to you. Most networks and programs have a threshold that you will need to reach before you can withdraw your money.

On a conceptual level, affiliate marketing is simply referring your friends and colleagues to buy your favorite products, which you genuinely recommend, and anytime they buy using your unique link, you get paid some commission.

That sounds generous and more sustainable for marketing teams since most consumers make such recommendations daily and yet get paid nothing for them. In the long run, the consumer becomes programmed to constantly invite their friends to buy from you, just as they have done.

While this is the concept, it takes more than casually inviting friends over Facebook messenger to make a million dollars from affiliate marketing. It takes strategy, study, and sometimes spending some cash. But, of course, you’ve got to spend money to make money.

Affiliate Marketing Vs. Network Marketing: Are They The Same?

No. Network marketing and affiliate marketing are not the same. As already alluded to in the previous section, they are similar but not the same. Network marketing uses referral marketing concepts and does affiliate marketing. However, network marketers become independent distributors of the product.

Just imagine your favorite convenience store as an independent distributor for your favorite product. The same can be said of a network marketer. If you have been invited to a network marketing business before, they would tell you they are business people first and then marketers. They partner with the company to move the products.

Even though network marketers get paid in commissions, they have to get involved in moving the products physically. No network marketing company is legit without a product. Always keep that in mind. Network marketers also get paid for inviting and signing up new partners or associates to the company as independent distributors, something affiliate marketers cannot do, unless they are affiliates for an affiliate marketing network.

Is Affiliate Marketing The Same As Drop Shipping?

No. This is a good question. Dropshipping is a very flexible business model that allows anyone to start an online business selling a product they love. Except that they do not have to actually make the product and neither do they have to partake in the handling and shipping of the product.

Dropshipping works by a vendor or business person approaching a manufacturer to make a product. Some drop shippers go the extra mile of adding their branding to the product. When all is agreed on the product, quality, and pricing, the drop shipper takes the price and adds up their own costs and profit. After this has been done, they have their final price for the consumer.

Once an order comes in through the drop shipper’s website, a personal assistant or the drop shipper can forward all orders periodically to the manufacturer, who agrees to package and ship the product on behalf of the drop shipper. It is an efficient system but can easily get expensive as the costs are compiled for the final consumer.

Dropshipping cannot be sustained for long in highly competitive niches where consumers notice small price differences. Due to this, the secret to dropshipping success is finding uncut diamonds and marketing them at a killing rate before it gets super competitive and the margins become smaller.

Is Affiliate Marketing A Pyramid Scheme?

No. As already explained, affiliate marketing does not involve inviting other people to become affiliate marketers hence cannot be a pyramid scheme.

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based form of marketing which means affiliates only get paid when they perform something. It could be a sale, a click, or an impression over a specified period after a user first clicks on the affiliate unique link.

How Long Would It Take To Be A Millionaire With Affiliate Marketing?

It can take as long as over five years to be a millionaire with affiliate marketing depending on your working ethics and experience. While it is possible to become a millionaire as an affiliate marketer even under five years, no one can give you a definite period within which you can become a millionaire affiliate because a lot of factors are involved.

The reward systems, strategy, traffic quality, niche, specific program, and various factors play into how fast you can make the million-dollar mark. The integral things are yourself, niche type and experience/skills. For me, this platform with a community of affiliate marketers has been a great help to me in my pursuit.

That said, you can start making money instantly with affiliate marketing. Once you have your unique marketing materials with your link, anyone who buys from that link gets you a commission. So any time from getting your link first can make you a millionaire.

Can You Do Affiliate Marketing As A Side Hustle?

Absolutely Yes! Affiliate marketing is not a full-time job you do unless you decide to make it your full-time job. I started my affiliate marketing journey as a first-year master’s student so you can do it as a side hustle. However, there are thousands of people who are full-time affiliate marketers.

If you already have something going on for you, such as a job or a business, you can still get on to affiliate marketing as a side hustle and probably work your way into making it your full-time hustle.

It is advisable to start affiliate marketing as a side hustle when you have a full-time thing going on. This is because of the long learning curve it takes to become a super affiliate and make millions. Nonetheless, having the right resources and learning platforms shorten your learning curve.

Therefore, your skills, experience, and knowledge in the online marketing space need to be sharpened. Unfortunately, that means you need some time to acquire the tools you need to get into the big leagues because it is not by chance that anyone makes a million dollars from affiliate marketing.

Can Affiliate Marketing Be Done Without A Website?

Yes, there are lots of affiliate marketers killing it with only their Facebook or YouTube. The key requirement for affiliate marketing success is traffic, attention, or eyeballs. And not just any kind of traffic, but quality traffic. With qualified traffic, you stand the chance of getting high click-through rates which means you get more sales and more commission payouts.

However, over 80% of blogs and websites have affiliate marketing as a monetization strategy. This is because of the traffic potential: limitless. Imagine you have 100 pieces of content ranking quite well, each receiving an average of 500 visitors a month at a conversion rate of 0.1%. If you did the math, which we wouldn’t be doing for you, you could see how insane it is to develop a website as an affiliate.

However, similar can be said of an evergreen YouTube channel. You make 100 pieces of videos that get 500 views each per month. You, first of all, make money through the YouTube partner program. And with an affiliate link conversion rate of 0.1%, you get the idea as well.

The key here is to build an audience that matters. Build an audience that is highly into your niche. That way, most of the products you recommend will significantly improve their lives, and they will keep buying any product you recommend increasing your conversion rates.

People Who Are Making Millions With Affiliate Marketing

Pat Flynn

Pat Flynn is a legendary marketer who built a fledgling community around online business and passive income with a website called Smart Passive Income (SPI). He is probably the first person anyone will mention when you talk about affiliate marketing multi-millionaires. But he isn’t the only marketer to have made it to such a high level.

He started his journey in 2008 due to a layoff from where Pat worked. He was a quick study and was able to get himself into marketing, making about $8,000 after a year and a half. While this may not sound like a ton of money, remember that affiliate marketing efforts compound while you still get the monthly checks.

His operation grew from $8,000 to $50,000 in 2013.

Pat now earns millions annually from all his affiliate marketing websites.

Harsh Agarwal

You may have read a piece of content from Shout Me Loud. If you did, then you have had a taste of the content that made Harsh Agarwal an affiliate marketing millionaire. His blog gets millions of views daily (do the math).

Other Millionaire Affiliate Marketers

All these people started by taking a step into blogging their passions and skills and sharing them with the world. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to do it. All you need is the courage to take the step. Of course, you need someone or a bit of learning if you’re new to it. What has helped me in my affiliate journey is the community of wealthy affiliates.

How To Make Millions With Affiliate Marketing

Skills, knowledge, community building, and high-level strategy. These are the keys to affiliate marketing success. It doesn’t matter at what level you start. You need the perfect combination of these to become an affiliate marketing millionaire.

While building an asset remains the best way to generate traffic, you won’t probably get far with the skills to make great content. In addition, your business may not see the light of day if you are not informed about the industry and the best ways to navigate the industry.

Without a community, your business stands on rocks and can fall at any time. I discovered this community of like-minded people, which has helped my affiliate marketing journey. Strategy is what weaves everything together in a cohesive way that allows everything to work together for your success.

Here is how to get started with affiliate marketing in 2022.

Steps to Affiliate Marketing Success

How to succeed with affiliate marketing

1. Choose a Niche

A niche is a subset of an industry that is specific enough to build a solid audience. Taking on an entire industry is usually a challenge for new marketers because it is broad and challenging to enter with many authoritative players. But what those authoritative sites may not have is authority for a small section of the industry. This makes microniches very profitable for affiliate marketers, and you can learn that here.

These are also specific industries that are highly rewarding, including health and wellness, money and personal finance, weight loss, spirituality and religion, and more.

Choose one that aligns well with you and get started. But remember that passion may not get you far because people are not always passionate about what you want. Instead, being interested in what others want is a very good recipe for giving exactly that to them while making a good income doing so.

2. Join a Network/Program

An affiliate network is a platform that provides access to lots of affiliate programs. Popular networks include CJ Affiliate (Formerly Commission Junction), ShareASale, and ClickBank. These platforms are host to many exclusive programs that you cannot get outside of the platform.

On the other side, some companies run their own affiliate program without a network. These companies, such as Fiverr and Amazon, have systems to provide you with the tools you can get from any typical affiliate network.

Whether you join a network or a direct program, you will still need to apply to be accepted to each program.

Before doing that, it would be best to consider the products and services you use which can genuinely help your audience. If there aren’t any, find some you can test on a budget and make sure are worth any person’s money.

Next is to sign up for the program either directly or on a network. Again, this will depend on the product or service.

3. Create Your Asset

Your asset is where your traffic comes to enjoy your content, on which you can then recommend products and services to them. It could be a social media page such as Facebook or YouTube. It could also be a website or search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Other ways you can market affiliate products include:

  • Email List
  • Free eBooks
  • Pay Per Click Campaigns
  • Social Media Ads

It may be a bit confusing as a beginner, but everything falls in its place if you get the right resources to learn the steps. For me, this platform helped me a lot when getting started. I still use it today to learn from the community.

4. Drive Traffic to Your Asset

An asset’s primary asset is content unless you solely depend on ads where you need high-converting landing pages to sell.

For bloggers, they write.

YouTubers create high-quality videos.

Email marketers have quality lead magnets and list-building strategies to acquire, nurture and convert leads.

They are skills you learn in your journey of sharing with others what you know. Anyone can do that if you are willing to learn.

5. Become a Super Affiliate

Super affiliates do not focus on a thousand low-paying programs. Instead, they find golden products and services that perform above industry competitors. Of course, they also make sure that the programs pay well to fund their marketing and operation costs. That said, it always depends on your niche.

But there’s no doubt that everyone loves a high-paying program. Super affiliates can guarantee companies results and will often be the first point of call for new programs in the niche, allowing them to make good commissions.

6. Stay Consistent

Affiliate marketing qualifies as an extreme sport that doubles as a marathon. You play for both the long and short term. This means consistency is something you need to build.

Results compound for affiliate marketers, but anytime you go on break, your compounded efforts reduce or worse, go back to zero, and you start from there the next time you return.

What You Need To Start Affiliate Marketing

Starting an affiliate marketing business is the easy part, and the steps listed above can get you started. You need

  • A niche
  • A list of high paying affiliate programs in the niche
  • A strategy for how to promote the products/services
  • Building your asset and community
  • Staying consistent.

Ready? I know it may be clumsy in the mind when starting affiliate marketing. However, having someone to guide you literally by the hand makes things easier. So, if you’re willing, meet me on the wealthy affiliate platform to help you with my experience.

The best time to start an affiliate marketing business was ten years ago; the next best time is now. Get started here!

Final Words: Personal Advice To Starters

I have seen firsthand the potential of affiliate marketing and several people who are making millions of dollars annually. Yes, you can be a millionaire through affiliate marketing. None of them has superpowers or special abilities. The common denominator is they all took action in the face of their fears; built their businesses bit by bit to success.

The reality is that life rewards hard work and consistency. Usually, most make their first sale or commission within six months with that attitude. The happiness that comes with the first sale is so awesome. All of the millionnaire affiliate marketers will tell you that.

I also made my first sale within six months – it was $160 and that proved to me that affiliate marketing is real.

This is not to say that you’ll start making money within six months. It varies for everyone due to several factors. It can take longer than that especially if you’re figuring out yourself and don’t have anyone or community to guide you.

The wealthy affiliate platform saved me a lot of frustrations as a beginner. Now, I’m fine on my own and help others as well. The best thing is that you can try out the platform without any financial commitment. If you want to start an affiliate marketing business, you can join here and I’ll be there to help you with my experience.

Over To You!

If you think affiliate marketing can’t make anyone a millionaire, please share it in the comment session below and I’ll be glad to read that. Also, kindly share your experience of affiliate marketing if you have any to help others. Thanks.

4 thoughts on “Can Affiliate Marketing Make You A Millionaire?”

  1. Affiliate marketing is indeed a legitimate way of making money online and if you work hard, it can make you a millionaire. It is important for newbies to realise that affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It does require work and effort, but it does pay off eventually. 

    You have mentioned several well-known personalities that have become millionaires through affiliate marketing, so it is proof that affiliate marketing works. But they all worked hard and didn’t have overnight riches. Getting training with Wealthy Affiliate will certainly help you to become an affiliate marketing millionaire

    Reply
    • You’re right! Affiliate marketing is not a lottery that you expect things to work by luck. It requires work but it pays great dividends for a long time. 

      Reply
  2. This is a legitimate topic and one intriguing question. I do believe that affiliate marketing will make you a millionaire. However, it requires hard work and dedication on your part. I have learned from participating and being a member of affiliate marketing that you should treat it as a business.

    It is important to understand that being passionate and developing good working habits and dedication and having the right mindset will be key. Also, as you stated, being a member of a good community, like Wealthy Affiliate will help in guiding and developing newbies on how to be successful in affiliate marketing.

    Reply
    • Hi Vai, thanks for sharing your experience. I hope to hear your success story of becoming a millionaire through affiliate marketing. Wish you all the best. 🙂

      Reply

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