It doesn't take a genius to see that affiliates are moving into different, and away from pure internet marketing. I'm glad to see this change, becasue It's one we've been talking about on the forum for a long time.
My goal with the forum was always to get people building long term businesses.
Is Affiliate Marketing Long Term?
This depends on what you mean by long term. Things change so fast in this business, it's hard to look at many online ventures as long term. When you talk about pure affiliate marketing (ie sending traffic straight to affiliate offers), it's not really a good long term option.
Most affiliates seem to have a 2-4 year lifespan. Some quit after this, and some take those skills and build other businesses. Why don't affiliates last longer than this?
– They get tired of the constant up's and downs that are out of their control (traffic sources, offers being pulled, etc.)
– They did great in a vertical or traffic source that's no longer viable
– They see greater opportunity elsewhere.
The affiliates I've seen become really successful usually follow this formula:
They get really good at affiliate marketing. They learn a specific skill, or skills that enables them to make a lot of money.
They then take those skills (and hopefully money they saved) and move into their own offer, traffic source, startup, ecommerce, etc.
Why Even Do Affiliate Marketing Then?
Good question! Why not just start with your own offer, or something in ecommerce? You can do that certainly, and people do, but the skills you learn in affiliate marketing are usually vital to make those businesses work well. Not to say you couldn't succeed at one of those without doing affiliate marketing, but the skills you learn from becoming a successful affiliate will give you a great advantage. Many people view affiliate marketing as a stepping stone to something else.
With an affiliate background, it's something you can always go back to or do a part of it. It doesn't need to be an all or nothing. Maybe you can outsource the affiliate stuff you do at some point while you build other businesses? Maybe you can, like Mike Geary, send traffic to your own offer.
Even if you build the best ecommerce store, or CPA offer, you have to understand the affiliate side of things to make that business as successful as it should be.
Just to be clear – I'm not saying affiliate marketing is dying, or that you should jump ship. I think affiliate marketing in some form will be around for a very very long time. My goal, is to get you thinking about what your long term plan is.
What are you going to do when you get tired of chasing offers? What will you do when you can't scale a campaign any further? What will you do when you realize your income could double when you become the one retaining the customers, instead of sending them to someone's offer?
Very good.
The benefits (as I see it) of affiliate marketing is that you only have to focus on one piece of the puzzle, one that can be very profitable. Managing the offer, merchant accounts, chargebacks, customer service, product sourcing, fraud (on the part of your affiliates), returns, legal, etc. can be quite a hassle.
I have to agree with what Jason said above. As an affiliate, it is much less of a hassle (not dealing with fraud, CS, merchandising, etc.). Additionally, I think the great thing about this industry is that things change so much. If you’re anything like me, I love change, I love the fast pace – it means that I will get to work on something new and complex every single day, unlike other professions which can be the same mundane tasks, over and over again, every day.
Affiliate marketing is a constant up and down so I agree with this article. Affiliate marketing doesn’t build a business it’s a house of cards.
Bingo! Great post
The skills you learn while pounding out affiliate campaigns is a huge lesson in internet marketing. It’s like a crash course and after that you can start to look at the much bigger picture. Then you have the skills to move on to much bigger deals and get a lot more technical control as well.
Some options post-affiliate marketing
– affiliate network
– own offer
– own offer that you promote yourself
– start a traffic source
– start a service geared towards aff marketers (private forum, spy software, tracking software, etc)
– offline business
– do a startup
– go guru and teach your skills
– go into other areas of internet marketing. build out websites, buy domains, etc.
– go “up” the food chain in affiliate marketing. Working closer with advertisers, developing partnerships, really monetizing their own data, call centers, etc.
– Dr_Ngo
dr_ngo are you still mostly an affiliate?
I was a full time affiliate for about a year and a half, and took some of my affiliate monies and opened up a gym(crossfitkingspoint.com) with my fiance. I look at it as a very long term and very profitable campaign. Never been happier!
New reader here. Excellent post!
You illustrate better than I could possibly express the decision I came to recently, which was that affiliate marketing/IM cannot be my sole focus, but rather a tool I use to learn how to better sell the products and services my business DOES already focus on.
If I can pick up some extra cash on the way and, as you suggested, come to the point at which I can outsource the affiliate-only side of the business, great! In the meantime, I’m going to soak up everything I can about sales, marketing, consumer psychology, etc. from my efforts as an affiliate.
I’m doing things backwards!
I started with my own product and made my six figures with it in the past year but now I’m trying affiliate marketing, specifically CPA and long term evergreen affiliate funnels
Having a product is great but there is lots more than just providing the product to worry about, there’s fraud, chargebacks, updates, support, competition and other hassles beyond the joy of creating the product so I’m going to take the money I earned in he last year and see how I can apply it to affiliate marketing . (maybe join Affplaybook premium!) 🙂
Congrats on your progression. I started my career as an affiliate as well. Once you harness the power of drive leads you can succeed in any online venture. Good luck!
This post is excellent!
I think affiliates who are at least moderately successful underestimate what they know.
You know how to track, how to use a traffic source, how to tailor your message to the traffic source and the visitor. You know that headlines and images matter, and that a good landing page can skyrocket conversion rates.
Do you realize how many businesses do not have a clue about all of the above?
There is a business in offering each of those services individually or even better… offer all of them.
If you’ve outsourced tasks before, then you are one step towards having a clue on how you could build a team should you choose to begin a startup.
So many businesses don’t know about outsourcing to the Philippines, India, Europe so you can make insane (and very stable) margins by offering services and getting your VAs to do the grunt work.
If you just take step back from busting out campaign after campaign, you’ll see that you have many skills that businesses need and you know things that they want to know.
Be proud to have affiliate skills, and use these awesome skills to create stable, long term businesses (as wise man David said)
Great comments Chris!