Can You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing? It Depends.

byleoemery

12.2K followers

Updated 5 years ago

So, the question is - can you make money with affiliate marketing? Of course you can. But it does depends on many things.

Now, I've been online since 2000 (man I'm old) and I've making a full time income online as an affiliate marketer since 2005. So I've been around the block a few times.

And today I want to share with you what I feel are some of these important key elements needed to build and grow a successful online business.

Of course, this is just my perspective and from my experience online. And please, chime in with your thoughts.

Ok, here we go.

1) Get Your Head Straight

What do I mean by that?

I don't care what you want to achieve in life, if you don't have the right mind set, your road to success is going to be a lot harder, in fact it will lead you to frustration and even failure.

And having the right mind set all starts with your Self-Talk.

I've talked about Self-Talk before and that's that running dialogue you have going on in your head and it's running 24/7.

And this self-talk is shaping your destiny. It determines how you think, how you feel, how you act, in a nutshell how you ultimately live. And if this self-talk is negative, then your whole outlook on every aspect of your life is going to be negative. And of course, it works the other way as well.

Now I'm not here to say just having positive self-talk it's going to make your life all rainbows and unicorns, because it's not. But it's definitely going to pull you in a much better direction than if you have negative self-talk.

Words are so POWERFUL, they can make you happy, they can make you sad, they can make cry, cause you all kinds of pain, create pleasure and create success and failure.

And you really have to be aware of the words yo'are using each and every day. Because those words are pulling you in either a positive direction or a negaitive one.

But the cool thing is, if you have negative self-talk, you can change your destiny and your life in an instant by changing that self-talk by becoming aware of the words your using each and every day.

A lot fo self-talk is questions, so let me give you an example.

Let's say you're working on your business and you're struggling to make things work and because of this you keep asking yourself "Why can't I find success online; at this rate I'll never succeed?"

If you have negative self-talk like that, the answers you may be getting could be:

"I'm just not cut out for this online stuff"

"I'm not as smart as other people that work online"

"I don't have the money other people have to be successful online"

"I don't have the advantages like other people have"

Now when you're asking yourself these kinds of questions what kind of reply do you think you're going to get? I can tell you they won't be empowering that's for sure.

Your brain is just like a computer and if you're putting in bad data into a computer your results will be bad. What's that saying? Garbage in Garbage out.

Each one of those questions is pre-supposing failure - not success. So, instead of asking
"Why can't I find success online, at this rate I'll never succeed?". How about asking questions like this:

"What changes do I need to make so I can succeed online?" or "What do I need to do each day so I can succeed with my online business?" These questions pre-suppose success.

It's pretty simple when you think about it. If you're constantly asking yourself bad questions, you're always going to get bad answers. So instead of doing that, start asking better questions.

So simply put, ask yourself a better question you're going to give yourself a better answer.
And this not only applies to building your business online, this applies to every challenge you may have in your life.

Do you want to know the one question I'm constantly asking myself? Here it is.

"Is what I'm about to do going to bring me closer to my goals or further away?"

So the next time you have a challenge, don't ask yourself "why does this always happen to me?" Because you know what kind of answers you're going to get. Instead change your self- talk, and maybe ask yourself a question like this when you have a challenge.

"How can I solve this challenge and have a great time doing it" or maybe ask yourself this: "Okay, I didn't expect this today but how can I turn this challenge around and learn from it so it doesn't happen again?".

Now changing your self-talk is easy, the hard part is consistently being mindful of your self- talk. So this is going to take work, but you'll be amazed by how everything changes when you change your self-talk.

2) You Need Patience - Things Take Time

When you're building a business online it's not gonna happen in two weeks it's not going to happen in 30 days you're building a real business and building a real business takes time.

When people ask me how long does it take? I typically tell people be prepared to work 6 to 12 months and that's not even a guarantee. Kyle said it best in a blog post that he had not too long ago. He said everything clicks for people at different times.

So maybe it will click for you in 8 months, maybe it will click for you in 14 months, or maybe it will click for you in 2 years. Take me for example, I started online in the year 2000. And I stumbled around, I got scammed and I got ripped off for 3 years straight.

And that's because like a lot of people today, I fell for all those shiny objects, and those get rich scams. But once I did get my head out of my ass and stopped chasing all these pipedream scammy programs and found a real mentor.

Then and only then, was I on the path to actually building a real online business. And then 18 months from that day, which brought me into 2005 I was making a full-time living online as an affiliate marketer.

So, like I said your timeline is going to be different. And you really have to understand it's going to take time to build your business.

And if you're not prepared for that, if you're looking to try to make money or build a business in a blink of an eye, then you're just setting yourself up for a huge disappointment.

But if you go into this with the right mindset, and the understanding that this is going to take time, and it's not going to happen overnight, you're going to be light years ahead of most people that want to make money online.

Now when I say how long it can takes, some people kinda freak out, they say, "you mean to tell me I have to work for 12 months before my business could succeed?". And I flat-out say yep, and it could take longer.

But when I ask them. "Where are you going to be in 12 months with your current job? Will you be happier? Will you get a promotion? Will you be making more money? Will you be where you want to be in 12 months with your current job?

And you know what people tell me? No, no, no, no, no.

When you think about it 12 months is a very short time to change your destiny, to be in total financial control without someone telling you how much you're worth. And I know it sounds like a cliché, but to live the life that you want to live.

Oh, and also be prepared not to see any results or income for a while, but don't be discouraged things are happening, you're just not seeing the results of your hard work yet.

And that brings me to my next point

3) You Have To Bust Your Ass

Making money online is not easy. And anyone that tells you that it is easy, is flat out lying to you. But we're human, and we love the path of least resistance. If we have a choice between fast or slow will pick fast. If we have a choice between hard or easy, we'll pick easy. That's why these online scams do so well.

Because they tell people exactly what they want to hear, all you have to do is install this, all you have to do is click this button, all you have to do is follow my blueprint and you'll make money in 12 minutes.

I referenced 12 minutes, because I just did a review on some scam program that claimed you can make money 12 minutes after you take their training.

Anybody that spends all their time talking about how easy it is to make money and how easy it's going to be for you to make this money and all the wonderful things you can do once you've made all this money. Such as, pay off your debts, go on luxury vacations, live in the house of your dreams drive the car you want.

There's an old saying - "A con man will sell you what you already want".

If anybody is spending more time telling you what you can do with all the money you can make, and never tells you how you're going to make this money and what you have to do to earn this money. This person or program is providing you zero value, it's a scam. And all they want is your money and they could care less about you.

Once you understand there are no shortcuts and you have to bust your ass to build your business, you're going to be well ahead of most of the people online trying to make money online.

Each and every day I'm working on my business, and every day is different. There are days when I work for 4 or 5 hours there may be days where I only work a couple hours, and then there's days were I'm working 8 or 10 hours. It just depends what I need to get done for that day.

Sure, having my own successful business allows me to come and go as I please and gives me the freedom to do what I want when I want. And yes, I can go on vacation and my business is still working.

But believe me I'm not sitting on the beach everyday with my toes in the sand while the money roles in, while I do nothing.

My priority is always building my business, and by having that as my priority that allows me to do the other things that I was talking about.

Now I also hear people saying, "right now I can only work one hour a day on my business. No problem, if that's all you can devote to your business each day at this time, so be it.

When I first started out, I had a full-time job, when I was done my day job I'd work on my business in the evening.

And most often I could only work a couple hours in the evening if I was lucky, and then on the weekend I'd work as much as I could. And yes, it took me longer to get to where I wanted to go, but I had a very simple philosophy.

As long as I'm taking one positive step towards building my business each and every day, I'm going to get to where I want to go. And that's the mindset you have to have.

It doesn't matter how much you can work on your business, it's the focus that you put towards your business within the time that you have that matters. And this is where a schedule really comes in handy.

To this very day I have a schedule for my business. Each day is devoted to something specific when it comes to building my business. One day is keyword research, other days are content creation, other days are video production and so on.

And I don't jump from one thing to another. If it's video production day. Then that's all I do for that day, nothing else. When it's my content days, that's all I do, and so on.

And while I'm working, my email is turned off, my browser windows are turned off, I have no distractions and focus on what I need to do. Once I get things done, then I can check my email, then I can come inside WA and see what's going on or do whatever.

So, if you want to make the time you have to build your business count. Create a schedule. Having a schedule is going to make things a lot easier for you.

Also, by having a schedule, this is going to get you in the habit of consistency. And just like everything else you have to do to build your business, consistency is key. Without consistency the growth of your business is going to suffer and reaching your online goals is going to take a lot longer.

Think of it this way. You can't go to the gym every so often and think you're going to get into great shape.

The same works for your business, you're not going to build a successful online business if you only work on it every once in a while.

And one other important thing, take time away from your business. You need to step away and recharge your batteries and have a life. For me, I don't work weekends. And by Monday I'm amped up to get at things again.

4) This Is A Business So Treat It Like One

Now this point might seems pretty obvious, but it really isn't for a lot of people. I don't know what it is, but when people are online and it comes to building a business, I find a many people don't really treat it as a real business. Maybe because it's not a brick-and-mortar thing and you can't really touch it.

Or maybe it's because you don't really have to invest a ton of money to get your business going and keep it going. So maybe there's that connection that there's not really a real big investment involved and if it fails no big deal.

And when I say not a real investment, compared to a brick-and-mortar business where you may have to invest over $100,000 or more.

The investment to start a business online is minimal. When you think about it, if you're using all the resources of wealthy affiliate your monthly investment to build and grow your business is less than $50 a month.

Just because you can start your business for free, and then build and grow your business for less than $50 a month. Don't let the level of your investment into your business dictate your level of commitment towards your business. It makes no difference how much you have to invest.

This is a business you're building, so treat it as such. In fact, this is a business that you could hand down to your children.

5) Find A The Right Training And A Mentor

I mentioned this at the beginning of this post, I did not get on the right track to building my business until I stopped chasing shiney objects and got the right training and found a mentor.

And by having the right training, guidance and support you're going to achieve your online goals much faster, easier and avoid a lot of the mistakes you would otherwise make without a mentor.

And call me bias, but the best place for all this is wealthy affiliate. Back when I started online in 2000, there was nothing like wealthy affiliate.

Hell, there was no WordPress, that started in 2003, there was no Facebook that started in 2004, there was no YouTube that started in 2005, and both Instagram and Pinterest started in 2010.

I'm not sure how many people realize how lucky they are that wealthy affiliate is here and that you can get everything you need to build a successful affiliate marketing business all under one roof.

Heck, building a website back when I first started was a pain in the ass, I had to use a program called Dreamweaver. So building a website could take a few days even a few weeks. And for those people that could not build a website they had to hire a webmaster.

And once the site was built, if they wanted to make changes to their site, they had to contact the webmaster and pay for those changes, and then wait for those changes to be applied. It was a nightmare for people.

Now think about that and compare that with what you have inside wealthy affiliate. With four simple clicks of the in-house website builder and in less than 60 seconds you can have a professional revenue ready website up and running with zero technical skills.

And you can do what you want with your website at anytime, you're in total control, you're the webmaster.

Now add the world-class training, the keyword research tool Jaaxy, the ease of buying your own domain name, free hosting and security for that domain name including around-the-clock technical support when you need it. The support you have from the community 24/7 through live chat, private messaging.

Your own personal blogging platform, where you can share your experience and knowledge, and even ask questions of the community. And speaking of the community, we are 1.4 million like minded entrepreneurs. And that number is growing every single day.

And let's not forget about Jay, our own in-house Super Guru that provides the most outstanding live webinars each and every Friday.

Even with my experience, I learn so much from these webinars, and the cool thing is if I can't attend the webinar, I can watch those webinars when it best works for me because they are all recorded.

People always ask me why am I a member of wealthy affiliate, and besides everything wealthy affiliate has to offer, it many things.

Incuding being surrounded by so many like-minded individuals. I love being around such positive energy.

Also, the intellectual resources that I have at my fingertips. You have people in here that are experts in Pinterest, Facebook, you have people that are experts in PPC, video, social platforms and it goes on and on.

So instead of trying to find some expert outside the WA. I have trusted people here I can turn to. For me, that alone is worth its weight in gold.

But the biggest reason why I'm here, it's because I know what it's like to try to build a business on your own. I know what it's like to get screwed over and scammed.

And I know what it's like to feel like you're never going to accomplish what you want to accomplish online because you don't have support or someone you can trust.

And all you're asking is for someone not to lie to you, not take all your money and just help and guide you.

Wealthy affiliate provides that. There's no false promises given here, there's no promise of overnight wealth. What you get is the truth of what you're going to have to do to build your affiliate marketing business and the steps to do it.

So with everything that wealthy affiliate has to offer, for me this is the perfect place that I can be that person, be that mentor and share my experience and help whomever wants to take on the challenge and the exciting journey of building an online business.

And when it comes to my personal mentoring within wealthy affiliate, I'm a very selfish boy.

And what I mean by that is anyone who comes to wealthy affiliate through me, they are my focus and my first priority. And helping the rest of the community when I can, that comes second.

I hope you found this post helpful and if you ever need a hand, don't hesitate giving me a buzz.

I believe in you!
Leo