How can you make money with affiliate marketing? The numbers do not show it's possible
I am sure this is a question that a lot of new members ask around here. I definitely ask myself that question today after I do some quick calculations, and I would like to throw it out there for a more senior and successful members to review and give answers. I am hoping that I can get actual practical tips that other members and I can follow and implement (i.e diversification tips, how to improve the numbers shown in the calculation, etc), not just motivational speeches.
I am a number person and a planner, so I created a simple spreadsheet to see how much I can potentially make with my niche and with the amount of time that I have available to spend.
As I said, the result is depressing. See the attached spreadsheets. My nice is luxury children dresses (and shoes and accessories), and I have a website with blog posts and a landing page that shows all the products that I like and would recommend. Based on my calculations, I would need to have at least 40,000 products sold in a month, just to earn around $1,000 from affiliate commissions, a far cry from my $10K a month goal haha.
In order to make that even possible, I need to have at least probably 1,000 products listed on my site, and every single one of those products have to be sold 40 times a month. I think that's extremely optimistic! On top of that, at my current rate, I won't have 1,000 products listed until 5 years from today (I can probably speed it up, but not by much more)!! So as you can see, even with very optimistic and probably not realistic assumptions, I will only make $1,000 a month 5 years from now.
I know that some of the hours that I spend will decrease as I get better and better over the time, and since I'm quite new (just started in January 2017), I probably need to add more affiliate programs. However, I really cannot see how I can be successful in my niche....
I know some of you may suggest getting into niche that pays much higher commission like the WA Affiliate Bootcamp, but that's not my passion, and I am passionate about my niche.
So, other actionable and proven to be successful tricks and tips would be welcome (especially if you are also in product niche like me)!
Thank you in advance!
Madison
Recent Comments
3
A couple of things I would suggest:
Whilst it is our goal to achieve income from affiliate marketing, first of all try to focus more on the content of your page. Your purpose is to become an authority in your chosen field, someone that a lot of people go to.
From that will come traffic, and traffic brings visitors and customers. Once they trust you then your recommendations of products will have more gravitas.
So to summarise.
Forget the money right now.
Create content.
Build an audience.
Mat
Hi Mat,
Thank you for your comment. I definitely understand the mantra (become an authority, gain follower, traffic will come, and traffic generates money). But like anything else in life, it's easier to reach a goal if it's clear and actionable.
As you can see on my calculations, even if I am a well known expert in that niche and have 40,000 successful transactions generated from my site, and say that comes from 10% of traffic (which is very conservative and optimistic), which means I need to have 400,000 traffic a month (which is amazing), just to potentially make $1K a month. Have you done your calculations?
To be honest, no I haven't. I'm only hoping for 500 odd per month anyways to supplement my income and see how it goes.
What you have to remember is that in order to reach the heady heights of 10k a month, you need to heavily diversify. I'm sure some of the folks here probably have five or more sites each in a different niche.
Not only that but I'm not sure you are taking into account advertising. if you have a ppc widget on your site, and say you get 15c a click. And 10 percent click on that that's 6k in your pocket.
So I get what your saying absolutely, but a reasonable income is definitely achievable.
:)