One Cool Thing About Affiliate Marketing

There are so many ways to make money. Even in the online world, there's a lot more ways to make money online than just affiliate marketing.

However, I like affiliate marketing the most! Why?

The cool thing about affiliate marketing is that there's no rush to produce results. Unlike starting a restaurant or brick and mortar shop, you don't have to pay thousands of dollars in rent every month.

Unlike ecommerce and Amazon selling, you don't have to invest money into products.

Here are a couple specific situations where the unique business model of affiliate marketing has worked in my favor.

Just Window Shopping!

This section was inspired by a rude message I got from an affiliate manager just last week. I asked this person some questions about their affiliate program, then they told me "no window shoppers allowed", and blocked me.

Um, what? Well, that was a pretty dumb move IMO. Every affiliate is a potential powerhouse to your business, even if it takes time to ramp up sales.

For example, back when I signed up to Wealthy Affiliate in 2010 I created accounts for a bunch of affiliate networks like Shareasale, CJ, Impact, and Flexoffers.

Then for the next 8 years I didn't do anything with them. I didn't really know why I signed up initially. It was just part of the training here in WA. I was busy focusing on other affiliate programs for those years, so just didn't think about doing anything with those accounts.

Now, in 2019, I've got monthly earnings coming in from many of those same networks. I simply signed into my accounts, updated my information, and started promoting. There's nothing wrong with leaving your affiliate accounts dormant for a period of time while you develop your content.

Wait For The Right Time To Take Action

Once affiliate marketing "clicks" for you, you'll start to have tons and tons of ideas. There are hundreds of thousands of potential niche websites you could start! I'm still sitting on a great domain I bought 3 years ago (wirelesssportheadphones (dot) com).

I haven't done anything with it since I bought it, but I know it's a good topic, and when I have the time I'll start building it out. For now, it's on the backburner. The cost of having it on the backburner? $14/year.

No expensive rent. No loans to pay back. No investors to worry about. Just an entire business sitting on the sidelines for a couple bucks a year. You never know when inspiration will hit, or when an opportunity will come along!

You Can Put Projects On Pause

I worked for about 2 years on a side project that was just failing and failing again. It was super frustrating to deal with. Day after day, that can really weigh on you!

So I stepped away for about 3 months. I let the content stew during that time period. I posted nothing, and just checked a few times per week to see how sales and traffic were doing.

After I took that break, I hired a writer, and started publishing again. Now the site is doing much better!

That 3-month break was exactly what I needed to regain some mental space for that project.

I didn't have to delete my site. I didn't have to sell it. Hosting and domain costs were more than covered by the poor affiliate earnings. $359 + $14/ per year is pretty easy to earn with just a few affiliate sales and Adsense clicks per month.

If you have to pause your work for a while, that's fine. Just make sure to get off the couch at some point and start things back up again.

"Just Testing" Is A Great Strategy

One time I spent two weeks testing out a product, writing a review, and then promoted the heck out of that product for the next month. I made exactly zero sales.

Another time I noticed that I had some relevant traffic to an affiliate program, signed up, and instantly started making money in a previously unmonetized section of my site.

Both were "tests". One worked, one didn't. That's kind of the nature of testing things out! The great news is that there were no financial concequences of running a failed promotion. I lost some time, for sure, but it's not like I sunk $5,000 into ordering products from China!

The other test took minimal effort, and ended up working out really well. Because it worked so well, I ended up adding additional content, creating charts, and further optimizing to boost sales. What started as a test, ended up creating reliable monthly income!

Tests can go either way, good or bad, no matter what you're trying out. Take some risks, try some ideas, and see what happens.

Final Thoughts

Affiliate marketing is a great biz to be in. Mistakes are cheap, anything can be fixed later, and there's plenty of time to learn as you build.

As you build our your affiliate sites, if you have to test, pause, and restart along the way, you'll be totally fine. Enjoy 2019 everyone.