The Risks Involved In Affiliate Blogging

Risk is scary.

It makes you hesitate.

It makes you go back to the safety of what you know.

Within risk however, there is reward, especially in the business world. There is risk involved in affiliate blogging, and accepting risk is a massive step forward towards success, no matter how far along you are in your journey.

Time VS Money Risk

One of the best things about starting a blog is that your "money risk" is very small. I know there's a lot of boostrappers in Wealthy Affiliate, so the $49/month fee may seem like a big risk. In reality, $49 is infinitesimally small compared to just about any other type of business you could start.

Even on a yearly basis, $495 ALL IN to run a business for a year with a 6-figure potential is crazy town. The amount of money you have to risk to be successful in this industry is very small. That's a fact, Jack.

On the other hand, you do need to spend a lot of time if you aren't going to spend money.

• time learning WordPress
• time learning affiliate marketing
• time writing articles
• time learning SEO
• time designing your website
• time researching keywords
• time analytizing Google Analytics
• time watching webinars
• time asking questions
• time reading articles
• time assessing mistakes
• time planning your next steps

Then, at the end of the day, you might end up making nothing. You could end up earning $0 from your website, and for many people, that ends up being true. All of that time invested might be for nothing!

This is the time risk involved. You MIGHT spend a bunch of time building a business and you MIGHT not get anything in return. The risk of the loss of time is what make a lot of people hesitate and never start, or dip their toes in and never give it their full effort.

Without risk, there's no reward. Although the idea of risking money is pretty familiar, the idea of risking time is less well known. I think ultimately, when you sign up to Wealthy Affiliate, you're risking your time, and only those who are willing to take that risk will ever see a reward.

My question to you is - what else do you have to do that's more important?

Next time you hesitate whether or not you want to log into Wealthy Affiliate, or start typing an article but you hesitate and think, "This sucks, is it even worth my time", ask yourself, "What am I going to do instead?"

For myself, I often find that what I want to do is drink a beer or watch some Netflix. Then I'm presented with the option of BUILD A BUSINESS or DRINK A BEER AND WATCH TV.

I think it's pretty obvious which choice a successful entrepreneur would do.

Risk As A Beginner

Your biggest risk as a beginner is time. In reality, $49 for a month of Wealthy Affiliate membership is very small. You really don't need to buy anything else outside of your core WA membership in order to learn how to build a six-figure website.

The main thing you are risking is the time involved to learn the things you need to learn how to make it happen.

In my opinion, just 2 hours a day Monday to Friday, then a couple supplement hours on the weekend isn't a whole lot of time to invest. I know people are busy with families, work, and other responsibilities. As a new father, I'm struggling to find the time to do the day to day tasks I normally do on my blog, so I get it.

However, there's always a path to make things happen. If the kids are crazy at night and you're distracted, get up 2 hours early and work from 4AM to 6AM on your blog. Or wait until everyone goes to bed and stay up until midnight. 10PM to 12PM working isn't that bad even if you get up at 6.

Six hours of sleep is not the doctor recommended amount, but that's why coffee exists.

Risk As A Full Time Blogger

As a full time blogger, you have much more opportunity to risk money as your business is growing. Buying articles, plugins, hiring VA's etc are all online resources you can leverage to help you scale your business. Not all of them work out.

I look at risking my business money much like risking my own time. $100 risked today could end up being $100/day in the future. That's why I try not to be too attached to money that my business earns.

Of course, I need to pay myself, and I do, but I always spend a good chunk of money reinvesting in my business.

One example of "money wasted" in 2020 was I tried to hire a keyword researcher. It's pretty easy to outsource articles for me these days, and I have a bunch of great writers who write things which rank and get traffic. However, it's really hard to get those writers to think of ideas to write about, so I do spend a good amount of time resarching topics and organizing projects.

I decided to take stab at trying to get someone to do the research and organize projects for me.

In the end, I cycled through 3 different hires and nobody really "got it". They didn't get the idea of keyword intent, so although I ended up with big lists of keywords, they were basically the same stuff I could find if I just hit "export" and didn't comb trough the results to find the best keywords.

Though this project didn't work out, the next one might. Or I might try this one again later and change something to make my request more clear.

Regardless, I know that although some projects fail, some do succeed, and I can't find the successful ones without trying. That's the risk. The trying part.

Final Thoughts

To overcome risk, you need to identify and accept it. Figure out if you're risking time or money, and what the potential benefits of that risk may be. What's the tradeoff, and are you willing to lose either time or money now in order to gain more time or money in the future?