Open Source Affiliate

Article: How long does it take to get rich with affiliate marketing?

How long does it take to get rich with affiliate marketing?

People are always trying to sell the latest get-rich-quick scheme based on internet or affiliate marketing. How quickly do you think you can really get rich online if you are starting from scratch?

How affiliate pros make money quickly

You might have seen marketing “gurus” or “pros” brag about making $10,000 in 1 day, or how they launched a new product and made $100,000 in the first week. These guys are NOT starting from the beginning. They already have an established base and resources that they can leverage to produce these kinds of results.

If you are starting from the beginning, you should not expect to have similar results right away. Experienced affiliate marketers have many contacts, both in the real world and online. Their social or technological networks are extremely powerful tools to leverage. For example, some of these people already have a mailing list with 100,000 subscribers. If they create a new product and email their subscribers, even at a 1% conversion rate, they have 1000 immediate sales.

Another example would be people who already own a large network of websites. Suppose they decide to create a new money-making site, whether that site sells memberships, uses Adsense, or reviews affiliate products. By linking their preexisting large network to the new money-maker, they immediately gain large amounts of traffic and Pagerank. If you create a new website, you cannot expect to have such similar results.

Making real, consistent money takes time

Laying down the groundwork to make consistent, large amounts of money takes time. You might be able to find a quick blackhat method to earn you a quick burst of cash, but for stable profits, you will have to be patient. Whether you are using article marketing, link building, or other similar methods, it will take time for the traffic to increase and you to make profits. Suppose your landing page converts 1% of visitors to a sale. That means you need 100 unique visitors every day to make 1 sale per day, for $20-40 a day. 100 unique visitors is certainly doable, but not overnight.

To give you some idea of what’s realistic, I will describe the results for some of the first affiliate campaigns I tried. I wrote one article each for a couple different products, and created a Squidoo lens for each one. One Squidoo lens receives about 3 visitors a day, and each month I get about 1 sale. Another lens receives about 1 visitor a day, and over 3 months, I made 1 sale. If I had kept writing more articles, and submitting them to more directories, I’m sure I could have increased my traffic and profits. However, I didn’t know back then if those niches were making any money. Until I waited long enough, or if put in enough effort, to receive a couple hundred unique visitors, I wouldn’t know if that niche was worth pursuing. Now that I know, I can go back and develop the good niches, if I choose to.

Set a realistic affiliate marketing timeline

Don’t waste money pursuing fast promised riches from internet marketers. Instead, create a realistic timeline and goals for yourself. Then, go about pursuing them. You could make the goal of having your first affiliate sale in a month. Maybe your next goal would be to have 1 sale a week in the next month, and continue setting goals until one day you realize that you are a rich affiliate marketer!