Affiliate Marketing: Why You Are Not Making Any Big Money

One of the prominent ways bloggers and internet marketers’ cash in on their online business is through affiliate marketing. The affiliate marketing boom in the 1990’s which many saw as one of those things to die off with time continues to make thousands of people rich online.

It seems the whole make money online enterprise is well grounded in affiliate marketing though there are other profitable ways one can make money online aside this.

Individual bloggers, internet marketers and webmasters are making thousands of dollars each month from their affiliate marketing activities. It is surely an online money making tool that works.

However, there are millions of people who are also making NOTHING or just a little from affiliate marketing despite the number of hours they put into it.

There is something wrong here right? Mr. A is making thousands and Mr. B is making nothing or pennies…

Let’s look at some of the reasons why Mr. B is struggling to make any money from affiliate marketing despite the fact that Mr. A and others are making thousands of dollars each month.

Anyway, What Is Affiliate Marketing?

It will be unfair to those who may be hearing the phrase ‘Affiliate Marketing’ for the first time not to be given an idea of what is it all about.

Maybe after knowing what affiliate marketing is, you will jump into the business and achieve the enviable success that many of the big affiliates are making.

Affiliate marketing is an online money making scheme whereby publishers are given monetary reward (commission) for promoting products or services of businesses on their blogs, websites or platforms.

This is when a publisher earns a commission which can range from 1% to as high as 75% for sending traffic (people) to the affiliate’s (business) website.

The payment or earning of commission is guided by agreed terms. For some affiliates, it is just about sending them traffic and you get paid a certain commission when the traffic lands on their website through your link.

For other affiliates, you only earn a commission when the traffic or persons you send to them perform an action. This action can be either buying a product or service they are offering or signing up for their service or taking part in a survey.

What the traffic must do to get you paid varies but the bottom line is, you are into affiliate marketing when you are paid a commission for referring people to another person’s site-either to do something or to do nothing.

In the world of affiliate marketing, commissions are often a percentage of a sale but it can also be a fixed agreed amount.

How Will The Affiliate Know What Traffic/Persons You Are Sending To Them?

It is not difficult for the affiliates to know which site sent which visitor and what the visitor did on their websites.

All traffic are generally tracked by a code that is given out to publishers. Each code has a unique identification number so when someone clicks on your link and goes to the affiliates site, their software records where they came from and via which unique identification number or link they came through. So the affiliates track where conversions or at this stage let’s call it traffic come from (usually by cookies).

There are times when publishers can give out coupons which is only assigned to them to people to use these coupons on the affiliate’s website. The moment a coupon is used, the publisher who is linked to the coupon is credited a comission.

For example, I have a coupon with HostGator.Com called ‘TopVincent25’. When you use this coupon on HostGator.Com by purchasing their products or services, you will get 25% discount . Since you used my coupon, I will be paid a commission for the sales they have made from you.

This is what we call affiliate marketing…

Reasons Why You Are Not Making Enough Money From Affiliate Marketing!

• Promoting Wrong Products & Service To Wrong Audience

What would you think of a salesman who tries vigorously to sell boxes of meat to dedicated group of vegetarians? You will surely think he is mad or a big joke.

The products or services you are promoting or selling through affiliate marketing matters, but the audience you are targeting matters more.

No matter how hard you push a promotion or how good a product/service is; if you are pushing it down the throat of the wrong consumer, it will never be swallowed.

So to make any good money from affiliate marketing, you need to know your audience, what they are interested in and then promote those things to them.

It will be silly to be running a football blog with great football audience and then try to sell them cricket related products. In this case, you will not be able to sell much or anything.

If you want to make money from affiliate marketing, then you got to grab the right products/services and offer them for the right audience.

• You Do Not Have Enough Traffic

Another factor why you may not be making any or enough money from affiliate marketing is that, you may not have enough traffic to generate conversation or sales.

The greater the number of visitors who come on your platform, the greater the tendency of some of these visitors going to make you some commission by purchasing a service or product you are promoting.

If you do not have enough targeted audience or traffic, then you got to work on gaining the right traffic for your blog or website to be able to see an increment in your affiliate sales.

When it comes to affiliate marketing, traffic does a lot of magic!

• Your Readers Must Have ‘Purchasing Power’ Or Be In A ‘Buying Mode’

When it comes to getting people to buy something or pay to subscribe to any service, the targeted people must have purchasing power or be in the mode to buy.

If someone does not want to buy something or have no purchasing power, no matter how good the product is, he/she will not be moved into buying it.

What I mean by purchasing power is that, your audience must have the capability to buy what you are promoting.

If you run a blog where your audience are high school kids with no purchasing power, then trying to sell them something will be difficult.

Another factor that can curtail purchasing power is the means of payment. For instance, if you are promoting a product to an audience who do not have access to credit cards and yet the only acceptable payment is credit card, no matter how much the audience like or want the product, they cannot buy any for you to make a commission on sales.

I mentioned buying mode as something which can affect how much you make from affiliate marketing and even if you will make any money at all.

If your readers are in the mode to buy (something which is affected by their financial circumstances and other factors), they will easily click the buy button when they like what you are promoting.

• The Sort Of Relationship/Trust You Have With Your Readers

Affiliate marketing is like going to a real market, finding a product that you think or know is great and then coming home to tell your friends about it so they can go and buy it.

For anyone to follow your recommendations to purchase a product or service, the person must have some sort of ‘cool’ view about you and your judgment.

If you do not have any good reputation/relationship with your readers and they cannot trust your judgment, they will not act per your recommendation.

If they do not trust what you say or if they think you do not know what you are on about, they will not follow any link you provide to buy products/services you promote to them.

The readers of your blog are your friends. Until you have a real relationship with them which develops into trust, you will struggle to get them to check out and purchase whatever you promote to them through affiliate marketing.

So if you are not making enough or any money from affiliate marketing, do not think it is a scam. It works fine, maybe you are the scam in the eyes of your readers.

Consider where you fall short and build on that because affiliate marketing is a strong tool in the make money online business.

If there is anything I have missed out or why you think affiliate marketing is not working for you or some people, let’s discuss that below, using the comment box.