For many people, affiliate marketing is a field where you can get millions of dollars for minimal involvement, and even in a short time. After all, all affiliates, even those who are only a year in the sphere, wear branded clothes, buy expensive sports cars and “live in chocolate”.
In the article we will try to understand how much affiliates actually earn, what the income consists of and whether there is a “ceiling” of growth in this area.
What makes the sphere so attractive?
- Low entry threshold (you can start work and tests on small amounts);
- Opportunity to scale the business;
- Ease of mastering the profession;
- Doesn’t require constant attention (although, debatable).
But with that:
- No guarantees (you can drain your entire advertising budget and get nothing);
- Terms and conditions are determined by the advertiser (for example, promoting a product you can’t use Facebook ads* and customize contextual ads);
- Risk of deception (they may not pay on the pretext of poor traffic quality and lack of leads).
How much can you earn from affiliate marketing?
You are an experienced affiliate who has found an affiliate program and an offer where you are offered payment for each attracted customer (for example, 500 rubles). To make money from affiliate marketing, you create a one-page site on the advertiser’s product, set up contextual advertising on the site at your own expense. That is, in the beginning you invest your own money in the work. Then with a good outcome, with each person who went to your advertising and purchased the product, you get the promised 500 rubles.
The formula is simple: leads – costs for RK = income.
It is undoubtedly possible to make money from affiliate marketing, but it requires experience and competence. If you think that coming to the field of affiliate marketing you will receive millions after 2-3 months of work, we hasten to disappoint you. The biggest difficulty of all beginner affiliates is to reach zero. First, advertising costs are much higher than the income you will receive from companies. So, to get to zero is already a victory, which can not be said about the work in the minus.
Affiliates with average experience can earn from 10 to 200 thousand rubles per month, depending on investments and performance. During the period of stability, you can get 50-60 thousand rubles per month.
Teams of experienced affiliates can earn several million rubles on affiliate marketing. But it is quite difficult to get into the team: high expertise, large budgets, a lot of work. For this, the profit per person in such projects is 50-400 thousand rubles, with high employment and constant work.
There are cases where affiliates make 20 thousand dollars in a month, there are those who have been making a constant income from one offer for several years. There are many stories, but there are many times more affiliates than these cases, so we urge you to be realistic and come to the sphere of traffic arbitrage marketing not with the only reason (to earn billions in two days).
The final profitability of affiliate marketing depends on 3 components:
- The number of advertising campaigns running simultaneously. Usually several offers are taken into work at once and engaged in them in parallel.
- Profitability of each individual campaign (it can be +50% or +5%).
- The amount of your money invested in each campaign.
What is important for earning money?
Of course, everything is not as simple as they write in articles and tell webmasters themselves. For good income, you need decent analytical work as well. Your income is also affected by details. The main parameter in choosing a particular offer from the advertiser should not be the price of a click. Analyze everything in a complex, including:
- The popularity of the product or service.
- The price of the product or service.
- Appearance of the site, which requires transitions. The speed of loading.
In affiliate marketing, there are GEOs, which are divided into Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3. And, of course, Tier 1 has higher rates and payouts, but also the costs of working with first-world countries are corresponding.
A lot depends on the vertical: for example, in gambling there is a lot of money and therefore risks, so it will be very difficult for newcomers here. Betting has seasonality, and with competent work you can get very large profits in these periods. Dating, nutra are considered optimal for starting your way and tests.
A key aspect of successful affiliate marketing is finding an approach to the target audience, including choosing an effective creative-prelanding-lending combination. This requires tests and constant monitoring of statistics to achieve optimal results.
One of the basic skills of an affiliate is the ability to work effectively with advertising platforms. Every affiliate should be familiar with the functionality of popular advertising platforms and be able to place ads on them. Studying the instructions, analyzing the functionality and practicing how to set up ads on various platforms play an important role. Also an important skill in affiliate marketing is the ability to create attractive creatives. The usual standard images do not attract the attention of the audience and are often ignored. Therefore, affiliates learn the basics of Photoshop and other audio/video editors to create original advertising materials.
Spreadsheets play an important role in affiliate marketing as they are widely used for analyzing, reporting and evaluating the performance of campaigns. They are also used to keep track of advertising costs and affiliate marketing revenue. Mastering Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets will keep track of all activities and revenues.
Without thorough analytics, it is impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of an affiliate. Analytics helps to determine the target audience, effective ads and profitable sources of traffic.
How to start?
Affiliate marketing, as stated earlier, involves both teamwork and solo work. Most often, beginners start out on their own.
Later, you can work for yourself all the time, you can build your own team, launch an agency or even open a partner network – there is no limit to scaling! But to create something of your own, you need to know the basics – a solo affiliate’s earnings depend on the following variables:
- Availability of consumables. Preparing an advertising campaign involves purchasing quality supplies, and this is not cheap and sometimes reaches 50% of your entire budget;
- Working capital. The more money in the work – the higher the potential income;
- Scalability of bundles. On some bundles you can easily increase the volume, on others you can get stuck in zero flood already on the tests. Work with bundles consists of 95% of tests, most of which will turn out not to work or weak.
- Relationship with affiliate programs. The webmaster’s relationship with a particular manager determines the advertiser’s flexibility to increase payouts, and also the manager can suggest some tricks/details on how you can make more traffic.
Conclusion
To summarize, the following conclusion can be made that in order to be successful in affiliate marketing, you need to constantly improve your skills and expertise.
The salary of an affiliate depends on what volumes of traffic and budget he will work with. Specialists with little experience are usually offered a rate of about 50 thousand rubles. Experienced – from 100 thousand rubles. Salary can reach 500-700 thousand rubles a month.
However, this sphere is similar to launching your own business – affiliates act at their own risk. In affiliate marketing you can not only earn, but also lose everything.
Do not be discouraged by failures, and try to learn from their mistakes. Do not immediately hope and believe in quick enrichment and Lamborghini under the window the next day, but perseverance and diligence can lead to earnings in affiliate marketing traffic at the level of several million rubles monthly in a couple of years. Many affiliates achieve significant financial success thanks to their experience and knowledge, and this should be your goal, despite the time.
