You’ve heard about them. People that make their money entirely online. A world of sleeping in until noon everyday, working in your underwear, and taking champagne baths bought with all of the money you are making in Affiliate Marketing. But hold on just a sec cowboy… While it’s true that many new affiliates jumping into the game right now will someday reach that level, it is not something that happens overnight.
Affiliate Marketing can be stressful. You can spend hours, weeks, and months testing out offer after offer, trying to break through and find that first big campaign. Then once you have found it, the network can take it right out from under you, or Google & Facebook can take away your traffic on a whim. So now you are back at square one.
This all sounds very discouraging. I’m not trying to talk anybody out of pursuing a career online, but I am trying to get you to take a realistic look at what you are getting yourself into. You are starting a business. Starting a business is hard. You certainly don’t want to jump into the deep end of the pool before you have even learned the dog paddle.
The best advice I can keep you is this: don’t quit your day job! If you have the ability to absorb a few losses and keep yourself afloat while you are learning the ropes, you are going to have a much easier go of it than someone who needs a campaign to work in order to put food on the table for dinner.
Ask any successful affiliate how they got their start, and I would be willing to bet that most of them got into this as a hobby or a part-time thing while they were still working somewhere else. When you are ready to go full-time, make sure that you have a bankroll saved up to float yourself for at least 3 months or so, in case things don’t quite go the way you wanted.
If you put in the extra work to set yourself up for success in your new business, that champagne will taste even sweeter when it comes.
Truer words never spoken.
If you try to build your business out of desperation, more often than not you will make poor decisions that will negatively affect your business – legally, financially, or otherwise.
This is a great point. I can' t tell you how many affiliates I've talked too that started with making a $1 a day and building from there. Put all you make back into it to grow your biz quicker. Keep that end goal in mind!
I'm probably in that rare minority that actually enjoy their non-affiliate job. I fully agree with keeping a day job until you can secure yourself for several months based on savings. The great thing about having another line of stable income is that it allows you to take bigger risks with your Affiliate income, since it's not what you're counting on for food and shelter. I suggest keeping your affiliate income separate from your main income and paying yourself a weekly Salary based on % of your profits. If you're not reinvesting the bulk of our profit back into your business you'll find yourself up shit creek pretty quick and begging for that old job back.
I disagree.
I've never heard of anyone making it in the affiliate world who has entered half assed. Your mindset is already wrong, if you are too scared to take risks.
I'm not saying start out half-assed, I'm just saying to the new guys starting out that they should be careful before they cut off their primary income.
The key here is diversification…
Google have hit me with massive blows (we're talking thousands of dollars lost because of a manual deindex), but as my affiliate properties are spread out, it's not the end of the story.
I have worked for myself since 2008, and i'll continue to do the same.
It's all about playing smart, and not putting all your eggs into one basket 🙂
You got it man. It sure makes a difference being able to float money to a campaign and not needing it to work out of desperation. When you have another source of income coming in it sure is less stressful.
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