The short answer is yes, affiliate marketing can be challenging in today’s competitive environment. With more people entering the industry, it’s tougher to stand out and make consistent profits.
Unfortunately, some marketers try to present affiliate marketing as an easy, get-rich-quick scheme to sell their own courses or services.
This can create unrealistic expectations for beginners.
However, while affiliate marketing isn’t easy, it’s not impossible either. With the right strategy, effort, and patience, you can build a profitable affiliate business.
Focus on choosing the right niche, creating valuable content, and building trust with your audience. Consistency is key – success won’t happen overnight, but it’s achievable with hard work.
Table of Contents
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a simple way to earn money online by promoting other people’s products or services.
Here’s how it works: you share a unique affiliate link provided by the product owner, and when someone clicks your link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission.
The products can be digital, physical, or even services, giving you plenty of options to choose from based on your niche or interests.
The best part? You don’t need to worry about creating your own product, managing inventory, or handling customer service.
As an affiliate marketer, your main focus is promoting the product effectively.
Getting started is also straightforward. Many affiliate programs are free to join – just sign up, get your affiliate link, and start sharing it with your audience. With no upfront investment required, it’s a low-risk way to begin earning online.
Is Affiliate Marketing Difficult Or Hard To Make Money In?
Affiliate marketing can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re trying to figure everything out on your own without proper guidance or help.
However, the good news is that, there are smart ways to approach it that make success more achievable.
One of the most important strategies is to focus on building trust and relationships with your audience instead of constantly pushing products.
Why? Because people buy from those they Know, Like, and Trust. If your audience doesn’t trust you, it’ll be incredibly hard to make sales, especially in today’s competitive market.
The best way to stand out is by positioning yourself as a trusted source.
You do this by genuinely helping people – sharing valuable content that solves their problems or eases their challenges.
When you focus on providing real value, your audience will see you as someone they can rely on.
Once that trust is established, promoting products becomes much easier, and your chances of success grow significantly.
So, the key to winning in affiliate marketing isn’t just selling; it’s earning trust first and then sharing products that genuinely help your audience.
Why Is Affiliate Marketing So Difficult For Beginners?
In my opinion, I believe the main reason why most beginning affiliates find it difficult to succeed with affiliate marketing is that they don’t focus on providing enough VALUE for their audience or customers before trying to sell to them.
Providing value helps you build trust with the audience and if they trust you, they are more likely to buy what you recommend to them.
And most importantly they don’t put in the work long enough.
The vast majority of people give up along the way when they’re not making any money from their affiliate business, and they presume it is as difficult.
Remember, making money online, especially with affiliate marketing is not a spring. It’s a marathon.
What do I mean by that?
Well, I mean, it will take you a fair amount of time, effort, and consistency before you’ll start to see any results from your affiliate business.
Here Are 7 Reasons Why Affiliate Marketing Is So Hard For Beginners:
1. Lack of Guidance
Many beginners start without a mentor or proper training, leading to confusion and mistakes.
Solution: Look for reputable affiliate marketing courses, join online communities, or find a mentor who can guide you step by step.
2. Overwhelming Information In The Affiliate Marketing Industry
There’s too much advice online, making it hard to know what works.
Solution: Focus on learning one proven strategy at a time and avoid jumping between methods. Stick to reliable sources.
3. Choosing the Wrong Niche
Beginners often pick niches they think are profitable but have no personal interest in, which makes creating content harder.
Solution: Choose a niche you’re passionate about and has good demand. This makes it easier to stay motivated and connect with your audience.
4. High Competition In The Affiliate Marketing Industry
Popular niches like fitness and finance are crowded, making it hard to stand out.
Solution: Narrow your focus by targeting a sub-niche. For example, instead of “fitness,” target “home workouts for busy moms.”
5. Lack of Marketing Skills
Creating engaging content, driving traffic, and converting visitors are often new challenges for beginners.
Solution: Invest time in learning basic skills like SEO, email marketing, and content creation. Start small and improve over time.
6. Not Building Trust
Trying to sell right away without building trust often turns audiences away.
Solution: Provide valuable, helpful content first. Share your personal experiences, solve problems, and recommend products only when it’s relevant.
7. Inconsistent Effort
Many start strong but lose motivation when they don’t see results quickly.
Solution: Create a schedule and stick to it. Break your tasks into smaller, manageable steps to stay consistent.
Tips To Make Affiliate Marketing Easy
Looking to make your affiliate marketing easy and successful?
Affiliate marketing is super easy to enter, that’s why anyone who wants to make money online quickly thinks of this business model simply because you don’t have to:
- Create your own product.
- Deal with customer services.
- Shipping of products.
- Refunds, etc.
However, a lot of people don’t take the time to learn what it takes to succeed with this model.
So, I want to give you some heads ups what to do to find success with this business model.
If you’re just getting into this business model or have been doing this for quite some time.
The following tips below can really help make affiliate marketing easy and successful:
- Focus On One Thing
- Don’t Rely On One Traffic Source
- Provide Helpful Value (Content) To Build A Brand
- Become A Niche Influencer
- Build Subscriber Base
1. Focus On One Thing
If you want to dominate in affiliate marketing, you need to pick one thing or a niche and stick to it for a period of time until you’re successful with it before moving to another one.
But most often, I see many affiliate marketers do the opposite, they make the mistake of focusing on too many NICHES or programs all at once in their first few months or years.
Which actually takes them nowhere.
Well, here is the painful aspect of that… The RESULT of focusing on too many things all at once is that:
- FIRST – you’ll overwhelm yourself in the first place.
- SECOND, you’ll not actually focus on any of them deeply which will eventually LEAD to failure.
For example…
Most people, when they see or hear other entrepreneurs making this and that amount of money with this NICHE or product, they also try to follow that route.
And when they are in that niche for a couple of months and they’re not having any success, they move to another different niche in that order…
And in the end, they end up not taking any massive action on none of them.
I know it can be very challenging to focus on one thing when you’re not getting the desired result you want.
However, if you ask for my advice… I will tell you to simply FOCUS on only ONE thing and be consistent, put in a massive effort, and above all be patient.
And over time, if you don’t give up, you’ll surely start to see the result.
Let me tell you a quick story…
When I first got started online, I focused on too many things all at once for a very long time and it did delay my success but the moment I decided to focus on one thing.
It didn’t take long before I started to see a hockey-growth in my business.
So, again I’d advise you to just stick to one thing.
But once you’ve achieved some level of success with that niche or whatever, you can freely move to a different niche. But for now, focus on one thing.
2. Don’t Rely On One Traffic Source
Most top affiliates and some well-known brands out there built their business around Google organic traffic and they wake up one day and realize that their traffic…
Income is going down drastically simply because Google has just made a new change to its algorithm.
This keeps happening every year and when it happens like that most people or companies who rely on Google organic traffic get hits.
And their traffic and income start to go down.
As I have been in this online space for quite some time…
This kind of thing is going to continue to happen.
So…
Here is the thing.
If you’re focusing on or building your business around Google organic traffic, chances are that you’re missing out a lot and you’re always going to get hit anytime an update is made.
So…
The smartest thing I want you to do and get the most out of your business is to DIVERSIFY your traffic source so you don’t get affected anytime these Google updates are made.
Here are some traffic sources I want to leverage:
- YouTube.
- Blog (Google).
- Social media marketing.
- Forum marketing.
- Pinterest, etc.
All these are very good traffic sources.
IMPORTANT: Though having multiple traffic sources is great, but not when you’re brand new or just starting out.
Why?
Well, the thing is, you might not focus on each of them effectively.
But here is what I want you to do…
Focus on one traffic source first, and as you’ve gained enough attraction or success with that platform then you can move on to another one in that order.
3. Provide Helpful Value (Content) To Build A Brand
As I stated earlier – making money online, especially with affiliate marketing is not an overnight thing or a get-rich-quick scheme.
So, the strategic approach you need to take to build a long-lasting income for yourself is to build a brand around you, not your business or product.
But first…
What’s a brand? A brand simply means, standing out as an authority figure, an expert, or presenting yourself as a go-to person for help or advice in a specific niche or industry.
So how do I build this brand? Great question!
There are many ways to build a personal brand. However, the best way to build this in any niche or industry is to provide valuable content or information for free that helps solve specific problems or challenges other individuals are facing.
The purpose of providing this helpful information for FREE of charge is to build TRUST and relationships with your audience.
And as you do that for quite some time, they’ll begin to Know, Like, and Trust you and your recommendations which will eventually lead to sales over time.
Also…
Make sure every product or service you recommend is SUPER GREAT and of GOOD quality and will help solve your audience’s biggest problem and pain point.
I WANT YOU TO TAKE NOTE OF THIS:
Don’t just focus on making a big commission and recommend crappy or fake products to your audience.
If you do so and your audience finds out after purchasing the product, that’ll make a statement about you and your business.
The trust and relationship you spend years building with them can be destroyed…
And if that happens they won’t buy anything from you again in the future.
So…
Only recommend products that YOU yourself have used before and it has helped you.
If you know what you’re recommending is of good quality, you’ll feel confident and comfortable when recommending it to your audience.
Because you know it going to them.
Sometimes, even if you’re not an affiliate of a product that you think it will help your audience, still recommend it to them…
…. But before you do so, make sure you do thorough research about the product.
Why all of this…?
The reason we’re doing all of this is that…
We want to build strong Trust and Relationships with the audience for the long haul which will pay off even bigger.
In my opinion, I think taking this path will help you grow your business and income way faster than just trying to spam people with your affiliate link.
4. Become A Niche Influencer
Influencer marketing is one of the most lucrative marketing strategies utilized by most successful marketers nowadays.
The reason behind this is that when it comes to making a BUYING decision, influence plays a HUGE role.
So… I think becoming an influencer in your niche can be of great help.
What I come to discover is that…
When an influencer recommends a product, his or her audiences often Trust and have confidence in that recommendation and make a quick purchase decision.
So, whatever product or service you’re promoting in any niche, I think becoming an influencer is the easiest and fastest way to sell that product without any aggressive marketing.
Another reason or importance of being an influencer is that it helps:
- Increase your brand awareness.
- Improve search engine optimization (SEO).
- Expand your reach and trust, etc.
5. Build Subscriber Base
If you dream of making serious money online with affiliate marketing or probably a full-time income then you need to get serious about building the following:
- Email List
- YouTube Subscribers
- Blog and Social Media Followers, etc
All of the above is so important because it can allow you to reach tons and tons of potential customers.
However, the most important one is to build an email list, because with an EMAIL LIST, you own the audience and you can market to them at anytime without any third-party restriction.
However, a lot of people don’t take building an email seriously.
Why?
Simply because they think email marketing is dead or it’s old-school marketing.
But…
Is email marketing dead? Well, to put it simply – no email marketing is not dead, it is still the number one or most lucrative way of making money online and growing an online business.
I believe you’ve heard this saying before “The Money Is In The List”. Well, that’s absolutely true.
As a true affiliate marketer, if you’re not building an email list in your business.
Guess what?
You’re leaving huge money on the table.
Most of the top affiliate marketers in the world understand the power of email marketing and that’s why most of them are taking it seriously.
But unfortunately, most of them don’t tell you and I to do this.
Now, building an email list is not an option, it’s A MUST if you’re really going to make money online.
Why?
The reason is that online people are very much skeptical when it comes to buying stuff online.
And the only way to get them to buy your offer without any hesitation is when you have them on your email list.
That way, you can follow up with them through an AUTORESPONDER to first build TRUST and RELATIONSHIPS with them before marketing your product to them.
NB: If you don’t build trust with people, they are not going to buy from you. And email is the best way to do that effectively.
Here Is Some Benefit Of Building An Email List:
- Building an email list can allow you to generate more revenues in your business.
- You can promote different products or your own product to your LIST in the future as long as you have them on your email list.
Here Is How To Create And Build A Targeted Email List of Subscribers:
- Create an account with an email service provider. (there are many of them but I suggest GetResponse).
- As you get your account set up, create a landing page to capture visitors’ email addresses.
- Offer freebies to make people give you their email addresses without hesitation.
- Set up an email sequence and link it to the product you promote.
- Follow-up with your list daily to build trust and relationships with them.
- Write good, enticing headlines and good content that teach and educate people.
PS. If you’re ready to build your email list, I recommend GetResponse. You can read my review of GetResponse here.
FAQ
Is It Hard To Make Money In Affiliate Marketing?
Yes, making money from affiliate marketing can be hard if you go about it the wrong way. However, the best easiest, and most effective way to make money with affiliate marketing is by obtaining quality targeted traffic for affiliate links and that can only happen by creating valuable content. It also requires training, work, effort, dedication, and perseverance in the beginning.
What Is The Hardest Part Of Affiliate Marketing?
Here’s a quick list of some of the hardest parts of affiliate marketing:
- Building trust: It takes a fair amount of time and effort to get people to trust your recommendations before they buy anything.
- Finding the right products: Not all products or services are worth promoting, and finding one that’s of good quality and sells well can be tricky.
- Staying patient: Affiliate marketing is a delayed gratification, I mean, it doesn’t bring instant results. It can take a while before you start making real money.
- Driving traffic: Getting enough people or target audience to visit your website or click your links is tough, especially when starting out.
- Competition: There are lots of affiliates out there, so standing out and getting noticed is challenging.
- Keeping up with trends: The industry changes fast, and you need to stay updated to keep your strategies effective.
These challenges can make it harder to succeed, but with the right approach, you can push through them.
Why Is It Difficult To Succeed In Affiliate Marketing As A Beginner?
The reason why most beginners find it difficult or hard to succeed in affiliate marketing is that they approach affiliate marketing as a quick way of making money online and the majority of them are not willing or don’t put in the work long enough. they give up too soon when they hit roadblocks.
Is Affiliate Marketing Easy Or Hard?
No, affiliate marketing is not easy. Though in theory, the process seems easy, in practice, it’s by no means as easy as many marketers claim it to be, it takes a lot of hard work, time, and willingness to learn to see any success with affiliate marketing.
Is Affiliate Marketing Safe?
Yes, affiliate marketing is safe. Don’t have any doubt about whether affiliate marketing is safe or not. However, not all affiliate programs out there are safe and legitimate. So before you go for any program, you’ll want to first do thorough research and have proper knowledge about the program before you join it or start pushing it to your audience otherwise it will be a waste of time, effort, and money.
What Is The Future Of Affiliate Marketing?
The future of affiliate marketing looks bright and promising. It’s here to stay and will only grow stronger.
Why? Because more big brands are now relying on affiliate marketing to promote their products. Instead of traditional advertising, they partner with affiliates to reach new customers. This creates huge opportunities for anyone willing to learn and work hard in the field.
With more people shopping online than ever, affiliate marketing continues to expand, offering endless possibilities for those ready to take advantage of this growing industry.
Is Affiliate Marketing Saturated?
The answer is both yes and no, depending on the niche. Affiliate marketing as a whole isn’t saturated, but some niches, like health & fitness or finance, are highly competitive. This is because many marketers are drawn to these niches due to their profit potential.
If you’re starting out in affiliate marketing, focus on finding a niche that you’re passionate about, has less competition, but still has a high search volume. For example, instead of tackling general fitness, you might target a specific sub-niche like fitness for busy moms or home workouts for beginners.
Jumping into oversaturated niches like health & fitness or finance can make it tough to stand out, and it might take a long time to make your first sale. Choosing a smaller, focused niche gives you a better chance to grow and succeed faster.
Is It Hard To Earn In Affiliate Marketing As A Beginner?
Well, in my opinion, this can depend on how you approach your affiliate marketing business.
Earning in affiliate marketing is not that HARD and that does not also mean it’s EASY.
The truth is, it all depends on you and your willingness to learn and take action on what you learn.
It also depends on where and who you learn your affiliate marketing skills from.
As with anything in life, it requires GOOD knowledge to succeed.
That said…
I’d highly suggest you find a good Affiliate Mentor, someone who is already successful with what you’re doing, and learn as much as you can from them.
And keep taking massive action until you figure everything out and are thriving in your affiliate business.
- P.S. Check out this post on how to learn affiliate marketing. In this post, I provide some of the best places to learn affiliate marketing the right way.
CONCLUSION!
Affiliate marketing, may seem difficult or hard at first but when you commit to learning and implementing and following the right direction or path of promoting your affiliate product…
And above all, if you provide enough VALUE to the marketplace and follow a simple strategy and tactics affiliate marketing will become so much easier for you over time.
