What holds many affiliate marketing newcomers from ever earning their first commission is the idea that they need to be making money from day one.
The truth is, making money online (especially with affiliate marketing) can be a slow process.
Affiliate marketing will take anywhere from 6 to 8 months to start producing a consistent income and more than one year to be making a full-time income (& that’s only if you do things the right way).
There are a few reasons why it takes this long, and I explain all the reasons below.
Why Does Affiliate Marketing Take So Long?
Let’s think about this for a second. You want a business that gives you:
- Ample free time
- No boss to answer to
- Unlimited income potential
- Time, location, and financial freedom
- and much more.
As I see it, affiliate marketing is a business worth fighting for.
If it’s going to take you a year to reach that, then so be it.
If you think six months is way too long of a wait to have a fully automated business earning you money in your sleep, then you may want to look elsewhere.
You may want to look at my guide explaining 4 great methods to make a fast $1000 online (which do not involve affiliate marketing).
Having said that, let’s now take a look at the 3 reasons why it typically takes 6-8 months for your affiliate business to take off.
Reason 01: You Need To Get Traffic
To make money with affiliate marketing, you are going to need to build up a website that gets (a lot) of traffic, you don’t need much traffic, but you do need some.
This process takes a while, and that’s only because we use Google as a traffic source and Google does take 6-12 months to fully start trusting a new website.
Starting and building a new website also takes its time.
- You need to pick a niche (you can see how here)
- You need to fill your website with content (which takes up the most time)
- You need to wait for Google to index and rank your content accordingly.
- You also need to learn how to package and sell your offer (we’ll talk about that below).
All of these things take time. You just can’t do it all in a week.
Of course, you can always try to do affiliate marketing on Twitter or Instagram for some quick results, but in my opinion, this is not sustainable. You’ll be much better off building your business on your website rather than on a third-party app.
There’s also the option of using paid traffic (ads) to drive traffic to your affiliate links which are a beast in itself but I won’t get into here.
In a nutshell, you are going to need traffic and that takes time to build.
From my experiences, I would say aim for at least 1000 people a day to start clearing you some decent monthly commission with a good-paying affiliate offer.
Reason 02: You Need To Perfect Your Offer
As an affiliate marketer, you profit by connecting a specific audience (traffic) to a specific product or service (an offer).
Picking what to sell shouldn’t take you too long. Simply pick a niche with a product(s) and go find an audience (traffic) that would be interested in buying. Learning how to sell will take you some time though.
I’ve had many instances where I built the traffic from product X but then figured out my audience is better served with product Y.
There’s a lot of trial and error in this business and that is also why affiliate marketing can take time to fully reveals all its income potential.
I have websites I’ve started 8 years ago and I am still finding new ways to monetize it today.
I guess what I mean here is that you will need some time to figure out how to best squeeze all the juice out of your business, but trust me – this is all part of the fun of having your own business.
Reason 03: You Need To Learn How To Do Both
The last reason I will give you as to why you can’t expect to make money with this method on your first day is that you need to spend time, money, and energy learning the process.
Getting traffic and selling a product are two of the most highly-paid/sought-after skills in the online business world.
If you’re an expert at the two skills I’ve mentioned above, you will never have to worry about money ever again.
I hate seeing affiliate newcomers who get into this business with no training and no idea what they’re doing only to fail and then turning around saying something along the lines of:
“affiliate marketing is a scam”
“affiliate marketing doesn’t make money”
Look, affiliate marketing makes money – you can see proof of my claims here and I also have a 12-month case study where I built two new websites from scratch and built them up to $1,000+ in earnings.
Affiliate marketing makes money, but you do need to know what you’re doing.
I have plenty of affiliate marketing training guides on my website but if you want a structured roadmap with daily lessons + tasks, I suggest you follow this training here.
It also happens to be where I learned affiliate marketing. I’m so grateful I signed up when I did and invested my time, energy, and money into something that has given me all the affiliate marketing benefits we’ve discussed above.
Ready To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing?
6-8 months is what you need to make money with this business (that’s about as fast as it gets).
This time will pass anyway, so don’t let this discourage you from getting started.
In 12 months, you could either have a full-time online business on your hands giving you all the benefits you’re wishing for – or; you could still be reading “how to get started” guides online.
- YES, affiliate marketing is still worth it – and
- YES, affiliate marketing is still a great way to make money online.
If you’re ready to do the work, then I have no doubt these six months will be a breeze for you.
