Anyone who starts a blog in hopes of making money, want to earn it quickly. They don’t want to be told that it takes months or years to earn money online. Today, we’re going to answer the question “how fast can you make money with affiliate marketing?”
We’ll also take a look at what you should focus on if you’re a brand new blogger.
How Fast Can You Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
You’re probably hoping that I reveal some top secret system for beginners that helps you earn money overnight. But the truth is, what I’m going to share isn’t going to be extremely motiving.
I’m NOT going to sugarcoat anything or point you to some system that will help you earn a full-time income overnight.
Nope, instead, I’m going to give it to you straight so you know what to expect. See, when I started my first affiliate website years ago, I was lied to and it caused me to go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole looking for that magic bullet.
Maybe you’ve read a blog income report that shows you it’s possible to earn money online quickly. What most of those income reports don’t share is the struggles and journey the blogger took to get to that full-time income.
My Quick Story
I started my very first affiliate blog around 2009 and made tons of mistakes. Unlike today, I had no prior experience and knew absolutely nothing about making money online.
All I knew was that I wanted to change my life financially and I had huge dreams of earning with passive income. So, I started researching and reading anything I could get my hands on.
Unfortunately, I was suckered into buying tons of courses, ebooks and all kinds of “get-rich-quick” guru products that promised big bucks with very little effort.
Fast forward, I did have some success with a few of my affiliate sites. But I NEVER experienced true success because I was always looking for that magic bullet.
Let me tell you, it doesn’t exist. Yes, you can make money with affiliate marketing, but you first need to learn how to do it the right way.
There is no shortcut to success, so save yourself a lot of time and do it right from the start.
How Long Does It Take to Become Successful?
I wish I could tell you that if you start today, you could start earning passive income in just 6 months. The truth is that it varies from person to person.
There are various factors that go into turning a blog into a profitable business through affiliate marketing depends on:
- Your Niche
- How many hours you devote to your blog/website
- The affiliate programs you promote
- How well you can write content that actually converts into sales
- Keywords you are using for your content (Be sure to read my KWFinder Review post)
- Where you’re driving your traffic from
- Your call to actions on your blog post
- Are you trying to make money without a website? (yes it’s possible, I’ll discuss this later)
You get the idea, there’s a lot of different factors that go into how long it will take you to earn a full-time income?
Can you start making money this week? This month? This year? With affiliate marketing, how long does it take?
Well, it’s NOT unusual to make your first affiliate commission in your first 4-6 months or sooner. However, you shouldn’t expect to make a consistent regular income until you’ve been doing it for 12 months or longer. (Yes, some people see quicker success, but it’s not the norm.)
I know what you’re thinking. It’s going to take a year of hard work upfront before I actually start seeing success?
Unfortunately, there’s no way around it.
I’m going to share what you need to focus on as a new affiliate marketer. If you follow these tips, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding the common mistakes made by new affiliate marketers.
How Do I Start An Affiliate Marketing Business?
If you’re serious about building a successful affiliate marketing blog, I highly suggest setting up a self-hosted WordPress site. It’s one of the best ways to create your own little digital asset that will eventually earn you passive income.
I’ve put together a step-by-step tutorial on how to install WordPress on SiteGround. For less than $4.00 per month, you’ll own a website that will eventually pay you over and over passively.
Can I Start Affiliate Marketing Without A Website?
I’ve had a few people ask me if they can start affiliate marketing without a website? While it’s possible to earn commissions without actually having a website.
However, I don’t recommend this method to new bloggers. If you’re serious about earning money online and want to join the best affiliate programs, most of them require a functional website.
Plus, if you’re just promoting affiliate programs without a website, you’re not really building an asset that will grow over time.
So basically, you’re going to always have to work hard at promoting your affiliate links if you want to make money.
While it will take a while for your website to gain trust in Google’s eyes. It’s so worth it to start your own blog and add your affiliate links to your blog posts.
Affiliate Marketing Must Be Treated As A Business
Before you start any business, you decide on a strategy or plan. Affiliate marketing is NOT any different. Before setting up a blog, you want to sit down and pick a niche that you’ll enjoy writing about.
Yes, you want to make money with your blog. But it’s important to choose a topic that you enjoy writing about.
As a blogger, you’re going to need to write a ton of content. You don’t want to choose a niche that you’re not somewhat passionate about. Otherwise, you’ll hate sitting down to write a blog post.
Choose something that you love or would like to learn more about and can easily be monetized. This is how you make money with affiliate marketing.
You Need to Build The Traffic First
One of the most challenging things for anyone who starts a blog is to build traffic. It’s time-consuming and chances and frustrating.
However, you need to focus on building traffic to your blog. Without traffic, you won’t have anyone to sell to.
You need people visiting your blog, reading your content and clicking on your affiliate links.
The method that works great for me is using content marketing to grow my blog. As your blog starts to grow, eventually you’ll start to see organic traffic from Google.
Which is the best type of traffic that most affiliate marketers want. You write the blog post once and it can continue to bring you traffic and sales years down the road.
There’s nothing better than that. So now, let’s take look at how you get started so you can actually make some income from home.
How to Do Affiliate Marketing Step by Step
Once you’ve chosen your niche, it’s time to focus on the things that will earn you commissions over time. Don’t worry, it’s not hard and once you get into the habit of doing these things on a regular basis.
Write Content
I’m assuming that you want to build a digital asset that grows over time. This means that you’re setting up a blog to help you earn affiliate commissions. You can choose to build an authority website (which is what I have) or a mini niche site (my second site).
Either way, you’re going to need content to help you grow your blog and attract targeted visitors to your blog. You’ll want to write content that helps your readers solve problems.
Hopefully, you’ve taken the time to sit down and figure out who your audience is. This will help you determine what type of content you’ll be publishing on your blog.
Keyword Research
Keywords play a huge part in whether or not you’ll be successful. Learning how to find keywords with low competition and have a decent amount of monthly searches will play a huge factor in how long it takes you to earn money with affiliate marketing.
Don’t make the same mistake I made when I started this blog. I refused to learn how to do SEO, I figured since I had learned years ago, I knew what I was doing.
But things change so fast online, it took me a while to understand how Google Rank Brain works. Now that I’ve been putting more emphasis on writing the right type of content, I’ve noticed a huge difference in my traffic and affiliate sales.
I’ve also started using KWFinder to help me uncover low competition keywords. I’ve written a detailed KWFinder Review blog post that shows you why I love it.
Free sources to learn SEO:
Blog Promotion
If you’re a brand new blogger, you’re going to have focus on quick traffic from social media and other methods to start driving traffic to your blog. Unfortunately, you won’t get organic traffic right out of the gate.
You still need to make sure that you’re optimizing your blog posts correctly.
Related: How to Use Yoast SEO Plugin Everything You Need to Know
A lot of new bloggers have had huge success with Pinterest. Of course, some niches do a lot better on the Pinterest platform than others.
Don’t overlook the platform, it took me a while to start using it for my blog. While most of my traffic now comes from organic searches, Pinterest still makes up 97% of my social media referral traffic.
I use Tailwind to help me automate my Pinterest marketing. This helps me focus on other things that I need to do on a regular basis.
If Pinterest doesn’t help you grow your blog, then don’t overlook the other social media channels. Here’s a great blog traffic ebook that can help you grow your blog.
Check Your Analytics
Once you’ve been blogging for a while and are starting to see visitors, it’s time to pay attention to your analytics. Here’s a step-by-step tutorial to show you how to install Google Analytics on your blog.
Pay attention to the content that your readers like. Log into your Google Analytics account and go to Behavior >> Site Content >> Landing Pages This will show you what posts are your most popular.
Related: How to Increase Organic Website Traffic Using Google Analytics
Based on this information, you could write more content related to the popular posts. After all, you know that people like this type of content, why not write some more?
You don’t have to check your analytics on a daily basis, in fact, I don’t recommend it. It’s going to take time to start seeing metrics from your visitors. I’d check it at least once a month, to see what you can improve.
Focus on writing SEO optimized content and promoting it via social media or other methods to start getting traffic.
Rinse and Repeat
Remember when I said that you should give it at least a year to start seeing some results? Well, it could take up to 3-5 years to start seeing real results like 10k or more per month.
Results will vary depending on how much you want to earn? The important thing to keep in mind is that it isn’t going to happen overnight.
You’re going to have to keep doing those daily blogging tasks that are going to help you grow and earn money online. Most people give up way too soon when they don’t see results fast enough.
This is the basics of what you need to earn money with affiliate marketing. As you can see, it’s NOT rocket science and anyone with the right motivation can succeed online.
Final Take Away
It takes time to succeed with affiliate marketing, but it doesn’t have to take 3-5 years to succeed.
If you’re brand new, there are a few places that can help you cut down and help you do proper research, find a great niche, and build an SEO friendly website that Google will love and trust.
Here’s one place that I highly recommend you can also find other affiliate courses that are dedicated towards new marketers. If you want to see how a blogger went from 0 to over $100K with her blog, check out this course.
You don’t need to invest in a bunch of affiliate marketing training courses. I’ve already given you everything you need to succeed.
How Much Money Can You Make With Affiliate Marketing?
The cool thing about this form of monetization is that there is no limit to the amount you make. It all depends on how much time and effort you put into your blog.
Give yourself time to learn and keep putting one foot in front of the other. Who knows where you’ll be when you look back 3 years from now.
Even if you start and make mistakes, you can always pivot and tweak your blog. The only way you won’t succeed is if you don’t get started.
Hand Picked Articles for You
- How to Learn Affiliate Marketing and Actually Make Money
- Affiliate Marketing Tips That Will Increase the Conversions on Your Blog
- 7 Ways to Find Affiliate Products to Promote to Make Money
Did you start your blog with hopes of making money with affiliate marketing? If so, how long did it take you to earn your first commission? Let me know in the comments below, I’d love to hear about your experience.
