7 Reasons to Use Affiliate Marketing
The business you see today didn’t always look like this. I haven’t always had a suite of products and programs. I haven’t always had one-on-one offers. And I certainly haven’t always had 20 hours to spend in my business each week.
I believe in building a business that fits where you are now, and at every stage of growth, you can continue to build that business around the life you want. But you have to start somewhere.
When I started, I had early mornings, late nights, and naptimes. I couldn’t spend hours, days, or weeks setting up complicated systems, creating new products, or talking to people one-on-one.
So I started with affiliate marketing.
I know when you hear that, you think of your friends selling you things on Facebook or pushy ads and sponsorships that are “in your face.” But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, my first income and still a good amount of what I make regularly comes from affiliate marketing.
Related posts:
Today I want to share more about why affiliate marketing is still a viable way to make an income and why you should consider it for yourself.
Reason #1: You don’t need to have your own product or service to make money.
Affiliate marketing is a simple and inexpensive way to start earning money. You have no inventory, no overhead costs, and no time spent to create anything new.
Instead you’re promoting someone else’s product -- that you like and use -- and earning sales commission. That means you can actually set it up, start earning, and have more time and money to pour into the projects you enjoy the most in your business.
Reason #2: You still get to serve your audience.
Many people object to affiliate marketing because they think it will be inauthentic, but it definitely doesn’t have to feel like you need to push products you don’t actually like.
The goal of any business should be to serve its audience and customers. Yours is no different. By having the right affiliate products and services -- you know, the ones you actually like and use yourself -- you can help your audience solve a problem, which serves them.
I always make sure that the affiliate product or service that I am selling is a solution to a problem that my audience is struggling with.
Reason #3: It creates leveraged income.
Leveraged income means that you can set it up and tweak it and continue to earn money without having to be there or work 80 hour weeks (who has that much time anyway?!?). Once you’ve got the system in place, it continues to work for you and impact more people.
Leveraged income is how I make most of my revenue in my business, and it allows me a lot of freedom to work on new projects, test new things, and spend time away from my business.
Affiliate marketing is an easy leveraged income stream to create. Once you lay the foundation and follow my 3 rules of affiliate marketing you can build the systems to earn recurring revenue month after month.
Reason #4: It’s easy to start with affiliate marketing.
A big reason people don’t create leveraged income streams is that it does take strategy and time to create the products and systems, but affiliate marketing is different.
With just a few clicks, you can have an affiliate account with your favorite companies. Then you only have to create content drivers to share the affiliate information. It’s a short process that is easily repeatable for other products and brings in income over and over.
Plus, you get to share your own personal experiences with your audience to show them how an affiliate product would benefit them.
Reason #5: It creates partnerships in your industry.
One of the best ways to grow your business is by creating connections and partnerships with people and other businesses in your same industry. Affiliate marketing allows you to do that in a mutually beneficial way.
By starting an affiliate relationship, you are saying that you believe in their product enough to send people their way. It creates a connection that expands your network and opens more opportunities in the future.
Reason #6: You earn money you wouldn’t otherwise be making from normal business activities.
In an online business, you might already be creating a lot of content and maybe even reviewing products in your industry. However, without an affiliate partnership, you’re not necessarily earning income from those.
Affiliate marketing allows you to leverage what you are already doing on a regular basis in your business to create more income without additional effort.
Reason #7: It allows you to scale your business.
One reason many businesses fail is that they don’t create a plan to scale their business beyond their own time, which means every dollar they make has to be attached to actual time or effort they exert in their business every day.
However, a sustainable business is a scalable one that moves beyond the mere exchange of time for money. While there are several ways to create these kinds of leveraged income streams, affiliate marketing is an easy one to start with for all the reasons above.
Affiliate marketing has been a core component of my business from the beginning, and today I continue to earn money from affiliate partnerships I created then because of the systems I put around it.
I hope this post has helped you see that you don’t have to be an “in your face” or only focus on trading your time for money in your business. Affiliate marketing creates a simple income stream that has many benefits for you and your audience.
Are you an affiliate for any products? Why or why not? Share with us in the comments below.