Making Money With Affiliate Marketing in 2021
As 2020 comes to a close (thankfully) and 2021 rapidly approaches – it’s about the time we start thinking about changes.
For those of you who are new to my site, I’ve been involved in eCommerce, affiliate marketing, local business, and plenty of other money making opportunities for several years.
2020 has to be one of the most volatile years and (in my opinion) marks a pivotal change to affiliate marketing.
2021 Will Be A Year Of Change For Affiliate Marketing
The first major change we saw in 2020 with affiliate marketing was Amazon slashing commissions…right as they saw online sales soar.
Now, Amazon’s commission structure primarily pays 1-5% on most products. You can see a recent snapshot of Amazon’s affiliate commissions rates below.
Economic Turmoil Drives People To Look For Ways To Make Money Online
While Amazon slashed their payments to affiliates, the world shut down and many people found themselves out of work.
Yes, unemployment benefits were generous for many, but even now – our country’s economic future looks unstable.
This has driven more people to look for ways to make money online…and savvy affiliate marketers have profited. Unfortunately, this has also soured many people to affiliate marketing as they purchase expensive products and don’t know what they are doing.
Basics of Affiliate Marketing
Let’s quick cover the basics of affiliate marketing.
1. You find a product you want to tell the world about.
2. You provide a special link for people to purchase that product and you get credit.
3. The supplier gives you a referral fee (commonly called a “commission”) for you referring the person over.
4. You find more products to recommend and more people to recommend products to.
Are You Swapping One JOB for another?
There are definitely ways to make this type of traditional affiliate marketing model work and even automate some of the process.
The problems are:
- There tend to be fewer and fewer quality products to promote these days.
- You need to learn and implement marketing methods to reach new people.
- If you aren’t building an email list, you’re losing out on LOTS of money.
- You spend a lot of time with not a lot of return.
Challenges With Affiliate Marketing
For the last several years, I would spend hours every week reviewing potential products to promote.
The problem was that I just couldn’t find a lot of decent products that were “evergreen” (meaning I could promote them all the time).
A lot of the products were launches – which meant they only sold for a limited about of time. So, I would spend a lot of time marketing and pitching a product and I had to just guess if it was going to be good or not.
Yes, I do purchase the products I promote – so imagine how many products I purchased and DID NOT promote (I don’t have the guts to count it up…I think I would feel too ill).
That's The Way It Is, Kim
As an affiliate marketer, I also felt like I was getting ripped off when I sent someone to opt-in to a seller and that seller would bypass the sales page (usually with a pop-up to get them on “their” list). It’s a sneaky way for the sellers to avoid paying commissions.
Then, once they have them on “their” list, the next product they promote…I don’t see any commissions even though I’m the one that referred the person over on their prior product.
In affiliate marketing, they literally just say, “that’s the way it is”. If you want to make “real” money, you need to make your own product and do the same thing by having affiliates promote for you.
But I Found Another Way
I don’t have time to create my own product. In fact, I created a ton of products…and it took so long and so many resources, I had to start over by the time I got them done.
I gave them away for free (and still do), but I realized that I just wasn’t ready to offer my own paid product (yet).
A couple of “guru’s” released some interesting programs. Most of them couldn’t ever figure it out, but I finally found one program I am proud to promote and would recommend any affiliate marketer also promote.
In the program, it TEACHES you affiliate marketing. Then, you can either promote that program to others that are learning (and there are plenty) or you can promote other programs from the same person!
I’m going to go over this in much greater detail soon, but for now – it’s a really low entry to get started ($7) and you’ll be up and running within 14 days. CLICK HERE to get more info!