Before we dive into the misconceptions about the subject “Affiliate Marketing”, let’s define what affiliate marketing is all about.

Have you ever being in a situation whereby you need a product or service but you don’t know how to get the product or where they are offering the product. Now, someone (maybe a friend) know who offers this product, so he introduce you to the product seller and after you purchase the product, the seller rewarded your friend with a token/commission (certain percentage of the amount you paid for the goods or service ) to reward his effort of bringing customer for him.

In this scenario, your friend is known as an AFFILIATE.

Obviously, three parties are involved in the sales process; the seller, the buyer (you), and the affiliate (which is your friend in the example).

That is how your friend is making his money, the more people he take to the seller, the more commission (money) he makes.

Hence, in simple term, the business model of recommending a product to a someone (prospect) and taking commission when purchase is made (they buy) is known as Affiliate Marketing (AM). It is a term adopted in the online space.

Below are popular ugly truths or misconceptions I discovered in my journey as an affiliate after making my first 6-figure from affiliate marketing:

1. You can start with zero capital: Don’t be deceived by people saying you can start with zero capital. Be wary of such people. The truth is affiliate marketing is a pure practical business. For instance, you will need money for advert (these are forms of Facebook advert, Instagram advert, Google advert, etc). Also you will need money for domain name and hosting of your business website (the landing page), and so on.

2. All you need is to sign up and start earning: The fact is that skills are key to success here. In the affiliate marketing, how skillful you are at generating traffic determine your income. Traffic means people. These skills include copywriting, content generation, sales-funnel design, email marketing, WhatsApp marketing, graphic design, traffic generation (paid and organic). These skills are paramount to being successful as an affiliate .

3. You start earning immediately: Don’t be deceived, It takes hard work and time to make big figures. Since you are going to need skills to to be successful. Definitely it takes time to learn the skills. So it is not a get rich quick scheme. You learn and master the required skills first, then you start earning.

4. The skills are only for AM: One of the advantages of having these skills is that the skills are useful outside AM: Skills learned while doing affiliate marketing businesses can be used for your personal business to boost/scale sales and grow your business. Also you can set up an online business consulting agency with this skills and start helping various business with sales challenges.

5. AM is a form of investment/Ponzi: As explained above. What you do is pure practical business over the internet. So you only make money when someone buy the product you recommend for them by leveraging the skills you have learned.

Would you like to learn more about affiliate marketing? Click the button below to get started as I will like to hold you by the hand and guide you.