Affiliate Marketing — can one build legitimate wealth?

Affiliate Marketing has made businesses millions and ordinary people millionaires! — Robert Foster Bennett

Ramana Murthy H V
7 min readOct 14, 2020

This famous quote by well known American senator Robert Foster Bennett paints a rosy scenario which isn’t the complete reality in itself. We’ll delve on it in a minute. Before that, let’s see the brighter side of things.

Well, Affiliate Marketing has been one of the lucrative options for building passive income stream. It gained lot of traction with the explosive growth of internet in recent times.

Market trends in 2020 indicate that more than 80% of publishers and brands are leveraging the power of affiliate marketing. And, with 10% increase year on year, around $ 7 billion is being spent this year in USA alone.

Considering these growth prospects, in order to build a sustainable passive income stream, its worthwhile to understand the impact of Affiliate marketing.

Its impact is 3 fold, even though the quote mentions only two:

First two impacts are obvious —

  1. the no of businesses leveraging the revolution powered by the explosive growth of internet have multiplied into millions.
  2. Many ordinary people became Millionaires, inspiring / tempting many others to join the band wagon.
  3. The third impact, albeit an unintended consequence of the second, is scammers exploiting gullible public by luring the latter with get rich quick schemes generating lucrative incomes.

The rules of the game are ruthlessly twisted by resorting to unscrupulously tweaking the tricks of trade in favour of short term gains.

As a result, affiliate marketing has become synonymous with scamming and fly by night illegal operators offering get rich quick schemes to make fast buck.

This in turn increased the competition too since more illegal scammers are now busy laying vicious traps to loot genuine consumers in the market, just like sharks in an ocean. Together these sharks made the ocean (market) “red”!

In other words, competition in the market has turned vicious due to too many players scrambling for the same market.

In such a scenario, it becomes difficult to get to know the right ways of doing affiliate marketing and build legitimate wealth. However, hope isn’t lost altogether.

The truth is that it requires disciplined efforts which can complement your image as a reliable brand with the kind of mileage that celebrities or famous influencers command.

The way to make it happen is to get genuine guidance on implementing “blue ocean” business strategy based on sound marketing principles.

Blue ocean strategy is a game changing business strategy made popular by Prof W. Chan Kim and Prof Renee Mauborgne of INSEAD with their best selling book: “Blue Ocean Strategy - How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant”.

Its based on the idea that instead of struggling to survive in the bloody shark-infested “Red Oceans” of vicious competition, why not move to the “Blue Oceans” where there was little or no competition.

Once you adopt this strategy, you will be operating in “uncontested market space” where “competition is irrelevant”. You will be doing so by creating demand rather than fighting for it.

Hang on! I know its easier said than done. Now, a game changer like this needs careful execution of well planned strategy, probably under the watchful eyes of an expert you trust for guidance.

There is tons of wonderful guidance out there on the internet. It definitely helps you to get started.

But sooner than later, you might run out of steam when the going gets tough. And, its not easy to find the right guidance helping you to achieve your goal.

In fact, I have dabbled with it in the past with zero success. In those days, I am lured by the obvious advantages of apparently not putting much hard work to earn quick bucks. Fortunately, I haven’t fallen prey to online scammers then.

The “Affiliate Marketing Machine” online course offered by Alpha Marketers Academy precisely helps you close this gap.

It provides the much needed authentic advice and practical guidance to establish one as a legitimate affiliate marketer recommending original, real value added products and / or services to genuine customers.

My key takeaways from learning affiliate marketing through this course are truly eye opening!

My first key takeaway is the blue ocean strategy which has given me direction on how to pursue affiliate marketing. The moot point is in applying the theory into practice by recognizing the ways affiliate marketing differs from traditional marketing.

My second key takeaway is the subtle differences between conventional and affiliate marketing. I used to believe that both products and target audience are served on a platter to me which is far from reality!

And the key differences need crucial changes to one’s mindset and overall business strategy. Rather its the one which helps you to get clarity on what you must really focus on and contributes to its potential success!

My third key takeaway is the groundwork needed to setup the funnel to sell products and the nuances in implementing it. Once this skill is learnt, it has the spin-off benefit of applying the tricks in other business scenarios — be they are yours or others’.

Apart from these key takeaways, I had an epiphany like realization which I’d call “keystone” realization. Its the truth behind my initial forays into affliate marketing.

My initial temptation to go for it is largely influenced by the apparent advantages viz. no need of creating products and / or services, zero inventory, logistics and customer support; minimal investment etc.

These apparent Honeytraps made me believe then that I need not put in all the hard work in creating products and/or services when so many are available on a platter.

I rather belatedly realized that this flawed thought process stemmed from my low self belief which was affecting me in many other ways, viz —

  1. not putting consistent efforts to market and sell them, even though I chose those products and / or services I personally liked using
  2. giving up early whenever I am faced with a tough customer due to lack of selling skills and feeling demotivated to pursue fresh leads.

No wonder, my affiliate marketing endeavor flopped soon..

My realization after learning the course is that I must have the self belief to market the products and sell them, just trying to sell those I liked isn’t enough.

It calls for setting up the funnel with due diligence and execute it with careful planning.

It also calls for adding value in my own unique ways to my clientele so as to nurture the relationships.

Money is just a byproduct of all these efforts and the benefit customers get is actually paramount.

Now, in case this paradigm shift in mindset makes sense to you, this course is your best bet in learning the much needed skills before you start earning passive income as a side hustle.

The course gives a good overview of

  • what Affiliate Marketing is all about
  • its principles and benefits
  • different types of offers and their sources
  • how scammers operate and cheat gullible public
  • Unique 4 step process to do affiliate marketing in the ethical way
  • build a marketing funnel which generates high returns
  • what is money mindset (a free bonus class packed with wisdom!)

All the contents are explained with good examples followed by practical exercises. Kudos to Antony Sir for designing the course, explaining the various concepts using simple language.

He made it easy to learn how they all work together in starting a viable affiliate marketing business. Not only that, you’ll get all your queries answered during weekly Q & A calls.

This ensures the necessary hand holding support you need not only to get started, but also reach your goals of earning passive income through a viable side hustle.

Here’s a summary of the Benefits you will get from learning Affiliate marketing through this course:

  1. You will get is the necessary clarity to be in a strong position to launch your own affiliate marketing business to sustain steady stream of passive income.
  2. You would be acquiring the ability and skills to carve your own niche and build your unique clientele loyal to service you will be offering as part of business.
  3. You would be confident in applying the knowledge and skills acquired (with a little bit of guidance from other Alpha Marketers Academy courses as needed) in offering marketing services to small businesses, freelancers etc for their business growth.
  4. You could be helping friends and others etc by training or coaching them to start their own affiliate marketing business.
  5. You would be becoming an inspiring influencer with clean reputation, enhancing your social stature as a reliable brand.

Thank you so much for reading this far!

And one last thing!

You might still be wondering why at all you take this course when there’re so many alternatives to choose from.

My view is this: you’re absolutely, right. However, the alternatives out there online teach you some tricks of trade which won’t withstand the changing trends in technologies and social media marketing strategies.

The only things which can weather tests of time are sound principles of doing business like blue ocean strategies.

And its so rare to get authentic advice backed by genuine support and guidance. But once its there, you must grab the opportunity with both hands!

Watch out this space for more inputs in due course. And, learn to build wealth ethically based on ever green principles.

Don’t want to wait?

Congratulations!

Get started with building your wealth by joining the course!

Here’s the link:

https://alphamarketer.in/launch-dm-career-in-21-days-free?ref=ramanamurthyhv&lead_source=refer

Bonus: Here is a list of 31 best Marketing books to sky rocket your business and / or career!

Affiliate Disclaimer: Links mentioned above are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

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Ramana Murthy H V

Business Excellence Analyst building futuristic SEVA (Sustainable, Evolutionary, Visionary and Agile) Business Models leveraging self-organizing Systems