Is Affiliate Marketing a Scam? Best Ever Truth About it

Most beginners have asked this question at one time or the other. But for real,  is Affiliate Marketing a scam?

In this post, I will share with you in all sincerity what it is, why you should not start affiliate marketing now, why you must start and how.

Here is the thing, if you have ever referred someone to a product, then you were not far from acting as an affiliate marketer. 

However, one thing is missing from that exercise. 

The Commission. 

After all, there was no initial arrangement.

You should be earning a commission after each sale made after you referred someone to a product that was never yours. ,

Ok, from me to you… hold on to this fact!

Affiliate marketing is without hesitation one of the most effective ways to make money. 

Toyin Omotosho

You can monetize your blog and earn money online on a daily basis, especially if you don't have a product or service of your own to sell.

Check my post on How to Make Money with Drop-servicing. 

You must know that affiliate marketing is not the same as network marketing nor is it a Ponzi scheme or a get rich quick scheme. 

Joining an affiliate marketing network in Nigeria or anywhere in the world can provide you with exclusive access to fresh material and exclusive offers for your audience while also allowing you to earn money. In this article, we will be looking at ways to start an affiliate marketing business in Nigeria. 

Before then let us first understand the concept of affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing (Company or Product Owner)

If I own a product, I would prefer to have interested persons run traffic to my site and get paid when their effort converts. 

That way I sell more than I would have if I had done so all by myself.

You get the message, right?

Affiliate marketing is in itself an advertising strategy within which a product owner pays third-party publishers (affiliates) to send traffic that ends up in its merchandise and/or services and most times, must record product sales for a commission.

It is a strategy for product owners to increase sales without having to spend money on advertisements. 

They only have to pay when affiliate marketers create a sale for them if they enable others to sell their goods.

What Affiliate Marketing is (to freelancers or affiliate marketers)

On the reverse side of the previous section, affiliate marketing to an affiliate is the marketing of other people's products to earn an affiliate commission when sales are made. 

It requires driving massive traffic to the product site, which in return tracks the activity of the traffic and triggers a return when a purchase is made.

Affiliates are third-party publications that are paid a commission to form new strategies to market the firm.

Read Also: 13 Important Affiliate Marketing Strategies you can not Ignore

How does Affiliate marketing work?

If you have been following, you would already have gotten the grip!

A product owner or a company supplies an affiliate marketer with a unique affiliate code that may be used to refer end-users to the target site. 

This is what you do as an affiliate marketer

1. You find a good product for your audience
2. Promote the product or service on your website, email list or WhatsApp list.
3. Customers click the link and buy the product
4. Conversions are tracked
5. The company pays you a commission

The affiliate marketer tries to sell to the customer through any channel they see fit, whether it's a social media platform, digital billboards, or content marketing on a blog via a search engine. 

Check this out: The 5 step process to make 7 figures by Promoting Affiliate products even as a beginner.

Still, on how affiliate marketing works, most affiliate networks, product owners or companies will provide pre-made materials, text links, banners, and other creative pieces that an affiliate marketer simply copy and paste onto their website or share with others to begin referring traffic to the product being advertised.

Can I Promote Affiliate Links on Social Media?

A few years ago, I had a serious challenge promoting my affiliate links. 

Actually, I had no experience at the time. I had promoted an affiliate link in one of the Facebook groups I belong to.

I got kicked!

My account was banned!

…Just before I started? The shock wasn't staggering!

I had to create a new Facebook account hoping I'd be unbanned. 

I tried other methods from several YouTube videos and blogs, but they were quite uneasy. 

After several attempts to drive traffic to my affiliate links, I discovered I was doing certain things absolutely wrong. 

This one worked!

I put together how I later managed to sell using my social media handles such as Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn without being banned. 

You will learn 

i. about the mistakes I made,  

ii. how to avoid the mistakes,

iii.  how to actually sell any kind of affiliate products 

iv. how to position to earn on autopilot.

v. And lots more…

Meanwhile, you can actually make massive sales from social media if you do it the absolute right way. 

Take a look at this ultimate guide.

Ways to earn commissions through Affiliate marketing

When it comes to generating affiliate commissions, there are lots of techniques to put in place. Here are five of them:

• Customer recommendations
• Generating links to affiliate products and services on social media sites.
• Placing advertising in e-zines and newsletters.
• Blogging about affiliate products and services.
• Joining online forums relating to the product/service of recommendation and giving relevant comments after reading previous postings.

However, all these have a specific approach that works. 

Let me hold you by the hands-on what I do differently.

Affiliate Marketing Vs CPA Marketing: What's the Difference?

You've probably heard of CPA marketing and wondered what it has to do with affiliate marketing. Well, I’ll also be paying honor to that so as to offer you a better grasp of how they both operate!

CPA marketing differs from affiliate marketing in that you get compensated for taking a specific action. This could be as basic as asking a potential buyer to complete a form or take some other action.

However, in affiliate marketing, you will only get compensated if the potential buyer makes a purchase.

CPA may appear to be less difficult than affiliate marketing, but the commission is typically much lower.

Read Also: Everything you should know about Cost per Action (CPA marketing) – Full details. 

Pros of Affiliate Marketing

Stated in this list are the upsides of affiliate marketing, they are but not limited to the following:

Affiliate marketing is a pay-for-performance model

The biggest benefit of having an affiliate program is that it is only based on performance. 

Affiliates are more driven to drive the conversion you're seeking for because they're only paid a commission once the desired activity has taken place.

It allows you to reach a larger audience.

Affiliates can be found in virtually any market or product space these days. 

There will always be appropriate websites to align with, whether you're wanting to enter into the retail market or for something more unique.

The good news is that a lot of those affiliates can have already got an outsized audience.

These collaborations enable you to change into new markets that you simply may not have had the resources to explore otherwise, or to saturate your existing target markets, giving you a way bigger on-line presence.

Affiliates will assist you to build a stronger name.

You may improve the name of your brand and its merchandise by collaborating with recognized brands, bloggers and businesses. 

These marketers will promote your products, market them and increase consumer trust in your product or service.

It is economical.

Affiliate marketing can be incredibly cost-effective for the features it possesses. You're not wasting ad dollars on spots with no demonstrated value if you just pay commissions when the intended conversion occurs. 

Furthermore, hiring affiliates in new markets is a simple approach to entering that market without incurring the costs of launching a full-fledged marketing campaign, obviating the need to invest money in an unproven market for testing.

Affiliate's ability to generate traffic and sales faster

Recruiting affiliates to your program will help you scale traffic faster in conjunction with your other marketing activities. 

The more sites that hook up with your pages, the bigger probability you will have of turning guests into paying purchasers.

It serves as an alternate stream of income

You don't have to quit your current work to become an affiliate marketer.

You can undertake it as a side job and see what proportion of mileage you'll get out of it within the initial few months.

Ease of Use and Flexible

In practice, you'll develop several campaigns on varied affiliate websites and landing pages to advertise your affiliate links, abandoning those areas with little or no activity while optimizing those that are.

Cons of Affiliate Marketing

There is nothing with a lot of benefits without disadvantages. I wouldn't tell you that Affiliate Marketing is 100% easy but I will tell you that it has its downsides. Let's take a look of some cons below:

You Have No Control Over Your Competitors.

The level of competition varies per industry. Many people strive their hand at affiliate selling due to the numerous benefits it offers, like token investment prices, large earning potential, and no need for knowledge. Theoretically, it is very feasible for anyone to join and succeeds.

Highly adept affiliate marketers within the same niche contend ferociously, posing a transparent threat to your success and swinging you at a serious disadvantage.

This, however, shouldn't be a cause for concern. Bear in mind that tough effort and perseverance are needed ingredients for achievement.

You're unable to build a customer base.

The truth is that a repeat client who receives a referral can never purchase from you once more.

Of course, he will make the transaction directly from the associate provider. This is how affiliate marketing works. You make a constant effort to generate fresh leads. Unless you promote affiliate schemes with regular commissions, it is going to be difficult to build a customer base.

There is no guarantee of revenue.

Pay-per-performance offers both a great opportunity and a major danger.

Nobody guarantees that working as an affiliate marketer will be simple or that you will make the promised profits right away. It's a challenge you need to settle for and dedicate all of your efforts to maximizing the chance, however, it's powerful to estimate what quantity of cash you may make in the end.

It's Possible to Take Advantage of Affiliate Links.

Although it doesn't happen very often, and the vast majority of affiliate marketers will not do it, there have been instances of fraudsters hijacking affiliate links in order to steal someone's commission. It's difficult to get it back after that. So all you can do is hope that you are not a victim of an affiliate scheme.

Strategies for Becoming a Successful Affiliate Marketer

Establish a connection with the other person.

You'll want to create an audience with very specific interests when you first start your affiliate marketing career. This enables you to customize your affiliate campaigns to that niche, boosting the chances of conversion. You'll be able to sell to the people most likely to buy the goods if you establish yourself as an authority in one subject instead of advertising a wide range of things.

Make it unique.

There will be no deficiency of product for you to market. You will have the liberty to settle on things that you just believe, thus ensuring your ads are targeted on an actually valuable product that customers can like. You'll boost your conversion rate while additionally establishing the trustiness of your personal brand.

Begin by evaluating items and services.

Concentrate on reviewing things and services that are relevant to your trade. Then, using the association you've got designed with your audience and your authority as a professional, tell your readers why they ought to get the merchandise or service you are promoting.

Use a variety of resources.

Spend time creating money via a blog, connecting to your audience on social media, and perhaps even investigating cross-channel promotions instead of concentrating just on an email campaign.

Keep up with the latest trends.

In the affiliate marketing world, there's plenty of competition.

To be competitive, you will need to remain in the prime for any new trends.

You'll almost certainly be able to benefit from at least some of the new marketing tactics that are continuously being developed.

Also Read: Everything you need to know about how Sales Funnel Work

Step by Step guide to starting an Affiliate Marketing business in Nigeria

After understanding the concept of affiliate marketing and how it works, let's take a look at the step by step guide to starting up your affiliate marketing business in Nigeria:

Select a platform and a method.

The first step is to see the platform on that you would like to form your audience.

Every affiliate vendor takes a unique approach and uses a special platform. You can choose from a variety of affiliate marketing concepts based on several methods:

Sites that focus on a specific topic or provide reviews.

These are websites that review merchandise for a particular target market or compare a line of business to its competitors. To draw in an audience, you need to generate content with reference to the review sector and post it on a daily basis.

Content on the internet. 

Bloggers, YouTubers, and social media influencers are examples of digital content makers. 

They develop speciality material that appeals to a selected demographic. The idea is to expose niche products to their audience in an organic way. 

This improves the chance that they're going to purchase, and you may earn an affiliate commission as a result.

Courses, events, and workshops are all available. 

You can incorporate affiliate partnership offerings into your events if you are a coach. 

Authenticity and audience building are the two most significant aspects of affiliate marketing, notwithstanding the path you pursue.

Choose a niche and a target audience.

When picking a niche, go for something you're enthusiastic about and know a lot about. This makes you appear genuine and a reliable source of information to potential customers. It conjointly aids in deciding which product and types you ought to promote.

Look for your products.

Your audience must relate to what you're saying if you want to make money as an affiliate marketer. It's critical that the products or services you market be ones that they actually want if you get this wrong, you may hurt your probability of success and lose quality with your audience.

Don't worry if you're unsure where to seek products or brands to collaborate with. There is a slew of affiliate marketplaces to choose from, including:

• AvantLink
• CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction)
• ClickBank
• FlexOffers
• LinkConnectors
• ShareASale

You must adhere to the terms of service of affiliate promoting schemes, thus browse the little print. as an example, your link can nearly always embrace a cookie with a group expiration date, and a few programs can prevent you from buying pay-per-click advertising that embraces the merchandise or company's name.

Select your first affiliate marketing opportunity.

The most crucial criteria to bear in mind while you brainstorm goods or look through affiliate platforms is that the product should be linked with your audience, or the audience you want to build. Is it anything that your target market would find useful? Is it relevant to your field?

For example, a cuisine blogger is unlikely to endorse cosmetics. Cookware, meal sets, gourmet ingredients, or even aprons, for example, would be a better fit.

Also, double-check that the product or service you're promoting is compatible with the platform you're using.

Construct an affiliate site.

It's time to start developing a website after selecting your product/service and affiliate program(s).

The goal of this site is to educate potential consumers about the things you want them to buy, so make sure each article contains enough information for visitors to get a good understanding of what they're getting without giving too much away.

Start advertising yourself.

Once everything is up and running, promote it by sending out emails or posting links on relevant social media sites to let everyone know you've just launched an affiliate website.

It's vital not to spam, so only send messages every few days unless they're giving something incredibly valuable (like free shipping), as this will appear suspicious to both your contacts and the company you're promoting.

You can also promote affiliate programs in Nigeria on your social media profiles, but don't go overboard or people will become upset at seeing adverts for items they don't want every time they log into Facebook/Twitter/etc.

Once all these steps are carried out, you are good to go as an affiliate marketer and can go ahead to promote products and services.

Affiliate marketing is a great alternative for people who want to take charge of their own finances by focusing on performance-based revenue streams and as such can be a very lucrative business built with creativity, passion and patience.