How Long Does it Take to Make Money from Affiliate Marketing

One of the most common questions beginners ask is: How long does it take to make money from affiliate marketing? Unfortunately, the answer is not as simple. 

I wish I could tell you that you can start earning money in a few days or a week, but that would be a lie. 

There are 7 key factors required that determine your ability to earn online as an affiliate marketer, and these will be covered below.

Generally, as an affiliate marketer, you may earn around the 3–6-month mark if you push your limits and work hard.

Most marketers will find decent monthly returns till the 12–18-month mark.

However, this doesn’t mean you cannot do it earlier, but this is the consensus of the findings worldwide.

Making money online depends on the individual along with their situation in life.

The more you understand the process and what is required, and with the right attitude, the better your opportunity will be.

Understanding the 7 key factors in making money with affiliate marketing and blogging online will help you further.

Like any other business, it takes time and effort, along with the other key factors discussed below.

Affiliate marketing can be a rewarding and lucrative opportunity to build a passive income online.

However, various key components are needed before you can think of making any form of money online.

There are some hard truths to know and accept if you truly want to be successful online.

So, let’s look at some of these factors, why it can take a while to make money blogging within affiliate marketing, and ways to make it happen.

How long does it take to make money from affiliate marketing?

1) Treat It As A Business

Affiliate marketing works and can become a sustainable way to earn income online. 

However, you need to treat it as a business, period.

If you are blogging as a hobby, no problem, this will not apply to you, so enjoy what you do.

One of the main problems I have seen with many is the attitude of I will see how this goes and give it a couple of months.

Later they find out it is either tougher than they thought or not earning any money online in those first few months.

What happens then is they quit, most often just before they start to see the opportunities before them.

One of the main reasons they quit is they are not serious about their business, as they are not putting in much effort and work.

Having a negative attitude or mindset will work against you.

To them, it becomes more of a side hobby than a long-term business venture.

Some want or are doing affiliate marketing on the side, perhaps to supplement their current income or to prepare for their future retirement. 

Some do this part-time while still doing their 9-5 (Just over Broke) Jobs.

While others are doing this full-time, they are not doing as well as they should be.

Never Quit Your Job Yet!

If you are doing this part-time and hoping to quit your job, then work harder with the time and hours you have available for you.

Never quit your job until you have reached a constant target with your earnings on a regular monthly basis. 

Preferably one that is much more than what you are earning now.

Make it happen, don’t just sit there and dream about it, make the effort and work harder where needed to make that dream a reality.

Regardless of which of the above you are, always treat your website as a business and have that positive mindset and attitude to make it work.

You need to be serious if you want success as an affiliate marketer.

It may not be as easy as many so-called gurus would state with their get-a-quick-rich method that is not a business, they are scams.

2) Commitment, Mindset, Patience

Once you start seriously treating this as a business, you will become more committed to your new venture.

With that, you will find a change of attitude you need to develop together with having a lot of patience in the process.

As mentioned in the two main points, affiliate marketing is not a get-rich scheme, and your affiliate marketing online business is a long-term strategy.

Being successful in pretty much anything in life requires a positive mind frame.

You will make mistakes along the way and face some challenges ahead when starting out, That’s OK and normal, but instead of giving up, you will get up and move forward.

Those mistakes and challenges you face along the way are your opportunity to use them to your advantage by learning why and then fixing them so they don’t happen again.

In doing so, you are then able to move forward and start to enjoy what you are doing once more.

Do you think an athlete expects to win a gold medal at the Olympics just by entering the comp?

No, it will take them a few years or more to get to the elite level, plus they still need to qualify.

Instead, they will continue to move forward and never give up on bringing their dream into reality.

How do they achieve success?

They learn by receiving the correct training and how to develop the required skills properly.

They will learn to develop the proper mindset along with more training, making that commitment, and being patient to achieve those goals in life.

As a starter in affiliate marketing, you are at the beginning stages, just like the athlete was.

By developing the right mindset, commitment, patience, and training, you will get there. 

Why?

You are also chasing gold, but instead of receiving a medal, you receive a commission that goes to your bank account as you learn to promote other people’s products or services.

Building a business does take time, but if you are willing to make the proper effort, you will get there.

If you do not have the patience or are fully committed to your work and put in the effort, you most likely do not have the right attitude and mindset to be successful as an affiliate marketer blogging online.

This needs to change, this is why those who make lots of money online as affiliate marketers have changed their attitude to making money.

You will find a negative mindset is one of the main traits of why people quit far too early in the game online and then believe this doesn’t work or affiliate marketing is a scam.

Affiliate marketing is a simple concept, however, there is work and effort that needs to be included to make it happen.

You are given a free pass in life, what you do with it is up to you.

It is not a case of adding your affiliate links and playing games or watching TV while the money flows in.

There is no done for you and simply push-button method, with little work to do on your part. Certainly not a get-rich-quick way to success. 

Methods like this are either scams or expensive to do with the hidden costs many do not tell you until you join their program.

When first starting as a beginner in affiliate marketing, be prepared to work hard and expect to write content for the benefit of your readers.

Disclaimer: Some links in this post may be affiliate links. Purchasing after clicking one of these links may result in a commission for me.

3) Learning how to do affiliate marketing the right way

As mentioned above, like the athlete, you need the correct training where you learn the proper techniques and methods in a step-by-step fashion.

Once you learn and complete each task, you move on to the next, and so on.

Not only does this develop your knowledge on building your online business, but you also learn all that is necessary to achieve the success you deserve.

It is not like going to College or University and then after years of learning and thousands of dollars later, you are going out to the workforce and then having to find work.

With the right training platform, you can learn, grow, and earn along the way.

You can review my No 1 Recommended Training Platform which has been in business for over 18 years.

One where you can even start for free to get an understanding of what is involved at the beginning.

Should you realize this is for you and if you are serious and want to go further, you can upgrade and get that added opportunity to earn more money online. 

Everything is given to you upfront with no hidden upsells like many other programs out there.

This way, you can test with the trial lessons given, and see if affiliate marketing is still for you or not.

In the worst scenario, you gain added knowledge the best scenario, you can upgrade and get heaps more training and added support from a worldwide audience as with me.

Learning the right way and applying what you are taught will become one of your greatest assets in life as an affiliate marketer.

The knowledge you gain will put you above the rest who are still trying to figure out what to do.

4) Choosing the right niche market

The excitement begins here, along with some confusion along the way.

Before you create your website (domain), you need to know your niche.

Generally, the domain name you select would be based on your niche.

A niche is a group of people interested in something specific to their needs.

This is the topic you would be focusing on with your website.

There are millions of types of niches, some are more popular than others, some are very broad, and some are narrow.

This is where confusion and to some extent failure can occur, while for others selecting the right niche, success happens.

Let me explain further on this.

As you can see, these niches can cover a very broad area covering many other aspects within these niches.

They are far too broad to use, and most likely you will find the competition far too tough to get into that particular market as is.

There are far too many high authority sites that cover these areas and ones that have been in the market for many years.

As a beginner, you may have next to no chance competing against such high authority sites although not impossible, it is tough going.

You may be thinking S#*^ Now what? I have no chance of earning money online.

Well, that is not the case. 

Many beginners who go for such broad niches will fail due to the high competition but there is a better way to succeed even with these broad niches.

This other article goes into more in-depth regarding choosing a Broad vs. Narrow Niche and will explain more.

I have used the first choice above in Fishing as an example.

This will show you how to better your opportunities to get an added advantage to earn more and find that selective audience interested in what you will say and write about.

The same method applies to any other niche above. 

That is the niche market that you will focus on instead. 

One that would focus more specifically on that specific group of people will give you greater success than selecting one far too big and against heavy competition.

This is where your greatest opportunities are and where you can make money online blogging with your affiliate marketing website. 

5) Are you helping or are you selling to your audience?

This is another issue many beginners face in the early stages when they start.

It is understandable to be keen on making money with affiliate marketing but there is the right way and a harder way, not wrong but harder.

You see when you first start, you will need to write information posts (blogs) that will help people understand more about what they are seeking online.

At this stage (which may seem weird) you will not be posting any affiliate links nor have the aim of selling anything to your audience.

Yeah, I know you came here to earn money but remember what was stated earlier on?

Affiliate marketing is a long-term strategy and is not a quick road to success online.

This is something many so-called gurus don’t tell you they will tell you to simply add links to sell the product and many thousands in commission quickly.

Hope you are starting to understand the reason why it takes longer and the commitment you need to make with affiliate marketing. 

Remember you are building a business, not an overnight success.

Don’t forget that article I mentioned on selecting a narrow niche vs a broad niche, this will help you understand more about the specific audience you will be targeting to help.

6) Understanding how to market your online business

Once you have created some posts, this is where you would be thinking about marketing your website to the world to see. 

Remember, you’re connection is worldwide which opens up so many opportunities to not only build traffic but connect with a worldwide audience.

This enables you to connect with that specific group of people interested in what you have to offer them in helping first and later with promoting products when the traffic is there.

I have seen, and I am sure you have as well, searching online many sites talk about using your affiliate links and starting to make money quickly but they don’t tell you it is pointless if you don’t have any traffic.

Speaking of finding you online, how often when you search for something yourself do you go to page 2 or onwards with the search engines? 

I thought so, pretty much zero, perhaps page 2 but page 3 onwards is known as the place to keep and hide a dead body in your case, the content you are creating.

Each post is first indexed just like your website but depending on the helpful and unique content you are creating will determine where you rank with the aim on page one of Google and other search engines.

Marketing outwards

Once you are ready and have content created, you can market your posts to other social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter for example.

This will open up further doors to expanding your website presence and posts you created to a larger audience.

At the early stage, it also would be best to focus on one or two social media sites at the start to see how it works.

Don’t overdo it but test out which one seems to work for your best.

7) Understanding SEO (search engine optimization).

The final key to How long it takes to make money from affiliate marketing.

One of the areas you can learn with the training I can give you is learning the simple steps to SEO (search engine optimization).

You will learn how to enhance your post content with some extra what they call Google Juice to help you rank higher within the search engines.

Certain methods are standard practice to help your blog post stand out, and when done properly, can get you at the top of page 1 with the search engines.

Of course, there are never any guarantees as you will also have competition from other websites that may be doing the same as you.

You will also find many bloggers online don’t even know or have a clue on what to do or how to use SEO to their advantage which is why many of them are in the graveyard spots I mentioned earlier.

You will learn how to select and understand the importance of your post title which is your main keyword.

Simply a keyword is something that is typed in the search engines as you did and how you found this post.

It can be one or two words or better still using long-tail keywords to help you rank better and higher with the search engines.

These are all covered in the advanced training for premium members I give you.

Of course, there are many other SEO methods and techniques involved however just these two alone are vital to your success.

So as you can see there is much work to be done, but once you get the hang of it it won’t take long to learn.

The more you learn the right way from affiliate marketing the easier it will get and the greater opportunities you will have in earning money online.

So hope you learn a few tips and are ready and eager to start building your business empire along the way.

If you have any questions, please add them in the comment section below and I will be only too happy to answer them for you.

So if you want me to help you further and be your mentor, then take my No 1 recommended training platform, as I said, you can start some lessons for free.

I will welcome you to the community and help you learn further along your new journey online.

Should you find you are serious and ready to take that step forward in being successful online, then premium or premium plus membership is available for you to take.

I suggest you take the free test trial first, see how it goes for you, and take the option to upgrade when you are ready.

I will be waiting there for you to welcome you to the community and help you out along your new journey online.

You will have the full support of many other members worldwide, along with the Co-Founders.

So if you are interested, check it out here and go from there.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to connecting with you later or answering any questions you have in the comment section below.