The Impact of Affiliate Marketing On Your Life

[liquidlunch]

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I watched the BBC programme tonight about people being out of work which featured the very sad case of a woman who went from earning �21,000 a year to living on toast and only one solid meal a week. I then went back to writing content for a site and realised that affiliate marketing will hopefully one day make a financial impact on my life to point where I never have to face the terrible experience of living on toast. Quite deep huh.

Has affiliate marketing removed this sort of threat from peoples lives. Its not going to make me rich but can it provide a reliable income?

I have noticed that some people suggest you should never become a full time affiliate regardless of how much you make whilst other people have stated that quit there job only a few months after it matched the money they were making in their full time job.

[accelerator]

Well, I've been doing affiliate marketing for about 6 years now, and I've been full time for the last 3 years. For me, it's a dream job. As soon as the internet arrived I knew that I wanted to run websites for a living, and I love being my own boss. Sometimes, I can't believe that everyone isn't trying their hand at affiliate marketing. I guess the technical barrier is there for many. For a long time in my life, I endured "financial hardship", especially when a student, and it does make you understand the value of money. Affiliate marketing has had a transformational effect on my life really, and I'm very glad to have lived through the advent of the internet and internet marketing. Doing a "normal" job wouldn't be nearly as satisfying.

I do feel sorry for people that are the victims of the modern UK economy, e.g. factory workers laid off, and I also feel sorry for young people leaving University today, as I think times are now really hard.

I would not advise quitting the day job until you have a comfortable cushion of emergency funds, and don't take anything for granted. Even now I wonder if conditions will change and I am always thinking ahead about possible threats to current revenue streams.

Rgds

[kcheung]

having worked at agencies and networks and now at Blue Barracuda, I've done affiliate marketing all my working life, having a few affiliates sites on the side (organic, no PPC), has helped in several ways -1. gives me a little cushion each month that helps, 2. helps me learn more about issues affiliates face and the kind of things that affiliate need, 3. helps me to spot opportunities et al.

the dream is to go full time, but i guess i'm not in a position to do so at the moment, the point still stands though that if it all fell apart tomorrow, at least i'd be able to live and grow my affiliate sites and be in full control. Affiliate marketing is great for the simple fact that (assuming you're quick, sharp and smart enough) you get out what you put in.

OT
Kunal and myself were actually thinking the best part-time job for an affiliate would be a minicab driver, with a mobile internet connection working the night shift.

[ian]

Has affiliate marketing removed this sort of threat from peoples lives. Its not going to make me rich but can it provide a reliable income?

I have noticed that some people suggest you should never become a full time affiliate regardless of how much you make whilst other people have stated that quit there job only a few months after it matched the money they were making in their full time job.

It depends on how much risk you want to take in life. The 'safe' bet is to keep your job and use AM as a lifestyle top up, or if you head is screwed on you'll spend some, and use the rest to top up your pension, save for a rainy day, or pay off the mortgage. If you want to take some risk, then jack in your current job and go full time.

Life is about balancing risk and reward, The bigger the risk, the bigger the rewards, and so are the penalties for messing up!

[boxfish]

I have been earning money full time from websites since June 2008. I say websites as it is a mix of ecommerce, lead gen and affiliate sites. My main income is from ecommerce but the others are growing.

The main thing with a lot of websites is they rely on Google for traffic. This is great as you can see which keywords to target, predict traffic and can gain lots of traffic without much expense.

The negative with this is when Google bumps your site. This has happened to me in two instances, the first I went from page 1 to page 9 for the majority of my search terms. It wasn't down to my site as it regained it's positions without any interference after a couple of months, it was just Google being Google. I reverted to a PPC campaign which was profitable but my income was down massively.

The second time was quite recent and one of my sites was infected by malware. Google flagged the site as infected and removed it from the SERPs straight away.
I repaired it, moved host (this is where the malware originated from) and filed a re-inclusion request. That was around 6 weeks ago and today it still doesn't rank well at all.

I had no control over either of these events and they cost me several thousand pounds in lost income.

Having an affiliate site is great for a bit of extra income alongside a fulltime job but leaving a fulltime job once you have matched your current salary is very risky indeed, especially if you have a lot of outgoings.

Another thing I am also wary of is how Google seem to be localising things more and more and have now started including paid listings, in with organic traffic. (http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=...91a82b81b330d6 Top Map Listing)

Google is there to make money, more and more money. How would you cope if you had to pay a 'review fee' to get a site indexed by Google, maybe £1000 per site or if you could pay to get your site manually reviewed against the top spot, whichever site was more relevant kept the spot? These are all possibilities and points which could severely affect people making money of the web.

[badboy_Nick]

Well, affiliate marketing is the best thing that ever happened to me. I been working HARD at becoming self-employed after graduating from University as I didnt like the 9-5 rat-race. Finally after making enough money every month I quit my job and never looked back. Where else can you start work at 10am in the morning and go for a movie + beer for lunch

Nick

[zinc]

I still have a day job but that's my choice. Because of the day job I'm unable to find the time to really hit AM hard, but i'm going to quit my job in the next few months and go for it, the income from my sites is good but not equal to my day job salary, although if I did this full time I'm sure I could get there fairly quickly.

AM has changed my life in the sense that, I can now go on 3-4 luxury holidays per year and still have some change left over to live very comfortably like for example (sounds stupid) but buying nice food, new clothes every week etc. In the past I would have a massive crisis if like my car was due Tax, £90 was big money then, now i wouldnt worry if a £300 bill came in.

Hope this helps?

[motor115]

I think i watched the same program.. anyway,

iv not been in it to long but iv made the jump , there are pro's and cons like you do the times you want, but you never know what your going to earn, one month could be great next few months could be bad (depending on site, how many you have and niche/s)

The way i first looked at it was if i could earn about the same and not have to travel 1 hour to work and same again back home, be bossed about and hours you want then why not. I was shocked how much can earn BUT iv also found its not all easy and half days.