Is it hard to do affiliate marketing? This is one of the most common questions that we hear every day. People who are new to affiliate marketing might think that it is hard. But you don't need a degree or years of experience to figure out how the industry works. You just need to be aware of the challenges and prepare to face them. Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to generate revenue. But with that popularity comes a lot of competition from other marketers and affiliates. This article will discuss eight significant challenges of generating revenue from affiliate marketing: generating traffic, finding quality products, getting paid on time, getting enough visitors per day or week, staying active in online communities, and managing time.

What Is Affiliate Marketing? 

For those unfamiliar with affiliate marketing, it is a type of performance-based online advertising in which affiliates advertise products and services. Affiliates can be bloggers or social media influencers who can promote certain brands through their blog posts or Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or other social media platforms. As the affiliate, you get a commission for the sales you generate.

What Is the Success Rate of Affiliate Marketing?

This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on how you define success. Success also depends on how many hours you put into it, what your goals are and whether or not you have any marketing experience. There are affiliate marketers who make five figures monthly. But only 1-5% of affiliate marketers can get there. For the same reason, it's also challenging to determine the affiliate marketing failure rate. But we can have an idea of why affiliate marketers fail. Below are eight challenges or contributing factors to failing to generate revenue from affiliate marketing:

Content:

1. Generating Traffic
2. Find quality products
3. Payment on time
4. Robust knowledge base
5. Too much competition
6. Staying active in online communities
7. Time management
8. Finding a good commission rate for your customer
9. Wrap up

1. Generating Traffic

Traffic is the lifeblood of any online business, as you must have people browsing your website and clicking on links to make money from your affiliate marketing efforts. 

You need to generate traffic, but that is hard when competing with other marketers and affiliates trying to do the same. There are at least two ways to generate traffic: organic and paid. Organic traffic is free and comes from search engine results, content marketing strategies like blogging or social media sharing. Paid traffic will come in the form of advertising on Facebook, Google or other platforms that can drive targeted visitors toward your website.

Experienced affiliate marketers recommend newbies to focus on organic traffic. Paid advertising can be expensive, and you might not know if it's worth the investment or not until after a while. Organic traffic is not only free, but it also helps you to rank higher on search engine results pages long-term. 

2. Finding Quality Products

This may be one of the trickiest parts about generating revenue from affiliate marketing because it takes a lot of time and research as well as competition for quality products. When searching for affiliates programs on places like Amazon Associates or Google Affiliates, you need to make sure that the company has a good reputation and high-quality products. As an affiliate marketer, you must be honest with customers and provide them with detailed information to make the best decision for themselves. While your immediate goal is to make a sale and generate revenue, you must also have a more long-term objective: maintaining customer loyalty.

3. Payment on Time

Affiliate marketers have reported that getting paid on time is another major challenge. It can be challenging to get a company's attention, so you need to contact them and follow up if they don't pay within the timeframe stated in their contract. 

When signing up for an affiliate program, be aware that there may be delays in payment or commissions being issued. If they are late in paying you, don't worry too much about how this will affect your revenue as long as they eventually pay. You can set reminders every quarter so their bill doesn't get lost in the shuffle while also keeping track of what should have been received from whose payments and when. One reason for delayed payments is the refund window, which varies from company to company. Affiliate commissions are usually released after the refund window closes.

4. Robust Knowledge Base

It's vital that before starting any new affiliate program, you are knowledgeable about the company, their products and services. It's also essential to understand how affiliate marketing works before beginning any campaign with that particular company or service.This knowledge will help you become more successful in your efforts as an affiliate marketer because there is no need for trial-and-error if you are knowledgeable about what you are doing. You also need to stay up to date on trends and changes in the industry to be aware of what's new, anticipate future needs and provide customers with quality content they need when they're looking for it.

5. Too Much Competition

No matter what business you are in, it is difficult to achieve success when there is a lot of competition. It can be even more frustrating as an affiliate marketer because the number one goal should be to generate revenue from your efforts, and there will always be competitors vying for that space. 

There are a few ways to overcome this challenge: create exclusive content, find small niches in the market that are not well covered and then focus on providing quality content to those potential customers. To stand out, you need to be an expert in your niche, provide quality content and be trustworthy. Your content must be so good and convincing that it answers all possible questions and concerns potential customers may have.

In addition to quality, you must also be consistent with the frequency of your posts. You can also create an email list so that people interested in what you are posting about will sign up for those emails instead of researching elsewhere or relying solely on search engine results for information.

6. Staying Active in Online Communities

When joining an affiliate program, it can be easy to focus on your site and forget about the rest. But you should actively engage in online communities like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram because they are a great way to network with other affiliate marketers. Staying engaged in these communities allows you to access new audiences and sources of traffic. They also help you to build your brand.

Furthermore, staying in contact with other affiliate marketers can be helpful for networking, exchanging ideas and sharing information about products or services that may not have been available at the time of joining an affiliate program.

7. Time Management

Affiliate marketing is a time-consuming endeavour. You need to be committed, plan, and work on it every day if you want your efforts to yield results. It is easy for affiliate marketers to become unfocused because they are their own boss and can do as much or as little as they please when it comes to marketing strategies. 

Time management skills are essential for success in affiliate marketing. You need to be aware of how much time you spend on each task, not to overload yourself and spend too many hours doing the work when it is necessary to delegate some tasks. People typically underestimate the time they need to spend each day on tasks like content creation, email marketing and social media. Creating a timeline helps you see how much time you have to perform your necessary tasks without overdoing them or getting behind.

8. Finding A Good Commission Rate for Your Customer

You should be aware that the best commissions are usually reserved for established affiliates who have an existing audience and advertisers, so you'll need to work hard at getting people on board with your products before you can make any money. If you are just starting, you can try to negotiate with the affiliate program and explain that you are new but willing to build traffic. Some programs may offer a higher commission rate for newcomers or allow them some time at lower rates before increasing it to their regular percentage.

Wrap Up

Finally, is affiliate marketing difficult now? Affiliate marketing is not an easy business to get into, but if you follow the steps outlined above and research where to start, it can be rewarding in terms of increased revenue. You need to remember no matter what you do; there will always be challenges. There are no shortcuts in this business, so it's important not to get discouraged and stay committed. Tackling those challenges one at a time and use the right publisher tools such as RevSocial, RevLinks, RevEmbed, RevAds, you can make affiliate marketing a profitable business that you are proud of. With RevSocial, for example, you can turn your social media account into a money-making machine in minutes. It allows you to search and find deals that pay you a commission. Once you do that, just post them to your social media account to get paid. RevSocial will take care of the rest. And if you want to monetise content on your website instantly, RevLinks will do that for you.