How Much Can You Earn in Affiliate Marketing in 2022?

Over time, there may be certain questions ravaging the minds of people in the area of Affiliate Marketing, questions like how much money can I earn in affiliate marketing? Is affiliate marketing still gainful? How much time do I need to start earning a reasonable income from affiliate programs? And at the mention of passive income, newbies get excited, and worst still, they do not care to carefully assess this opportunity to earn.

This is the essence of this article, to make sure we address the challenge pertaining to answering these questions, especially how much you can earn in affiliate marketing in 2020. 

On a daily basis, the affiliate marketing industry is growing. By 2022, it is expected that spending on affiliate marketing only in the U.S. will increase to $8.2 billion according to reports by Statista. From this report, you can deduce that there is enough space to grow and earn aside from the examples of super-affiliates publicly sharing their income reports and telling the success stories we see and hear.

Just to inspire you, we have listed below examples of well-known super-affiliates:

• Famous affiliate marketer Pat Flynn built his affiliate business from $8000 per month to $100.000 monthly;
• The second person is Tom from Online Media Masters who grew from $20k to $150k yearly in the past two years;
• The third person is Doug Cunnington who made $70k in the year 2017 which was gotten from one niche website.

If this doesn’t inspire you, we do not know what will? However, in reality, after spending some months with little earnings or even none, a lot of people become adamant and just give up. A lot of other people begin to search for ways from which they can earn more, this brings us to the question, what is the real amount affiliate marketers earn?

A poll was recently conducted by the STM forum where they enquired about affiliates’ annual income. And from the results, we found out that income in affiliate marketing can vary a lot, while some earn below  $20.000 monthly, others make a lot of money.   

We can categorize affiliates into the list below depending on their monthly income:

• The first category are total beginners, who are currently losing money at the moment;
• The second category are low-level affiliates which are those who earn about $300 daily;
• The third category is intermediate affiliates which are those who earn from $300 daily to 3,000 daily;
• The fourth category are high-level affiliates which are those who earn above $3,000 daily;
• The fifth category is super affiliates or, “gurus of affiliate marketing,” as they are fondly called, they are those who make more than $10,000 daily.

For you to be successful in affiliate marketing, there are two major qualities you must possess which are persistence and continuing nature. You cannot just expect that your profit will always be the same if you once earned 300$ daily. Of course, it cannot always be bad news, there are cases whereby people earn very modest income for some time, and then, their income skyrockets overnight. In fact, affiliate marketing is all about selecting the right niche and using the appropriate strategy. 

Below are a few Affiliate commissions in various niches:

There is a wide range of niches in affiliate marketing, little wonder you are not likely going to apply similar conditions and peculiarities to affiliate programs within a particular niche, therefore we have explained a few affiliate niches with examples of affiliate earning:

• Software affiliate programs

In case you are thinking about what the most profitable affiliate programs are, then you should consider software and web hosting providers because the commission here may be up to 30% on each payment. Usually, the check size in the software niche is obviously big. Before you get all excited, it is the most competitive niche aside from being the most attractive, therefore, we will not recommend this for a beginner.

• Travel affiliate programs

Most affiliates in this niche obtain their income from airlines, travel agencies, booking aggregators, travel goods, and review sites. Let us take, for instance, you are an affiliate in the travel niche, you can earn up to $7-10 on the transfer price. It is safe to say that the commission rate and total income are dependent on the niche you work in. Look at the instances below:

•  You can earn up to 1-3% commission on the overall order value in KAYAK, JetRadar, Kiwi.com, and other flight affiliate programs for flight tickets.
• You can earn up to 3-12% commission on the overall order value in Booking.com, Agoda, Hostelworld, and other hotel affiliate programs for accommodation.
• You can earn up to 3-7% commission on the overall order value in GetYourGuide, Klook, Viator, and other programs for tours and activities.
• You can earn up to 4-15% commission on the total order value in RentalCars, DiscoverCars, AutoEurope, and other car rental affiliate programs. In addition to this, you can join the main travel affiliate programs like GetYourGuide, Booking.com, and more than 60 others in the Travelpayouts affiliate network.

Please we would like to bring to your notice that despite the fact that the travel niche is fiercely competitive, nevertheless, it is still lower than that of e-commerce or dating.

• E-Commerce affiliate programs

When it comes to eCommerce, having a big audience is expedient if you want to earn a decent income. Let us look at Amazon which we all know is mainly  B2C sales and the pay is relatively low, however, having a large audience in addition to efforts can make you earn a minimum of  $1,000 with approximately 20-40 hours of monthly work as against 4% to 8.5%.

• Dating affiliate programs

One who decides to be an affiliate marketer in the Dating niche can earn up to $12 per lead, up to 5$ for referral commission, and up to $500 for the first order as affiliate commissions. Your commission tends to increase after a certain amount of sign-ups if an affiliate program has a loyalty (bonus) program.

• Loans affiliate programs

You can earn a decent income from this niche especially where companies are competing for clients fiercely. One who is an affiliate marketer in the loans affiliate program can earn between $1 to $5000 depending on loan size.

• Fitness and Nutra affiliate programs

When considering the most-talked-about topic, there is no way you can skip mentioning the topic of a healthy lifestyle. Interestingly, the awareness keeps increasing by the day, hence, promoting fitness and health products can give you up to 15-40% commission from every supplement sale.

A detailed account of how long it takes to make a steady income

Truthfully, it will take a while before you can get to the point where you are able to consistently earn from affiliate programs, therefore, we advise that you do not quit your job just yet. Well, it will take you from 6 months upwards to start making profits with affiliate marketing, but generally, you need to be able to create quality content, optimize for SEO, and promote your affiliate products, and drive traffic to get maximum results.

Just think about how people actively use social media and email marketing, that alone should encourage you. Just like every other successful venture, affiliate marketing is not a skyrocket science, therefore, you should be consistent in promoting the affiliate products, and have the appropriate marketing strategy.

Determine who you want to be in affiliate marketing

From all we have said, you can see that there are numerous ways you can earn in the affiliate business; all you need to do is to choose your side. It is either you decide to be a publisher who promotes products from various brands and advertisers, or you can design your affiliate network and create an all-around digital advertising business. 

In this article, we will discuss both parties and the role affiliate marketing plays in their income.

A summary of what it means to earn in affiliate marketing as a publisher

For those starting from scratch, which means starting with no investments, becoming a publisher and promoting products is their only option. We know that this may sound pretty simple but it does not because it is not easy in practice. That being said, you cannot post numerous links and expect to see hundreds of people buying products through them. You need to first sit and think and implement your well-thought-out marketing strategy if you must achieve this.

These are the two steps you must take when starting affiliate marketing:

1. The first is that you must choose a niche
2. The second is that you have to consider starting a blog or any other platform where you have the liberty to post important content

All about choosing an affiliate niche

This is the basic step you must take for you to predetermine your job satisfaction and estimate your income level. 

In addition to this, you have to consider your personal preferences towards the possible product when choosing one. We suggest that you choose a niche that is close to something that you are genuinely interested in. It could be something related to your professional background or even your hobbies.

Also, you have to find out the average affiliate commissions you will get from the product that you want to choose, therefore, you should be prepared to research various commissions, alongside the different conditions that affiliate programs apply. Having this knowledge will help you know the volume of effort and also the number of contents you need to produce to achieve your desired profit. 

All about creating a blog

IF you are a publisher, an online platform where you will post affiliate links is needed, and the two most common options affiliates can settle for is either a blog or a youtube channel. If you can juggle between the both of them, then, it is a nice idea. 

Another thing we must emphasize is that your choice of a platform must not depend on whether you feel comfortable in front of the camera or not. Furthermore, you should know that blogging and vlogging are two different things, so, you should keep in mind some fundamental differences between the both. Below are the essential points you should note about blogging, and they are: 

• You cannot sell a YouTube channel at will because it is not your property, the blog is what is your property;
• The second point is that blogging is more SEO complicated;
• The third point is that blogging will attract additional costs on the hosting, domain, development, while Youtube is entirely free of charge;
• The fourth point is that over time, you can edit text and include new affiliate links, but this can’t be done in published videos.

All about the growth of your blog audience

The strength of affiliate marketing was one that could easily go unnoticed therefore users are advised not to understand it to be an advertisement. That being said, you must grow your audience organically who will in turn be interested in the advertised products, and you can achieve this by producing content regularly. 

The first thing you need in digital marketing terms is traffic even before sales. In fact, most of the ad networks will enquire about the traffic volume once you indicate interest to join them. 

Another important thing you should note is not to neglect email list growing because it would assist in widening your presence in various promotion channels. A great tool used in growing an email list is a free webinar, and also various tutorials.

How you can earn as a vendor in affiliate marketing 

As a product owner, you may be tempted to focus solely on improving the quality of your product or direct product delivery, and leave the promotion of the product in the hands of another while trusting them to do it well. It may interest you to know that whether you have in-house marketing or not, including an affiliate program into your marketing strategy is a great advantage because you can increase sales with the help of it.

How can you achieve it?

As a vendor, you are provided with two options in this context: it is either you join an affiliate network and design a partner program there or design a partner program of their own on a SaaS partner marketing platform, therefore the two options should be compared here.

Once you sign up as an advertiser, you can create a program. Advertisers normally commence with a description of the partner program, its rules, and policies, marketing collateral. When all these are set, they go-ahead to recruit affiliates to join their program. 

One of the advantages of running a partner program is that you can access all ad campaign data and also be in control of the performance of all your partners and see for yourself, what works better. 

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