50 Case Studies That Prove Affiliate Marketing is Profitable

Anyone new entering into the world of affiliate marketing will usually question if it is truly profitable and today, I’d like to show you 50 case studies that say it is.

Before I get to these case studies (I will really show you 50, I’m not kidding!), there are 3 very important things I need to let you know about this whole business:

1) It is 2019 right now and I began doing affiliate marketing in 2005 (My history). I also refer to this method as “AM”.

To this day, it is still profitable and I would even argue, that there’s more opportunities to succeed with this business as time goes on. I have built an entire online business doing this and am continuing to expand my knowledge and ways that I use affiliate marketing to generate sales. 

• There is passive income potential in this.
• If done right, this business has no limits to how much it can make you.
• You as a beginner can 100% still get involved with it and succeed with it.

But to make all of this happen, you just need good guidance and I can tell you, that the one program that’s consistently helped me with seeing consistent success in this business is the Wealthy Affiliate program.

2) There are many ways to make AM work, but this 1 formula is responsible for the success of the 50 case studies you will be reading about today.

From the day that I discovered how to make this business work, to today where I’m a very advanced practitioner of it, that formula has NOT changed, and it never will…

This is that formula:

Now I explain this in this complete affiliate marketing guide, and how that formula helped me earn over $1 million in this business.

And this applies for ANY affiliate network you join.

• It doesn’t matter if it’s Amazon.
• It doesn’t matter if it’s Clickbank.
• It doesn’t matter if it’s some make money online program, although in this situation, few are legit (like Wealthy Affiliate).
• It doesn’t matter if it’s any none mainstream network.

3) Do not look at AM as a get rich quick scheme, otherwise, there is a 100% chance that you will fail (read why).

I began this business in 2005 but it was because I chased that get rich quick approach to succeeding in it, that I failed for YEARS. 

Invest at least 1 year into this business if you are serious about getting started and if you are, start with the Wealthy Affiliate program and FOLLOW through with their training.

If you run into people who have never been able to make AM work for them, I guarantee you that it was because they were rushing, they weren’t using a good training program and/or they were NOT patient and didn’t understand that it takes time.

So let’s get to these case studies…

I’ll start with summaries of my own projects that have worked. Now these personal case studies involve me promoting different programs, across different sites, via different methods such as through free traffic method and others, through paid traffic methods.

Regardless, do NOT forget about that 1 formula I showed above, because despite the different sites I’ve run and the methods by which I’ve monetized on them, at it’s core, that 1 formula was always present and still is…

1) This make money online site.

As of now, this very website has grossed well over $300,000, and the profits are all made via AM. 99% of all the promotions on this site promote the Wealthy Affiliate program I’ve been talking about. You can actually see almost all of my income reports here. I’ve been documenting them since 2015.

There are other make money online programs/promotions I occasionally add like other programs I also find to be good as well, but overall, because I believe so much in the WA program, it is why I am loyal to it and still recommend it. It has the best training for beginners and the price of it is so low that the customer is the real winner.

I’ve had numerous opportunities (and even bribes, technically speaking) to promote very expensive and in some cases unethical high ticket programs. I’ve disliked that a lot, so have stuck to mainly promoting WA and the site has been growing little by little.

• In 2018, it earned over $65,000. 
• In 2019, I hope to get close to $100,000 in earnings.
• In 2020, I hope to double the income from 2019 because I am VERY focused on paid traffic generation to get more sales for this site.

So far, here are the 2019 reports:

2) A small drone site of mine.

I have the case study of my drone site here. It’s earned a few $100 and is slowly growing. I recently added Adsense to it and it makes about $50 a month. Considering I do NO paid traffic generation for it. Earning about $50-$100 a month from this site isn’t bad.

Now while Adsense is not a form of AM, the drones I sell on the site are and some of them have made me $20-$70 commissions. I’ve sold a few of them in addition to other products.

I always tell people that the main reason I don’t earn more from this site is because I don’t work on it enough. My first case study above this is where I invest most of my time.

3) A weird niche involving “something” called mud running.

A few years ago, I came upon a sport that turned into a hobby and it is called mud running. I ran a number of races, each of which always had a TON of other people participating in it.

Because my mind is so internet marketing oriented, I began to brainstorm about making a niche site about this subject and selling gear and accessories for people who look to do it and viola, I did. Here is the info on my mud run site.

This one makes a little bit more than the drone site I have and gets over 100 visitors a day. And if you do the research (Well let me save you time), you’ll find that MILLIONS of people love this sport and engage in it WORLDWIDE. But here is a sample of how much it earned from one month (it’s not a lot, but they are all affiliate sales):

The affiliate marketing I do on that site is pretty interesting, as I sell hiking shoes, GoPro cameras, special clothing for these events and more. And yes an affiliate, I have access to promote ALL of these things, for free through programs like Amazon Associates.

4) YouTube videos work for AM. Here’s at least one success story…

The very same mud run site I just talked about, I also neglected to mention that I sell backpacks for these races, and on one occasion I decided to create a simple video reviewing the one I use for these events (and hikes).

I was out on a hike with a friend of mine and the idea to review it came up and so we did. Here is the actual video I made:

I promoted the backpack in the video, by simply linking to the Amazon page to buy it and I’ve had dozens of sales for this product in the process. All of this is from free YouTube traffic, so every commission earned is 100% profit.

Now in this situation, the skills I acquired in AM allowed me to create this simple video and thus the sales.

5, 6 and 7. More YouTube + AM success stories.

In this part, I have 3 examples to share with you, ALL of which are YouTube videos where I reviewed a specific make money online program and directly linked people to join Wealthy Affiliate. All of these videos in my opinion were accurately commenting on the program I was reviewing and explaining where WA was better and each of them has produced it’s own sales for me, some in the $1,000’s.

Here is a YouTube case study compilation where you’ll actually be able to see the same videos I made to promote this program.

8) A micro niche blog. $5,000+ in sales.

Out of all the personal case studies I’ve had, this one is the “luckiest” one because it involves an old blog I had set up that I wasn’t building up. But this happened which caused one blog post on that site to skyrocket for a popular keyword term.

That brought it traffic, and allowed me to take advantage of it, insert an affiliate promotion into that post, and thus monetize through it.

9) One page sites also work (if you know how to do it). This one produced $100k-$200k.

When you become more experienced in AM, you will find ways to seek out opportunities such as capitalizing on big trends. In the case of this particular story, I found a popular niche topic VERY early on, which meant that there was NO competition for it and created VERY cheap ads on Bing Ads that brought in 1,000’s of clicks and visits to a one page site I created.

That page promoted an affiliate product and thus brought me in the income I mentioned above. Here are details on this case study and you will literally see a check I earned from this project for over $20,000!

Note: There are MANY niches to make this kind of money from and here are 100 for you to consider! 

10) AM done for me (I hired a freelance writer).

If you can manage to find yourself a legit freelance writer who knows how to blog, KEEP that person and pay them well. That’s what happened in this case study where I didn’t have time to build up a website on how to stop hair loss so what I did was, I hired someone I knew understood how to blog and paid him $20-$30 an article. 

I just gave him popular keywords to target when he would write the blog posts for that site. As a result of doing this, the website in question grew and made occasional sales. It doesn’t get a lot of traffic, but it makes sales none the less because the niche topic is a very hungry one where the audience is quite honestly, desperate to get solutions and I made sure that this site was offering the right ones for them. 

The affiliate products I promote through this site are very simple:

Supplements for hair growth, shampoos and similar products of that nature. All of them are legit, but they pay very little in regards to commissions, so the key with this site is to grow the amount of people visiting it, thus increasing the commissions, so those small ones would add up.

It’s honestly not a big success because I just stopped paying attention to it, but with the recent realization that I still have this, the drone site and mud run site just sitting around without new content coming in, I figured it would be a SMART investment to get this same writer (or others with the same qualifications) to write on those pages and grow them while I focus on the bigger earning sites/projects. 

Now this case study should only be used by already successful affiliate marketers who have extra money to spend on outsourcing to trusted freelance clients. Do not do this if you’re a beginner!

Ok, so I lied (There’s more than 50 case studies I have to share with you).

I already wrote about 10 of my personal case studies, but going into 11-50 is going to make this article extremely long and while that’s not bad, the truth is, I already wrote the detailed case studies in bulk in other articles. So here they are:

Here’s 9 additional case studies on friends of mine who also do AM and how well it does for them (I’m the 10th person on that list).

Now there are people who specifically use the Amazon program and promote from it as affiliates and how well they are doing. I have a case study post of Amazon affiliate success stories here.

And here are 10 affiliate success stories of people who are within the Wealthy Affiliate program that get results with it. So that makes about 40. And And here’s a whole bunch more from the same program (and the results people get):

And with these additional 9, we are now close to 50. So here’s a link to about 30 more (making it 80+).

And once again, I need to mention that ALL of these case studies involved people using that 1 formula. If you want to learn how to use this same formula and become a successful case study, start here with Wealthy Affiliate. This is how it’s done!

So if you’ve been wondering if AM is truly profitable, I hope these 80+ case studies have answered that, so with that said, start your journey to becoming a +1 on this case studies list!

Note: Want to see 100 niches that would be great for you to start an affiliate marketing business from? Click that link I just gave you and you’ll see a bunch of ideas!