If you’re considering doing affiliate marketing and want to know how much you can make, I’m here to tell you that it’s quite substantial.
And I am about to show you my personal stats for multiple sites and other types of projects where I do this and how well it works, and here’s one preview (of many):
But despite that, let me make a few disclaimers:
1) It’s not an easy business.
2) It takes a lot of work for 1 site to become huge and make sales. How much you make as an affiliate marketer often varies on the work put in and…
3) If you work hard, implement proper techniques, you can make well over a full time income.
4) This business can become one of the most rewarding things you can ever do. There’s a peace that comes in knowing that you can go anywhere, and pick your own hours, while an entire website business is doing work for you, but again, you have to REACH that point before you experience that…
5) Here’s my about me information if you would like to know more about me personally. But if you’re fine with that and want to see how much you can make with affiliate marketing, continue onward and we’ll start with the definition of it:
Using that example, allow me to share:
My personal affiliate marketing case studies:
The following are examples of successful projects I had in which I utilized different forms of traffic generation, but ultimately used affiliate marketing to make money through them all:
Case 1: I compiled an email list, sent out an email blast and made over $1,500 in a few days.
One my first gigantic breakthroughs in affiliate marketing was during the time when article directories were a huge thing (many years ago).
I mainly wrote for a site called “Ezinearticles.com” and several of the dozens of articles I wrote ended up becoming “viral”, amassing 10,000’s of reads and in some cases well over a 100,000.
What I did with this traffic from all these articles is I created a short squeeze page (where people sign up with an email) and gave away a short eBook on weight loss that I personally wrote. Over the span of a few months, I ended up getting 10,000’s of subscribers.
One day, I sent out an email blast to the list promoting a diet product which paid me $20-$30 per sale. I ended up making about 100 sales in this endeavor, over a period of several days, the total of which was $1,500 and sales still kept coming in after that (not everyone opened the email or got to it quickly).
And in this case, through using affiliate marketing and email list building, I was able to do pretty well with it.
Note: Do not use article directories anymore. They are not good ways to generate traffic anymore. I’ll explain what’s better below.
Case 2: Created a short YouTube video promoting an expensive backpack.
I have a 4 minute video I made on YouTube where I’m standing on a mountain ledge reviewing a popular hydration pack (backpack with water pack inside) and I’ve been able to make numerous sales by just making this short video, and in the description providing an affiliate link for people to buy it (off Amazon).
This took VERY little work and it still pays me today. For each sale made, I only make $5, but considering the work I put in which was next to nothing, it’s not bad at all!
Here’s another video example, but in this, over a few years, the video I made grossed $10,000+.
Note: For your own reference, YouTube does NOT allow affiliate links to be placed in annotations within a YouTube video, only in the description, so make sure you know this. You can however DIRECTLY link to a product/program within your description and that works very well.
Overall, I explain all of my YouTube affiliate marketing projects here and estimate I made about $20k in sales.
Case 3: One of my best examples to date ($1,000’s per day doing the following).
One of the best ways to generate EXTREMELY large profits over a short period of time is to find a popular trending product. Those get a lot of attention from the internet and by setting up things such as ads which promote it OR utilize it’s popularity and promote something else, you can make a fortunate in a short time.
I don’t want to re-explain the whole case study, but it’s explained in great detail here where a 1 page site made me 6 figures.
It involved promoting a high paying diet program while leveraging the popularity of another big diet program that was trending at the time on TV and on the internet. I was getting 1,000’s of clicks a day on my ads and making $1,000’s a day in the process (it was a good time to be an affiliate marketer!).
Now so far, out of all the examples I listed, this is the only one where I actually paid for advertising to get traffic, and its a risky play, but it paid off BIG time for me in this case.
Case 4: Targeting high ticket niches and making websites off them.
I’ve wrote about this several times, but high ticket niches can be one of the biggest money generators for affiliate marketers as each sale made can really make you a lot. In my case, I am currently running a drone site where so far I’ve sold 2 drones (the site is still in it’s infancy so to speak) for a little over $100 in total as well as accessories that pay me a few dollars (people love to buy accessories for drones).
Thus far this site doesn’t get a lot of search traffic because I’m still building it up (It’s gotten about 2,000 visits over 3-4 months, which isn’t really huge), but the whole thing about this is that sales have been made indicating potential and should I continue scaling and building up the site, thus multiplying that traffic, those existing sales could easily multiply and yes I am working on doing that.
Drones are just 1 example of high ticket niches. Here’s more high ticket niches.
Note the keyword in that article is “ethical” as not all high ticket niches are like that, let alone niches in general. Please make sure the one you get involved in is legitimate and doesn’t rip people off.
Case 5: Multiple niche sites, each on their own can make you more than enough to live off.
I have 2 more examples (technically making it 6), but the basic idea here is that I pick a niche, make a site on the niche and sell products. The 2 sites in this case each get 100’s of visits a day, I am actively building them up daily by writing more content on them and as an affiliate selling at least 1 program on that pays me pretty well!
For affiliate program 1, I used a training program called Wealthy Affiliate bootcamp to get these results and that by the way is another case study you need to check out!
For affiliate program 2, it was mainly a promotion of a weight loss program called the 2 week diet.
Here are the stats:
My final thoughts: To succeed with affiliate marketing and make good money:
You need to remember those 3 things I mentioned at the very beginning of this article. These numbers I listed didn’t just happen from doing nothing. I had to learn the right material on this stuff and then I had to work hard for this.
Now every single bit of success I’ve had with these 5 cases has stemmed from one program that showed me all these ways to do it:
Now another important disclaimer I need to make is that I can go on an on about the types of sites I’ve made that have made money through affiliate marketing, but the truth is, it’s really not a lot.
I’ve had A LOT of failures and attempts at what I though would do well, only to see it fail, but the truth is, just 1 site is often enough to provide you with all you need. I’ve just had a lot of years of experiments and time to practice different strategies and I have had multiple success stories as such, but in the end, if you’re looking to become successful at this, start with that Wealthy Affiliate program I talked about and let them teach you to do what I did and how you saw how well that worked.
Update: My full affiliate earnings revealed ($1 Million).
While this article explained many of my successes within this business, I updated it and really went into the details of HOW the money was made. If you’d like to learn how I did it, here you go:
That article is very long, but if you’re seeking the best way to learn this business and succeed at it, there is no better article I would recommend.
Hi Vitaliy,
Thanks for the post. I’ve been trying to earn money with affiliate marketing for 2 months, not getting results yet, but after watching your post, I believe I’m on the right path. I’m constantly learning how to make money with affiliate marketing, like you said, it’s not an easy business, but I have the faith I can do it. 🙂
Hi Daniel, depending on which type of affiliate marketing strategy you’re using, 2 months is still very early. Perhaps there are some things you could be doing differently that I can help you correct. Let me know what you’re currently doing on your site and I’ll see if it’s right.
Hey Vitaliy,
There is a lot of really powerful information on this page. I like how you use different examples with your own experience. That really shows authority in the content. What would you say is the best approach to getting a first page index? Can you accomplish this with good content alone or do you need backlinks and social media links too?
Hi Brett, firstly, thank you! In regards to your question, I have a particular point of view many marketers may find to be unorthodox in this regard:
My overall position on first page rankings is that high page authority, high quality content in large amounts is what is needed to hit first page rankings, but it is also dependent on the keyword for which you are trying to get that high position for. You may sometimes have a high authority site, but not always reach first page positions. This is a 100% guaranteed to happen in SEO and it’s OK, keep growing the site.
As for backlinks and social media stuff that you asked, my position is NOT to use backlink services. Instead encourage on page comments and shares by just asking people to tell you what they think of the topic and share it with friends. This is a natural form of backlinking that I find works and also helps the site grow.
I’ve written a lot about getting first page rankings awhile back and I recommend checking that out, but overall, this is my advice for getting it (and it’s 100% guaranteed that you will), but overall, it’s not something you control, it’s something Google decides. The best you can do is set up the site so that the odds of that increase.
Hey there Vitaliy,
I have been considering building a really profitable website for myself but didn’t quite know how much I could make from the effort I’d have to put in. Thanks for much for the recommendation of using high ticket niches like washing machine and laptops. I think this is what I will use and promote washing machines.
You’ve really helped me. Thanks.
Hi Dave, no problem. Before you move forward, I would suggest you carefully look at this niche (washing machines) and see if you like it. Don’t just sell high ticket items because you can make good money, sell it because you know something about it and can help the audience figure it out too.
Hello there Vitaliy,
I am really encouraged by the stats you have shared with us. I am just starting out with a new website and I have been tempted a few times to lose hope and call it quits.
But posts like these keep me moving and the tips you have offered in the beginning of the post remind me that I am not the only one who is facing challenges with online businesses. Thanks a lot.
No problem Dave, I’m glad this post fueled you to push forward. This is a problem I encountered MANY times over my years in internet marketing. Is there anything specific you are stuck in this business? Perhaps I can suggest a path that will help you succeed.
Vitally you have an amazing site and have had tremendous success from Wealthy Affiliate. What I love reading is that you are scaling your business up with additional niche markets and even piggybacking off popular TV Informercials.
Paid ads, e-mail marketing, blogging, and social media all go hand in hand and while we differ on opinions of how poor the use of e-zine and article directory marketing affects your business, I will tell people you are not wrong in what you have said, you just don’t see the direct traffic numbers and syndication properties of these article sites.
SEO is damaged because even a quality directory is seen by Google as a way to cheat the system just as traffic exchanges and safelists are seen as ways to manipulate traffic numbers etc…
But I have several articles that have been working for me on e-zine articles and forums for some time. Traffic isn’t what it use to be but every visitor counts.
Hi Andy, I suppose there is still a case to be made to use Ezinearticles and YES, people do indeed still get traffic, but it is completely dwarfed by the traffic numbers a site can get. Suppose you compare 2 keyword terms that are written on Ezinearticles and on a website. In the long run, the website can get far higher traffic numbers if it can rank on the first page of Google. And ezine article however will not have a chance of doing that, because of it’s reduced authority in Google.
So as a person seeking traffic and business growth, I’d much rather concentrate on writing articles on my own site and building up the authority there, vs having a small, yet immediate surge in traffic from writing an article on Ezinearticles.com.
Hello Vitaliy, thank you for allowing us to see your personal information. Very good testimonial on what can be achieved with affiliate marketing, so long as you are willing to work. Are all your sites dealing with dieting and making money through affiliate marketing or do you have other sites?
Actually, I have various niche sites at the moment, but the biggest earner is my online marketing site Harvey. I have 2 diet websites, but only 1 is bringing in some money. The truth is, I am currently exploring a different way for it to monetize, but it has made $1,000’s before.
I am also currently engaged in creating and testing hungry niche websites.
Hey. affiliate marketing looks very interesting. I’ve looked for a lot of ways to create an online business and chose affiliate marketing. I realize that this is not an easy business, but I am determined to succeed. I want to create a blog and make videos on YouTube. Do you think that directing people from YouTube to your own website will be a good strategy?
Depending on the niche you choose, I’d say yes Michael. I even made a case study regarding YouTube and how I made sales doing videos there.
That’s very impressive how well you’ve done with affiliate marketing over the years. I guess that goes to show they hard work, patience, and just trying new things literally pays off at the end.
I have been reading your site for some time now, and I knew about a couple sites that were successful for you — I however didn’t know about your YouTube videos.
It seems YouTube has also been good to you. Do you still make videos on a regular basis to sell products, or drive more traffic to your sites — or would you say writing content is better?
Hi Michael, honestly, my experience with creating YouTube videos is a lot less than with writing content, so for now I’d say the latter is better. However, I am in the process of building a website and YouTube channel entirely devoted to pretty much doing the same thing I am doing on this site, just in video format and seeing how this affects my sales/traffic and overall stats. This is a very interesting experiment that has a lot of potential that I am VERY much looking forward to testing and I will be providing a case study in the near future on my results through this.
Hi
Thanks for giving some useful tips for affiliate marketers to get sales. I have a multiple niche sites and I am not getting many sales and now after reading your post, I have got my morale boosted. Your case studies will be very useful to me and I will start following these steps. For email list building, which free plugin would you suggest to be the best? Thanks again.
Hi, I don’t use free tools for list building but I do use Aweber and it’s pretty cheap and can hold 10,000’s of subscribers for pretty small prices.
Those are some great stats! I’ve been thinking of building a second website in a high ticket niche. I thought about drones, but watches sound interesting as well! They are indeed crazy expensive, but hey…if people are buying, then you can make money! I would only find it hard to create content on 2 sites at once, because I don’t have that much time…
While a lot of people spend big money on things like drones and watches, believe me, you need to have a VERY extensive experience with each topic to provide excellent content for these audiences. The money is there, but it won’t come unless you know the niche and if you don’t know it, and then on top of that try to write content for 2 sites, it will only cause problems. It’s better to do just one and even consider a niche site that isn’t high ticket oriented.