Is paid advertising necessary to be a successful affiliate marketer?

[ornum]

I'm new here, so firstly I'd like to say hey!

I've been researching into affiliate marketing quite a lot and find it very interesting, but as someone who would like to give it a try without putting cash up front for PPC campaigns etc, I was wondering if paid advertising is neccecery to make a decent income from affiliate marketing?

Obviousely, paid advertising will provide a far greater chance of making conversions and I'm not against using it sometime in the future if all was to go well. However, it would be nice to see a light at the end of the tunnel before shelling out the readies and possibly seeing everything go arse over tit.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Ron Bechdolt]

Hi ornum!

Good question and comes up here regularly. A recent post here pretty much gives you the generally accepted thought on it.

 

[Travis_Ecomleads]

No, there are many affiliates who make money off of organic sites. However, you will get a lot more traffic, and generally higher converting traffic, through a good PPC campaign.

But no, you do not need to do PPC to make money. Just do some good seo and get your site up in the organic listings.

 

[motivebrendan]

Paying for PPC these days is a shot in the arm -it can really grow your revenue quick of course it could also crush you. I do like this strategy but to do it right you have to take the risks. But no its not a must you can grow slow on organic SEO.

However, the questions was not only PPC it was is paid ads needed. I would say yes eventually you will have to invest back into your business through some sort of paid advertising if you want to grow.

The ability to work hard, and take financial risk this is what most people lack. How do I make money without spending it or working too much I hear this a lot. - I'm not talking about you - I'm just saying If most people have that mindset think of the opportunity out there for those who don't.

So yup I think you have to spend.

 

[Dane Grey]

Welcome to 5 star!

I would recommend making sure you can afford to "lose" some money on Pay Per Click campaigns, it can be a very expensive process if you are just starting out. There is much to know, keyword research is very important and you need to choose relevant keywords that are also relevant to your web page content. If the relevance is not there, Google will penalize you by hiking up your keyword prices. It has happened to a lot of people, the only way to get around this is to tweak your campaigns and make sure they are very, very specific. Way too much to explain here, but the short answer is that if you don't know what you are doing, it is best to steer clear until you get some income under your belt, say with article marketing, because that's free. You have to be very prolific with your writing to achieve this, though. I would say writing at least one article per day would be your goal. The more articles you have out there on the same topic that all link to each other and your site, the better chance you have of getting traffic.

The main thing to remember is that affiliate marketing is not a "get rich quick" thing, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication and if you can put that into it, it will definitely pay off. Don't give up and keep checking back into the forum here for advice and support.

 

[Anomaly]

Adding to what Dane has said ...

making money through organic (free) methods is a great way to start out ... be it article writing, setting up squidoo lenses, there are many methods ... the main difference i would say in this ... in organic, anything you do will generally take a bit of time to have an impact ... so, don't write an article and necessarily expect results overnight, but keep writing articles and as traffic builds up you will get more and more likely to get a sale

 

[ornum]

Thanks for the information guys. Over the past 2-3 years I have researched into various traffic building techniques including article marketing, SEO, PPC, forum marketing, private advertising to name a few but never in the interest of affiliate marketing. I was wondering, for the people on these boards that use free traffic streams, do you.....

a) Run a content rich website or blog on which you promote your affiliate product(s) and direct your traffic to.
b) Direct free traffic to a landing page for a specific product.
c) Direct free traffic to a landing page for a selection of products.

I'm a firm believer that quality content pays off with any type of website, but when it comes to affiliate marketing I also have an inkling that a website concentrating around many different topics may distract the reader from what you are ultimately attempting to do, which is to sell them something. What is your opinion on this?

 

[myfreeforum]

If you are just getting started, I would try to use sweat equity as much as possible rather than paid advertising.

I have been doing this for about 8 years now, and probably generate 20 percent of my revenue from ppc. The rest is by optimizing for search engines, and other means of drawing traffic in that costs me time, but not actual cash.

Of course, some people who are very good at ppc make a lot more money than I do. But lots of people make a lot less money, especially after they deduct their ppc expenses.

 

[seo-affiliate]

There are advantages & disadvantages to both paid and organic.

The advantages of Paid Search is that you can start today and get traffic immediately, but the down side is that the learning curve can be expensive. If the payout is high enough and not highly competitive, it is just a numbers game. - How many leads do you need before you make a sale; then look at the total cost of leads vs. affiliate commission (and leave room for returns).

The advantages to organic is lower cost, but the down side is that it doesn't normally come overnight. Of course, matching blogging and Social Media can bring immediate traffic, but unless you are already in the niche and are connecting with a buying audience, it's just traffic and not targeted traffic that will convert.

I always have favored organic becuase it just makes the ROI that much higher.

hope that helps.

 

[jcorkern]

You can trade cash for sweat equity, labor is just like cash if you do the work yourself and you can get huge returns with time without any money spent other than time. I have done it, and have seen a few others do it.

Well almost no money, you need a URL and hosting.

 

[Bryan Zimmerman]

For someone just starting out I would stay away from PPC unless you either can afford a coach or you just have money your not scared of losing.

SEO can bring you money for years to come with little expense other than time. When a PPC campaign winds down you have to take out expenses and decide if you are willing to keep forking out money for something. With SEO it takes longer to get to but once you get there it's on auto pilot for the most part.