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Hello hello everybody and welcome back. I hope everyone is doing well and I am thrilled that you’ve decided to join us here today. In this article I want to push back against this sentiment out there that affiliate marketing is not a legitimate business. It seems to come up every single year. Whether it is 2010 or 2020, some people have a hard time coming to grips with just what a good and legitimate business opportunity affiliate marketing is.
There is some reason for people to have this apprehension about affiliate marketing. In the early days, there were a lot of affiliate marketing training products that were designed to take your money and do nothing for you. A lot of that has gone away. A lot of networks where that type of product was available have instituted checks and balances to make sure that they’re not just there to take advantage of people.
But here in 2020 affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online. Whether you’re running a YouTube channel or an Instagram account or a traditional written blog affiliate marketing can be the foundation for a full-time Business Online. There are people out there right now burning hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars through affiliate marketing and everything that comes along with it.
So let’s look at a few reasons why Affiliate marketing is a legitimate business opportunity for anyone looking to build a passive income Business Online.
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Why Affiliate Marketing Is Legitimate
Affiliate Marketing Is Just Advertising, Really
If you really want to break it down to its core component all affiliate marketing really is is advertising. It’s simply advertising that is built into the content. When you write a review for a product whether you intended or not, you are essentially advertising that product.
Even if it’s a bad review and people come to your site and click on it that is still advertising that product that may not put it in the best light but it is still getting that product name out there and I have written reviews about products that are terrible and made a little bit of money off of them because people just decided to buy that product through my review. Even though the review warns them off to no end.
It’s one of the craziest things about affiliate marketing sometimes no matter what you do people are going to buy that product and you were going to get a commission off of it. But the point is it’s just advertising. And it’s a completely legitimate form of business especially online.
You Are Promoting Products, Nothing More
At the end of the day affiliate marketing is simply the promotion of products. These products are handled and delivered by a separate company and you are simply promoting those products.
There’s absolutely nothing illegitimate about that. Especially if you are honest about which products you like and dislike. When you do a review of a product and put an affiliate link in there that is an honest opinion of that product and when someone values your opinion and decides to buy a product based on that opinion, that is affiliate marketing at its purest.
How affiliate marketing got such a bad reputation and one that would lead people to even ask the question “is affiliate marketing legit” is pretty murky, to begin with. I think it comes from a lot of the affiliate marketing training programs that were prevalent for the last decade or so and we’re just overpriced and not very good.
This led to a lot of people to try out affiliate marketing, fail at it, and then tell everyone they knew that it was a whole big scam and that you can’t make any money out of it. That’s simply not true. Affiliate marketing is a legitimate business model and one of the most ubiquitous and widespread business models on the internet. Which leads us to our next Point affiliate marketing is absolutely everywhere.
Affiliate Marketing Is Everywhere
If You have spent any amount of time on the internet then you have come across affiliate marketing on a daily basis I can almost guarantee it. Whether you’re watching a YouTube video with links in the description or reading an Instagram story with affiliate links to the product that that influence her just showed you.
Or maybe you went to a Blog looking for a review of green tea. Chances are that review contained affiliate links. And if you clicked on that link and bought some green tea from Amazon or Buddha Teas can the owner of that website and that affiliate link got a small commission for their promotional work.
and it’s not just a little guy that uses affiliate marketing. Many of these hotel booking sites or flight booking sites or travel sites that you see with advertising and commercials are simply affiliate marketing sites. They are the middleman between the consumer and the hotel. They get the word out they promote the rooms and the seats on the flight and they get a commission for each passenger or occupant it’s a sign-up.
That is affiliate marketing.
Many of the largest websites on the planet use affiliate marketing. MSN will run stories that include affiliate links to make a profit off of them. Huffington Post has articles that are affiliate marketing articles. typically these articles come in the form of top 10 list or the best products to buy from this or that sale. But they are affiliate marketing at their core.
There Is Nothing Shady Or Illegal About It
Many of the largest website on the planet use affiliate marketing. MSN will run stories that include affiliate links to make profit off of them. Huffington Post has articles that are affiliate marketing articles. typically these articles come in the form of top 10 list or the best products to buy from this or that sale. But they are affiliate marketing at their core.
Ask yourself this question. If there was something Shady or illegal or illegitimate about affiliate marketing would you see these large websites doing it. Would they risk their millions $5 in potential profit on something that is not legitimate?
Would the biggest affiliate marketing program on the planet be run by amazon.com? If affiliate marketing weren’t legitimate would Amazon risk their billions by building an affiliate program that is 20+ years old? The answer is of course not.
Affiliate marketing is a legit business model. You are simply acting as a middleman to drive traffic to a particular website or business. That’s all affiliate marketing is.
Affiliate Marketers Are Just Middle-Men
You were just a middleman as an affiliate marketer. Your job is to take your audience that you have built a relationship with and point them in the direction of products that you enjoy using or that you think might be beneficial to them.
You don’t handle the products, you don’t handle the credit cards, you don’t handle the inventory, all you do is create the content that people come and read or View and then the consumer makes a decision on whether or not you are a knowledgeable and respectable source of information and then make a product purchase based on that.
That is all affiliate marketing is. There’s nothing about it that isn’t legitimate. In fact, if you look at it from the flipside you are giving your consumers and unbiased opinion of someone that’s just like them. Another consumer that has used the product and hopefully liked it enough to give it a good review. Now you were taking that and simply getting a commission for it.
You can make the argument that some people might be disingenuous with their reviews the bad is going to happen at times no matter where you absorb your content. It’s up to the consumer to decide whether or not the value that content and that information that you as an affiliate marketer of providing. All you can do is provide it in an easy to absorb and respectable way.
Closing Thoughts
That wraps up our look at affiliate marketing as a legitimate business opportunity. The truth is I probably have to write this article again next year. But that’s perfectly fine because I want everyone to understand that this is an opportunity. There is nothing illegitimate about affiliate marketing.
Are there scammers out there are their dishonest people out there using affiliate marketing to try and get your money, absolutely. But there are those same dishonest people trying to get your money any way they possibly can. The point is there are scammers in every single business model out there,
But that doesn’t make those business models any left legitimate. The same is true of affiliate marketing. My hope is that if you are thinking about jumping into affiliate marketing by building a website or a YouTube channel that this has helped us wait for any of those fears that it might not be completely aboveboard. It absolutely is.
In fact, now is one of the best times to jump into it. More and more people around the world are coming online more and more people are comfortable spending their money online and more and more people are looking for honest opinions of other regular people and that is where affiliate marketing truly shines.
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Thank you for stopping by and have a wonderful day.