How I Made Money on Amazon
In today’s article, you’ll learn how I achieved my first sale as an Amazon affiliate, what I went through, how long it took, and the commission I earned
Non-Medium members read the full post here.
Introduction
Hello, my dear readers and loyal followers!
As you can gather from the title, the topic of today’s article is making money online with the help of affiliate marketing through Amazon.
Let’s clarify something right from the start: this isn’t another article about the “secrets of affiliate marketing and special secret methods” intended to teach you how to do it.
The internet is full of such articles, and most of them are complete trash designed to lure clicks, likes, and views or sell you something.
Today, we will talk about my personal experience with affiliate marketing, my thoughts, the earnings I achieved, how much time and effort I put into it, and how profitable this market actually is.
First Encounter
My first encounter with the term “affiliate marketing” was about four to five years ago, and I heard it from my wife, who frequently came across it while surfing the internet looking for ways to make money online.
I had never heard the term before, and when my wife quickly explained what it was about, I became quite interested because, who wouldn’t want to make money quickly and easily online?
At least, it looked that way at first glance!
This is what an Affiliate Link looks like: https://amzn.to/3RujOfn
I grabbed my keyboard and started exploring the vast depths of the internet, and as you can imagine, after typing “Affiliate Marketing” into Google, I came across thousands of articles, videos, social media advice, etc.
At first, I was amazed by the sheer amount of advice and people willing to help me completely for free, with no charge, literally $0.00.
All these people, gurus, advisors, experts, and others in affiliate marketing were at my fingertips, just a click away, ready for me to use and learn all about the trade secrets. All I had to do was read, watch, or listen to their advice, and the money would start flowing!
Internet Gurus and Experts, Oh Those Wonderful People
Oh, how wonderful the internet seemed then, and how easy it was to make money online. If thousands of people were doing it so easily and quickly as they described in their articles or videos, I thought, I’m not any worse or dumber; I can do it too.
I read and watched everything I could find on the internet about this topic, and it seemed like such an easy way to make money that I wondered why more people weren’t getting into it when it was so simple.
Hundreds of YouTube gurus and blogger experts explained the affiliate marketing process in such a clear, simple, and accessible way that I was already counting my earnings and piling up money in my head.
“Create a blog, write a few articles, or make some videos, then stuff them with affiliate links and just wait for the clicks,” the gurus said.
“It’s the simplest form of passive income while you sleep, and it doesn’t require much effort; the money just flows,” the bloggers explained.
So, we naturally plunged into the world of affiliate marketing and decided to start our business through Facebook, YouTube, and our blog.
First Steps in the Affiliate World
The first thing I tried was Facebook because it seemed the easiest. You post a few posts with lots of affiliate links, and that’s it!
Boom!
The first bombshell surprise was that Facebook doesn’t allow affiliate links; you have to do it through private groups you create or drive traffic to your blog through non-affiliate links.
Okay, then we’ll create a group and a blog, and the money will start flowing!
After a short research, my wife and I created a Facebook group and started sharing links, but the blog was a more serious matter and required more knowledge and effort, of course.
While waiting for the money to start coming in on Facebook, we divided the tasks: I handled the technical part of the blog while my wife wrote articles. And we encountered new tough problems, as we did not know either.
We solved this by turning again to the almighty YouTube gurus and internet experts for advice on the topic.
As time went by, we encountered new problems at every step, and their solutions always required new videos and articles on various topics. Our “online business” turned into constant learning, 24/7.
Needless to say, we hadn’t earned a cent yet, even though we sometimes worked 10–12 hours a day!
Little by little, we began to realize that affiliate marketing wasn’t as easy as many advertised, and we understood that the vast majority of videos, articles, and social media posts were complete trash. These people were just trying to collect clicks, and likes, or sell us something.
I must mention that among all the trash you’ll find online, there are indeed people who create excellent and high-quality content and are genuinely dedicated to teaching you something. However, they are rare, and it takes a lot of effort to find them.
Learning, Learning, and More Learning
As we slowly progressed in the online world, the problems became bigger and harder, because affiliate marketing is a serious business and should be approached as such. If you’re starting as a complete beginner, you need to educate and prepare yourself for it.
Our Facebook and blog still weren’t bringing in money, as we discovered that it required a lot of visitor traffic, and we were still fresh and hadn’t managed to position ourselves on search engines.
Speaking of blog visitor traffic, I must tell you that to achieve this, you need knowledge of SEO optimization, which of course requires additional education and learning.
As you can see, at this stage, our online workday was still all about learning, and as we later realized, if you want to be competitive in the online business, learning must never stop.
With all the work we had with Facebook, the blog, and constant daily education, we decided to try YouTube, as we read or heard somewhere that it’s the fastest way to make money from affiliate marketing.
Of course, YouTube wasn’t the promised land of affiliate marketing either, and we didn’t manage to earn a cent from it, no matter how hard we tried, filmed, or edited videos.
You can imagine how our days looked, filled with writing, filming videos, and constant learning, still without earning a cent!!!
For some time, we struggled and worked hard, learning a ton of things, but the money just wasn’t coming, so we finally decided to explore other forms of online income and at least temporarily stop with affiliate marketing.
We simply weren’t ready, nor sufficiently educated on this topic, so the right time for affiliate marketing hadn’t come yet.
Money to the Roof
We turned to freelance, surveys, writing here on Medium, and cryptocurrencies, and I can freely say that we succeeded in all of them and made money.
What brought us the most money was, of course, cryptocurrencies, but everything else still contributes to our household budget. Just from surveys, we earn an average of $100–200 per month.
Affiliate marketing was thus on hold for several years, and I decided to give it another chance here on Medium.
Medium turned out to be an excellent, perhaps the best platform for writing so far, bringing me a steady income that isn’t very large but is always there.
Moreover, Medium has a completely open policy towards affiliate marketing and affiliate links within articles, so it seemed like a great place to try again and give it another shot.
My first affiliate commission was earned right here on Medium recently and very quickly after publishing an article!
This is the screenshot of my first Amazon Affiliate Commission and don’t worry it’s not so big:
I can freely say that what I couldn’t achieve on other platforms for years, Medium gave me in a very short period of a few months!
Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is a job, a real job that requires learning, effort, and time to achieve results, and it’s not one of those “get rich quick” schemes advertised by gurus.
The hardest thing to achieve, and unattainable for many people for various reasons in affiliate marketing, is generating enough visitor traffic so that some of those people click on the link and buy something through you, earning you a commission.
My article had no intention of discouraging you from this business; on the contrary, it aimed to encourage those who want to try, that effort will pay off, but don’t be fooled by lies about easy money.
Every job, including online work, requires sacrifice!
While workers in the real world struggle physically and get physically tired from work, don’t think that online work is much easier, as mental work that lasts for hours and days is sometimes far more exhausting and takes a greater toll on sleep and health!
Make an effort, and your effort will surely be rewarded!
In this article, you will find some links that are affiliate links. If you click on one of those links and buy something we will get a small fee, but that fee is not charged to you, instead it is paid to us by the product owner or reseller. This way you can buy excellent products researched and reviewed by us without any additional cost to you!
Your shopping with our help can be so much fun and a positive adventure because our motto is:
Save your nerves, and save your money,
shopping with us is so easy and funny!
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Greetings and until my next article!
Neo77
