Is Affiliate Marketing a Scam? Is $10,000/Month REALLY Possible?

After seeing some people making tens or even thousands of dollars per month with affiliate marketing, you may have asked this question from yourself, "Is affiliate marketing a scam?"

I have been making money online with affiliate marketing already for a few years so I know that affiliate marketing is not a scam. However, I understand the reasons why you may be asking that question

In this article, I am going to give you a very comprehensive answer to this question and also show how affiliate marketing works in practice. I am sure you will find this helpful and valuable.

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Affiliate marketing is simply the process of earning money (a commission) by promoting other people's or company's products.

Christina Piccoli has written a wonderful affiliate marketing guide for beginners that I highly recommend reading if you want to learn how it works from A to Z and how you can get started right away. 

To understand how affiliate marketing works in a nutshell, take a look at the picture below:

Affiliate marketing happens all the time everywhere and it's one of the most common ways to make money online. Actually, affiliate marketing has also existed before the Internet but it has just happened offline.

When you recommend your favorite gym to your friends, you are actually doing affiliate marketing. As a reward you will often get a free membership month or other rewards.

With affiliate marketing online the rewards and commissions are usually paid in cash. You promote, for example, a digital product that costs $100 and it gives a 50% commission. Every time when somebody clicks your link and buys the product, you earn the commission.

The best part of affiliate marketing is that you can actually help people while earning money. As an affiliate marketer you connect a person who needs somethingand the product that provides that value.

So, affiliate marketing is a legitimate to make money online and there's nothing wrong with it itself.

In the next chapters, I will still explain you a few situations and examples why some people have mistakenly thought that affiliate marketing would be a scam.

Have you ever heard claims like, "Make $9,543 during the first month!" or "Earn $3,298 in just 7 days as a complete beginner!"

Those are called get rich quick schemes and 99,9% of them are scams. If you want to make $9,543 in a month, you either need to have lots of experience or lots of money to invest. Otherwise, you will not make $9,543 during the first month with affiliate marketing.

While reviewing more than 450 make money online opportunities and systems, I have seen numerous affiliate marketers promoting such get rich quick scams. Actually, some of those affiliates may be rich because of those schemes but they have completely lost their integrity.

Some people are always promoting one "scheme" after another.

Most famous get rich quick schemes within affiliate marketing space are probably Digital Altitude, MOBE, Awol and other similar programs. Actually, Digital Altitude was already attacked by FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and many other similar systems have been shut down over the years.

The idea there is that you can get started with $1 or for completely free. Then you climb up their stairs (by buying expensive products) and start promoting their systems to other people. They have upsells all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars.

I recommend staying far away from such schemes.

Yes, you can make $9,543/month.
Yes, you can make $3,298/week.
Yes, you can make $500/day.

But that kind of income requires lots of work and effort! Often it also requires financial investments.

My #1 recommended affiliate marketing training doesn't require any up-front investments and they don't have expensive upsells. But I can say that you will not big money unless you put in the work.

The truth is that it's very easy to get started with affiliate marketing. You can create your own website in 30 seconds and put affiliate links there.

Or you can go to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter or to other social media and share your affiliate links. When somebody clicks your links and buys something, you earn a commission.

That being said, making money with affiliate marketing as a complete beginner is not that easy. Most likely you won't make many sales by sharing your affiliate link to your friends on your Facebook page (unless they are interested in the subject).

If you attract traffic to your website from Google through organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) like I do, it will take some time get some traction.

Once the traffic starts flowing in, everything becomes easier and easier. But it doesn't happen overnight.

Another classical mistake that beginners make is to spread yourself too thin. It means that they get so excited about making money with affiliate marketing that they immediately create 5-10 new websites.

Then they post a few posts on each site and nothing happens. They start thinking, "This affiliate marketing thing doesn't work. Better to concentrate on my 9-5 job." Even though nothing could be actually further from the truth.

Affiliate marketing works and it is a very effective way to make money but if you have unrealistic expectations, you will be disappointed.

That's why I offer my 1-on-1 support to you if you want to start making money with affiliate marketing. Having a clear step-by-step training and an opportunity to ask me anything you need will help you to move forward much faster.

You choose an interest and build a simple website around that subject. Next you attract visitors to your site. You earn money when they click your affiliate links and buy something.

Let me give you a quick example on how this can work in practice:

1. You are interested in playing guitar.
2. You build a basic guitar website and leave affiliate links to Amazon best-seller guitars..
3. People visit your website from Google, Facebook and other channels.
4. You earn money when some of your visitors clicks your links to Amazon and buys something there.

Another example is my language learning site.

1. People who are interested in learning languages come to my website.
2. I recommend them a course that will help them their target language faster.
3. Somebody clicks my affiliate links and buys the course.
4. I earn a commission.

A great thing here is that I am able to help that visitor his target language much faster and at the same time I can earn money. Everybody wins.

Let me give you an interesting examples of affiliate marketing from my own life.

I am originally from Finland but I haven't lived there for 1,5 years and I wouldn't. I wanted to set up a company in XXX country where I have never created a company before. 

I didn't know personally anybody who would have created a company in XXX country where I wanted to create so I needed to ask from Mr.Google.

I found a website that looked reliable and they said they could help to create a company in that place. Therefore, I decided to contact that company and they helped me further.

However, that company didn't help me to do the whole process because they just replied, "We know another person/company that can help you." In the other words, they were affiliated with a company that helps people to set up their companies in that specific country.

The middleman company probably took a commission for the recommendation.  

No, affiliate marketing is not a scam. It's one of the most legitimate ways to make money online and it can be a win-win strategy for everyone.

• An affiliate marketer earns a commission for promoting a product.
• A client is happy because he found that he was looking for.
• A company makes a sale which was their target.

Therefore, all parties can win with the affiliate marketing. Often affiliate marketer can also provide some kind of special bonuses or discounts for a client. Therefore, having this middleman is often a positive thing.

If you would like to make money with affiliate marketing as well, I recommend clicking the picture below or clicking here to get started. I will show you a simple step-by-step strategy that you can use to make money with affiliate marketing online.

In addition, I will provide you my 1-on-1 help and support because I want to guarantee that you succeed.

​What kind of experiences do you have with affiliate marketing?

Do you need my help to start making money by using this strategy?

Have you also gone through the Wealthy Affiliate training? 

Let me know in the comments below!

If you have any questions, just leave a comment below and I will be more than happy to help you out.