Busted: 6 Myths About Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has always been surrounded by tons of myths. Some of them provoke businesses to set up their affiliate programs while the others vice versa cause businesses to ignore them. Thus, it is crucial to understand the nature of these myths not to get disappointed with this marketing tool, as well as to choose the best way to boost your online business efficiently. Below are listed six most common myths about affiliate marketing we are going to bust today.

Affiliate program is easy to manage

First things first, this is probably the most popular myth there is about affiliate marketing. Do not suppose that just engaging in affiliate marketing will bring you lots of money in an instant. This is just not true. Launching an affiliate program you should be ready for a hard work, high competition and absence of quick profit. Do not think that all you need is just to find affiliates and you will be receiving handsome money out of doing nothing. Successful affiliate program is a hard work that requires time and efforts from both parties. Put your best into it and you will surely get your dividends.

Affiliate marketing works only in popular and profitable market niches

Many businesses refuse to start their affiliate programs only because they suppose that their niches are too small and narrow. They do not even bother trying it. However, the truth is that the size and profitability of a business are not the core factors defining the success in affiliate marketing. Even though this myth may have sense to some extent (some niches do really better with affiliate marketing), it depends only on you whether you will achieve success or fail with it. Affiliate Marketing is not about finding the most profitable niche, but making the most of the market you are working in. Some affiliate programs even in big popular niches fail when the wrong approach has been applied to them. Thus, choose your reliable team of affiliates, and together you will find the way to make your sales go up.

Affiliate market is overloaded

Don’t worry, affiliate marketing is the industry where everybody can find their place. High competition in the sphere means only that it has lots of money. It is a natural step of an industry evolution. The players are constantly changing, coming into and out of the market, so be sure that with the right approach you may successfully compete with the others.

Affiliate marketing is dead

Affiliate marketing as an industry appeared more than 10 years ago. By the time it has already proved to be a very good, and sometimes the one and only traffic source for advertisers. That is why more and more businesses are now launching their affiliate programs. The industry has just started to grow, and there is a huge market share that is not covered by anyone. So if you want your business to grow, just give affiliate marketing a shot to boost your performance.

Advertisers do not risk, as they pay only for the result

Affiliate program has a range of cons both for affiliates and advertisers. But saying that advertisers get only benefits, as well as saying that more traffic means more money, would be untrue. Surely, high traffic volumes are good. As long as it is high-quality traffic. Only targeted traffic coming to your website will make your sales grow. But the biggest threat an advertiser can face nowadays is, for sure, fraud. Fraudulent traffic comes from unfair affiliates and always looks like real conversions. So, paying to fraudsters advertisers lose their money, as in the end these conversions will not result in sales. The good news is that if you choose working with an affiliate network instead of direct publishers, the network itself becomes liable for taking financial risks caused by fraudulent traffic. Besides, you can create your own affiliate network on the basis of performance marketing platform which also provides fraud protection service. So, before launching your affiliate program make sure you stipulated all these aspects in advance.

Consumers do not like affiliate marketing

Actually, the majority of customers does not distinguish an ordinary advertisement from an affiliate one. So you may freely use any type of advertising tools, including affiliate marketing. The key is that you should have a good advertising strategy and accurate targeting of your campaigns. In this case your potential customers receive the content and creatives they are into, and in return you receive loyal and high-quality audience to your offers. Win-win.