Would you start now?

If you were new to affiliate marketing today, would you bother to begin?

[btsteed]

Many of you in this forum have had good success with affiliate marketing. I imagine some of you have been doing it for years and years.

I myself have tried it off an on for a few years, but have never had significant success with it--mostly due to spending time on other projects that demanded my attention and yielded more ROI.

My question to you is: if you were starting from scratch today with some knowledge of affiliate marketing, but little-to-no content or existing affiliate relationships, would you still choose this route?

If no, why would you pass on it?

And if yes, would you care to show a card or two and explain what you think would work?

[ibQuixote]

In fact, I am starting now as an affiliate, even though I've been in the industry a long time. I've seen twenty-somethings (and younger) make so much money that I thought I should be able to make at least a little.

Of course, the playing field is changing and getting quite a bit tougher. The barriers to entry are steeper. I see your point that past momentum aides future success, but you have to start sometime.

I think most affiliates will agree that the changes in our space are having a beneficial impact on the Internet as a whole. Read: much more quality and fewer crap pages littered about. Those easy money days are gone (though not yet long gone).

At the end of the day, this kind of work is creative and satisfying. In fact, I resist the label of affiliate because I dont define myself by my relation to others. Im a web publisher, and feel web publishing is a good place to be.

Good luck!

[CatLady]

Sure – I would still do it in a heartbeat. Like ibQuixote states, from a web publishing standpoint it can be fun to develop sites about a particular topic that interests you. I think as long as you enjoy doing that and keep your main focus on developing a quality site about that particular topic, putting relevant affiliate links into the mix is really a no-brainer.

Although it’s not as easy, I also think there’s still profit to be made by affiliate marketing purely through PPC. This would best be accomplished by testing various ideas and affiliate programs until you found a combination that works well for you (i.e. program pays a decent commission and doesn’t bleed your advertising budget dry before converting). Can take quite a bit of patience and a lot of money, though before finding something that works using this method. But when you do, the rewards can be worth it (especially if you prefer not to live a 9-5 cubicle existence)….. So still a big "Yes" on both counts!

[jimbeetle]

I had quite a bit to say, but seems as if ibQuixote took the words right out of my mouth, boiled them down and summed up my thoughts quite nicely. ;-)

[ws3222877]

Absolutely, although I think there is room for improvements in affiliate network programs. Adsence is easier and for general content pages optimizes the ads itself to the page.

If networks where to give affiliates a channel of merchants instead of making them select specific products themselves then tracked profits and optimized the ads for the affiliate it could improve performance for ads on content pages that are not presales pages for the product ...

Well placed merchant ads work and normally get a high click though percent and higher conversion rates.

[Catalyst]

This is SUCH a great question. I think affiliate marketing is always in a state of flux and ever evolving, so I'm not sure you could ever say there is an ideal time to get in. Even though it appears it would have been easier if you started a few years ago I see success stories all the time from affiliates that just started a few months ago.

Think about it this way - if we were back 4years it would seem at that time it would have been easier if you got it right at the beginning too.

One of the advantages to getting in now is that there is so much more information and more options too, with blogging and social marketing which wasn't around way back when...

So IF you are prepared to work hard and know there is no such thing as get rich quick in your underwear, then it's as good a time as any to jump in.

Hope this helps and best of luck!
Linda