How Much Time Does It Take To Make Money in AM? (13)
HOW MUCH TIME DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE MONEY IN AFFILIATE MARKETING?
Among many other questions that appear often from new members, this is certainly one of the top ones. People don’t like uncertainty… They need to be able to plan their next actions. When deciding to give AM a shot, many people do it with limited time and budget, thus the question comes: How long does it take to make money in affiliate marketing?
@caurmen gave a short answer in the getting started guide HERE.
The problem with giving a short answer is that we may omit some factors. I will try to address those factors and the assumptions I've seen the majority of people make about those when thinking about the timeframe for their AM venture.
Assumption 1: Everyone starts with equal or very close skill level.
Wrong. People who come from a technical background do very well usually. Same goes for people who have some understanding of the digital advertising space. That said, a lack of skill doesn’t restrict your ability to make it, it will just mean it will take a different amount of time, depending on how long it takes you to gather some essential skills that others already have.
For example, I met a person who used to be a construction worker and is now doing affiliate marketing full time. Your background doesn’t mean you can’t succeed, it just means it could take a very different amount of time given the skills you have to learn.
Assumption 2: Everyone has the same amount of time in their day.
Incomplete. A 35 year old guy with 2 kids, a wife and a full time job has less time compared to a single 24 year old University dropout who just had a business fail and is looking for the next venture (yes, I’m talking about me when I got into AM).
The 24 year old is able to spend 100% of his focus and 100% of his available time on making AM work. That means at least 12 hours a day available, sometimes more. The 35 year old will probably be able to dedicate 3-4 hours/day on average in a week. That means in a week the 35 year old has invested about 25 hours in a week, while the 24 year old invested 84 hours. In about a month, the 35 year old invested 100 hours, while the 24 year old passes 300 hours. Especially given the learning curve in this industry, you can see why measuring it in terms of days, weeks, months is wrong, or at least incomplete. The amount of focused worked a motivated full time guy is able to put in is at least 3 times as high. It’s also reasonable to assume that our 35 year old guy in this scenario is also distracted by other things and is not able to have his AM dedicated time as focused as the 24 year old, so it will end up being effectively around 4 times fewer hours per month. FOUR TIMES!!!
That means he will manage to do in 4 months what the other does in one month!
Assumption 3: Unchanging market conditions.
Wrong. The market changes so often and so quickly, that someone’s success 2 years ago is not representative enough of what is currently possible. Though the industry is growing as a whole, the things with lower barrier to entry and recommended for newbies are not always as good over time, and not always the same. Timing makes a difference.
Assumption 4: Luck is equal for everyone.
Incomplete. Luck affects everyone, but it doesn’t mean the luck factor doesn’t have very different impact on your success. By luck I mean unpredictable factors and beyond your control.
Unfortunately, in public you generally see only the extremes, and you either see people who were positively affected by luck and managed to become successful very quickly, or the opposite: people who have failed time and again without having a glimpse of hope in their next campaign either.
Once you try to account for these 4 points, and perhaps you will find more than I thought of now, you realize that giving a time frame for success in AM is a big guessing game. The right mindset for it is to always improve yourself and your past results, not to compare yourself to what others can do, since you will be in a very different situation than them.
This is a great post. I thought I'd add my thoughts as an example for others since it fits well with your post.
I got into AM back in 2006 using Adwords but lightly dabbled in SEO before then. I did it for a few years and never made huge money but I did ok. Later had some down times and started working with local businesses to handle their online marketing, later gravitated to larger b2b businesses but still in the upper small / mid-size business sector.
So I've had a solid understanding of AM concepts from the old days and my more traditional lead gen skills through websites/landers, SEO and some paid channels like Adwords are strong.
So when starting back into AM in July 2016, I had a little bit of a jump start and it still took me 2.5 months to hit my first decent campaign but inconsistent. Fast forward another 3 months to present day and I've had many profitable campaigns under my belt. But I was about $3750 in the negative from adspend and cost of tools before things started to take off.
As for initial budget used, I began using about $8k to fund my campaigns and cover my overall expenses. I tried to use my budget wisely by testing smart (although I did have some crazy moments I spend way too much on tests) and then once I found something that worked, I stuck to my strengths while starting to build up more capital to test more geos/offers/landers.
A few tips that really helped to accelerate my learning and get me here are:
1. Reading every case study, guide, tutorial, follow along and every thread on a topic that I didn't know about. Even as far back as the original threads that STM started with.. there are some nuggets there that you will find the same tips/strategies still be shared today.
2. Start your own mastermind, stop waiting around for someone to approach you and stop trying to join someone else's. It rarely works and if you start it, you have the control to navigate the style and atmostphere of the group until things pick up. I strongly suggest keeping the group to less than 5 people in the beginning and make sure everyone is spending money daily to test and on a similar level as you.
3. The sooner you decide to start testing as many geos/offers/landers/verticals as you can each week, the faster you will find something that works for you. And that will be a huge boost to your mentality and drive to continue on.
4. Start your own follow along and be as detailed as possible with what you know and what you don't know, share you campaign details. The type of support you will find on STM is by far going to give you the best chance to hit your tipping point where things start to just click for you.
5. Keep your mindset positive, remove emotions and treat this as a business.
Great post Manu, just wanted to share my thoughts in support of your topic!
Cheers,
Andrew
Originally Posted by manu_adefy
Definitely agree. I was a auto mechanic when I started this 1.5 years ago...I kept reminding myself the success of ,y brother and how there was so much money being made and in all reality, I just needed to hit a small fraction of it and I would be making more in my sleep than I did at my job. Took a bit of Time and patenice and it came true.
Webdev jr.
Very good article Manu, I can relate to assumption #2 very well 
When I started with paid traffic, I already had a family and 3 kids - I definitely had way less time available, compared to my very beginning in AM in my 20s
Let me add one more factor that I think plays a role too : Financial Background.
There is a big difference between starting with your last grand VS having a supplemental income and larger savings.
Working with your last money is stressful, forces one to make immature decisions and to act very tight when it comes to investing some $$$.
Having a larger budget and the security of a different income stream, gives an aspiring affiliate the much needed peace of mind and a chance to make a few bad decisions - without dramatic consequences.
Another great post from Manu.
@matuloo: Yeah, that's true, financial situation is also important. I'd generally put that in the category of "make a lot of money in AM", because if you have less pressure and the funds to scale successful campaigns, you reach high numbers much quicker.
When it comes to the initial profit, the budget matters a bit less, so that's why I didn't add it.
@Andrew: Some really good tips there. I also did the same as you basically... Starting your own mastermind has more than one benefit.. You get to choose the people but you also end up being responsible for it so you get some experience for working in a team.
Good post, many come into this wanting to work 4 hours a week.
They have 0 skills. They might be typical jocks that hated and made fun of nerds in high school, but now they want to be nerds all of the sudden.
They need to learn every single thing -or- have a lot of money to outsource and hire people to offset their lack of skill.
So how much time it takes to make money depends on the factor of skill or money really.
If you have skills and money, then you are a step ahead already. Add connections, and getting profitable might only take a day of smoozing at an event like AWE Berlin
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
To me, it always seemed easier to gain enough knowledge about a topic by myself before trying to hire/outsource for it. I think it's my duty to have enough of an idea to judge someone else's skill and also to be able to fit their skill into the big puzzle.
If you just have money and no skill, and start hiring, you have a higher than average chance to fail than the average person probably.
Great posts and great insights, but the question is something that I have a different opinion on.
HOW MUCH TIME DOES IT TAKE TO MAKE MONEY IN AFFILIATE MARKETING?
If you put a time limit on yourself, it will eventually lead to desperate and not so thought trough decision making. The question should rather be "how much MONEY does it take to make MONEY in affiliate marketing?"
Never put any time pressue on yourself - there is no deadline, there is no rush. Think your decisions trough and move ahead quickly.
Imagine your deadline strikes right before hitting gold - its better to put a money limit on yourself rather than a time limit.
You should certainly have a deadline for most projects you undertake. The idea that you should not have ANY pressure whatsoever is stuff found in "feel good books" that don't give practical advice.
As an example, if you have been doing something for 10,000 hours and haven't shown any significant progress or any chance of success (depending on how you define success), you should probably quit.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the saying that "winners don't quit". The real winners know when to quit and find something they can succeed at.
This is the same in AM. You will need to work your ass off, and you better have some ways to measure progress and decide whether or not to pursue this more. You should not have AM as your small and unprofitable hobby for years and years.
Saying that you can hit gold right after your deadline is like saying that you can win the lottery if you play it more... It's true, but it certainly doesn't mean it's a profitable decision in the long term.
You should have a money limit, not a time limit. Its a different way of approaching the same situation.
New affiliates should decide for themselves how much money they are willing to invest before deciding to continue with it or leave it. Whether it takes 2 weeks or 2 months doesn't matter. Every big decision in life (who to marry, what house to buy, who to partner with, what job to choose, etc) should be taken without a time limit. You keep on looking until you hit it 100%.
I'd agree with Manu on this one. If there's one constant in the histories of successful people, it's that they quit things that aren't working.
Richard Branson, for example, has been involved in over 700 failed business projects. That means he's said "fuck this, guys, shoot it in the head and send it to the glue factory" to over 700 promising business ideas.
AM is great, and it's an excellent way to make money, but it's not the only way to achieve financial independence or whatever else your goals are. Some people may just find other approaches work better for them. And you only get a fixed period of time in your life. If anything, your time-based stop losses should be tighter than your monetary ones.
Having said that, it's very important to distinguish between "this isn't going to work" and "this feels like it's never going to work". That's the hard part - and why stop losses are so useful to have in place in advance.
I also agree with cbrughmans that you shouldn't ever quit pursuing your goals. The goals may change - in which case for goodness's sake realise that and adjust plans accordingly - and your hypothesis on the best way to achieve them may also change. AM is usually a means to an end, not an end. And sometimes you may just need a rest. But giving up and settling for less is an approach that rarely if ever seems to work out.
Finally - there's nothing wrong with quitting something then coming back to it later. I did that way back when I started AM. Some time working on a different project followed by a new vertical turned out to be just what I needed to succeed.
In conclusion, there are two terrible mistakes you can make - quitting too early and quitting too late :-)
Every decision has a dose of uncertainty, and thus you will never be 100%.
You have to play the probabilities game and look to make decisions with positive expected value. Waiting for the sure things is very likely to cause you not to act, since you will never be certain.
That applies to all aspects of life.
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