I’ve been sitting in my office thinking, there has been a lot of people jumping into affiliate marketing and find themselves confused and down as to why they can’t earn money from it. First of all, making money online is not just about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is one of hundreds of ways to earn money online. It’s just a preference. I know a lot of people earning thousands of pesos per day in adsense, paid reviews, paid to click and filling online surveys and more. Affiliate marketing is just one of these ways. No other thing is better or best its just how you decide to focus and grow and be good at what you do.

First thing, if you want to dive in this industry there are things you should check first and evaluate your values if you are really into this industry and if you want to make it big. Though the promise of huge income is present in affiliate marketing, there are also consequences in return for the big prize:

• Affiliate marketing is not for the faint of heart. If you don’t want to spend money, this industry is not for you. You can lose a lot of money in this industry (big money) especially when you’re starting up. The figure below suggests that I must bid Php1,809 per click to show my ads.
• Long Hours Of Work. If you can not devote 16hrs - 24hrs working in front of the computer just to test out a niche for months and find out that it is not profitable, this is not for you. Affiliate marketing is an on going process of testing out everything. You want to know if you’ll earn big bucks in this particular niche? You have to test it for months. There is no guarantee that you can get your money back. Well, that is business. But once you got that particular niche that are doing good, it can give you money for years without doing anything.
• Frustrations. Most of the time, you’ll be dealing with google and their algorithm. Slaps are as natural as any affiliate marketer experience this. Most of the time, you’ll get slapped every week and your site will be black listed. After spending months developing the site, you have to make another one again, and again and again. If you are easily discouraged, affiliate marketing would be hard for you.
• You must be creative. People who are earning big bucks in affiliate marketing are very creative people. They know that everybody is doing this and that and that gives him the motivation to do another thing (might fail or succeed) but its worth the shot. You may lose time and money in the process but its really worth it.
• Tough Competition. If you’re doing adsense sites, you know that competition is fierce when it comes to optimizing current events. You may earn big money for that but because of competition it will diminish. Now multiply that competition by a hundred folds in affiliate marketing. Competition is not really bad. Its also a way to know how much money you can earn in a particular niche by knowing how much competition there is in the niche. Which can save you time in the long run.
• There is no one way to do affiliate marketing. I am guilty of this. When I started out, I sought out mentors that would teach me how to do affiliate marketing. What I learned from each person I asked is that, there is no one way to do affiliate marketing. You just have to know the basics (which you can get for free on the internet) and get out there and do it. Do not be afraid to lose money and fail because everything is a learning experience. Then after that, you will develop your own way.