Affiliate marketing is eminently scalable — let me explore with you the definition of scalable in a lucid manner.
And to do that, let me, first, explore the notion of scalabality — what it means?
Let’s start with a simple analogy
Supposing you go to a certain bakery — actually, it is your favourite bakery — a French patisserie legendary for its croissants (ooh la la).
Now around a certain time of the year around certain holidays, they seem to go crazy. You still manage to elbow your way to your favourites. They never close even in these high traffic times.
So, the question is how do they do it without breaking down? Obviously, they may be hiring more people. But you never noticed any extra people. Most of the staff you know by name through long acquaintance.
So, what is the magic?
Surely, they would have increased their efforts — instead of doing 20 batches of croissants, they may have been doing 100s more. As the demand soared, they stepped up the production by increasing their own working hours (bakers start work in the wee hours anyway). Apart from that, you noticed nothing different. For example, they did not get a bigger store or buy more equipment. Neither did they hire a small army of new workers
This is one of the key features of scalability — when a business can increase its output without a substantial increase in the input — labour, capital.
Of course the patisserie would have bought more supplies in anticipation of the increased demand — not, however, without calculating how much more they would be making relative to their expenses. They would have done a unit calculation. What would be the unit price of flour vs. the unit price of croissants? How many croissants for how much flour? And, croissants are not the only products they have.
How Does Scalability Apply To Affiliate Marketing?
Although affiliate marketing is inherently different from a French patisserie, the notion of scalability still applies. Actually, it applies even better because you have set up the system in your chosen platform, there is no further expenditure.
If you can drive traffic to your chosen niche and people buy frequently, it will increase your revenue without your having to increase anything. The brand you are promoting will reward you more proportionate to the increase in traffic. A rare win-win situation.
As you may gather, not only is affiliate marketing scalable, it is far more scalable than a conventional business — you will not be required to create another website or hire staff to run things if suddenly the demand picks up.
You also need to understand affiliate marketing as passive income — that means apart from the initial effort of setting up the website and driving traffic to the brand you promote, there is nothing else to do to. Building a website can be likened to building a house you build not, however, to live in but to rent out to earn revenue. That comparison is not completely figurative either because a website is indeed digital property. Once built, you only focus on promoting it. Done.
One word of advice . . .
The affiliate marketing platform is the most powerful tool.
What Are The Downsides?
Expect challenges, though. It would be naive not to. How does affiliate marketing compare to conventional business?
Like other businesses, there are variables. However, unlike a traditional business which has too many variables — which, moreover, may fluctuate wildly — here there are only a few: website; brand; product.
To start with, you will be going into a niche and so that automatically eliminates a mismatch. You will not have to create the product itself — it has already been created. That also eliminates inventory — the biggest logistic challenge for a physical business. the business model of affiliate marketing eliminates the potential risks of most conventional business models.
Conceptually, affiliate marketing is far more advanced than a conventional business, primarily because the income comes from promoting a product or service not selling it. And the promoting you do is also purely digital — no need to produce fliers and stuff them into neighbourhood mailboxes; no going door to door to sell. t
Your effort is still important. In fact, it is paramount. That is why you have to avoid a scatter gun approach and find a high precision approach, something only possible with the right tools and strategies.
One of the biggest fear we have is the fear of failure. And, why not? Who likes failure? It can be crushing, in fact. While we cannot completely eliminate failure, we can reduce its by first asking where the failure is likely to come from.
Is it possible to fail even with the best product and brand? Yes.
Is it possible to fail even with the inherent scalability potential of affiliate marketing? Yes.
Without the right tools and the strategies you would not even want to carry out a simple task. Can you drive a nail without a hammer?
Okay. Now I have a suggestion for you — watch Kyle Loudon’s video to understand better what I mean by a platform and the tools available to you — for free as a
starter member on Wealthy Affiliate.
Just for a quick intro, Kyle Loudon is one of the Co-Founders of Wealthy Affiliate, a preeminent training platform.
The most exhilarating part of this video (Spoiler Alert) is that Kyle shows you how you can earn income almost immediately with the tools available.
Go check this out.
And, oh yes, please feel free to let me know if there are topics you would like me to post. My business email is, soheil@affiliatepathways.com.
Cheers.