How Long Does it Take to Make Money From Affiliate Marketing?

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Answering the question, “How long does it take to make money from affiliate marketing?” is important for anybody looking to make money online with affiliate marketing.

You want to know when you can start counting on cash coming in from your efforts. It’s a reasonable question and you can certainly find a number of answers online.

I am not going to tell you a specific system will get you there overnight or promote some “get rich quick scheme” like so many do when they try to answer questions like this. Instead, I will give you a real answer and try to break it down for you.

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The Answer to How Long Does it Take to Make Money from Affiliate Marketing?

The easy answer for me to give you is to simply say, the length of time it takes for you to make money from affiliate marketing completely depends on you and several other factors. There is no black and white answer to this question.

The factors include:

The Niche you choose
The Marketing Method you choose
The Number of Hours you put in each week
How Fast or Slow you learn
How Serious you are about making money with affiliate marketing

The most direct answer I can give you has to do with using affiliate marketing with blogging since that’s what I do.

It takes about 100 high-quality blog posts to start making a significant amount of money with affiliate marketing.

For some, this could take a month to create, while most are looking at a 6 to 12-month journey to make money from affiliate marketing.

According to AffiliateMarketerTraining.com, it takes about 12 months to start seeing success with affiliate marketing. I tend to agree with this, but the question was, how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing? Let’s look at everything from your first sale to making a full-time income with Affiliate marketing.

How long does it take to make your first sale with affiliate marketing?

Making your first sale might happen rather quickly or it could take a few weeks or months. Assuming you are using blogging and you’ve gone through my free How to Become a Blogger guide found here, you’ll likely make your first sake within your first two months.

Yes, this can be discouraging as many people get sucked into affiliate marketing as a “get rich quick scheme” which it is not. It takes patience, time, and effort to make money with affiliate marketing.

The good news, for most, getting that first sale is the hardest. You will put in more work to achieve your first sale than any other sale after.

How long does it take to make $100 per week with affiliate marketing?

Making $100 per week is a nice goal as it’s enough to probably pay a monthly bill. It’s a nice milestone and will require some effort on your part, of course.

Depending on the type of affiliate program you’re using, it could take three months to achieve this milestone or six months.

With Clickbank, you’ll likely get there a bit faster compared to the Amazon Affiliate Program or Commission Junction. Clickbank offers digital products, which offer larger commissions.

If we assume you get paid an average of $25 per sale with Clickbank products, you need 4 sales each week. Building your blog traffic to a level where you can make $100 per week will likely take about 50 high-quality blog posts, maybe more, maybe less, depending on your niche.

The sooner you get 50 high-quality blog posts published, the sooner you can expect to reach this milestone.

If you’re using Amazon or Commission Junction, your commission percentage will likely be much lower. Usually, you get paid 4% to 15% on the products offered from these programs.

However, you will also have access to high-ticket products that sell for $1,000+. It may take more or less time to get to $100 per week, depending on the commissions you will be paid for each sale.

How long does it take to make $500 per week with affiliate marketing?

Most beginners to affiliate marketing would be thrilled to make $500 a week from affiliate marketing. If you put in the right level of work, you can achieve this type of success in six to nine months. It will take about 100 blog posts and some time for the search engines to index them to get to this level.

Of course, the variables of your niche, the products you are promoting, and the quality of your blog posts will impact how quickly or slowly you get to this level.

How long does it take to make $1,000 per week with affiliate marketing?

Once you’ve reached $500 a week in affiliate marketing income, getting to $1,000 a week isn’t nearly as hard. It just requires you to keep working and building your content library (your blog).

For those willing to put in the work, you can achieve $1,000 per week in less than a year. Expect to create 150+ blog posts to get to this level.

How long does it take to make a FULL-TIME income with affiliate marketing?

A full-time income is subjective, of course. You may think $500 or $1,000 per week is a full-time income. For this blog post, I will use $5,000 per month as a full-time income or $60K per year since most of us can live off that amount.

If you want to quit your job and enjoy affiliate marketing full-time, you will need to get to the 200+ blog post level as quickly as possible. According to an article from Neil Patel and from Hubspot, those going from 301 – 400 blog posts to 401+ see a massive increase in traffic.

Yes, there are increases from each level on the chart, but getting from the 301 – 400 to the 401+ level the increase is nearly double in traffic. If you want to make a full-time income from affiliate marketing and you’re using blogging, get to 401+ high-quality blog posts as quickly as possible.

If you write a blog post every single day for a year, you’ll have 365 blog posts. Another 35 days (just over a month) will get you to the 400 post benchmark.

Making a full-time income from blogging with affiliate marketing, in my estimate, takes more than 400 blog posts. You may reach $5,000 per month before you reach this mark, but this should be the goal.

If you set aside 2 hours a day for 14 months (assuming you miss a few days due to unforeseen circumstances) you should be earning a full-time income from affiliate marketing and blogging.

Are you ready to make money with affiliate marketing? I have answered the question, “how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing?” for you and now it’s up to you.

Get started with my How to Become a Blogger guide for free by clicking here now!