The affiliate marketing industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade, with more and more new people taking part each year. If you’re still on the fence about whether or not to become an affiliate marketer, there are seven major reasons why you should give it a shot. Affiliate marketing is here to stay, but only if you’re willing to get started today!

Affiliate marketing is something that anyone can get started and do. You don’t need a business degree or even a high school diploma to be successful in affiliate marketing.

Anyone can get started and do it with just a little bit of motivation, patience, creativity, and effort. Even if you have absolutely no business experience whatsoever, you can still succeed in affiliate marketing!

It’s A Lucrative Industry: Affiliate marketing is one of those industries that has unlimited potential to make more money while working less time in your life. The income potential is there for everyone who wants to put a little bit of effort into it.

Affiliate marketing allows us to work from anywhere in the world (as long as we have an internet connection) at any time during the day or night.

Independent & Convenience: There are many benefits that come along with being independent as an affiliate marketer such as being able to work whenever you want and choose what kind of products/services you want to promote on your website.

No Need To Come Up With Your Own Product: Affiliate marketing doesn’t require a person to spend countless hours brainstorming about their own product before beginning their journey.

According to Statistic Brain, affiliate marketing is a $19 billion industry.

If you're new to online businesses, it's likely that affiliate marketing is one of your first stops.

And for good reason: It's easy to get started, it's low-cost and it can be lucrative—especially if you have business experience.

Starting an affiliate marketing business is perfect for anyone with free time who doesn't want to work directly with customers. Most importantly, affiliate marketers don't need their own product; they only need to know how to sell other people's products effectively.

Because of these advantages, affiliate marketing has been particularly helpful to stay-at-home moms looking to earn some extra income from home, but there are also plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs interested in earning residual income or even starting a full-time business.

All You Need Is Your Own Website: Unlike most jobs where most independent contractors typically pay thousands of dollars just to lease office space every month, all affiliate marketers have to pay is domain registration fees (usually between $10-$15) plus hosting fees (usually around $5/month).

That's it!

No other costs related to office space or employees mean that you can easily start an affiliate marketing career without sinking any capital into overhead costs.

This is important especially if you’re just starting out. It will keep your overhead low while you get your business off the ground and running.

Once traffic and revenue begin to pick up, you can begin to upgrade, such as purchasing email marketing software or hiring a virtual assistant. In addition, it’s also easy to scale in affiliate marketing; whether you choose to work on it full-time or as a side business, there are countless opportunities for scaling.

This is particularly helpful for those who want their income to be fairly passive, allowing them time for personal pursuits or additional projects beyond affiliate marketing (i.e., freelance writing).

Anyone Can Get Started And Do It: There’s no need to come up with an original product or service – all you have to do is focus on promoting other people’s products online!

Anyone with a computer and internet connection can participate in affiliate marketing, meaning that almost anyone who wants to start a new business venture (or supplement an existing one) can do so from home quickly, easily, and relatively inexpensively.

All that's required of any potential entrepreneur is determination and perseverance – characteristics that anyone reading these words undoubtedly has!

Affiliate marketing makes running a business easy. Instead of building a product or selling your services, you sell other people’s products.

The companies that create these products handle all aspects of production and delivery, which means you don’t have to hire and manage employees or invest in equipment or inventory.

You simply promote their products online with links, banners, and other tools provided by your company. Since everything is handled for you, it frees up time for other important tasks like marketing yourself as an expert in your field and networking with others who share similar interests.

Scale Your Business Without Sacrificing Quality: One person can easily manage several affiliate sites at once because it doesn’t require any significant overhead expenses like physical space and equipment purchases.

As long as you’re connected to high-speed internet, you can set up multiple websites without much effort or expense. You aren't bound by geographic location either, so global opportunities abound if you're willing to put in a little extra legwork overseas.

Independence And Flexibility: If money weren't an issue, you might be able to make more starting a traditional business since there's no middleman taking profit from each sale. But if money is tight—or not entirely necessary—this option could be better than starting from scratch.

Also, consider how much time and resources go into getting started on your own before making any final decisions about what's best for your situation and goals!

One of the top reasons that people start an affiliate marketing business is that they don’t have to develop their own products. They can simply sell other people’s products or services and make money doing it.

You don’t need to come up with your own idea or find a manufacturer who will let you slap your name on their product and pay you royalties if it doesn’t sell well. But remember, not all affiliate marketing opportunities are created equal. There are literally thousands of different offers out there for both online and offline companies and each one has a lot of variation in terms of the compensation plan and sales technique required. Before choosing a program, spend some time researching them first to make sure you can earn money with them without having to purchase leads or recruit affiliates. For more information on becoming an affiliate marketer, check out our post

With affiliate marketing, you're not responsible for any customer service; you don't have to deal with orders or shipping, and you're never responsible for returns. All that falls on your merchant's shoulders.

This can be especially great if your goal is to have a one-off, single-product website rather than a full-blown e-commerce site. That way, no customers means no customer service responsibility!

Of course, as an affiliate marketer, you'll have plenty of opportunities to provide tips and recommendations—but it's all at your discretion.

The bottom line?

You're not expected to engage in any kind of duties other than posting regularly about a merchant's products. No inventory – more time:

The lack of physical stock makes it easy to keep your costs low because there are fewer things for which you need to worry about procuring directly from suppliers yourself—that comes later.

So at first when all you have is a few posts up on your website as part of starting out, consider offering links through an affiliated program in place of sending users directly offsite so they can purchase something online themselves.

At least until such time as reaching potential buyers becomes just as easy!

One of my favorite things about affiliate marketing is that it’s extremely scalable.

There are very few businesses I know of that can have their sales team handle just one customer at a time.

With affiliate marketing, there’s no need to hire more and more people until you need to. The structure of your business will allow for your work to grow with minimal growth on your part. All you have to do is learn how to set up a website, write posts and add products then sit back and watch them sell!

8 Must-Have Tools For Affiliate Marketers:

1) WordPress

2) Google Analytics

3) Social Warfare Plugin

4) Click Bank

5) Web Hosting

6) Themeforest

7) MailChimp

8) Bluehost

This list is by no means exhaustive, but we wanted to share our personal favorites. We chose plugins and services that were tried and true as well as some that we personally use.

These tools give us valuable information that allows us to continually improve both our own sites and those of our clients. Using free tools like Google Analytics allowed us to track data from an existing site or start from scratch without having to spend money on paid solutions like Woopra or KISSmetrics.

Once we realized just how powerful these tools could be when used in tandem, we started giving each client an individualized toolbox so they could start making improvements themselves based on what was available for them.

It helps take out some of the guesswork when trying to determine which paid solutions would be best for their needs without having first built a site on autopilot using free solutions.