There have been at least 2-3 recession periods I’ve experienced during my time doing affiliate marketing, that have negatively affected my affiliate business and I’ve learned many lessons over those 3 events that helped me continue and grow that business despite these downturns.
From the first time I had to face a slowdown in affiliate sales during a recession to the most recent one we’ve had worldwide, I have become much more numb to them, and know what to do in order to get past it and come out on top after it’s gone.
5 points about how affiliate marketed gets affected during a recession:
- Like a normal business, recessions hit affiliate businesses too.
- You can make your affiliate business recession proof.
- Some affiliate niche markets are goldmines during recessions.
- Tons of opportunity is in affiliate marketing (even in recessions).
- Recessions don’t hit an affiliate business nearly as hard as Google updates or paid ad networks suspending your accounts (those are the true events you should worry about, not recessions).
I want to expand on each point and really help you understand the big picture in all of this which is that affiliate marketing isn’t going anywhere and if you let the negativity of a recession affect your work, it will absolutely affect your business and there’s no exception to that.
I can tell you as someone who has been on that side of the aisle that moping around and not getting any work done because “what’s the point?” isn’t going to lead to success, so if you’re in that state of mind, knock it off.
The true success story in business, and that includes affiliate marketing can overcome any recession by understanding that people will still buy stuff online and that there’s numerous ways to reach those customers around the world and by knowing how to properly find those people, and market to them, you will never have to worry about a recession destroying your affiliate business.
My video on the subject of recessions and how affects affiliate marketing:
1) Understand that recessions happen, and they affect every business, including affiliate ones:
Whether it’s a:
- Presidential election.
- Worldwide viruses.
- Catastrophes.
- Stock market drops.
- Mass unemployment.
- You name it.
These things happen every few years, whether naturally or artificially and when they do, consumer confidence is affected massively, and of course, when that happens, people buy less stuff, including online.
It’s normal and I’ve gotten used to it. You should too, especially if you’re planning to embark on making an affiliate business.
I’ve had amazing periods with my affiliate business lose over 50% of my profits when one of those events have hit and I know how much it hurts.
How to overcome it:
1) If your affiliate business isn’t already your main source of income, make sure you have a secondary supplementing you.
2) Do not get involved in risky affiliate business models like pay per click during recessions (your sales will slump).
3) If your affiliate business is already making you a passive income, make sure you have money saved up for several months and grow the business during the recession even if you think it’ll never come back (it will).
2) Affiliate marketing can be recession proof (here’s how):
1) Targeting evergreen niche markets is a great way to supplement losses.
These niches are typically always in high demand and even during recessions, you can make a lot. For example: Getting an ex back. See more on evergreen niches here.
2) Grow your affiliate business to a point where a temporary loss in traffic and sales isn’t the end for you.
Whenever downtimes hit my business, I work harder, not lighter to ensure that when the recession ends, my work will explode in profits.
3) Start a second (side) niche site.
Typically having more than one niche affiliate site is a great way to make multiple streams of income. Do not do this if you don’t already have the experience or at least 1 niche site making you money from a blog, YouTube channel or other means like pay per click.
4) Expand into new realms that help you grow your affiliate business.
If you’re doing blogging, expand into YouTube, social media, pay per click, Pinterest, email marketing, ect…
This is what I did when the recession hit and I promise you, the time I invested into learning these new realms helped big time in saving my business. I also learned many of these skills from one of my best affiliate coaches here.
The point is, you have to reach a point with the affiliate business where the losses won’t get you to $0 and even if they do, you have savings ready to carry you through the recession period until it ends. Then when it does (they eventually do), you will be able to climb back.
3) Here are some niche markets to consider starting during recessions:
The biggest one is emergency preparedness.
I promise you, during downtime’s in the economy, these types of markets explode, especially when people have doomsday thoughts on mind. I talk about this niche and other popular ones in this top 10 list of niche markets to bank on in 2021.
Other niches include people looking for extra work when they’re unemployed (making a side income, working from home, ect…) and you may want to consider promoting affiliate marketing training programs like Wealthy Affiliate. I promise you, these types of niche markets grow during recessions.
Be careful if you do this because there are unethical ways to promote programs and I would recommend you understand the differences before getting into that.
4) There’s tons of opportunity in affiliate marketing (even when recessions happen):
It’s always nice to reach a point with affiliate marketing where it’s making you a great income, but unexpected and uninvited events happen in life.
However, you need to learn that it’s normal and that for example in affiliate business, you have more opportunity than you can imagine. Here are some positive things to consider:
When recessions hit, many people leave the affiliate marketing world (they just quit). This means you have less saturation and competition to worry about in affiliate marketing.
Your hard work in building your affiliate business a recession will pay dividends when it ends.
Billions of people search online. Even if a recession triggers 50% of them to stop buying, you still have BILLIONS of people to market to potentially.
Learn to look at these events from this point of view and it will absolutely change your game in the affiliate marketing world.
5) The true enemy of an affiliate business isn’t a recession, it’s Google updates, ad suspensions and you:
If there is anything in this world that hits an affiliate business as hard as a recession hits a regular business, it’s when one or more of the avenues you’re using to make money in this business takes you down a notch or just flat out cancels your account, not allowing you to do business. Such is the case in the affiliate marketing world and this is truly what can destroy an affiliate business, sometimes overnight.
Here are some examples:
1) You run a blog, but then it gets hit with a Google update like this and it can take months to crawl out of that.
2) You run ads on Google Ads, and they suspend your account, and it’s nearly impossible to get it back.
3) You run social media pages or accounts that also get the ax and then it cuts your profits out.
4) You see a downturn in your affiliate business or lack of progression and become lazy or quit because of that.
These types of things are very familiar experiences to me personally since I’ve had almost all of them happen (see my about me page for the history) and I promise you, that is the true killer of affiliate businesses and if I can bounce back from that, trust me, you can too, and I doubt most people would even experience what I had to during my time.
Yet there’s good news:
1) You can rather easily avoid these situations by just not breaking the rules of whatever network you’re building your affiliate business through.
2) If you’re building a blog, don’t make it crappy or steal content from others.
3) If you’re doing pay per click, do not run ads that violate the TOS and if you do get it banned, there is a way back by just talking to their customer service. And even if that fails, you have more than one pay per click network available to do affiliate marketing on.
4) And if you’re feeling lazy or depressed because your affiliate business isn’t taking off (or took a hit), then focus on growing it more, and/or entering into a new, more recession proof niche.
If you are on social media and something like this happens, the protocol is pretty much the same.
The point is that there’s numerous avenues to:
- Avoid the problem from happening.
- And even if it happens, to fix it or move into a different one.
What if you’re just getting started? Read this:
So if you’re just getting into affiliate marketing, I can totally understand if you feel overwhelmed, pessimistic and lost on current events and if it’s even worth doing anything. I can tell you the answer is yes, but you have to do the following:
- Follow a specific guideline.
- Give it at least a year of hard work.
- And be flexible.
If you can follow these 3 guidelines, then start a real affiliate marketing business with Wealthy Affiliate here, and in doing so, you can properly set up a recession proof business overtime to be on the other end of these bad events and overcome them.
I know a lot of people are having tough times right now and I have certainly seen my own hits take place with my sites and business, but this won’t last forever and you will be able to overcome it and come to the same conclusions I did that I wrote about in this article. Just start with a positive mindset, know the best is coming and take action with a program like Wealthy Affiliate.