As I was laying in the sun, gazing out to sea last week (apologies for the lack of updates – Summer seemed to descend upon us all of a sudden, and I wasn’t about to miss out!), I really felt for the poor souls who were stuck in work, looking out of their windows at the glorious 4 days of summer they were missing out on.

And that got me to thinking just how lucky I am to work in this Industry – If the sun comes out, or I fancy catching a movie, or just fancy a duvet day, I can give myself the day (or at least a few hours) off. And whilst I finished off my second “heavenly honeycomb” ice-cream of the day in preparation for another round of frisbee, I thought of a few more reasons why it’s great to be an affiliate:

The hours are not fixed. I, along with most affiliates am a “B person” – There’s no explaining it – we just work better when we roll out of bed at 11am, and work through till 2am. Being an affiliate means you can work the hours that suit you. Kids to drop off/pick up? No problem – work around it. Fancy sloping off to the beach for the day, or nipping off for a round of golf? Ask the boss – That’s you!

The wages are unlimited. That’s not to say you can just roll out of bed at 11am, play Wii all day and expect a £100,000 salary. But if you put the work in, over a sustained period of time, the amount you can earn really is unlimited. As Gary Player is famously quoted “The harder I work, the luckier I get” – well, the same applies for Affiliate Marketing.

There is a great spirit amongst affiliates. I don’t know of many other industries where competing MDs would all sit around and share a beer and tips with each other. But that’s exactly what happens in Affiliate Marketing. Many of my competitors in this industry are also amongst my best friends. Affiliates will always help other affiliates out if they are in need. Compared to the “office politics” that happens in most workplaces, there is very little of that here.

Affiliate Marketing can be mentally rewarding. As well as the obvious monetary rewards, I don’t think there’s much better reward than spending the time creating something (be it a PPC campaign, SEO page, blog post etc), and before too long seeing sales coming in from real people. That’s when you know you’re making a real diffference, and it makes you very proud.

There are no barriers to entry. You don’t need to have any qualifications as such (I left school after doing my GCSE’s), you don’t need a pile of cash (I started out with around £250), and you don’t need to know anything about HTML (I didn’t know anything at all, and still know very little). All you need to a bit of a creative mind, and a determination to succeed.

There’s a fairly level playing field. One man band operations compete with (and in many cases out-perform) multi-million pound conglomerates in Affiliate Marketing. I truly believe that small is beautiful in AM.

You can travel the world, for free. Aside from the fantastic holidays you can now afford thanks to AM, the Industry has also gained a reputation for holding its conferences and incentive prizes in some of the world’s most amazing places. Just in the last 12 months, you could have gone to Las Vegas, Tokyo, Barbados, California, Amsterdam, New York, Miami, The Bahamas and many more. All either for free courtesy of networks and merchants, or as a business expense.

I’m sure there’s many others that I haven’t mentioned, and of course every affiliate has their own personal reason why they love Affiliate Marketing. But in true Marmite fashion, there are many things that I don’t like about this Industry, and I’ll touch on them in my next article, Why I hate Affiliate Marketing!

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