Has Anyone Legitimately Gotten Rich Off Of Affiliate Marketing?

Exactly.

The picture you see here is a hugely distorted one because it comprises a preponderance of people in the MMO/IM-advice niches together with struggling newbies and a collection of recidivistic believers in all those urban myths of internet marketing. Most successful affiliates aren't in those niches. They're off doing whatever.

Just curious, why did you bring up the MMO niche into the conversation? Do you really feel that most everybody posting is just promoting a leveling guide for a game like World of Warcraft?

To answer the OP post, I've earned 7 fig/year, but the key isn't IM. IM in my opinion is just 1 single piece of the puzzle. Not even the most important one. The real key to the puzzle is providing something of real importance, something that truly is useful. Once you have that you can utilize IM techniques to broaden your audience and appeal.

"selling dog biscuits or something" ... sorry you hit a funny bone with this comment.

Of course , there are people who are rich from affiliate marketing . i know many 6 figure , 7 figures earners . I have seen clickbank earnings that made me want to lose sleep and do the work I have been putting off for so long

I was gonna say something similar, but you don't have to be a super-affiliate. But a list helps tremedously and a great relationship with your list is important. I think a good mixture of affiliate marketing along with freebies that are valuable and somewhat exclusive can be the key to bringing wealth from affiliate marketing.

This is exactly the truth.

I DO NOT recommend, or encourage, ANY of my students to get into the MMO/IM niche. Do what you know, or what you love, and you'll have a better chance of success.

All the examples that I'm building through out the course is all on various hobbie like topics.

Ahhhhh that makes me feel sick I that I didn't discover IM back in the early, early days...I'd have bought the domain sex.com ($14,000,000) and lived happily ever after.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

- Mark Twain

It means you are one of the top 100 current clickbank earners.

Great thread! There are so many real pro's chiming in here! That alone answers the question.

Yep, there are many folks just killing it in affiliate. Remeber the 80%/20% rul? It may be more skewed toward 90%/10% in IM. There are recipes to success, and I do not mean buying the latest WSO about making $10,000 this week. Find someone who is really doing it and see if they will mentor you!

Wealth to the point that you no longer need to worry about money, aside from where and how you are going to spend it. Financial security to the point that you needn’t worry about “picking up an additional job” to supplement your online income/expenses, or worse yet having to abandon your online pursuits completely to work a more “traditional” 9-5 job for someone else. Exact figures could be subjective as someone could live comfortably on an amount of money someone else would consider “Not enough.”

You should read my post right above yours. I have nothing to gain saying it works if it doesn't.

Being "rich" is subjective. I felt rich making my first $1,000 in a month several years ago, and I thought i was on top of the world lol

And at the time my income had been purely from affiliate marketing. I scaled that to about $7-8k monthly until i moved onto other things (becoming a product creator, for one), but some people on this forum will 100% swear by being an affiliate versus being a product creator.

Everyone has a different path, and you're no different. Affiliate marketing might be simple since the product is already created, but if you're just starting out mastering traffic generation needs to be your first step (just saying, I know that wasn't your question).

The top earners on clickbank are a good example of the success of affiliate marketers.

Mark Ling is a 7 figure affiliate, though he has products. He makes more from affiliate marketing than his own products (which makes sense because he promotes way more affiliate products than owning his own products).

And then you have the world of CPA marketers, who are purely affiliates and make 6 - 7 figures yearly (there is some debate about whether these are true affiliates since they're more lead generation rather than product affiliates).

So the question really isn't about whether or not marketers have legitimately reached that level with affiliate marketing. The question whether or not you want to replicate that success and what you need to get there.