Affiliate Marketing could be the solution to COVID-19 Unemployment Increase

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The COVID-19 Pandemic on Employment

On March 11, 2020 the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic the outbreak, which has left millions of people unemployed globally. According to BBC reports, the unemployment insurance claims in the US have surpassed over three million, a record-breaker beating the number of unemployment claims recorded during the time of the “great recession”  between 2008 and 2010. The editorial board of the New-York Times, in  reaction to the mass unemployment controversy in the US, reported that a wide range of European countries have shutdown large part of their economies due to the epidemic, even with the compensation tactics utilized to keep workers at bay. In South-Africa, President Ramaphosa in a press briefing lamented the COVID-19 situation and its negative impact on the nation’s economy, citing the recent crash in the tourism and mining sector, which has fueled the country’s economy for decades.  At the time of  the article, CNBC reports that, economists of the St. Louis Fed district protrude unemployment rate to hit 32%, as job losses increase to 47 million worldwide.

With the COVID-19 economic pandemonium, there are obvious implications which affected countries could encounter, such as an increased rate in criminal and illegal activities, and a global recession which has been restrained for long, but eventually found an avenue for manifestation. Notwithstanding, online entrepreneurs and freelancers are still under the productive and influential benefits of the internet, because the more people sit at home during this period of isolation, the more prolific social-media traffic becomes. This is the main reason why creating awareness about affiliate marketing as a home-based source of generating revenue becomes necessary for those currently unemployed, in a bid to check the escalation of such negative implications.

The Basics of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has been a profitable obsession within online entrepreneurs, content developers, bloggers, and freelancers. It requires little or no skills (educational or vocational qualifications) to start, and it creates different income sources, by simply earning money through commission rates on any e-commerce product or service sold by the respective affiliate. Affiliate marketers do not go through the painstaking process of manufacturing a product or thinking about shipping processes and taxations, they are simply mediators: introducing potential customers to e-commerce vendors or stores.

Diagram Created by the Author.

Most e-commerce companies like Amazon, Etsy, Shopify among others, hold affiliate marketers accountable for adding value to their online sales and promotions, and for this reason, their affiliate programs are made available to the public for free registration.  Another beneficial method of building an online career with affiliate marketing is by joining notable affiliate networks or programs with commission rates relatively higher than most of the e-commerce stores mentioned above. Affiliate networks such as ClickBank, Jvzoo, ShareAsale, etc., are crucial to affiliate promoters because they provide more: tools, tips, and training courses that is comprehensive and affordable, in order to enable beginners (and even experts) navigate the affiliate market with fewer challenges and risks. The concept of affiliate marketing is structured on the rudiments of social-media networking, i.e., being an affiliate marketer objectively relates to being an active social-media user.

How Affiliate Marketing Could Be A Solution 

According to SocialMediaToday, Facebook reported last week that it is seeing high levels of demand for its social services during the COVID-19 crisis, the use of Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp is now over 50% and the use of the Facebook Live video is now over 70% since January. Facebook Messenger and Facebook Live Feed is now more useful in connecting with organic traffic than any other social tool, simply because people are self-quarantined and stuck at home. What does this mean? A large number of people are likely to solicit for home-based jobs and offers, and simultaneously; affiliate marketers have more opportunity to increase their online clientele through the niche of internet marketing and the “make-money-from-home” scheme. Therefore, from these deductions, it seems like a suitable period for affiliate marketing to act as a plausible solution in restraining social unrest and sustaining the socio-economic paradigm for each affected country.

The Common Issues Associated with Affiliate Marketing

The common problem with affiliate marketing comes from a misunderstanding of the subject itself. Most people think its objectives and standards are prone to becoming fraudulent since it is 99.9% internet business. However prejudicial it may seem, they are right to think so because most online entrepreneurs or affiliate marketing advocates have not done enough work in clarifying those doubts. Most advocates through their blog-posts or YouTube channels often exaggerate how affiliate marketing can literally generate thousands of dollars in a day (which might have worked for them personally), without really emphasizing on why it should be a career choice for people looking to earn a good amount of passive income to survive the unemployment crisis, or people looking to become their own boss.

Sometimes with good intentions, these advocates think that using their stories and results as an example will give enough encouragement or conviction about the market, which only works 20% of the time, perhaps for the few who have carried out their own personal research about the business of online marketing.  But for the majority of those hearing about affiliate marketing for the first time, whether from an article or YouTube video, that kind of approach will probably not work for them, especially if the article or video in particular focuses more on the advocate’s success-story  than the technicalities of the affiliate market itself.

Another common problem, arising from the first point, is how to effectively communicate these technicalities to the majority of people, who generally use Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter just for entertainment purposes, without them realizing the enormous potential of converting such entertaining addiction into a career that could be worth millions in the future. This problem does not rely so much on affiliate marketing experts or advocates, because there are thousands of webinars, toolkits, training courses and packages concerning internet marketing and sales management. The issue is central to the privacy policy of popular social media platforms or networks, responsible for restricting links or websites related to affiliate marketing, promotional advertising, and home-based investment opportunities. The disadvantages of this are more than the advantages it provides. Indeed it helps improves cybersecurity and detection of spambots, and so on… but it cloaks so many business opportunities to the majority of the online community. Affiliate marketing experts are encumbered with these privacy policy restrictions, thereby, causing a lacuna in effective communication on some entrepreneurial techniques or packages that could be utilized in creating an online business from home.

In summary, the period is perhaps the best time to expand the self-help market and to steer the populace into self-entrepreneurship. Any form of orientation in this order should outline a pragmatic principle that is attainable and realistic enough for people to engage with and for them to become hopeful of surviving this epidemic. Most importantly social-media platforms and prominent online editorials should make their privacy policy a bit flexible to welcome promotional advertising regarding home-based entrepreneurial activities and financial ideas on DIY investments either in online marketing, Option trading or cryptocurrencies.