All the above content is purely personal opinion, unrelated to others, but comes from the heart. It took more than three hours to write these words. I really don't want new people coming in who do Taobao affiliate marketing to have income, but I don't think that's success. The biggest gain from doing Taobao affiliate marketing, in summary, is maybe upgrading from a small rookie to an old rookie. In order for promotion to succeed, intentionally or unintentionally, I've learned a lot. There are friends who also do Taobao affiliate marketing but now they all start transitioning. Only those highly skilled at doing Taobao affiliate marketing remain, and there probably aren't many left. Why haven't I moved away from Taobao affiliate marketing? Because I've been involved for a long time and regret not receiving proper returns. I've been with a Fuzhou internet company for a long time, and recently many clients need Taobaoke services. It's necessary to explain my understanding of so-called newcomers before starting the entire article. This includes rookies like myself who know a little or nothing about building websites; those without impressive blogs, without proud websites, without personal brands; some people see the Taobao affiliate model and become overly enthusiastic, fantasizing endlessly, about to enter or already entered into this industry, yet completely lack knowledge on website construction. If you belong to any of these categories, please take a bit of time to finish reading this article. You might change your mind after reading it. A loyal warning from a Taobao affiliate.
1. Why do so many people rush to do Taobao affiliate marketing?
1) Low entry barrier: Anyone can join. Just register on Ali Mama, get your own PID, and you can promote Taobao products anywhere and earn commissions. Whether QQ emails, forums, blogs, personal websites, etc.
2) High income: First, Ali Mama’s own title says "Being online can make money!" How attractive! Second, input "Taobao affiliate" on Baidu. The content on Ali Mama's forum talks about making ten thousand yuan per month. Third, skip Baidu Baike. Fourth, there are soft articles I don't know who wrote, saying how to make 30,000 yuan commission in a week as a Taobao affiliate (I didn't bother to check). These posts are always highlighted, marked as excellent, and pinned. Some posts talk about earning several thousand yuan per month on Ali Mama's forum. Some say 10 IPs earned 100 yuan in commissions. As long as you search for articles related to Taobao affiliates on Baidu, most of them talk about how much money was made or are tutorials for Taobao affiliate beginners. After reading so many posts, you're excited, right? Dreaming, right? Believing, right? Taking action, right? So every day, you can see N number of people posting on Ali Mama's forum: "Just made a new Taobao station..."
2. Do Taobao affiliates actually make money?
Looking at the earning posts on Ali Mama's forum, honestly speaking, seeing the top earners on the weekly income leaderboard on the homepage of Ali Mama's community, I truly believe they are making money. This includes moderators, forum elders, early Taobao affiliate site owners, and site owners with rich marketing and SEO skills. They have their own diverse methods, networks, and even personal brands. Especially after Taobao blocked Baidu, it brought a lot of traffic to some early Taobao affiliates. Many users couldn't clearly find Taobao through Baidu anymore. Thus, successful SEO let their websites seize Taobao-related keywords on Baidu. Of course, they are making money. They have many ways to do so, which can be searched online and won't be repeated here. But among the millions of people rushing in, what is this "number"? And if you search "Taokao", how many sites come up? If you search "Taobao", how many Taobao partner sites come up? Moreover, there are many sites that haven't even optimized their titles or aren't indexed by Baidu. Countless people are striving hard for Taobao's commissions, dreaming. I'm just giving advice as an elder in Fuzhou web design!
3. Why should you stay away from Taobao affiliates?
1) What is a Taobao affiliate?
A Taobao affiliate is someone who gets product codes from the Taobao affiliate promotion section. Taobao affiliate promotion is a performance-based payment promotion model. Any buyer, including yourself, after your promotion, enters a Taobao seller's store via links on personal websites, blogs, or forum posts, completes a purchase, and then earns a commission paid by the seller.
After removing all adjectives, this is the official definition. Only the key main points remain. We discover four parties related to Taobao affiliates: Taobao, sellers, buyers, and Taobao affiliates.
Taobao: Provides a trading platform for buyers and sellers.
Sellers: Open stores on Taobao to sell goods.
Buyers: Shop on Taobao to buy goods.
Taobao affiliates: Recommend products to buyers and earn commissions upon successful purchases.
In conclusion, fundamentally speaking, Taobao, buyers, and sellers are essential, while Taobao affiliates are optional! If you want to refute me, please keep reading!
2) Why do Taobao affiliates exist?
For a long time, various signs indicate that turning all Taobao buyers into Taobao affiliates is the ultimate goal of Taobao and Ali Mama.
Many Taobao members receive short messages directly from Taobao: "You can earn commissions by becoming a Taobao affiliate!" The content of the text message is omitted. Don't believe it? Check after July 2008. Taobao members can verify this. The message was received on August 24, 2008.
Ali Mama shows indifference to long-term cheating shops and sellers. Is it difficult technically? They never respond to or adopt suggestions from Taobao affiliate site owners except for singing praises and boasting about making money.
There are significant benefits for both Ali Mama and Taobao.
Turning all Taobao buyers into Taobao affiliates:
A) Can initially achieve Taobao's profitability.
If all tens of millions of Taobao buyers become Taobao affiliates and buy products through affiliate links, the affiliate system profits from high technical service fees. If all Taobao buyers become affiliates, how much would the daily technical service fee be?
B) Free advertising for Ali Mama and Taobao.
The process for Taobao affiliates is relatively simple, so more and more people join. Existing websites can be used directly for promotion. If only a few webmasters help promote, it wouldn't matter much for Taobao and Ali Mama. But if many webmasters help, say 1000 webmasters doing Taobao affiliate marketing, each site getting an average daily traffic of 50, that adds up to 50,000 visits per day. If no one buys the promoted products, the entire website becomes free advertising for Ali Mama and Taobao. If someone does buy, they still have to pay a service fee to Ali Mama.
C) Taobao affiliates are charged technical fees.
The profit through 10% technical fees (for example, if Taobao's annual transaction volume is around 100 billion yuan, that's 1 billion yuan in technical fees). If everyone becomes a Taobao affiliate, stores on Taobao may be free to open, but stores willing to promote will get a lot of recommendations, while stores unwilling to promote will have pitifully low transaction volumes! (This can be verified by interviewing a few Taobao sellers.) However, even if everyone becomes a Taobao affiliate, the 10% technical fee continues to be collected, allowing Taobao to profit legitimately.
3) Stay away from Taobao affiliates
The commission rate is 1.5%. An expert calculated this: For a 10,000 yuan mobile phone, the Taobao affiliate should earn 150 yuan in commission, but needs to deduct Ali Mama's technical fee of 10,000 * 0.5% = 50 yuan.
According to:
1) Service fee rate is less than or equal to 5%, based on 0.5% of the transaction amount for technical service fees;
Finally, only 100 yuan can be obtained. Clearly, the deducted technical maintenance fee is one-third of the commission, i.e., 33.33333% technical fee, which is very unreasonable, plus personal income tax.
What does this mean? Using the expert's original words: "It's sucking the blood of Taobao affiliates!" Some experts promoted 6000 weight loss products in a month with an original commission rate of 5%, but the shop suddenly changed it to 0.5%, causing great disappointment. Not to mention Ali Mama's infamous K-station (just search on Baidu). One day, you wake up and find your site replaced with Ali Mama's default ads. All your efforts go down the drain, and your site gets banned, meaning your funds are frozen! Go check out the Ali Mama community if you still don't believe me. How many people are complaining? How many seem calm saying "Persist, persist further!"? How many rushed in excitedly only to leave disheartened?
There are too many such cases. Probably even Baidu spiders are sick of it. Most Taobao affiliate sites are repetitive, copied versions. How many people aren't just using random source codes and calling themselves Taobao affiliates? Always rookies, right? SEO? If others can do it, why can't you? No matter how good your SEO is, can you rank "Taobao" or "Fuzhou Internet Company" on the first page? Some call it long-tail keywords. When you understand these, can't you succeed in any other field? Aren't most people just asking themselves questions? Isn't it all about wanting to highlight their sites and promote them? Nowadays, what forum, community, or blog doesn't deeply hate Taobao affiliates? Check Baidu Zhidao. One IP asks, another IP answers! Now Baidu Zhidao refuses URL links and bans accounts immediately! Look at those who genuinely ask questions; none of them say "Please directly provide the seller ID without linking because everyone understands!" Who needs Taobao affiliates when all buyers know about them? Some say we need to take it slow and persist. For a year? Two years? Isn't the lifespan of Taobao affiliates shorter than that? When most people are familiar with Taobao, don't rush! Alright! Don't you need to invest in buying domains and hosting? Don't you need to spend time updating? Don't you need to sacrifice time and youth? Then, can your investment and return be proportional? Or if you don't invest anything, just throw together a page, do you expect money to fall from the sky? Wake up!