Hope in traditional employment is an uncertain feeling to fathom in today’s world of information technology and employment uncertainty. Automation is taking over the way most companies do business, phasing out the need for human intervention. According to the website Ladders (April 25, 2018), it’s predicted that “Even Wall Street is undergoing automation-enhanced shifts, with over 230,000 jobs predicted to be lost to bots in the next eight years.” When you hear of automation overpowering human services, job security is surely in question with or without a college degree.
College graduates working for some companies who suddenly become a secret target by their employer and co-workers for termination may find their employment soon in question, without regard of years employed with the company nor how much revenue achieved. This leaves some workers to rethink their future with their current employer and external options to consider, should a random downsizing happen or sudden termination without an honest reason to you why you were let go. Want to work less for an unthankful employer who’s not paying you enough and have a piece of mind? Affiliate marketing and blogging is your pathway to future financial freedom and online employment stability. Termination can be your biggest motivation for seeking out online entrepreneurship as a way of life and stable income.
'Affiliate Marketing Defined'
What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is a process of marketing goods and services as an advertisement placed on a blog or service promoted by an affiliate of that advert in hopes of earning what’s called an affiliate commission. The affiliate sets up a blog or website centered around a niche topic and finds relevant affiliate programs to join and promote on their blog or website that’s relevant to the content they publish. As the future of traditional shopping is taking a backseat to shopping online and acquiring goods and services at a cheaper price with the ability to earn cash back from sites such as eBates and RetailMeNot, people spend more money purchasing the same things from home versus going to the shopping mall.
According to Forbes (October 25, 2017), “The internet had a limited reach once, but today around 72% of the U.S. population has access to the internet, and around 96% of all internet users in the U.S. have made some kind of an online purchase.” That opens doors to affiliate marketers-bloggers infinite possibilities of potentially earning an uncapped online salary that can and will match their current salary and grow to “infinite financial strength,” depending on your creativity, length of content in published blog posts or webpages (known as evergreen content), and ways you promote your blog to earn traffic and repeat customers. According to raw data compiled from BLS.gov between years of 2003-2013, an estimated 923,282 people were actively engaged in “non-employer business growth,” relying on gig work to supplement their income. In today’s age of information technology being dominant and employment uncertainty, people are relying more on self-employment vs. working a regular day job. The era of the side hustle is at full strength.
'Overcoming Debt with Side Hustles'
Millionaire affiliate marketer and blogger Michelle Schroeder-Gardner of Making Sense of Cents was once a college student in almost $40,000 of personal debt before starting her blog as a hobby in 2011. Just 2 years after launching her blog and promoting ads on it, she earned enough affiliate revenue from Google AdSense and related affiliate programs she promotes to quit her day job and travel throughout America in her RV. Michelle felt her office job wasn’t satisfying and took a leap of faith into affiliate marketing as a means of employment stability. The best form of job security today is using your personal intellect your employer doesn’t appreciate and applying yourself wholeheartedly into starting a business from home online through affiliate marketing and blogging. It allows you to work on your own terms, spare time, and not worry about meeting quotas.
CJ Affiliate by Conversant Vice President Paul Tibbitt discusses the future of affiliate marketing in an article on the Huffingtonpost quoted in the following (December 21, 2017) “Having been forecasted to reach $6.8 billion by 2020, affiliate marketing is a rapidly growing channel that advertisers and publishers are increasingly using to get in front of the right audience and monetize their content.” With job security in question today and everyday people walking around with million dollar business ideas rambling in the back of their mind, the internet is helping the average person transition from struggling employee wondering if they’ll make it to retirement and working from paycheck to paycheck, to unleashing their full creative entrepreneurial potential trying their hand at affiliate marketing and blogging as a gateway to secondary income and moving into a full-time online career and future millionaire. Forbes (2017) reinforces affiliate marketing as a stable career to invest yourself in by saying “This shows the potential of affiliate marketing, which gives you the power to reach to a global audience. With more and more people using the internet today, you have the whole world as your target audience,” “Affiliate marketing, without a doubt, is big. How big? Well it's over the size of $5 billion, which makes it one of the biggest industries in the U.S.,” and “The industry is expected to grow to the size of $6.8 billion in the next four years, and the growth is not only in terms of revenue, but networks as well. More networks mean people have more options to pick from.” It’s obsolete today to be in a one track mindset of believing your day job is the way to a healthy retirement because affiliate marketing proved itself to help people retire faster and achieve millionaire status. Affiliate marketing, blogging, creating content from your home computer or smartphone for your site, and making money 24 hours a day is the “new new of future financial and self-employment stability.”
To further reinforce the claim that affiliate marketing freelancing - side hustles tend to be more stable than regular jobs, Bankrate (July 12, 2017) has an interesting article making clear and concise sayings that “A new survey from Bankrate reveals that we are seriously a country of hustlers, with 44 million American adults claiming they have a side gig—aka an extra way to rake in cash aside from their main source of income. The age group most likely to grow their green with a side hustle? Millennials.,” and “Bankrate’s survey found that younger millennials (ages 18 to 26) are the age group most likely to have a side hustle, with 28 percent saying they have an extra way to make money aside from their main source of income. And they’re not using these gigs to make a quick buck every now and then just to fund their trip to Coachella; 61 percent of younger millennials say they earn extra money on the side every week, and 96 percent of them say they do it at least monthly. 25 percent of younger millennials make more than $500 a month.” Bankrate’s surveys are concrete proof side hustle entrepreneurship (as mentioned) is the way to go to keep yourself employed.
Hopefully, this thread inspired you to take serious consideration in self-employment vs. working for someone else. Based on the linear regression of self-employment, it looks as if people are more inclined today to working a regular job against trying their hand at entrepreneurship. Are people getting scared nowadays of entrepreneurship? A hypothetical guess is because people want to feel that cushion, knowing they start making money the minute they punch in for work. Millions of Americans are still uneducated today how to use the internet to start a blog and a side hustle working from home or their smartphone as a part-time job outside their regular job. It's also assumed that people are inclined to work a regular job because they don’t want to adapt to a new way of thinking and get out of their current mental comfort zone of being in a daily routine of going to work and getting a bi-weekly paycheck. Self-employment is surely worth taking a chance and starting your own business with or without a job. Self-employment is a test of patience and a confidence builder.
6 Ways Millennials Are Working Less and Earning More. (2018, January 05). Retrieved from http://www.wisebread.com/6-ways-millennials-are-working-less-and-earning-more
Berger, S. (2018, January 05). Side Hustle Nation: Millennials Are Making Major Money With Side Gigs. Retrieved from https://www.bankrate.com/personal-finance/smart-money/side-hustles-survey/
Olenski, S. (2017, October 25). 5 Signs That Affiliate Marketing Is Not Dead. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2017/10/25/5-signs-that-affiliate-marketing-is-not-dead/#431b0e594392
Self-employed, total (% of total employment) (modeled ILO estimate). (2017, November). Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.EMP.SELF.ZS?locations=US
Theus, D. (2018, April 25). Middle management job security in the age of automation. Retrieved from https://www.theladders.com/career-advice/middle-management-job-security-in-the-age-of-automation
Tibbitt, P. (2017, December 21). Three Predictions for the Affiliate Marketing Industry in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/three-predictions-for-the-affiliate-marketing-industry_us_5a3bfc92e4b0df0de8b0634a
Working in a gig economy : Career Outlook. (Hogan, Andrew, Torpey, Elka 2016, May). Retrieved from https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2016/article/what-is-the-gig-economy.htm