A few years ago I came across a Facebook advert with this very title “Struggling With Your Affiliate Business?“. I was indeed struggling. I followed the link and found a new way to make affiliate marketing work for me. More on that later. At the time I was making next to nothing from affiliate marketing. I had followed all the courses and tried many different strategies. I was close to giving up.
Struggling With Your Affiliate Business?
But I had learned so much. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. It was disappointing to find out later that I didn’t even need to learn most of what I had spent so much time on. I had learned:
- How to build a website from scratch
- Placing affiliate banners
- Writing content
- Paid advertising
- List building
- Social Media marketing
- Article marketing
- Keyword research etc.
But I didn’t realise that I was caught up in some unproductive habits which were not serving me. Added to this I was also wandering from one course to another without any real direction. As soon as I saw another ‘shiny object’ I would change direction. My mindset was all over the place. Don’t get me wrong, work is needed with an affiliate business, but your mindset is more important than I first realised.
The Top Deadly Sins Of Affiliate Marketing
Here’s a short list of what I believe are the top deadly sins of many affiliate marketers. These are mistakes we all make and until we notice and improve ourselves we will continue making them:
1. Shiny Object Syndrome
Shiny Object Syndrome – You find an internet course which promises you a lifetime of unlimited income for little work and jump straight on it. You work hard for a long time, but results aren’t coming. The next ‘shiny’ new course which promises us an easier time of it catches our eye. Abandoning your previous efforts, you start a new direction. This is shiny object syndrome! Finding a path you believe in and sticking to it for the duration is your way out. This has a lot to do with mindset. Unless you know your direction, someone on the internet or elsewhere will distract you with their ‘better’ direction!
2. Being A Busy Fool
Being a ‘busy fool’. It’s fine to be a busy fool if you get a paycheck every month. You can spend a few hours sharpening your pencil, then browse through social media. Before long it’s lunch time and as the day draws to a close you’ve accomplished nothing. If you can float under the radar in a job you will still get paid. With affiliate marketing you don’t get paid. You get paid for exactly what you have accomplished that day. So it it’s nothing that’s what you get paid. Beware of being a busy fool. Set yourself tasks to complete before you log on to avoid distractions and avoid social media and emails until you have completed them all.
3. Getting Stuck in Education Mode
Getting caught up in ‘education mode’ – This was a big one for me and I spent far too long believing I had nothing to offer. As a result I was always learning, never applying. There’s a lot to learn about affiliate marketing but if you get caught up in just learning, you will never make any headway. Learn something and apply it straight away. Learning without applying that knowledge is a waste of your time and energy. Don’t get caught up in education mode. You don’t need to learn everything to get started. Something which took me a long time to figure out. Learn as you go and earn while you learn.
4. Working In The Wrong Direction
Knowledge is power. With the right knowledge you can accomplish a lot more with an internet business. With the wrong knowledge you can be forever working in circles and never get anywhere. Make sure you are working in the right direction. For example, you have built a website and set about creating content for it. You join an affiliate program and put some banners on your website.
You blog about some topic you really don’t know much about, just to get started. I did this for quite a while. It got me nowhere. The problem was I burned out. I didn’t have an interest in my chosen topic. As a result I couldn’t sustain writing about it for any length of time in order to build the level of traffic required to my site to make it work. My products were low cost affiliate products. I sold books which made me only pennies on a sale, or used Google’s Adsense which again only paid pennies.
All of my efforts were futile. I didn’t make any money. I was working without the right knowledge. Get the right education from the start and you can make big leaps forward, rather than following a strategy which doesn’t work, and in some cases will never work.
Not Focusing On Money Producing Activities
As an affiliate you must focus on money producing activities. I spend months, and eventually years wasting time designing e-book covers, building useless websites which never got seen and writing articles which would fall into the void of internet obscurity. I didn’t promote or share my articles, I just expected everyone to see them. I didn’t promote my website, I just ‘hoped’ Google would rank them. Of course some money producing activities are more cost effective than others. Writing content takes time. Paid advertising is instant. However, whatever your activities are, don’t get caught up in activities which don’t move your business forward. Write a lost of everything you have accomplished each day and be vigilant with yourself. Are these ‘accomplishments’ moving your business forward or just filling your time to avoid the important?
Affiliate Marketing – A Better Business Model
Most of my affiliate products in the early days were low cost digital downloads. I tried many products like this without ever buying them myself too. This is a mistake since you can’t truly promote something you know nothing about. It wasn’t until I sold my first high ticket affiliate product that I realised how effective and profitable affiliate marketing could really be. I’m not saying I didn’t work for that sale, just that when you make a high ticket sale, it’s worth a lot more than making even 10 low value sales. It makes an affiliate marketing business much more viable. There’s a few other things you should also consider with an affiliate business model:
- Do your products offer monthly commissions? Selling membership products is a complete game changer too. Rather than a one off sale you also every month for each referral you make. Think about that for a minute, especially if you’re focused on selling single items. A single item doesn’t reward you again and again for the first point of sale. M
- Do you have a high ticket product to offer? Making an internet business profitable is much harder with low value items. High ticket items allow you to make greater leaps towards a profitable online business. They also make scaling of your affiliate business much easier.
- Do your products reward you for back end sales? Most affiliate products don’t offer this. They only pay you once for individual sales. After that the customer is theirs! Choosing to sell items which offer back end sales for which you are paid is another method which can completely transform your internet business. Especially if those sales are closed by a built in sales team.
Access An Education Platform & High Ticket Products
Access an education platform which will give you the right mindsets, tools and training to take your affiliate business to the next level. Whether you are a complete novice or a seasoned affiliate marketer, you can benefit from the education, training and product range available here.