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Start Affiliate Marketing - Stop Talking Start Doing
One of the many reasons to start affiliate marketing is the fact the industry is worth $17 billion globally.
At first sight, affiliate marketing is simply a dream come true business:
- No product creation,
- No storage of items,
- No shipping,
- No customer support, etc.
Unsurprisingly, almost everyone wants to use this model of generating commissions by promoting other people’s products online. But the truth is more than 95% of newbies who start affiliate marketing fail to achieve success.
People start with very high expectations, only to give up because the money-making part of their affiliate business does not take off.
From my own mistakes and observations, I can tell most reasons for failure in this business are caused by the wrong mindset or the lack of proper technical skills.
Provide Outstanding Value
Affiliate marketing is a very crowded business area.
Hence, it would be best if you found ways to stand out from the crowd.
Create content to be either a great help or very entertaining (or both) to your audience.
You must add or invent your unique value and tone to whatever topic you create content about. If you can’t capture your visitors, they are gone forever.
When you start affiliate marketing, it is highly recommended to have a website and blog to answer questions that haven’t been answered before.
Try to give some extra tips to use the product best or to combine it with other products, for example.
Know The Products You Promote
This is a big one, too. Many affiliates don’t take the effort to dive into the products they want to earn commissions from when they start affiliate marketing.
They think it’s enough to provide superficial product information.
Your visitors don’t come to your blog to read things they have read elsewhere. They seek reliable extra details, which in the best case, comes from a user knowing the product inside out.
It is impossible to provide this unique and beneficial information about a product if you haven’t used or tested it yourself.
Show your achievements by using the product. You can give significant and credible advocacy for it in front of your audience.
That way, you will achieve much more success than those who promote products they are not connected with.
Look To Help, Not Sell
This is a widespread phenomenon, not only in affiliate marketing. People put all their energy into selling and get only a few positive sales results.
And with poor results, many put even more effort into actively selling, which makes the gap to their sales results even bigger…
If you want to sell something, do anything but sell.
An unwritten law in business is that people deal with those they know, like, and trust.
Rather than madly chasing after sales, start helping people.
Switching your primary mission to helping mode for your audience, it won’t take long to see excellent results.
In helping mode, you don’t push people to buy something. Instead, your actions are based on solving your audience’s problems. Offering solutions to them with your blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc.
When you start affiliate marketing, being able to separate yourself from the crowd will help build success.
Switch into helping mode and aim for your audience to know, like and trust you.
Where Should I Start
Choosing a niche is a widespread struggle for many newbies when they start affiliate marketing.
Choosing the field of interest for my affiliate business was a big challenge at the beginning of my online journey.
When I looked at how I had to start affiliate marketing, trial and error was how I learnt. Mostly more mistakes than in the tests!
A well-targeted audience is visitors who are very interested in the content and the related product recommendations you provide on your blog.
People looking to start affiliate marketing are an ever-expanding target audience, which I had gained intimate knowledge of through my struggles.
Promoting Multiple Niches
It is a common mistake to try and promote several niches at once.
Once you understand how a profitable niche business works, you want to build many of them to maximize your affiliate income.
Even if it’s possible to manage several niches simultaneously, it is not a good model for newbies. Building an affiliate marketing business is more complex than one might think.
I see many starters who underestimate the workload related to this business. They end up in several niches where each one lacks proper contribution and care to take off. This results in many places with only little to no income. Sooner or later, people get frustrated and give up.
Start with one niche and stay laser-focused until it’s a profitable business.
At that point, your expertise and routine are strong enough to step into more markets or try other business models.
Choosing Affiliate Products
Your income opportunities depend significantly on what kind of affiliate products you promote. You must be aware that products with relatively low pricing result in relatively low commissions you can make per sale.
I don’t say affiliate marketing with low-priced items is impossible. Still, you must know that you need to generate significantly more traffic than higher commission products to achieve the same results.
The most successful method I have discovered is to use a free plus shipping funnel. Learn what we use here.
This strategy enables us to capture leads, offer upsells and have the potential to make high ticket and recurring commissions.
Distractions And The Shiny Object Syndrome
When we start affiliate marketing, distraction is only a mouse click away. I think that’s the occupational disease of our industry.
We sit in our “virtual cockpit “and can reach out to everything business related (or off-topic) through our screens.
When creating content daily, don’t allow distractions from your cell phone, tablet, computer, or other devices. You will disappear down a rabbit hole, checking emails, social media, analytics, news and whatever else.
Sometimes we cheat on ourselves with distractions. We do business tasks we find more interesting, while other activities are much more critical to do first in reality.
To reach your goals, you must use the time available to you on those things that will contribute to producing income.
Luckily for us, there are only four of them.
So prioritize your tasks with first things first, and don’t procrastinate on things that urgently need to be done to grow your business.
Core Focus #1 Traffic Generation
Traffic is the lifeblood of an online business. Without traffic, there are no results. Master the three types of traffic. The traffic you control, the traffic you don’t control, and the traffic you own.
Core Focus #2 Capture Leads
As an affiliate marketer, you must build a database of emails from the traffic you generate so you can communicate with them whenever you choose.
Core Focus #3 Following Up
Since most people do not buy an offer straight away, you need a process to be able to follow up on your email list. Delivering value will get the people on your list to know, like and trust you.
Core Focus #4 Sales System
You will not make sales unless you are making offers to your list. The recommendations must have your audience’s best interests at their core, or you will destroy the relationship with the subscribers.
Realistic Expectations
It’s interesting to see that when people start affiliate marketing, they tend to be very impatient with their business.
The expectation you can get rich overnight on autopilot is mainly caused by all the black sheep of our industry.
The first important thing you should do before stepping into the affiliate business is to reset all the scam hype about affiliate marketing in your brain.
In many aspects, affiliate marketing is pretty much the opposite of what these so-called gurus want to make newbies believe.
- It takes time to build a solid foundation for your long-term affiliate business.
- It takes time to gain the trust of your audience and search engines.
- It takes time to see the first results.
- It takes time to grow your affiliate revenue into a full-time income.
- It takes time to scale your business to a higher level that exceeds a full-time revenue.
If you expect it to take time, you are not tempted to choose shiny strategies to boost your business, which only hurt your business.
If you bring in patience, you will stick to the solid strategies that will make you the winner in the long run.
Some of those who start affiliate marketing based on their website or blog, which I highly recommend, see the first results after a couple of months. And for some, it can take a year or more to make a stable income.
That depends on how much time you can invest in building your business.
Whatever you build a business, there is always hard work before you can enjoy all the advantages of high income, flexibility and independence!
Give It A Go!
Most people fail to start affiliate marketing successfully, and I showed you some of the most common reasons above.
You absolutely can succeed in this business if you remember to:-
- Stay away from tempting scams.
- Learn the skills from mentors you trust.
- Apply your skills steadily.
- Don’t let setbacks ever stop you.
- Take care of your mindset.
I hope you have found some good insights about critical factors when you start affiliate marketing.
There is no doubt in my mind that everyone needs a coach and mentor to succeed in this business. I recommend anyone interested in the next generation of affiliate marketing get a copy of my friend and mentor Dean Holland’s book “The Iceberg Effect.”
Please share your experiences and expertise in this business below. And if you have any questions – please comment below.
Steve Turner
DISCLOSURE: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS, MEANING I GET A COMMISSION IF YOU DECIDE TO MAKE A PURCHASE THROUGH MY LINKS AT NO COST TO YOU. PLEASE READ MY DISCLOSURE FOR MORE INFO.
