Your affiliate marketing mindset is either your biggest asset or your biggest liability, when building an affiliate business. Not everyone will succeed with affiliate marketing. Those who do, and turn it into their main source of income, are in a minority. Around 97% of people who “try” affiliate marketing will quit – see affiliate marketing failure rate.
But that’s partly because so many can “give it a go”, without much investment of time or money. But to succeed, you can’t have a “give it a go” mentality, you’ll need a “whatever it takes” attitude instead.
Affiliate Marketing Mindset – Your “Why?”
As an employee, you do the work and you get paid regularly for showing up; you trade your time for money. Affiliate marketing is different in that you don’t get paid unless you make a sale. The goal of affiliate marketing is to learn how to get paid on autopilot for the work you have done previously.
But before you can reach this stage, there’s a whole host of roadblocks and hurdles standing in your way. As a beginner, you’ll doubt whether it even works at all. In this state, it’s very hard to work towards something in a meaningful way.
The early days are the easiest to give up because you have no (personal) evidence that your work will be fruitful. You watch training videos and read blog posts. You may even make a start and join a program. This is all costing time and energy. If you’re also juggling family life, a full time job, a commute etc., it can be difficult to maintain the necessary motivation and enthusiasm to continue down this path – especially when you’re making no money from it.
You’ll need a strong reason to keep going. Otherwise, you’ll probably quit! A good reason is always something which makes you keep going no matter what. For many, this is the possibility of becoming financially independent and leaving their job.
Affiliate Marketing Mindset – Your “Why?”
Knowing your “why?” is a useful motivational support when things aren’t going as expected. If you have a burning hatred of your boss or job, or of simply feeling financially powerless, you’ll overcome a lot more adversity in affiliate marketing than if you are fairly happy in your life and in what you’re currently doing. If life is generally “ok” and you don’t have a strong desire to change your circumstances, you’ll probably have less drive to become successful as an affiliate.
You’ll likely come across plenty of adversity as a beginner while you’re learning about affiliate marketing. How you handle this is what’s important. Those who consider setbacks as important learning exercises will use it to further their knowledge, and move forwards. But some will look upon setbacks as failures, and use them as a reason to quit.
Entrepreneur Thinking Vs. Employee Thinking
The mindset of an entrepreneur is different to that of most employees. As an employee, you know you’ll get paid for performing a certain set of activities. But as an entrepreneur, which is effectively what an affiliate is, you’ll need to set goals and have a long term vision. The mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur is an important one if you’re to succeed as an affiliate. If you bring an “employee mindset” with you to your affiliate business, it can block you from realising the dream of becoming self employed and financially independent. But why is this?
An employee knows they can get away with as little as possible. Granted not every employee has this belief, but many know this to be true. With affiliate marketing, you only get paid for sales you make. So you’ll need a different approach to succeed online. With an online business you’ll need to work much harder for far less, at least in the beginning. But what you’re working for as an affiliate is freedom, rather than a steady pay package! If you keep this in mind, it can help motivate you beyond the initial startup phase, into actually making money as an affiliate.
Employees trade their time for money, and income is therefore finite. Affiliates see things differently; they know that by selling products online, there’s a point in time, (if they keep going long enough), where their systems will generate income automatically. They won’t have to work anymore, and they will still generate an income.
If you understand this deeply, and want this outcome badly enough, you’ll do pretty much whatever it takes as an affiliate to achieve it. You’ll have a “whatever it takes” attitude. This is the affiliate marketing mindset you need to make a success of it!
What You Need To Succeed As An Affiliate
In the free video below, Stuart explains what you’ll need to become successful as an affiliate. If you bring a “give it a go” attitude towards your affiliate business, your results will reflect this attitude.
If you bring a “whatever it takes” approach, likewise you can expect something more fitting. Like with life, you get out of something what you put in. If you’re just “dabbling” in affiliate marketing without taking it seriously, you can make some pocket change. But if you take affiliate marketing seriously, you can replace your income and become financially and geographically independent.
Not everyone has the same motivations of course. Some people want only a secondary income from affiliate marketing. But the benefit of learning affiliate marketing is the ability to work from anywhere and generate an income from your laptop. During the current times, this is a pretty good reason to learn, whatever your motivations are.
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