What are your affiliate marketing objectives? Affiliate marketers are third party referral “sales” people who earn revenue from selling other people’s products online.
They are effectively self employed entrepreneurs who are mostly aiming to earn from the internet for several different reasons:
- To escape having to work for an employer
- For another income source
- So they don’t have to commute any more and join the rush hour traffic every day
- To become self employed and be their own boss.
- To attain financial freedom and/or geographical freedom (work from anywhere)
In order to achieve any of these objectives, affiliates must sell affiliate products and earn enough from it to replace an existing income, or give them another source of income which can be built upon.
Affiliate Marketing Objectives: Why Affiliates Should Have Objectives & Goals
Affiliates work for themselves in an industry which is performance based. As such, unless they sell products, they don’t make any money! Since affiliate marketing is incredibly easy to get into, and not so easy to excel at, affiliates need goals and objectives to strive towards.
Without serious goals, it’s very easy to fail with affiliate marketing. Around 95% of new affiliate marketers fail and drop out. To avoid the trap of failing with affiliate marketing you need to be very serious about it and set goals. Otherwise, it’s easy to become demoralised when things don’t immediately work out!
A lot of affiliates will assume that affiliate marketing is their golden ticket to a charmed life. They set about it without really knowing what to do. When things don’t work out, instead of getting help and support, they simply quit. If you set goals and objectives for your affiliate marketing business, you are giving yourself a much better chance of success than those who simply wander into it expecting it to be easy! See also is affiliate marketing difficult?.
Affiliate Marketing Objectives: What Are They?
What are your affiliate marketing objectives? If you don’t know, it’s a good idea to get started with affiliate marketing with some training. Access a free video series to start here. Once you have begun your affiliate marketing journey, you can break down long term goals into smaller more achievable steps which you can do each day. With a large long term goal it can seem like you have a mountain to climb and this can be daunting. A good long term goal should excite you and it should also feel like a bit of a stretch.
Long Term Objectives
Long term affiliate objectives might be:
- To earn the same amount as your employment so you have the option to quit working a job
- To achieve financial independence from a boss or a job
- To be able to work from anywhere globally from your laptop
- Financial freedom
Medium Term Goals
These are long term goals which you can achieve through using affiliate marketing. However they won’t happen overnight and you’ll need a plan of action and to break down these longer term objectives into small achievable goals you can work on day to day. Here’s a shorter term list of potential objectives which affiliates might have:
- Choose your marketing strategy
- Choose the products you want to sell and join an affiliate program
- Make your first sale online
- Generate a regular income from affiliate marketing
Once you have chosen your path, there’s many other steps you might take. Choosing your marketing method is an important step for affiliates. Ideally find one which suits your working ethos, marketing budget and available time.
Short Term Affiliate Goals:
Short term affiliate goals are the ones you can do today:
- Join an affiliate marketing course
- Work through a step by step program
- Watch a training video
- Build your first website
- Start learning a marketing strategy
Ideally affiliates should have a few objectives and goals which they can categorise into the following:
- Long term – 5 to 10 years
- Medium term goals – 6 months to 1 year
- Short term goals – weekly goals
- Shortest term goals – what can be accomplished right now, today
Tony Robbins “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in two or three decades.”
Without breaking your goals down like this, it can be easy to “have a go” at affiliate marketing and struggle. When you see only problems, you quit! Think of the Chinese bamboo tree!
The Chinese Bamboo Tree
The Chinese bamboo tree makes a great analogy with affiliate marketing. With the Chinese bamboo tree, there’s a gestation period where nothing sprouts above the surface of the soil for several years. If you didn’t know the plant’s growth period, you could be mistaken that it was dead, and abandon it. But it still needs water and nourishment to form.
Unfortunately this is the same for affiliate marketing. Many affiliates will “give it a try” for a few weeks or months and give up when nothing “sprouts”. If only they stuck with it. The Chinese bamboo tree can sprout 90 feet in only a few weeks once it breaks the surface. The same is true of affiliate marketing because of the potential to scale up to a global audience with the sale of affiliate products.
If you’re ready to start with affiliate marketing you can start here with a free video series.
