You’ve probably encountered some affiliate marketing problems if you’ve been doing it for any length of time. When I started learning affiliate marketing back in the early 2000’s, I encountered more than my fair share of them! I was originally trying to sell my own ebook and after struggling to make any sales. I realised that I wasn’t getting any traffic to my website. This, is a common problem for affiliates. No traffic = no sales!
So I put myself on one of those “earn money online” courses in an attempt to learn how to market my ebook. I quickly changed gear having found products which were far better than my ebook – and which would pay far more. This was just the beginning of my affiliate marketing problems!
Affiliate Marketing Problems
One of the first courses I took was by a guy called Peter Lexis. I promoted his online earning course after going though his training. You can read about some of the other courses I took over a period of a few years in my digital profit course review. It worked, and for the first time I thought I had “arrived” and was going to make it as an affiliate.
I ran an Adwords advert to a landing page where I used Peter’s video to promote his course. People signed up to an email list and entered into a series of emails which was about 10 emails long (1 per day).
I started making sales and was just about to increase my marketing budget when I got my Adwords account shut down! Back then it was pretty serious and I couldn’t get it back no matter how hard I tried. I was devastated; so I threw in the towel for a bit. But I knew that I had to keep going or I’d be stuck trading time for money forever!
Affiliate Marketing Problems – Next Stop, Organic Traffic
After a while of working crappy jobs again, and getting the odd contract in TV and film, I started again. This time, since my Adwords account was shut down I choose another route; organic marketing. I joined a course called The Keyword Academy. They taught how to rank websites and make money through Google’s Adsense program.
The idea was to pick a niche and use a spreadsheet to determine the value of each click of your adverts within the niche. Then, according to the advertising value you can potentially obtain, and the relative competition of competing websites, you would make a decision to build a niche website. The Keyword Academy is no longer operating so don’t bother looking! Needless to say I spent a long time working on websites and got nowhere!
I did see some tiny revenue from my sites. But overall this was a dead loss. Google’s algorithm changes had a big effect on sites like these and most of my sites didn’t rank at all, much less make any money. I did spend several months on this strategy though. However, it’s difficult to maintain a strategy if you don’t fully believe in it. Support wasn’t a strong suit of courses back then. So once again I dropped off and had some time out!
George Brown – Google Sniper
George Brown’s Google Sniper 1.0 was one of the courses I bought and it was around $50 or so for access. I did learn a useful strategy here it has to be said. I went on to create several websites which ranked in the top of the search results for their main keywords.
Plus, I made some websites for people who benefitted from a high ranking. But these were mainly city based companies where the keywords contained the city name and main business keyword. Still, it’s a useful strategy which has benefitted me to this day.
I even built the website for my Kung Fu school using this tactic. Fortunately there’s little competition for a Kung Fu school in Bradford so it helped me pick up many students over the years.
But, I had hoped to rank a site and make affiliate commissions from Google Sniper. And since there was so much competition from Google, this was nearly impossible, or so I found anyway. I did make an affiliate sale from one of the sites I built called tedsheds.net – selling shed plans using a Clickbank affiliate product. However, I had no success like George seemed to have from his screenshots!
Affiliate Marketing Problems – Support
Of of the main affiliate marketing problems is lack of support. What all these courses had in common was the level of support, or rather the lack of it. Despite attempting many strategies I was still pretty disappointed with my level of affiliate marketing success.
I had experience a lot of problems but had also made a lit of mistakes I wasn’t aware of in the beginning:
- Lack of focus – jumping around from one strategy to another without any continuity
- Being a busy fool – I would spend far too long on making websites look good rather than attracting traffic, for example. Or on the activities I enjoyed but weren’t profitable.
- Shiny object syndrome – the next course always promised more than the last – so I was perpetually changing direction
- Stuck in learning mode – I enjoyed watching videos and learning – but I was spending too little time on implementing the right strategies (lack of knowledge)
- Lack of faith in what I was doing – because there was no support, I simply worked for months without getting any results and then lost faith in what I was doing.
See also 23 affiliate marketing mistakes newbie affiliates should avoid.
Affiliate Marketing Mistakes – Getting Help
I had been at the affiliate marketing “business” for some time by this point, and in 2014 found another online course. By this time I was pretty burned out and very sceptical. This was to work against me too (being sceptical)! But I bit the bullet and bought another course. I was desperate and my working life was completely miserable as was my personal life. So I had a big reason to make it work!
I saw a video of the guy below, Stuart Ross and he struck a chord with what I was struggling with.
I joined The SFM Mentors in 2014 knowing near nothing about them. It was just on instinct and desperation. Despite being very sceptical, I knew I had to do something. Life had been getting me down and nothing seemed to work. I was juggling a number of jobs and attempting to build a career as a stunt performer. But I didn’t get enough work to meet the bills, whatever I seemed to do.
I got an invite to a meet up locally in the UK and was rather surprised to find real people at the event! I also went to a meeting organised by the founders Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek where I was able to meet the founders of the company Stuart and Jay.
Affiliate Marketing Problems – Support
The SFM Mentors offered something which most of the courses I took didn’t – support. I was able to connect with other affiliates and actually meet up in person for the first time ever. Plus, Stuart and Jay regularly hold webinars with their members offering support and advice.
What was most useful were some of the groups I was able to join through Facebook. Here’s a picture of one of the mastermind sessions where we discuss a number of affiliate marketing problems and can ask mentors for help.
Affiliate Marketing – Business Model
One of the biggest affiliate marketing problems I faced was choosing the wrong business model. I would use eBay and Amazon products which only paid out tiny commissions. Amazon’s commissions range from 3-11% for their affiliates. With digital products you can expect to earn 40%+ commissions on any products you sell.
My marketing method too was mostly blogging and writing articles. This strategy is incredibly time consuming and laborious. Having my Adwords account shut down led me to think I only had organic marketing left. But in fact there’s a few other marketing options I could have chosen.
The SFM Digital Business System has a number of advantages over most affiliate programs:
- High ticket affiliate products mean you can earn more per sale, scale up more easily and access paid marketing platforms which are out of reach with low value products.
- Recurring commission affiliate products let you earn ongoing commissions from previous sales.
- A range of up-sells mean you can benefit from later sales purchased by your existing customers.
- A built in sales team helps close sales on your behalf – even months or years after your initial referral
- Multi-tier commissions let you earn commissions based on sales made by your referrals.
Marketing Strategy
One of my biggest affiliate marketing problems was my marketing strategy. I wrote and wrote and wrote! But nothing happened, for years! That’s because my content wasn’t getting found. It was simply like throwing a business card into a well!
Blogging can work of course, but it’s definitely a slow strategy. Over time it compounds and the work you’ve done previously can add up to traffic, leads and sales. But you’ll usually only see slow progress unless you get a good link from a powerful influencer or site with a lot of traffic.
With a range of digital products though, there’s more advertising platforms available to you. Especially if you position yourself at the top tier of the business model and can benefit from high ticket commissions on the most expensive products.
Modelling Success – The End Of Your Affiliate Marketing Problems
Anyone can succeed at something given a proven roadmap and through taking the right steps and refusing to quit. Most people will quit affiliate marketing because they don’t get the results they want. See why affiliate marketing does not work. But in the early days, it’s all “feedback” and most feedback will be no sales. It just depends on how you take that feedback – as a challenge or a problem.
Only when you keep going through the difficulties will you see some results. Then, using pareto’s principle (the 80/20 rule), you can focus on what is working and drop the rest. At this stage you’re already well ahead, even with minimal results. When you have some positive feedback, you know what works. But until you get there it’s can be a hard uphill struggle.
To shortcut this process it’s a good idea to model success. To do this it’s worth investing in a mentor and a program which can help you learn and grow.
Access A Mentorship Program & Model Success
You can access a free video series to learn more about the SFM Mentors by clicking on the image below. You’ll meet one of my personal mentors Stuart Ross who will explain more about the digital business you can use to build an online income starting from scratch and with no prior experience.
