What are the affiliate marketing secrets which separate the successful affiliates from those who struggle? Since becoming an affiliate marketer in the early 2000’s, I’ve learned a lot. In the early days it was particularly tough. I jumped from course to course looking for the “magic bullet” which would bring me instant riches.
Over several years I realised this tactic was flawed! I had some success with a few of the websites I had built. But nothing seemed to last. Why was I failing? What was I doing wrong? One of the reasons I was failing was that “failing” is the natural process to learning affiliate marketing! Unless you fail, you have no feedback with which to learn from. You can’t just hit a home run on your first swing!
Over several years I tried various things and failed over and over again. Eventually I started making sales, and things started working.
Affiliate Marketing Secrets – Fail Forwards
“Failing forwards” was a term I heard several years into my study of affiliate marketing. Unless you try stuff, which you can fail at, you can’t move forwards. It’s uncomfortable to fail over and over again, but necessary. In the words of Thomas Edison when challenged about his “failing” to make the incandescent light bulb work, he said “I have not failed, I’ve simply found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.
For example, most advertising campaigns won’t work. You’ll need to create many campaigns and try different things to find the one which does. At first you may be dismayed that your very first advert doesn’t work. But you need to take the attitude that this “feedback”, not failure will launch you towards success eventually, simply by being determined and not giving up.
Affiliate Marketing Secrets – Be A Creator, Not A Consumer
We are consumers on the whole and whether we are reading a book, eating a chocolate bar, watching television or studying an online course, we are absorbing material which someone else has created. Affiliates get paid by creating a value, of some kind, which can be absorbed by others.
Most people are stuck in consumer “mode” in which they can only consume more and more information, products, food, entertainment etc. To change the script you need to shift your focus from being a consumer to being a producer of value, and put that value between your affiliate products and your potential customers.
Whether you decide to do that through blogging, creating videos or using email marketing, or paid advertising is up to you. But notice how much of your time is consumed absorbing someone else’s material, and notice how much time you spend producing material. Be a producer not a consumer! When you’re learning affiliate marketing your time will naturally be spent absorbing information in learning mode. You’ll spend 90% of your time consuming information. Once you have a plan, and a path to follow, switch this so that you spend 80-90% of your time producing, rather than absorbing information.
Affiliate Marketing Secrets – Use A List
Most successful affiliates have an email list of subscribers where they can automate the delivery of messages to a growing base of potential customers. An email list gives you control over your traffic flow. On a website, someone only has a small window of opportunity to make a purchasing decision. But once they are on your email list, this period of time is massively extended. People have bought affiliate products from my list even years after joining it!
So if you’re serious about becoming successful as an affiliate, get an email autoresponder. See free autoresponder for affiliate marketing, and the power of email marketing.
Types Of Product – Digital, Physical, High Ticket & Subscription
As a beginner affiliate I promoted products which I had bought myself; things such as books from Amazon and low value physical products from eBay. The trouble was, and what I didn’t know at the time was, they don’t pay very well! In fact Amazon and eBay have some of the lowest commissions in the affiliate marketing industry. See Amazon affiliate marketing commission.
When you’re making sales sporadically, which happens when you’re starting out, you want those commissions to count. When you use low value items which offer tiny commissions, they won’t make a dent in your bank account! Books from Amazon, for example pay only 6% in commission. So a $10 book would only make you a commission of $0.60cents! Hardly a living!
In contrast, digital products pay a whole lot more; generally upwards of 30%. By choosing carefully which products you promote, you can work a whole lot smarter. The same work can net you a much larger income if you choose wisely. Recurring income affiliate programs can pay you ongoing commissions from products you’ve sold previously. Then there’s high ticket affiliate products too. What is a high ticket affiliate marketing? A high ticket product is one which sells for a much larger value than most products. Here’s an example of a high ticket item you can sell as an affiliate:
Get Help
Successful affiliate marketers seldom did it alone. As with many successful endeavours, those who are able to get help can achieve a lot more and push past the barriers met by those who go it alone. With affiliate marketing this is definitely the case.
If you’ve been going it alone with your online business it’s well worth getting a mentor. The worlds most successful people have mentors and coaches who help them with their thinking and mindset issues which would otherwise hold them back in life.
After finding a community of online entrepreneurs in 2014, I was able to shift my thinking. I switched from trying to get, to trying to give. I changed from selling low value products to high value and subscription products. I kept going and followed several coaches and mentors who had already achieved what I wanted to achieve.
You can access the same community here, or checkout the free video series to learn more.
Use A Product Range
Most affiliates join a program, grab a link and paste it everywhere they can. They earn tiny commissions and they don’t get enough traffic! (More on traffic later in this article).
Once you pass a product onto a customer, that customer becomes loyal to the product owner, or vendor, not you! To make money as an affiliate like this you need a continued stream of new customers.
With a product range, you benefit from the lifetime of a customer. You only refer the customer to the initial “entry level” product within a range of higher valued items they can purchase later.
A built in sales team close sales on your behalf and provided you referred the customer initially, you still earn the commission for the sale, even with high ticket items. A good product range gives you multiple earning methods:
- One off products – which you earn single commissions from
- Subscription products – earning you regular recurring commissions
- High ticket products – giving you much larger than average commissions when higher value products are purchased by your referrals
See SFM Digital Business System for more on a product range.
Marketing Strategies – Paid or Unpaid?
There’s many marketing strategies you can use for affiliate products. See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products. Some strategies will take longer than others, some are expensive and some are cheap. However, the best marketing strategies are those which can be turned on quickly and scaled up to a global audience.
With slower marketing strategies, such as blogging and other organic cheap strategies, you can be at it for some time before you see anything for your hard work. These strategies aren’t as scalable as by using paid marketing. The main trouble with paid marketing is that it costs money and it’s expensive. To learn paid marketing also takes some budget, and you should expect to spend some money while learning.
Some business models aren’t suitable for use with paid marketing however. See affiliate marketing business models. Low value products are much harder to combine with paid marketing strategies simply because it’s far more difficult to make a profit from them. But with a product range, and a series of high ticket affiliate products to sell, you’re in a much better position to do so.
Whether you use paid or unpaid marketing strategies will depend on your affiliate marketing business model and the time you have available to work on your online business. See also unpaid social media marketing. Ideally find a strategy which suits you and stick to it. But if you’re using cheaper or free strategies, expect a longer journey.
Summary
Affiliate marketing secrets? This is the list I wish I could tell myself about when I started learning about affiliate marketing several years ago. I hope they have been useful. Affiliate marketing is a performance related business model, so the longer you are in the game, the better your results should get. These tips however should give you a head start if you take them seriously.
As with anything, if you “tinker” around with affiliate marketing and treat it as a hobby, you’ll potentially earn a hobby wage from it. But treat it more seriously and you can achieve some amazing results. People have built businesses online which have far surpassed any income they made from their previous employment. But it takes a huge amount of commitment and you need a strong desire to make affiliate marketing work for you.
Access a free video series here to learn more and access further training and resources.
