Your affiliate mindset is your best asset or biggest liability when it comes to building an affiliate business. Affiliate marketing is tough and over 90% of new affiliates will quit. The affiliate marketing success rate is low for a reason: it’s difficult. But why is this?

For one thing affiliate marketing is accessible for the masses. Pretty much anyone can “have a go” at affiliate marketing. If you bring a “have a go” mentality to an affiliate marketing business, it’s going to be so much easier to quit when things don’t work out. You’re already starting with the wrong mindset if you think you’ll “have a go”!

A better mentality to bring is an “all or nothing”, “do or die” or “whatever it takes” mentality. This kind of mindset is needed to overcome the many hurdles and challenges you’ll find on route to a successful affiliate business.

Affiliate Mindset: The Beginners Mind

In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few –Shunryu Suzuki, Zen master.

As a beginner in affiliate marketing you’ll need to spend a good proportion of your time in learning mode. Once you have understood some concepts you’ll need to apply what you have learned and develop some skills through trial and error. Depending on your choice of marketing strategy, this could lead you to create content, or run paid ads. You could find a social media strategy, or decide to focus on blogging or SEO, (search engine optimisation).

Whatever you choose, remember you’re still a beginner. Even after you’ve spent months on a strategy, and things aren’t going so well, remember the quote:

“In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few”.

Beginners Mind

When you hit a roadblock in affiliate marketing you’ll be tempted to think : “affiliate marketing does not work!” When this happens, and it will, you should remember the quote about the beginner’s mind. In Buddhism, the beginners mind refers to a state of acceptance of not knowing. Therefore, in this state, there is the allowance of something new to be learned.

Originating from Japanese Zen Buddhism, the term ‘Beginner’s Mind‘ (or ‘shoshin’) refers to a paradox: the more you know about a topic, the more likely you are to close your mind to further learning.

This is what is meant by the quote “In the beginners mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few”. For a beginner affiliate, there’s the possibility of success. But once you have hit a few roadblocks and struggled, you become an “expert”, at least in your own mind. You cast out the possibility of further growth and quit, rather than investigating the cause of the “failure”.

There’s no real failure in affiliate marketing unless you quit. Failure is only feedback on the road to success! Hence “failing forward” is a term used by affiliate coaches, who encourage you to fail many times in order to learn.

Affiliate Mindset: Patience

You need to be very patient to be a good affiliate. The path to success is littered with all the other affiliates who quit! Depending on your situation and marketing method, getting traction with an affiliate business can take months or even years. Blogging, for example is a much longer journey for an affiliate than paid marketing strategies. However, if you’re using paid marketing strategies you’ll need to let go of the fear of losing money while you’re testing your ad campaigns.

For some, working really hard creating content (risking their time), is much more appropriate to their situation as those who would rather spend the money learning paid marketing. Either way, you’re going to need to be really patient when results don’t come immediately.

With blogging, you’ll need to create a lot of content and get good at promoting it. With paid marketing, you’ll need to test and measure different adverts and learn from the feedback you get – whether positive or negative. If you bring a expectation of an immediate return to affiliate marketing, you’re likely to be disappointed!

Having an “entitlement” attitude will give you more problems. There’s only cause and effect. Your job as an affiliate is to learn how to cause the outcome you want. This is done through experimentation after having studied a particular marketing strategy.

Affiliate Mindset: Desire Vs. Comfort

Another reason affiliate’s quit is because their desire to succeed isn’t large enough to overcome the status quo. If your life is pretty good, your desire to succeed in affiliate marketing won’t be as strong as someone who is in desperate need of change.

When an affiliate business is the very bedrock from which you intend to build your life, you’ll be very motivated to succeed. But if your affiliate business is only another passing fad, that’s a different kind of motivation.

When you meet a challenge in your marketing, which person will be more likely to overcome the difficulties? Will it be the person who needs to make their business work or the one to whom it doesn’t really matter? Of course it’s the one who’s desire is strong enough to overcome the difficulties.

Why put yourself through the challenges and difficulties of building an online business if you don’t have to? Your answer is your reason for doing affiliate marketing in the first place. Are you currently happy in you life and comfort zones, or do you want more? The degree to which you are comfortable has a large say in how hard you’re prepared to work at your affiliate marketing business.

Employee Vs. Entrepreneur

As an employee transitioning into an online business, there’s plenty of hidden challenges. The mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur is not an easy one. The two are very different. As an employee you get used to being paid a monthly wage; regardless of your performance. With affiliate marketing you only get paid performance related pay.

As an employee you have a specific role to play in a larger organisation. With an affiliate business you’re on your own, with many roles to learn. If you don’t make any sales as an affiliate, you don’t earn any money, so your time spent in your affiliate business needs to be laser focused. It can be easy to get caught up in a number of mental traps:

• Shiny object syndrome – looking for the “easier” path continually by jumping from one course to another; but never gaining traction in any one direction.
• Being a busy fool – spending time on activities which are enjoyable but not profitable.
• Trapped in learning mode – initially you’ll spend time learning. But you don’t want to stay here, thinking you’re being productive but trapped in continual learning without action.

It’s easy to bring a bunch of attitudes and mindsets from employment into your business which will hamper you:

• Being paid just for turning up every day (entitlement).
• Expectation of reward for old habits and “expertise” which don’t translate into an enterprise/online business.
• Misunderstanding of the needs of your customers – see customer avatar worksheet.
• Not understanding that your business needs to be driven by purpose and vision, and an aggressive marketing campaign.