Author: AffiliateMentor

An Interesting Thing About Blogging

There’s an interesting thing about blogging and that is that it casts a shadow. Let me explain. Back in July I set myself a goal of getting 1000 website visitors to my blog in a single day. Check out my post “how to get 1000 website hits in one day without paying“.

At the time, I was getting on average around 200 hits on my website. So 1000 hits was a bit of a stretch for me. That’s what a goal should do though. A goal should motivate and inspire you to take actions which you previously were not taking! My goal definitely inspired me into action. I blogged much more than I would otherwise have done last month.

I didn’t quite hit 1000 hits though, in a single day. I got pretty close to it though hitting over 800 hits on many days. Checkout my stats below and you’ll see my goal definitely pushed up my traffic: (see also the importance of goal setting).

about blogging

An Interesting Thing About Blogging

The thing is though, before I set my goal my traffic stats showed a much lower amount of daily traffic. When I set my goal, I was inspired to write more blog posts and to promote them (on social media) and share them every day with my list. I did this for about a month without fail.

Then a funny thing happened. I burned out and gave up! I got busy with other things and my blogging took a nose dive. However, what was interesting is that my traffic didn’t take the same nose dive as my activity did. In fact the opposite happened. My traffic kept going up! I posted a blog once a week or so, but nothing like the frenzied activity I was used to doing.

It’s now been 2 weeks since my last blog post which was aptly titled dealing with overwhelm! However, my traffic has remained fairly consistent and stuck over the 500 daily hits mark. Checkout the stats below:

an interesting thing about blogging

An Interesting Thing About Blogging – The Shadow Effect

The “shadow” effect of blogging is the lagging activity which happens from the actions you’ve done previously. So, for example, when I write and share this post on social media, it might not get seen for a few days by some. So I might get a visitor from that social media share, but it doesn’t happen straight away. Also, I post my freshly published blogs to my email list. Well, someone on my email list might only read my post the next day, or the next week, or even a month later.

an interesting thing about blogging

I’ve heard some subscribers tell me that they put the emails in a folder to look at at a later date.

When I share via my email autoresponder, there’s also an option to share the content with my social media business pages; which I do. So my posts get syndicated out to my Facebook pages, and other social media platforms such as X.com.

I also use a software called Revive Old Posts, which syndicates older content out to social media automatically.

All this activity leaves a shadow – a trailing digital footprint which can lead to later actions and visitors to my website. So, even though I stopped blogging for a couple of weeks after burnout, my traffic continues on.

The Tipping Point Of Blogging

I’ve written before about the tipping point in blogging. That’s where your cumulative efforts eventually “tip” your blog into the big time! The effects of SEO, continued blogging, promotion of posts, email list and your creeping results on the search engine results pages all factor in to your overall traffic. Eventually your previous efforts results in organic traffic which grows and grows culminating in a curve which grows exponentially:

an interesting thing about blogging

However, there’s also the tipping point of the “wave” which reaches its peak and starts to fall away! I believe I may have reached this point, benefitting from the work I did over the last month or so. Ultimately the traffic will start to drop again, as it reaches the point where the “shadow” of my previous work has reached its limit.

Today my stats show nearly 500 website hits. Not bad for free and considering that I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks! However, if I continued to do nothing, I’m sure this would slowly drop over time.

Summary

An interesting thing about blogging is the shadow it casts and how your previous efforts culminate towards a rising “peak” of the traffic “wave”. Blogging has definitely taken much longer than I anticipated to get to the point of consistent traffic. Google is constantly changing their algorithm and this effects the organic traffic you may have earned previously.

We also have artificial intelligence now which is becoming almost unrecognisable from human content. That means blogging is getting more difficult! So if you want to make blogging work for you, I suggest picking a topic you’re wildly enthusiastic about so you can enjoy the process and so that you won’t get too unhappy when things don’t go according to plan. They undoubtedly won’t!

Dealing With Overwhelm

If you’re an affiliate marketer you’ve probably experienced dealing with overwhelm at some point or another. Overwhelm is, well, overwhelming. It stops you from moving forward in any logical way. The result of overwhelm is non-action, confusion and getting stuck. I’ve recently been in overwhelm again and it’s definitely not for the first time. It often happens when you’re shifting gears from one strategy to another. Or, if you have got caught up in shiny object syndrome, it’s when you jump from course to course looking for the “easy way” to make money online.

But shifting gears is a gradual process. If you attempt to move too quickly while shifting gears, it’s like trying to push a freight train off course. It simply doesn’t happen easily. You need to give yourself some room.

I’ve recently been investigating a free Facebook marketing strategy and I’m not really into the habits with it yet. My previous habits are blogging, and I’ve just begun posting on Quora again. See my post how to use Quora for affiliate marketing for more on this strategy.

While juggling a part time job and blogging and posting on Quora and learning a new free marketing strategy, I find myself sitting doing nothing. It’s quite frustrating really! But I’ve realised that I need to go back to my daily routine which is well established, and gently add the new Facebook strategy over time!

Dealing With Overwhelm – Doing One Thing Well

Trying to do everything in your affiliate business leads to overwhelm and inaction. So if you find yourself here, a good thing to do is to focus on a single daily action step you can get into a habit with.

My single daily action step has always been to write a blog post. So here I am, taking some action again. No matter how small your daily action step feels, it’s always good to establish a routine where you are taking at least one daily action step with your affiliate business. So no matter what your marketing budget looks like, you can always take some positive action regardless.

one thing is easier than many things

There’s magic in taking action steps because it fires up your enthusiasm, and prevents you from procrastinating yourself into a corner.

One single action step is far better than a week of frantic procrastination and spreading yourself too thin among many different strategies. When you spread yourself too thin, nothing much happens because you never gain any traction in any area.

With blogging, my “go to” daily routine, I’ve managed to keep it going for several years now and have built a huge volume of blog posts on this website alone.

Dealing With Overwhelm – The Cycle Of Confusion

There’s a cycle of confusion within affiliate marketing and it explains the around 95% drop out rate in the industry. You join a course, get some training and then it comes time to choose a marketing method and get to work. But you don’t know what’s going to work and what isn’t. If you have a marketing budget, you can start out running ads and testing different marketing campaigns. If you don’t have money for marketing, you’ll need another strategy, such as blogging, video content or using social media.

dealing with overwhelm

The problem with any kind of marketing method is that nothing is guaranteed to work, especially the first time you try it. But particularly with free social media tactics and content creation, it takes a long time before you see any results from it. So you need to be confident in your daily action steps and persevere, often for weeks before you see the result.

The worst thing is, before you take action, you procrastinate. You wonder whether the action steps will work. You want proof that it works! But there is no proof. The results are only waiting for the action takers who put themselves on the line – both with paid advertising and content generation.

Dealing With Overwhelm – My New Facebook Tactic

My new Facebook tactic is only just underway and I’ll share my results in a later post once I’ve given it some time to generate traction. But at the moment I’m running into problems with it. What invariably comes up is doubt and scepticism. I wonder whether it’s worth my time at all. My old habits of blogging, sharing content with my list, positing on social media and answering Quora questions are more established, and therefore easier.

dealing with overwhelm

By taking action on a new strategy, I’m taking time away from my old strategies. Should I stick with my old tactics or switch to Facebook? Will Facebook actually work? These are the questions which fill my mind and while they do, doubt arises and I’m not actually working on anything!

I also mentioned my new tactic to someone who queried it, which led to me querying it! Now I’m doubting my new tactic already before actually starting it properly. It also gave rise to this post on why you should’t tell anyone what you’re doing before it’s done!

Now there’s two sides to this coin because some say you need to be held accountable. Telling someone your goals for example makes them hold you to account. But, if you’re unsure of something, sometimes it’s worth keeping it to yourself before you tell anyone what you’re up to! Anyway, I’ve shared my new tactic here so I hope you can hold me accountable to it. Sign up to my list and you’ll get my future post on the tactic once I’ve proven to myself that it actually works!

Summary

So if you’ve found yourself dealing with overwhelm, unable to think or act, it’s probably worth choosing a single action you can do every day without thought. For me it’s posting a blog on my website, but it could be running an ad, uploading a video, posting on social media. That action becomes your daily staple and you can build on that over time.

When you switch to something else, especially after establishing a routine, your mind rebels. It wants to remain in your old patterns of behaviour. It’s easy to remain the same. So cut yourself some slack if you’re going through this. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Change takes time. Make a daily habit out of one simple action step you can get into a groove with, and build on.

That’s far easier and more effective than jumping from course to course, or strategy to strategy, looking for some magic pill. A single step towards your goals is much better, no matter how slowly you move, than staying in a state of overwhelm and confusion.

Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing ‘Till It’s Done!

Don’t tell anyone what you’re doing ’till it’s done! There’s a reason you should keep quiet about your ambitions and dreams. People have the habit of stealing your thunder, undermining your ambitions and making you question yourself. When you share a dream, make sure that the person you’re sharing it with is on the same page. Otherwise it can have dire consequences. Better yet, don’t share them with anyone, just go out an achieve them first. Let your results do the talking!

don't tell anyone

A dream or ambition is like a seed, which needs consistent belief to grow. When you share your dream with someone who is full of doubt and scepticism, (like many people are), they throw that scepticism on your belief – your “seed”!

You start to wonder whether your dream is valid at all, whether you want it, or whether you should even bother. Your once alive and joyful desire to achieve or manifest something is dulled. Now you’re filled with scepticism and doubt instead.

If you’re particularly empathetic, you’ll easily pick up on any doubt/scepticism coming from others, especially regarding something that’s important to you.

Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing ‘Till It’s Done!

So, why would someone sabotage your dream anyway? What’s in it for them? There’s lots of reasons why someone would do this, and it’s usually done without their awareness. Well meaning friends are often trying to help you, keep you “safe”, or have “concerns” about your direction. Like a well meaning parent, who warns you off the career you want, to encourage one which is “safe” and gives you a “secure” future.

In my 20’s I decided I was going to become a stuntman! That didn’t get a lot of encouragement from a lot of people, I can tell you. Well meaning strangers would tell me how that was only for certain types of people, but not for me. “Former racing car drivers, that’s the kind of people who become stuntmen – but not you”…whoever you are. Pretty soon, I learned not to talk to them about it.

Don't Tell Anyone What You're Doing 'Till It's Done!

If I did, I might have listened. Then I wouldn’t have become a stuntman and got to hang under a helicopter, a dream since I was a kid watching The Fall Guy on television with Lee Majors as Colt Seavers!

Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing ‘Till It’s Done! – Cultivating Your Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is what drives your actions. If you don’t have any enthusiasm for something, you’re not going to take action for it. At least not any enthusiastic action. You can, of course, keep taking action in turning up to your steady job, even if only because you’re enthusiastic about being paid!

But over time a lack of enthusiasm for the job itself means you’re at odds with it. This eventually catches up with you when your resistance for a job is greater than your desire to keep doing it, or for the money you earn from it. This can take decades, but once you’re completely disheartened about your job/career, you’re forced to look elsewhere and make a change. Or, ruin your life in other ways if you fail to recognise the cause! Using drugs or ruining your relationships for example.

Don't Tell Anyone What You're Doing 'Till It's Done!

The problem here is that over a decade, you become surrounded by people who support your current reality. This is why change is so hard. To change, you need a new direction and new enthusiasm for something. When you suggest this to someone in your current circle, they deny it because it betrays their reality! If you could for example start an online business, and escape the corporate 9 to 5 nightmare, their situation would be worse, relative to you!

Why Naysayers Demoralise You

The “naysayer’s” might not even share your desire to escape (your current reality), and so only reflect their own beliefs back to you, instead of supporting your new venture!

Far easier to denigrate your desire to escape, and be re-assured that there’s no better reality out there than the current one. Should you escape, it would alter the dynamics of the relationship.

So they dissuade you from your new ideas, ambitions or goals, putting your ideas down and demoralising your dreams! Now they are safe in their reality, and the relationship dynamics remain the same. You think “ah well, maybe they are right”, and give up your dream!

If you are uncertain about your dream, and speak to one of these naysayer’s about it, they are sure to kill it for you! This is why you Don’t Tell Anyone What You’re Doing ‘Till It’s Done!

Protect Your Dreams

To cultivate your enthusiasm you need to protect it from these negative influences. Like a seed in the ground, they can easily be washed away. Treat your “spark” of inspiration (or dream) as a newborn, which needs love and protection. Guard it well and keep watering it and feeding it positive intentions, even if you don’t know the actions to take yet.

As Napoleon Hill wrote in his book Think and Grow Rich:

“The subconscious mind is like a garden in which weeds can grow in abundance if seeds of more desirable crops are not sewn therein”

Your inspiration, idea or dream is your “seed” which needs protecting. You must keep adding to it, in order for it to grow: water it and give it love. There’s nothing so damaging to it than asking a friend for encouragement, and none is given. Especially a friend you think well of and trust their judgement, as you do your own.

See also goal setting and identity shift.

Summary

There’s another reason to keep your mouth shut about your future plans around people. Many will subtly sabotage your plans, hopes and dreams because they don’t really want to see you doing better than them. It changes the relationship “status quo” and puts them on their back foot with you.

Many may say they want “what’s best for you”, and are only “concerned” or “worried”. But in reality they are simply relaying their own personal fears and prejudices about a path they wouldn’t tread themselves. Most people simply aren’t coaches, who try and understand what you want and encourage your dreams out of you. Most people subtly convey their own limitations, fears and biases onto you instead of supporting you in your endeavours.

When you practice self control, you give more power to your dreams/goals too. Not only do you disarm anyone’s ability to denigrate your dreams (because you don’t tell them), but each time you keep quiet, you remind yourself of your goal.

When you share a goal you haven’t materialised with the wrong person, they can undermine your belief and desire in it to the extent that you lose all motivation for it, based on their opinion or indifference to it.

Your disappointment that they don’t share your enthusiasm can soon turn to discouragement, even if they mean well!

So keep quiet and show people with your results, don’t give away your intentions!

Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product?

If you’re wondering who to target with your affiliate product, you’re in the right place. It can be easy to get your affiliate link and start randomly “shoving” it out “there”, any way you can. But it’s a mistake. Most people aren’t interested in your product, even if you are! There’s only a tiny slice of the online marketplace who actually is likely to buy your product, and some of those people will require a little persuasion.

But what if you could attract only those people who were ready to buy? Those with their wallets out and credit card in hand? Wouldn’t that save a lot of wasted time and effort? While we can’t always find those exact people, we can certainly “zone” in on those people who are most likely to buy from us, when we show them our affiliate product.

When you know who to target with your affiliate product, you’ll shave a lot of wasted time and effort off your online journey.

Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product – Your Customer Avatar

The first thing you should do once you’ve selected an affiliate product to promote is to define who your customer is. Your “customer avatar” is the type of person who is most likely to buy your product. They are your target audience and focusing your marketing campaign/s towards people like that, is going to give you more sales than not doing so.

Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product?

So, who is your customer avatar? When you’re a beginner affiliate, you probably haven’t given this much thought. If you haven’t run any advertising campaigns yet, you won’t have any data to know who they are. So where do you start? When I began in affiliate marketing, I was in a rush! I rushed through basics like this and wasted a lot of time and effort, throwing my affiliate links hither and thither in the hope one would land on a buyer! It’s a reciepe for disappointment let me tell you!

When you don’t know who to target with your content or your ads, start with your product. Ask yourself who it will serve the most, and why they will not hesitate in buying it.

Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product

If you’re selling a piano course, you want to target people looking for such a course. That’s pretty obvious right? But what if your product is more obscure, like a training course for entrepreneurs? In this case, you would look for people who need a solution to their problem.

Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product?

If someone hates their work, and wants more time with their family, an online business course might offer a solution for them. Here’s a few tips on how to find your target audience through your affiliate product. Start by asking yourself:

  • What problem/s does your product solve, and who might have that problem?
  • What kind of people are most likely to buy your product and why?
  • Where do they live? Is your product location specific?
  • How old are they? Is there a specific age range of the people who will buy from you?
  • What interests might tie your customers together?
  • What do your customers have in common?

How To Target With Your Marketing

Once you know a little about your customer avatar, such as their likely age, interests, location and circumstances, you can begin to set up a campaign which will target them, and them specifically. You can also communicate a single congruent idea/message towards your customer avatar, knowing their circumstances and speaking to their pains/problems.

So, for example, if you’re creating a video advert, you can communicate to someone about how your product can solve their main problem. If they are struggling with a challenging work situation, and want more control over their life for example, you might suggest your business course as a solution.

If you don’t know who you’re talking to, it’s much harder to reach your customer avatar and communicate in a way which connects with them. But if you understand their main problem, you can speak to this in your marketing, and lead them to your solution.

Who To Target With Your Affiliate Product?

Marketing platforms are very high tech these days and you can focus your marketing demographics at a very specific “slice” of the online marketplace. Target people by age, location, interests, income and all sorts of other criteria to get focused on your customer avatar.

As you start making sales, build a database around your customer avatar, getting more and more focused on who your “perfect” customer is, what drives them, and where they hang out online.

Facebook, Adwords, Microsoft, YouTube?

So, which advertising platform should you use to attract your target audience? Well that depends on where your customer avatar hangs out. Which platforms are they using to solve their problems? Google Adwords is a useful platform to find people who are actively seeking a solution to their problem.

They are solution aware perhaps. Solution aware people are actively looking for a product to help solve their problem. So a search on Google could be used to show your advert, for example. You could research keywords which are being used on Google (use Google’s keyword planner tool) for your particular product.

Reviews are a good example of this. When someone is looking for a review of a product, they are solution aware and may be ready to buy. They simply want to know whether that particular product will help them. So your could create a review for your product and run some advertising to it, targeting people looking for that particular review.

If someone knows they have a problem, but doesn’t know what the solution is, their are problem aware. They might be looking elsewhere for a solution online.

Summary

Knowing who is likely to buy from you is super important. If you don’t know, you’re likely to waste a lot of time and marketing budget scattering your marketing efforts about randomly.

When you know who is most likely to buy from you, you’re much better armed as an affiliate to succeed at making a sale. Not only will you know where your customer avatar is and what they want, but you should also get to know their pains and problems, so you can communicate a message which speaks to them directly.

Speaking to a specific person who you’ve identified through their pains and needs, is much more powerful that trying to communicate a message to “all and sundry”. A vague message doesn’t hit home like a specific one aimed at the right target demographic. Once you get to know your customer avatar, and how to communicate with them directly and in a meaningful way, you will get better at making online sales as an affiliate.

Goal Setting & Identity Shift

The last couple of my blog posts have been about the importance of goal setting but in this one I’m going to discuss goal setting and identity shift. One of the reasons you might find it so difficult to work on your affiliate business, or make change in any area of your life, is because of your identity. “Who” you see yourself as, has a great affect on what you can achieve, because it’s embedded in your very being.

goal setting and identity shift

For example, if you see yourself as someone who “struggles”, you might perpetuate that reality because it’s how you identify yourself: “I am one who struggles“. It is “me“. An identity gives us congruency and safety. When we make a conclusion about “who” we are in life, it’s a form of security which the ego can cling to. It is the self image. People get to know us as that person, and they continue to reenforce that false “self”.

When you try and change things you meet resistance, both from yourself and your circle of friends/family. But mostly it is from your “old” version of yourself trying to cling to its reality. You can’t be a “successful entrepreneur” and at the same time “one who struggles” , for example. You can’t be a “fit athlete”, if you see yourself as “fat and lazy”. One of those identities clashes with the other. So, in order to make progress in any area of life, an old part of yourself (an old identity) has to die!

Goal Setting & Identity Shift – Kill Your (Old) Self

But it won’t give up without a fight. Your old self has been around for a long time. You’ve had fun together! You have become comfortable as “that” person you created! That’s the reason that when you set about making change in your life, in any area, there’s a battle going on. Your old self is fighting for its survival! It’s a paradigm which you’ve entrenched in your mind for perhaps years of your life.

goal setting and identity shift

A new “self” will rock the boat. Friends will say things like “that’s not ‘you'”! When you come to “do the work”, you’ll kick and scream because that’s where the old self is fighting for its existence. It resists change because it wants to retain the status quo. It wants to stay alive!

But you want change and the best way to change things permanently is through self growth and an identity “shift”. That won’t happen without a fight, and without losing your old self in the process.

Goal Setting & Identity Shift – Why Goals Often Don’t Work

You might have had some problems with goal setting. You set a goal, and when you come to do the work, you get blocked. There’s resistance. Resistance is anything which comes up which you use to not do the work you need to do to accomplish your goal.

goal setting and circle of influence

Your mind tells you a story about the action you should be taking and it might take a form such as this:

  • I’m not good enough
  • I just can’t find the motivation
  • What if I should be doing something else
  • I don’t really care about the goal anyway
  • I’m not cut out for this
  • I’d rather not do it
  • It won’t matter anyway

You avoid doing the work and the payoff is that you stay the same. Your identity remains in tact. But your situation doesn’t change either. A goal can help you do the work needed in order to change your identity. Once you have an identity shift, you become the person who does the work. But you must push through the pain otherwise you’ll only perpetuate what you already have. You’ll avoid the work, make excuses, and your reality won’t shift.

Summary

A goal sets the wheels in motion and gives you motivation to make change. However, once you have set a goal, you’ll come up against resistance. This will come in the form of your old self justifying why it doesn’t want to shift, why it doesn’t need to shift.

goal setting and identity shift

Observe this resistance for what it really is – your old self putting up a fight! In order to affect change you need an identity shift towards the person who does the work in order to get the outcome you really want – to achieve the goal.

the “old” you is the person who struggles, procrastinates and avoids the work you need to do to achieve your goal. The “new” you (version 2), is the person you must become in order to achieve your goal. The “battle” is between the old you and the new you who is trying to manifest itself through your goal.

Once you become aware of this battle, you can see the resistance for what it really is – the older version of you battling for its existence! This is explained much more succinctly in this video by Charlie Morgan and it’s well worth the hour and ten minutes of your day if you’re struggling with your goals.

Failing With Your Online Business?

If you’re failing with your online business, you’re still far ahead of those who aren’t even trying. A “failure” is never truly a failure until you quit, it’s actually feedback for those who stay in the race! So if you can keep going, and choose never to quit, you’ll eventually learn from your mistakes and hit a winner. Then you can use that winner to create more and more of the same. Ultimately, your mindset will determine whether you will continue or not, and whether you continue or not determines whether you win (or not)!

henry ford quote

In the middle of July I set myself the goal of getting 1000 website hits on my blog through organic only means. Here’s the post I wrote explaining my method: how to get 1000 website hits without paying. Yesterday was the deadline and I was inspired to write this post: the importance of goal setting, to mark the occasion!

I actually had a shortfall and didn’t hit my target of 1000 website hits in a single day. Here’s my stats. They show I had 746 hits yesterday, a shortfall of 254 from my target! Today is Thursday, which is why it shows only 247 hits so far.

failing with your online business

Failing With Your Online Business?

So, did I fail? Certainly I failed at hitting my target of 1000 hits by the end of July! However, the goal itself served its purpose and I worked much more diligently towards my blogging that I would have, had I not set a goal. Have a look at my stats for the rest of the year as a comparison:

failing with your online business

I decided on this goal in mid July, to spur me on in my blogging! If traffic was my intention, which it was, (and content creation of course), the this is surely a success? Before this point, I was blogging fairly regularly, and you can see I was getting regular traffic to my blog. However, once I set the goal, my activity increased because I had a stronger intention – to reach 1000 hits by July 31st!

In my drive to hit the 1000 figure, I wrote more, and I promoted my blog posts more too! Previously, I was held back by thoughts like:

  • It won’t make any difference if I blog more
  • I don’t want to annoy people with too many emails
  • Will blogging even help my bottom line
  • Should I be doing something else, such as paid ads?
  • Am I taking the right course of action here?

But once I set my goal, these thoughts had no space because I needed to focus on every single effort I could make to reach my goal. The doubting thoughts in my mind had to take a back seat – my goal was what mattered! There was simply no time to entertain negative thoughts like these. If I did, I wouldn’t be taking consistent action towards my goal!

Failing With Your Online Business? – Set A Goal

“If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes” – Andrew Carnegie

If you feel as though you’re failing with your online business, set a goal for yourself. A goal should inspire you and excite you. I’ve set many goals in the past which I quickly forgot about. Nothing came of them because I either didn’t care about my goal, deep down, or I didn’t believe I could achieve it!

failing with your online business

But set a goal which motivates, inspires and drives your behaviour, and you know you have set a good goal for yourself.

When I set the goal of 1000 website hits in mid July, I was already blogging, knew I needed some motivation, and knew my goal was more traffic. So the goal was pretty logical.

If you’re unsure of a goal to set, think about an area of life which you’d like to change. With an online business, the goal is likely to relate to achieving more sales. You don’t have to know how you will achieve your goal when you set it, just that you want it, a lot and you believe it’s possible, even if it’s a stretch.

Failing With Your Online Business?

I recently found an old goal I had written (and laminated) in a recent house move. It was dated 2010 and said “I now earn £1000 a month online”. Earning an income online was a goal of mine for a long time, and once I achieved it, I rested on my laurels. I sat back, forgot about my goal, and slowly my online income dropped down again.

I had forgotten about all the actions I had taken to get me to that goal of £1000 a month online. As a result, I stopped doing the things which drove my business forwards!

Had I set another goal, of perhaps hitting £2000 a month online, I would have continued taking the right actions to move my business forward! See my post on contingency goals.

failing with your online business

The same thing happened after I set a goal to become a stuntman in 1998! Once I got my first stunt job, I thought I’d “arrived”. I had achieved my goal! I rested on my laurels and stopped setting new goals. Sure enough, the work dropped away and I found myself back in my default settings – scraping by and doing jobs which made me unhappy.

If you’re failing with your online business, maybe you have let your intentions slide? Can you set a goal which will help you get back on track? One which motivates and inspires you?

“We are not the highest version of ourselves that we can imagine, we are the lowest version of ourselves that we can accept” – Sam Ovens

Summary

So if you’re failing with your online business, perhaps you have fallen into the same trap I did? Perhaps you have let your intentions slide. The negativity has crept in and drowned out your inspirations and aspirations?

You need to refuel your aspirations and intentions by writing out a meaningful goal which inspires and liberates your hopes and dreams!

Set a new goal. Decide where you want to be in 5 years time and choose the outcome you desire. Without a conscious choice of your direction, your arbitrary actions and habits will decide for you!

If you haven’t started an online business, you can begin the journey here! Good luck!

What Are Contingency Goals?

What are contingency goals and why use them? A contingency goal is a goal you use if you change direction, achieve a goal, or meet resistance with your primary goal. It’s a contingency plan for when things don’t go as expected.

In fact, it’s especially useful if they do go as expected! Once you have achieved a goal, it’s easy to drift off into a vague meandering mind space. This is because you’ve “arrived” at your “destination”. As such, you’re no longer driving yourself forwards anymore, so it can be easy to drift.

I only recently heard about contingency goals from one of my online mentors and it immediately struck a chord with me. I’ve set goals in the past, and achieved them only to drift off and meander for years afterwards! In my 20’s I set a goal of becoming a stuntman, which I achieved in 2002 (here’s my IMDB page).

What Are Contingency Goals

What I failed to do, was set a contingency goal once I had achieved my primary goal of joining the British Stunt Register. My contingency plan was eventually to escape the film industry and build an online business. But it took me a few years to realise this is what I wanted.

Contingency goals are useful for when things aren’t going to plan. My stunt career wasn’t what I had imagined, and over time I became demoralised by it. I wanted an online business to give me more control over my income. With the stunt business, I was always at the whim of a phone call.

What Are Contingency Goals & Why Use Them?

It’s useful to have a contingency plan for an online business too because things might not go exactly as you expected them to. For example, you might run out of advertising budget, and need a fall back marketing tactic. I experienced this personally, and hence why I have used blogging extensively. My income from stunt work was always sporadic, which didn’t give me a consistent income for marketing my online business.

But I had plenty of time to create content – so blogging seemed like the natural contingency plan when my ad budget ran low.

A contingency goal gives you the power to create a new destination, rather than hoping that your current habits will take you there. After a few years as a stunt performer, I realised just waiting for jobs wasn’t a good strategy. But I didn’t have a contingency goal for when the phone stopped ringing!

Many people who start an online business have felt trapped by their jobs and income. A goal to build a profitable income online gave me an option out of the stunt business, which I ultimately felt trapped by.

My Latest Contingency Goal

I set myself a goal a few weeks back to attain 1000 website hits on this website through organic means. I even wrote a post sharing my strategy: “how to get 1000 hits on your website without paying“.

What Are Contingency Goals

My goal was to get 1000 hits a day, by today (31st August 2024). While today isn’t over yet, yesterday I reached 860 hits organically, a slight shortfall to my main goal.

The 1000 hits was a contingency goal. After I ran out of advertising budget, I could no longer run paid advertising. But I had a lot of time. So the contingency goal was to generate traffic, leads and sales through blogging.

Why Use Goals

As my latest goal has shown me, there’s huge importance in goal setting. By setting a goal which is both important to you and meaningful, which meets the criteria of believable and desirable, it should drive you towards a meaningful future outcome which you have control of. Not doing so allows you to fall back into your old habits and behaviours and your life becomes the default setting of what has always been so.

Insanity, as Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Goal setting allows anyone to set a future destined event or circumstance and then work steadily towards it in a logical and consistent fashion.

When I’ve failed before with goals, it’s been because I didn’t believe in them, or I didn’t really care about the outcome. Setting a good goal inspires you towards its outcome, and allows you to focus on its achievement in a desirable and enjoyable way.

Once you have achieved a goal, it’s easy to fall back into old habits and downwards towards your lowest acceptable standards. A contingency goal can be used when this happens. It allows you to focus again, and keep moving forwards towards a life of your conscious choice, rather than living by default.

The Importance Of Goal Setting

What’s the importance of goal setting? Well, if you don’t have a target, you’ll never hit anything! A goal should motivate you and drive your behaviour towards some future attainment which you desire. I’ve found goals have kept me going when I was unmotivated, even if they were only tiny goals. As time has gone on, I’ve become better at setting goals which are meaningful to me.

Earlier this year, I set myself the goal of achieving 1000 organic website hits by the end of this month (today). I even wrote a post on my strategy “how to get 1000 websites hits in one day without paying“.

Here’s my stats for this week:

The Importance Of Goal Setting

Yesterday my website had 860 hits on it. That’s a slight short fall of the 1000 hits goal I set for myself. Still, today isn’t over and I’ll share my stats at the end of this post.

The Importance Of Goal Setting – Did I Fail?

I really don’t consider this a failure, even if I don’t make it to 1000 hits today. The thing is, when I set this goal, my daily hits were around 200 a day. The goal inspired me to aim for a higher figure, something I had never achieved before.

My mindset at the time too was slightly distracted and whimsical. I was feeling a little demoralised and uninspired. I was also wondering whether blogging would actually make much difference in terms of my sales. This mindset, (the uncertain kind), is the kind that leads back into procrastination and inaction.

The goal served to fire me up on all cylinders again. Rather than wonder about whether the action would “work” and spend needless hours on procrastinating on a new method of marketing, I simply focused on the goal.

The goal got me thinking about ways to achieve it. So my mind filled up with creative ways to accomplish it, rather than dawdling, and then doing nothing, which I often do!

The Importance Of Goal Setting – Breaking A Goal Down

I had never before hit 1000 website hits on my website organically, (and still haven’t – yet)! I have achieved this before, but through using paid advertising. By setting this goal, I stretched myself and have proved that goals do in fact work. However, I’ve “failed” many times in the past with goals. Partly that’s because I wasn’t very good at following through, or setting good goals. I would set a goal, and then forget about it. Many times I’ve found my goals on pieces of paper, even years later, laminated lines of text which were long forgotten!

The Importance Of Goal Setting

In a recent house move, I found one from years ago about making £1000 a month from my online business! It was from 2010! The thing is, I didn’t keep track of my goal once I had written it. I forgot about it, and therefore it forgot about me too!

This time, I wrote my goal out and reminded myself of it every single day. That way, I couldn’t forget it. I also made sure I worked towards my goal every single day and that my daily routine was aligned with my goal. In terms of my blogging, I’ve kept up a blog post a day (at least) for the last several weeks! I also made sure I was posting my articles to my email list, and posted them on social media – every single day! The result is a compounding effect. Not every post gets huge interaction, but the compounding effect of doing these small daily actions means an upward tick of my traffic over time.

Why I Never Stuck With Goals

I have a scatter brain, I’ll admit it. So I would write down a goal, and then go and do something different, and totally forget about it. But a good goal is something that keeps you engaged. You want it so bad, you can’t stop thinking about it! It stretches your comfort zones and you believe in it, even if you don’t yet know how to achieve it.

A good goal needs to be a 10/10 for belief (meaning you totally believe it can be done) and a 10/10 for desirability too (you really, really want it). Unless these two parameters are met, you’ll likely forget about your goal, put it to one side, or dismiss it as unachievable. If your goal only scores a 5 out of 10, on either parameter, it’s not going to motivate you.

I used to write goals that I didn’t believe in. No wonder I discarded them. Or I would write goals I believed I could achieve, but didn’t really care about! A good goal is one you believe in, care about and really, really want.

The Importance Of Goal Setting – Summary

The Importance Of Goal Setting

With an online business, it’s important to keep setting goals which drive you forwards and stretch you. With my affiliate business I’ve had periods where I’m running adverts, shooting videos, writing blogs or sending emails.

There’s so many things you can be doing, it can be easy to waste a lot of time, and still get nowhere. A goal ties it all together and keeps you motivated and taking consistent action. Without a goal, your mind can wonder about all the possible actions you could be taking, but end up taking no action, because you’re so confused.

I’ve not always been such a strong advocate for goal setting, because I haven’t always known exactly what I wanted! But if you can set a goal which is specific for you, which motivates you and inspires you into action, it’s never going to be the wrong goal!

the importance of goal setting

The current hits today on this website are 235 but it’s still morning here in the UK! So I’ll update the web count once the day is passed to see if I hit the magic number of 1000! Please share this post because I need all the help I can get!

Update:

Here’s yesterday’s stats and it looks like I only managed to reach 746 hits on my website – a shortfall from my 1000 target of 254!

Still, I have learned a lot from this exercise and I don’t see this as a failure. Yesterday I pushed myself more, asked for shares, and some subscribers even said they would share my post for me!

The thing is, when I send an email out to my list, some people pick it up days later. So there’s a delay. The same is true from sharing some content on social media. Growth with blogging is incremental, and consistency is the name of the game!

Setting a goal of 1000 website hits (organically) has helped give me focus and commit. Without my goal, I wouldn’t have done as much. That’s the importance of goal setting. It gives you a target which helps to motivate you and inspire you! I’ll now set a contingency goal for the upcoming month! See my post what are contingency goals.

I set the goal of hitting 1000 website visitors (in a day) by the end of the month, but I only set this goal mid July! Take a look at how it impacted my traffic compared to other months:

What goal could YOU set which would make the biggest difference in your life for the better?

Give First, Receive Later

One of the best pieces of advice I got as an affiliate marketer was to give first and receive later. When I first became an affiliate, I simply wanted to get those sales! Make the money! I didn’t really consider how this would happen. But affiliates succeed with an exchange of value:

Acquisition, conversion then value delivery are the main first principles of online selling.

affiliate marketing for beginners

As affiliates we send traffic to offers, but to build trust, acquire leads and convert them into customers, we must have some kind of value first. This didn’t occur to me as a beginner affiliate. I thought I could simply set up and advert, send traffic, and make money. While it can work like that, it’s what you give that attracts your customers, and builds trust.

If you’re running an advert, you attract customers by giving value and meaning. By creating content, or emailing your list, you give understanding and insight. If you do this enough, and to the right people, they will buy from you because they trust you, and because you’ve already given them the value they will exchange in monetary terms.

Give First, Receive Later – Example

Over the last few years I’ve been teaching martial arts and initially, I struggled with building up my school. I sought the help of an online “guru” who I found online. His name is Mike Massey. Now I didn’t have much money to go buying his stuff, and I didn’t know whether he could help me in any case.

law of reciprocity

So I signed up to his email list to learn more about what he was offering. His emails alone helped me enormously. He taught me to use online advertising, offer more courses and teach summers schools etc., how to retain longer term students and a whole bunch of other useful stuff!

I didn’t want to do some of the things he recommended, but after several weeks of reading his emails, I felt like he’d given me huge value – and completely for free!

power of giving

Guess what? In his emails he sells his book and I bought it. I realised there and then that this was how to sell online. Nobody wants a pushy salesman shoving their wares at them. But once you’ve already given the value, the law of reciprocity kicks in. It’s a commonly known sales technique and one which works really well in the online space.

The online space is a buyers marketplace. But if you continue to deliver value and build trust, your subscribers and visitors will buy from you if your products are a good fit for them!

Give First, Receive Later – Example

Another example of the give first, receive later principle is Martin Lewis’s website moneysavingexpert.com. In it, he gives financial advice and links to companies and services through affiliate links. Money Saving Expert is a hugely popular and successful website which helps people with their finances by showing them the cheapest utility companies, credit cards, discounts and offers.

give first receive later

It advises on mortgages and other financial matters, such as getting out of debt. The point is that the site is built on the principle of helping people first, making money second. You might not even be aware that the site makes money from referrals (affiliate marketing).

Without having built the huge amount of helpful content on the website, Moneysavingexpert.com wouldn’t have gained the brand awareness and readership it has today.

Be A Producer Not A Consumer

We often don’t think in terms of producing or consuming, but if you look around you’ll see that most of us are in fact consumers nearly 100% of the time! We consume entertainment, blogs, videos, food and goods and services.

Most of our days are spent consuming something, whether it is food, goods, entertainment or a service. To shift this relationship and earn from affiliate marketing, you need to become a producer.

When people are consuming your information, your courses, ebooks and downloadable content, you have their attention! Use the content you produce to lead people to products which will help them, by giving them useful information which is of service. This can be done through blogging, through video or through your own ebooks, or email messages.

Be a producer, not just a consumer!

Delayed Gratification & Patience

As an affiliate marketer, it’s important to realise the importance of delayed gratification and patience! If you focus only on the getting, you might scare away your potential customers by being too keen! If you walk into a shop, and the salesman is too needy for the sale, it pushes customers away! The same is true in the online space.

give first receive later

But if you give through your content and email messages, you build trust over the longer term. Continue to do so, and your subscribers will know you are consistent and therefore reliable. But if you get frustrated and drop off, you can’t serve anyone over the longer term.

As a beginner affiliate I was definitely focused on the getting, rather than the giving. I was looking for the quick wins, the easy buck! But it didn’t work because I didn’t provide any value to anyone.

I recently had a sale drop in from a subscriber who had been on my email list for 5 years! Such is the power of email marketing and of course of patience and delayed gratification!