AffiliateMentor, Author at Affiliate Marketing Mentors

How Do I Make Income Through Blogging?

I’ve just received an email from my list asking “how do I make income through this” pertaining to my latest email message on the post “how to stay in the flow state for blogging“.

There’s a couple of main strategies people use to earn through a blog. One is advertising; using an Advertising platform such as Google Adsense to place ads on your content. When people click on the content, you earn advertising revenue. I personally haven’t had much success with this strategy, although it does work the amounts are incredibly small. So you need a huge volume of traffic to make it work – and free traffic at that, which is difficult to obtain.

The strategy I’ve had the most success with is affiliate marketing, hence the name of this site: “affiliate marketing mentors“. With affiliate marketing you sell someone else’s product from your blog. These are what I believe to be the main factors in making this strategy work.

How Do I Make Income Through Blogging? – Product Or Topic?

Blogging can be a tough way to make an income and you shouldn’t expect the money to suddenly come suddenly flooding in as a beginner. Although you can have some quick success as an affiliate, to make money consistently takes a little more effort.

Some people say to find a product you want to promote first. But, if you’re going to be blogging for traffic generation (to find visitors to buy your product) you’ll need to create a lot of content over a long period of time. So choosing a product first might not be the best idea because that means you’ll be blogging in a topic you might not be familiar or even interested.

So I would recommend choosing a blog topic first which you can align with a product you want to promote. Unless you can consistently create content for your blog, you’re better off using paid advertising instead, to build an affiliate business. This is far faster too, if you’ve got the budget for it. If not, blogging it is!

How Do I Make An Income Through Blogging – Why Your Blog Topic Must Align With Your Product Choice

To sell something through your blogging, you must align your blog topic with the product you’re going to be promoting. Otherwise, you’ll spend a huge amount of time building traffic, and nobody will be interested in what you’re selling. Think about why you would find a particular website, for example. Imagine you’re looking for information on how to fix a toilet seat. You land on the website, and they are selling picture frames. Would you buy one? Of course not! You’re looking for information about fixing your toilet seat – you’re not shopping for picture frames!

You might buy a tool, or a bracket to help you fix your toilet seat. You might even buy a toilet seat! But you are definitely not in the market for a picture frame while you’re trying to solve your toilet seat problem!

Unless you align your blog topic with a suitable product which can help your audience, you’re not going to sell your affiliate product. So for starters think long and hard about the product which will align with your particular interest for your blog.

How Do I Make An Income Through Blogging – Your Blog Topic

There’s over 600 million blogs on the internet so in order to get noticed and pick up some of that much desired traffic you’re going to need to create a lot of content. It can take several months to build traction from blogging, even several years. This will depend on how competitive your particular topic/niche is. In a competitive topic, you’ll have more competing websites online , so it’ll take longer to generate traction than with a topic with few competing websites.

Ideally choose a topic you can become obsessive about and keep creating content in. That’s likely what it will take to generate the traffic you need to build an income. See also how long does it take to make money blogging.

If you find an untapped niche, which has low competition, it can of course happen much more quickly. Or, if you can throw some marketing budget at your blog, this can help too! See also, best niche for blogging.

Cashing In On Your Blog Traffic

In order to “cash in” on your blog traffic you need to sell something to your visitors. This is done through finding a suitable product which helps your audience in some way.

There’s thousands of affiliate products you can choose from online. So it’s worth spending some time on this, finding the best product in your niche to promote. Unless you already have something to sell of your own, or have a service to sell, it’s probably not worth creating your own product initially. There’s plenty of high value products you can promote online without going to the trouble of product creation.

The best affiliate products to promote are firstly the ones which are the best for your audience and secondly those which offer the most value. If you misalign your product choice with your blog topic, it’s going to be difficult to sell anything. But find a good match and you can sell them more easily through your website.

Selling Affiliate Products From A Blog – The Email List

To sell an affiliate product from your blog you will want to offer some giveaway product to encourage your visitors to sign up to your email list. You can get an email autoresponder service here for free. This lets you collect subscribers from a blog and deliver automated messages to your subscribers.

To get website/blog visitors to subscribe to your email list, you can create some giveaway. I use an ebook on this website, for example. You can get a copy of Affiliate Marketing For Beginners here.

Ebooks are good lead magnets which attract website visitors to your email list. Once you have a “lead magnet” offer on your website, you can build out some email messages which automatically send out to your email list of subscribers. You can use these messages to promote your affiliate product using your affiliate link. An affiliate link is a unique identifying link which you use to sell your affiliate products through. When someone buys a product through your link, you earn a commission based on the sale.

Back To Blogging

While it may take some time initially to create a lead magnet such as an ebook, once you’ve set it up your email marketing can be automated. Messages are sent out on autopilot to your subscribers as they join your email list.

With a few carefully crafted email messages, you can sell your affiliate offer to your subscribers as they join your list, all on complete autopilot!

Once setup, you’re going to need to build that email list though and this is done by creating more content through blogging. There’s many other ways to get traffic to your website free. You can also pay for advertising if you’re less inclined to create lots of content through blogging.

But blogging is a good, cheap method of generating website traffic. Just make sure the blog posts you write are going to attract the right audience who will want and need your products.

Link Directly In Your Blog Posts

You can also place your affiliate links directly in your blog posts too. Use banners and images which you can get from your affiliate program. Here’s an example of an image I found through the affiliate program I use:

Most affiliate programs will offer banners, images and other marketing materials which you can use to help you generate sales through your blog. It can be a little more difficult selling products directly through a blog post.

Most visitors to a new blog will be hesitant to make a purchase if they don’t know you or trust you. This is where email marketing can help you sell online. By offering value to your subscribers through your email messages, you can build trust and lead people to your affiliate products.

How To Get Paid For Online Referrals

Getting paid for online referrals is one of the best ways to earn money! You can earn from your armchair, with your feet up! You can earn from your laptop, from anywhere in the world. Once you’re making sales online, it means you can earn an independent income from anywhere. The implications are great. You can work in your own time and in your own way, quit your job and never have to work a job again or have a long commute again.

However, the downside is that there’s work involved in attaining this achievement. Firstly, you will need to learn a few new skills. You’ll also need to find a suitable product (or products) which you want to sell online and a method of selling it! There’s thousands of affiliate programs you can join and millions of products to choose from.

Certain products can pay much more than others too, so it’s worth doing some research to find the best kinds of products to sell. Subscription and high ticket products are the best in my personal experience. With a high value subscription product, you get paid recurring income from memberships which you have referred. High ticket items pay much larger commissions so you can get large paydays even with only a few sales.

With the right type of products, too, such as software products which are essential for business for example, customers will always maintain their subscriptions because the products are so necessary.

How To Get Paid For Online Referrals – Selling

While product choice is an important factor in getting paid for online referrals, your method of promotion is also as important. If you don’t find a method of product promotion which works, you won’t sell! So it’s definitely worth arming yourself with the right training and education for a good foundation.

Selling online is not a matter of being a “salesy” type person either. With the right marketing method, online sales can happen in your sleep without any “hard-selling” on your part. By using selling systems which drive traffic towards your offer, you can even sell in multiple countries worldwide – and on complete autopilot!

Once you have learned this skill, you can use it again and again to sell anything to almost anyone online. Access a training resource here to get started.

The main methods affiliates use to sell online are:

Paid advertising – using platforms such as Google Adwords, YouTube, and social media
Email marketing – an important part of selling online is automating email messages to deliver value (and your offers)
Content marketing – content, (like this blog post), can be used to attract an audience organically through various means (social media, SEO (search engine optimisation), email marketing etc.)

How To Get Paid For Online Referrals – Choosing A Product To Sell

Choosing a product to sell is often where you begin the affiliate marketing journey. A lot of affiliates start out on Amazon because there’s so many products to choose from. You can find Amazon’s affiliate program here and anyone can join. Once inside an affiliate platform, you can access your unique identifying links – known as affiliate links. By selling a product online through your unique identifying “code”, you’ll earn commissions and get paid a portion of the sale price of any given product you sell.

Certain products will pay more than others. For a comparison, most physical products will pay between 1% and 10% commission. With digital products you can earn from 30%-40% commission. Digital products pay much more because they can be delivered automatically over the internet. As such there’s very little cost involved in manufacture and delivery. Whereas with physical products there’s more costs involved in manufacturing, postage and handling.

So although Amazon is a popular choice for affiliate marketers when they get started online, it doesn’t offer the highest levels of pay available. Amazon pays between 1% and 10% for most of it’s affiliate products. You can also find products in almost any category with a simple search online. Simply type in to a search engine “{your topic} affiliate program” to find products in almost any niche.

Promotion Of Your Affiliate Link

Once you have found a product through joining an affiliate program, you can get your affiliate link. This is just a link of code which you can attach to your blog posts, email messages or use throughout your social media platforms. There’s many ways to promote your affiliate link, but the most leveraged method is through using a paid advertising platform. Many affiliates will start with Google Adwords or Bing which lets them create ads related to their product.

aweber -how to get paid for online referrals

While some affiliates send traffic directly to their offers, this is often thought of as a waste of advertising budget. It’s far better, especially if you’re paying for advertising, to collect emails and start building an email list of subscribers who you can serve somehow.

An email list gives you much more control over your traffic, whereas paid traffic is expensive to acquire, organic traffic takes time to build. But once you have captured an email address of a visitor, you can deliver value to them and build some trust.

Top earners from referrals always have an email list of subscribers to promote their products to. So it’s definitely worth getting an email autoresponder if you’re going to sell products online. You can get one free here.

Free Marketing Methods

While paid marketing is much faster and more scalable way to selling affiliate products online, it does take some time to learn. While learning a paid marketing method, you can expect to spend some advertising budget while you make a few mistakes. So it’s worth starting with a small budget you can afford to lose.

But if paid marketing isn’t appealing to you, there’s also a cheaper solution which is organic marketing. Organic traffic can be built upon through content creation and many affiliates use this approach to generate website traffic and sales.

This can be done through blogging, video (e.g.YouTube), or using social media to interact and connect with people.

While a free marketing method can take longer to attract an audience to sell to, it compounds over time. So the more content you have, the easier it becomes to attract customers over time. A blog or a YouTube channel are two possible avenues for organic traffic generation. See also how to get traffic for free.

Finding The Right Audience – Your “Customer Avatar”

The “customer avatar” is the right person to attract to your website if you want to sell a specific product. Since there’s so many people online at any given moment, trying to sell to everyone results in selling to no-one!

In order to get paid for online referrals, you must attract a specific audience who see the value in what you’re selling! For example, if you had a DIY store, the type of person who usually shops with you might be of a certain age. You might attract mostly people aged from 30-50, for example. This “data point” is worth a lot to you once you figure it out and understand who is most likely to want your product.

As you learn more about your customer avatar, you can collect more and more “data points” until you have built up a very specific customer profile. Once you understand “who” that is, you can target them more specifically.

Getting paid for online referrals is much easier when you understand your customer avatar. Checkout the customer avatar worksheet for more info on this.

What To Expect

To get paid for online referrals you must join an affiliate program, get your affiliate link and learn some kind of marketing/promotion method. Getting your affiliate link is the easy part, but content promotion is where many affiliates get stuck. There’s a large drop out rate in affiliate marketing for this reason – most affiliates struggle making money with their promotion method.

So it’s definitely worth investing in a course of study to get the right foundations first. Once you have got some basic training, you must start with a marketing method and learn through trial and error! This can be a little frustrating at the beginning but if you have a good understanding of your product and your customer avatar, you’re already ahead of most affiliate beginners who attempt it.

With paid marketing and organic (free) marketing methods there are upsides and downsides. Free marketing is obviously cheaper, however, it will take much longer to get any traction. Paid marketing is much faster and you can get a more immediate feedback to see if it’s working or not. With blogging or video creation (content marketing) it will take a lot longer before you see any results.

The tipping point in blogging, for example, where the sales are coming in without much effort, might be weeks/months down the line. With paid marketing, you can expect results within days, depending to your marketing budget.

Access full training and resources and get started here.

How To Stay In The “Flow” State For Blogging

Keeping yourself in a state of “flow” is important if you want to make a habit out of blogging. This can be challenging, especially if you’re unsure of your direction. Ideally choose a topic you can become obsessively passionate about. That way, you’ll never run out of ideas to blog about.

But it’s also important to set up your daily routine to help you maintain consistency. If you’re all over the place with your daily routine, it’s going to be tough keeping up with a blogging practice. I find a good routine for me is to blog first thing in the morning. If I have a late night, or drink too much alcohol, it massively effects my ability to be creative and stay consistent.

Consistency is what you want with your blogging. Successful bloggers have made a habit out of posting blogs regularly.

How To Stay In The “Flow” State For Blogging

First, you have to “get” into the flow state. The flow state is a state of mind where you are consistently creative enough to keep writing blog posts. In this state, ideas come to you easily, and you write freely. To help you find the state of flow, choose a topic you can easily write about. Ideally it should align with a passion or interest you can consistently come up with ideas for. If you find yourself getting stuck then it could be you’ve chosen the wrong topic.

Of course your environment has a part to play too. Make sure it’s tidy and you’re not distracted by clutter – a tidy space means a tidy mind and although I like a bit of mess at times, it definitely effects my ability to focus on the task in hand and come up with ideas.

I also find social media a distraction. So if you’re spending hours scrolling your feed, ask yourself whether it adds or subtracts from the flow state you want to maintain. I’m a big fan of psychology books and often get ideas from them for my blog posts. So keeping a book on the go which inspires me definitely helps.

I also read other blog posts when I’m coming up with ideas for my blogs. If I’m not certain of my blog post I’ll scour the internet looking for inspiration.

How To Stay In The Flow State For Blogging – Why Consistency Is Key

Consistency is key to blogging and if you don’t keep up your blog habit, your traffic will dwindle and die! But before you can make it a habit, you must start! If you’re struggling getting stated with blogging, the first thing you should do is look at your state of mind. Ask yourself what mental baggage are you carrying? Spend some time clearing your mental space with some meditation. Are you in a state of panic? If so this definitely won’t help you in your creativity.

I find I work best in a calm and relaxed state of mind, but you will find your own “perfect” state with a bit of practice. You might even find a little bit of fear helps you get going! Here’s a few things I use to help me reach my best blogging mental state for productivity:

Meditation
Reading a book about my topic, or something inspiring
Clearing your workspace
Reading blog posts about your topic for ideas
Listening to music and lifting your “vibe”
Exercise

Not Feeling It? Shift Your “Vibe”

Remember some days just aren’t blogging days. So on those days I like to strategise about potential future blogs. Or focus on some other activity which moves my online business forwards, such as paid advertising, video or just research.

Find books which cover your area of interest. I’m personally a big fan of the self help genre and often use them for my blog posts in one way or another.

If you’re struggling with your affiliate business I always find it helpful to detach from it and work on myself. This could be doing some form or exercise, setting goals, journalling, reading or writing out my gratitude journal.

Here’s a post on the power of gratitude for an affiliate business. I think a gratitude journal is one of the best tools for a blogger. Gratitude quickly shifts your mental and physical “state” to a lighter and higher vibration.

A Mental “Check-in”

I’ve personally found particularly destructive circumstances for your creativity are those shown on the lower level of the emotional guidance scale (shown above). These are emotions of anger, jealousy, unworthiness and powerlessness. Often I might watch a video of someone online, for example, which might trigger feelings of unworthiness. Some leader type such as Tony Robbins might even have a negative effect on me because I compare myself to him! How stupid I know!

If I get into an argument, it can affect my mental state for long after the quarrel, too, affecting my ability to create content. We often carry around a lot of mental baggage and “noise” which affects our ability to come up with spontaneous ideas.

I find a mental “check-in” helps me detach from what’s going on inside and become more present. This in turn helps you return to the flow state where ideas come more freely. So if you’re carrying a lot of mental indecision, noise, unworthiness and so on, it’s likely holding you back from being creative.

To help switch off the mental internal “noise” I use:

Meditation
Exercise
Mindfulness exercises – moving meditation such as kung fu exercises (Siu Lim Tao is a kung fu exercise I practice regularly)

Look At Your Consumption Habits

What information are you consuming on a regular basis? Is it information which inspires you and gives you ideas for your blog posts? Or is it social media conflicts and problems with the state of the world! I often catch myself “doom” scrolling social media finding all the problems with the world. This puts me in a negative and fearful state from which is can be very difficult to return!

So if this happens for you, it might be worth having a “digital detox” and finding some new information to consume. As already mentioned in this post, I find self help, psychology and mindset books, as well as certain business books are inspiring.

What books inspire you and give you ideas for your blog posts? Make a habit out of reading these kinds of books and you’ll find you’re much more inspired for your blog posts than if you constantly doom scroll social media sites instead!

Summary

So there’s a few ideas for how to stay in the “flow” state for blogging. Staying in a positive mindset is paramount if you want to make a good habit out of blogging. If you find yourself “blocked”, don’t force it. Just shift your mental state instead!

There’s lots of ways you can “gear” your brain to stay in a state of flow. Firstly take an inventory of your consumption habits and remove those which put you in a negative state of mind. This could be social media scrolling for example. I’ve definitely found Facebook throws me into a negative state when I see how great everyone’s life “appears” to be on their news feeds! So I avoid the platform if I want to be creative and write!

Take regular check-in’s with your mental “inner” space. Notice what situations and circumstances throw you off and start avoiding them! Look for inspirational books, and follow other bloggers who inspire you. Sign up to inspirational email lists so you get regular ideas dropping into your inbox!

If you find yourself in a negative state these are some simple tools you can use:

Tidy your space
Meditate
Take some exercise
Use music to shift your state
Take a break and remove the pressure to write if needed
Read an inspiring book or blog post

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How To Keep Going With Blogging

Ever wondered how to keep going with blogging? Successful bloggers have thousands of posts on their blogs. But how to they keep going for so long? Why do so many quit? To get a regular readership with blogging takes time. There’s also over 600 million blogs on the internet so there’s plenty of competition. To stand out you need to pick a topic you’re going to stick at for several months or years.

Picking a topic you don’t care about is the worst thing you can do. I tried this several years ago and found myself writing about mushroom harvesting! I didn’t know anything about it, nor did I care. My goal was to create a successful website which made money organically. By starting with this intention, I found myself in some hot water. After 6 months of writing about mushroom harvesting, types of mushrooms and growing mushrooms in general, I got stuck! I was burned out and had had enough of mushrooms! So I quit!

Looking back my intention was all wrong. I put money first and as a result the blog was a failure. That’s because my heart wasn’t in it. My mushroom website ranked at the top of Google for some time. However, it was a difficult topic to monetise and I eventually let it drop! Some other blogger took the top place in Google – someone who was passionate about their topic. As a result, they had created much more content – including videos of their own mushroom harvesting activities!

How To Keep Going With Blogging – Touchy Feely

This might sound rather “touchy feely” to some, but I’ve since learned to choose a topic which is heart aligned. Find a topic you’re passionate about and could blog about forever. That way, you’ll never tire of writing and you’ll outlast any competition.

Many bloggers quit when they lose their desire to blog. But if you choose a topic you’re genuinely inspired by, your blogging habit can become a joy, rather than a burden. When you remove the “end goal” of making money, and choose a topic which gives you intrinsic motivation to blog, you’ll do it regardless of the outcome.

That’s where you need to be. As a mentor of mine said in relation to building an online business:

“The man who enjoys walking goes further than the man who likes the destination”

How To Keep Going With Blogging – How To Find Your Niche

I’ve written some posts on finding your niche for blogging before. For me, it didn’t come straight away. Before I built this website “affiliate marketing mentors” I had already built several hundred websites, most of which failed miserably! One of my first ones was a website tedsheds.net, which has long since passed. I wrote about shed plans for a while and managed to rank the site on Google for a popular keyword. I managed to sell a Clickbank product from it but it was only a short lived success.

Many of my other websites didn’t rank at all for their keywords even though I spend hour upon hour building them and creating content on them. The main takeaway from it all was this:

My focus was only on selling some spammy affiliate product from my sites and to make money – I wasn’t providing any real value.

After getting some more training in affiliate marketing I was given the advice of putting the value first – help people with a problem. I like to use Martin Lewis’s website as an example of an affiliate marketing website which does this superbly: Moneysavingexpert.com

How To Keep Going With Blogging – Give First, Get Later!

With Martin Lewis’s site, MoneySavingExpert.com, he offers advice about saving, mortgages, credit cards and so on. The main goal of the website is to help people with their money/spending.

In my early days as an affiliate marketer, I was focused only on the getting, and for as little work as possible! Big mistake! My websites only got sandboxed by Google and disappeared into the vast abyss of the internet with all the other invisible sites which never amounted to anything.

My “energy” was in desperation, because I was broke – also not a good foundation for building an online business from! But because I was desperate, and didn’t have a clue, I made a lot of mistakes. I didn’t lay the groundwork for my websites which would have saved me a lot of problems.

Use Your Own Journey/Experience

If you use your own journey or experience of something, you can always be genuine. There’s a saying which is apt for building a blog:

Oscar Wilde — ‘Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.’

blog traffic — Blog traffic on this website

When I first started blogging, however, this was more difficult than it has become over time. I was convinced that I wasn’t good enough and that I didn’t know anything worth sharing. So I felt that I should “assume some authority which I didn’t have”.

If you’re just starting out with a blog, my advice is to just get going. Be genuine. Initially, you’re not going to get a huge following. So there’s room for growth as you learn the ropes. Don’t expect a massive amount of people to find your blog posts in the beginning. There’s comfort in this, especially if, like me, you’re a little shy or feel as though you have nothing worth sharing.

Using your own experience and finding something you genuinely want to blog about are your superpowers. When you find your niche, it’s fun writing and you could do it forever, regardless of the rewards.

When you only want the reward, your creativity is stunted by thinking of whether something “works” or not. Will this work, will that work. “Is it worth all the trouble or should I not bother?” This thinking will only lead to inaction. Even if you start, with the goal of a sale in mind, you’ll be too anxious looking for the result and this can easily put you into a state of indecision and procrastination. Instead, focus on the post that inspires you, and which you want to write regardless.

Trust And Doubt In Blogging

Not everyone is motivated my money. When I started out looking for a way to earn an income online, the money was all I could think of. I just didn’t know how to make it. The problem with being money focused with an online business is that it doesn’t come immediately. There’s a lot of work to do beforehand, especially if you’re going down the organic marketing route such as with blogging.

It can take months or years to get your blog bringing in a good income. I’ve had some great months and some lousy months through blogging. Sometimes you’re up and other times you’re down! As with any business, it’s inconsistent. The key is to become consistent yourself, in order to build the consistency with your business.

I’ve definitely found consistency to be one of my main problems when it comes to blogging. In the early days, I was unsure whether blogging would be a good use of my time. So I would write a few blog posts and then sit and wait for the “results”. Nothing would happen. So I’d quit! Then, maybe a month later a sale would drop in! “Damn”, I thought, “if only I had kept up the habit, I’d have several sales by now!” As my confidence in blogging grew (as a form of income), I trusted it more and became more consistent with it.

But the main way I found to keep going was to find an intrinsic motivator which helped me stay the course.

My Intrinsic Motivator

My initial intrinsic motivator was simply one of achievement. I wanted to create some content which would rank on Google. Whether I made money or not wouldn’t matter if I achieved a ranking of my website. I knew, of course that a ranking would mean more traffic and more sales of course. But my focus was only on the task of getting a ranking. To get a ranking, I would find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.

Once I found a good keyword match, I would create some awesome content for it, which was far superior to anything currently ranking on Google! My motivation became therefore about creating awesome content which ranked on Google; NOT MAKING THE MONEY! The money became a by-product of my creating awesome content!

I can’t say that I was always super motivated by rankings because some days I simply wasn’t! Even now, I’m a little sceptical of Google and its ranking algorithms! Many of my rankings have dropped off too, but some of them remain! The point isn’t rankings though, it is to find a motivation to do the work first outside of the end result which may be far away. A shorter term motivation has always helped me.

Give Yourself A Reward System

It’s not much work to write a single blog post. As you’re beginning as a blogger, remind yourself not to worry about how your posts are perceived, since it probably won’t get a lot of views! As bad as this sounds, it can help if you’re worried about this! Use a reward system when you’re done, such as a cup of coffee or a biscuit! Don’t allow yourself the “treat” until you’ve done your post for the day!

Using a reward system has got me over the procrastination “hump” many times. Some days you just aren’t inspired to write. Allow yourself the luxury of having a few “duvet” days where you let yourself off the hook. Some days you will just have a mental block, or are uninspired. Use those days instead for strategising about other areas of your online business perhaps, or just getting yourself into a better state of mind.

When you’re struggling, just start writing about how stuck you are! Craft a post which might help someone else in your exact circumstance! I’m sure many of my posts simply haven’t been seen! Some of them I didn’t even promote! Sometimes the blog post is just for you – to get the wheels turning and start the habit. Remind yourself of this when you’re stuck.

See also my post about getting unstuck in your affiliate marketing business.

When You’re Stuck, Work On “You”

A few years ago I was really frustrated with my blogging. I wanted a sale and couldn’t understand how nothing seemed to be happening no matter how hard I worked! Sometimes blogging is just like this! I was about to quit the community I had joined to help me with my affiliate marketing (click here for info), and I reached out for support.

I met up with two members of the community (Gill and Frank) who helped me immensely and I’ll never forget it! The thing was, I had worked myself into a bit of a “Frenzy” (as I’m prone to do occasionally). Instead of assuring me about my direction of blogging or anything like that I was given the advice to start a gratitude journal and read a book!

Well it turned out to be great advice because I was simply burned out. Plus, I had been looking so much for the “result” that I was pushing it away! I had forgotten to look after myself and my health was suffering. It was a wake up call! Just remember, no amount of success is worth losing your health over!

Summary

So here’s the main points I’ve covered in this post “How To Keep Going With Blogging”:

Choose a topic which is “heartfelt” – close to your heart and that you’re passionate about or at least interested in. It’s far easier to keep going when you love your topic!
Don’t put the money first, put your topic/passion first
Give first – get later. Focus on a topic which actually helps your audience, rather than focusing on “what you will get from it”!
Use your own journey/experience and be genuine – when you’re genuine it’s much more inspiring to read and there’s less competition for “you” when you’re being yourself – nobody can imitate you! “The key to success is sincerity. If you can fake that you’ve got it made.”― George Burns
Trust the journey – if you find a journey with “heart” you’ll keep going long beyond those who quit.
Find an intrinsic motivator (which is shorter term than the financial reward) – e.g. hits on your website, rankings, leads/subscribers etc.
Give yourself a reward system – such as a cup of coffee/biscuit etc. For a longer term achievement you can find a larger reward.
Sometimes the blog post is “just for you” – it doesn’t have to be perfect! Remove some of your mental objections (self judgement, perfectionism etc.) and write it just for you, and to get the wheels turning on the blog habit.
If you get stuck write the post which you need to read to help you get unstuck! See how to get unstuck in your affiliate business.
When you’re stuck work on you – take care of your mental and physical health and don’t forget that’s the real key to success – good health!
Enjoy the journey and remember to have fun – don’t make it too serious!

Aligning Your Passion With An Affiliate Business

If you’re struggling aligning your passion with an affiliate business, you’re definitely not alone. A passion project is so much more inspiring than working for the sole purpose of making money.

When you’re aligned with a passion project, you love every minute and you could do it all day long. When you’re working for the money alone, it has a much more “weighty” vibe to it. There’s challenges of course with any endeavour. But would you rather choose a path with heart, or one which has no meaning to you besides the paycheck?

I’ve never been very good at working (only) for the money, without having some kind of love or connection to it. Over time, it simply wears me down inside somehow. Still, I’ve worked countless jobs trying to stay afloat. Maybe you’re in the same boat? But each job that I didn’t care about has brought me closer to realising what it is I’m actually passionate about.

So how can you align your passion with an affiliate marketing business?

Aligning Your Passion With An Affiliate Business – Ikigai

Ikigai is a Japanese term meaning “reason for being”. Ikigai is where your vision, mission and passion aligns with a way/means of making money!

I’ve always struggled with this and in large part I put this down to the programming of society. We are told, “you can’t make money doing this, or doing that”. You need to “choose a profession“, or “find a vocation”, or just “get a job” whatever it is!

So confused was I around this situation that in my 20’s I pretty much dropped out of society and went a lived in a ramshackled old house with a bunch of hippies! It was literally falling down! One morning I woke up to the sound of a collapsing wall – fortunately it was only the dry stone wall surrounding a nearby field – not the house falling down!

It’s since been rebuilt and you can now actually stay there as it’s a B&B:

During the 3 years I spent at this house, I realised something pretty important: time was worth much more than money and despite being broke for the whole time, I found an inner peace I didn’t manage to replace by re-joining society and “fitting in”.

Aligning Your Passion With An Affiliate Business – Forget The Money

Many people are frustrated with their working situation. A recent Gallop poll stated that 85% of people are disengaged at work.

That’s a pretty harsh statistic. But what’s the answer? While money is an important part of life, it’s worth asking yourself what you would do if money didn’t matter?. Separating ourselves from the ties which money makes on our very being is vital to understand out motivations outside of making money.

It is your intrinsic motivation which will give you the answer when trying to understand your passion project. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, while extrinsic motivation arises from external factors. Here’s a few other questions to ask yourself which might help you find your passion project:

What lights you up?
What subject are you most interested in?
What’s the first thing you want to tell someone about yourself?

Here’s another way to consider your passion project. Imagine you’ve won the lottery. Think of everything you would buy. Perhaps you’d go on a few holidays, buy some nice cars and travel the world. Now, once you’ve done all those things, what will you do once you have exhausted all those material desires? What’s left?

Another angle is to imagine a future where money doesn’t exist! Look at your day through those eyes and think about how you feel about your chosen vocation, knowing that you must continue in your job, without getting paid! How do you feel about it?

Be Yourself – Everyone Else Is Taken

The deathbed meditation is a meditation to help you gain clarity around your life. Start by imagining yourself in the last few hours of your life. Perhaps you are surrounded by your family members who are saying goodbye for the last time. Ask yourself a few questions once you have spent some time getting into the meditation:

Ask yourself “What was I most happy to have done in life?”, “What did I regret not doing?”, “What is the most important thing in life to me, above all else?”.

The deathbed meditation might seem extreme, but it’s important to realise that we don’t live forever. Sometimes that’s the realisation you need in order to shift your thinking.

When you come to terms with the fact that you will die someday, it’s very liberating. From this perspective you can make much better choices than if you’re surrounded by the opinions of other people and the constructs of society which are unconsciously absorbed through the course of life.

Summary

Aligning your passion with an affiliate business can definitely take some time. Most of us have at least some programming which may not be helpful when approaching this topic. We are told, for example, that we “need to be realistic”, you must “choose a profession”, that you can’t make money “this way” or “that way” and so on.

With an affiliate marketing business you need to align your passion with a product of some kind in order to make it pay. But too often we think of the money first, and second guess our passion as a result, shifting into an area which perhaps we are less than passion about to make it pay. But with blogging, it’s a much harder and longer road if you don’t care for your topic so it’s a much better idea to choose a topic you can maintain your passion for over the longer term.

How To “Flag” Your Goal To Your Unconscious Mind

How To “Flag” Your Goal To Your Unconscious Mind? “Flagging up” your goal to your subconscious mind is an important part of attaining something you strive for. We know the things we truly want, because we think about them a lot. But the reason why so many people struggle with their goals and desires is because they are in conflict with them.

Take the gym for an example. You join a gym to get in shape and get that “beach body”. But within a month, you’re bored of it. Your old habits kick in and you’re eating pizza and having a few beers. The “six pack” never arrived not because you didn’t desire it, but because you didn’t desire it enough to get over all your competing desires such as slobbing out, drinking beer and having a pizza whenever you felt like it!

The same can be said when you’re attempting to build an online business. There’s the desire to have more money, and create more freedom, for example. Perhaps your goal is to quit your job or make $10,000 a month as an affiliate. But there are also counter desires which don’t fit with your goal such as to slack off and watch TV.

The competing parts of your self want to maintain the status quo, so you put your feet up and don’t do the work. What happened to your dreams of building a profitable online business? They took a back seat to the status quo. What’s the payoff? You don’t have to do the work. You tell yourself you’ll do it tomorrow, but secretly you know nothing will happen!

How To “Flag” Your Goal To Your Subconscious Mind – Negative Payoffs

Perhaps you want to get fit, but you like a beer now and then. Maybe you want more control and freedom, but you don’t want to do the work. You want more money, but you like time off. The negative payoff of not getting your stated goal is that you don’t have to do the hard work in attaining it.

You want it but you don’t want it badly enough! Or, perhaps you just don’t know how to get it. Why do you want a better body, or to “get fit” or to make $10k a month?

Friedrich Nietzsche — ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’

Find your “why” and get clear on it. With an online business, the ones who succeed and build large incomes from affiliate marketing/online businesses are those with a big reason to do it. So if your job is “ok” and you don’t mind your boss, you probably aren’t motivated enough to build an online business to quit your job. If your fitness or body is “ok” you’re probably not motivated to get fitter or in better shape.

Be honest enough to admit that you don’t always want the “goal” you say you do badly enough to put down those habits and behaviours which stand in the way of your attaining it!

Set A Goal

Without a tangible goal, how will you know whether you have hit it or not? If your goal is to “make more money” or to “get fitter”, you’ll never know when you have arrived. You can’t hit a goal which isn’t well defined.

These goals are poorly defined and as such not much use. “More money” is always future bound and you can always be wanting “more money” no matter how much you attain. Similarly, “getting fitter” can always be your goal, forever! You’ll never arrive at “get fitter” because again it’s future paced and there’s no measurable “end-point” to it.

So define what you want by writing it out in specific terms. A SMART goal has:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Realistic
T – Timebound

There’s also the notion that SMART goals can become too cerebral and that DUMB goals are the way to go! A DUMB goal, by contrast to a SMART goal can be more motivating because they are “moonshot” dreams which inspire and lift your spirits. Either way, jot down a goal or aspiration you currently have and give it a time and a date to accomplish it by.

How To “Flag” Your Goal To Your Subconscious Mind – Setting A Goal

Did you write something down? Writing down a goal makes it tangible. If you only carry ideas in your head and don’t get them on to paper, they are less definite and tangible. So make sure you write something down just to start off with.

e.g. I now make $1000 a month from my affiliate business. It is January 1st 2025.

How To "Flag" Your Goal To Your Unconscious Mind

Now, have a look at your goal. Does it inspire you? How do you feel about it? Mark it out of 10 for desirability and out of 10 for achievability – meaning how easily do you think you can achieve it? If you don’t believe you can achieve your goal, you’re unlikely to work towards it.

If you goal isn’t desirable enough to you, you won’t want to push yourself towards it either. You want your goal to be a 10/10 in desirability and a 10/10 in achievability. Perhaps you believe you need more time, so alter the date. Or perhaps your goal doesn’t really motivate you, so change it to a more desirable goal:

e.g. I now make $10,000 a month from my affiliate business, it is January 1st 2026!

How To “Flag” Your Goal To Your Unconscious Mind – A Goal

Spend some time altering and “tweaking” your goal because unless you find a goal which is highly desirable, and you really believe you can achieve it, you won’t be motivated to work at achieving it.

Your goal must be a 10 out of 10 for desirability and a 10 out of 10 for achievability. Your goal might not be about building a business, or money. It might be about a relationship or a situation, a new job or a new house or car. Whatever it is, make it highly desirable and achievable and realistic to you.

Once you have tweaked your goal so it’s high number for both these factors, write out your final goal. Now write it out 10-20 times. As you do so, notice if anything feels “off” about it. Do you really want this, or is there something you can change to increase its desirability or your belief in it?

As you write out your goal multiple times, you’ll likely want to change a few things to align it with your values and genuine intentions. Keep going until your goal is clearly stated, has a definite outcome which can be measured. It should excite you and still be within the realms of possibility for you.

Writing Out Your Goal

Ok so you have your goal and you’ve tweaked it to a 10 out of 10 for desirability and attainability. Now write it out 100 times! It’s this repetition which will clearly install your goal in your subconscious mind.

Once you have done this, you’re unconscious mind will “flag” your goal and your mind will start searching for ways to make it happen. The subconscious mind is powerful, but most of us don’t know how to use it properly.

Make a habit out of repeating your goal daily and write it out at least 10 times a day. Don’t want to do this? You haven’t chosen a big enough goal/ you don’t want it enough. Choose a big enough goal to motivate you into this exercise. Write it out every day at least 10 times. You’ll be amazed at the power of your unconscious mind to deliver results when you do this.

Be on the lookout for “packages” of information pertaining to your goal which you’ll receive from your unconscious mind when you start doing this regularly. They’ll come in as brainwaves, brain farts and inspiring actions. Make sure you take them!

The best book I’ve found on this process is Stuart Lichtman’s Lots of money for anything fast. Stuart Lichtman was an MIT professor who came up with a goal setting formula called Cybernetic Transposition. It’s a process where you align all parts of your brain with an outcome you desire (a goal). You repeat it to yourself regularly and train your brain to look out for opportunities and ideas pertaining to your goal. Do the work and you won’t be disappointed.

Summary

So how to “flag” your goal to your unconscious mind? Firstly you must define your goal in terms which are specific and measurable. A vague goal such as “have more money” or “get fitter” can never be measured so you won’t be able to “hit” it!

Once you have defined a tangible goal, spend some time writing it out. How does it feel to you? Is it desirable enough to go for it? Do you genuinely care about your goal? How about believability? Do you believe you can attain your goal? With a strong desire and belief you simply won’t follow through on the actions needed to attain your goal.

Once you have defined a goal which is specific to you, write it out many times. At least 100! As you do so, keep tweaking to align your goal even more with what you really want and how strong you believe you can have it.

Read your goal out daily, and watch for ideas and inspirations coming from your subconscious mind as it processes your daily mantra. So that’s how to “flag” your goal to your subconscious mind.

Unconscious Saboteurs Of Your Success

If you’re struggling in any endeavour, you’ll probably have a few unconscious saboteurs of your success. What are they? Well, they’re you! Or, to be more specific they are parts of you.

So if you dream of a lifestyle of freedom and unlimited income, but you’re not quite making the grade, there’s a way to uncover these hidden splinters in your mind, which are holding you from success.

“Why would you sabotage your own life?”

Did you know that many of the worlds lottery winners end up regretting their win? Many of them suffer lost relationships and 70% of them lose or spend their money within 5 years or less.

Unconscious Saboteurs Of Your Success — https://www.rd.com/list/13-things-lottery-winners/

Changing your circumstances financially has an effect on more than just your bank balance. You could lose friends or even a life partner if it throws up some conflict or problem:

Unconscious Saboteurs Of Your Success – Your Own Cognitive Bias

Cognitive bias is an individual’s construction of reality, not necessarily the the objective reality. So if you hold a negative bias towards money, for example, it can act as a subconscious money repellant and stop you from attaining it.

While consciously you may be trying to build a profitable business for example, your unconscious money “tick” keeps you struggling. Why would you do that to yourself? It’s because there’s a payoff. Your subconscious mind is wise and listens to everything you say and think. So if you’re running a “program” in your mind which secretly hates money, or connects some negative attributes to money, it will “keep you safe” by limiting money in your life.

For example, if you believe rich people to be greedy, but you consider yourself generous, there’s a clear conflict if you desire to become rich. How would you reconcile becoming rich when you attribute a negative idea to “the rich”?

Here’s a few commonly held limiting beliefs which you may have some connection with:

Rich people are greedy
Money is unspiritual
Money is the route of all evil
The rich are deceitful
You must be dishonest to become rich
It’s nobler to be poor

Have a look at these statements and rate your agreement with them on a scale of 1-10. 1 = you absolutely agree, and 10 = you completely disagree.

Unconscious Saboteurs Of Your Success – Other Inner Conflicts

Having money might compromise some of your relationships too. Imagine if you suddenly doubled your income overnight. How would that affect your relationships? How would those closest to you see you differently? Would it create any difficulties with friends and family who don’t share your outlook and aspirations?

Do you have any bad habits which might surface when money is no longer limited? What is often cited as an excuse to not giving money to beggars is that “they would only spend it on drugs”! So, if you gave a homeless person some money, they might even drink themselves to death with it, or die from a drug overdose! Therefore you could cause their death, if you believe that.

But apply that same rationnel to yourself becoming wealthy. Do you have any negative habits such as drinking/smoking/drug taking which might be exacerbated when you have more money? Imagine at the same time if you lacked purpose and direction, how damaging this could be if you suddenly had large amounts of money to spend.

Sometimes your subconscious mind is keeping you safe by not allowing you to succeed past a certain level. Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap, calls this the upper limit problem, and it can surface in some negative event which sabotages your success.

Unconscious Saboteurs Of Your Success -Identity/Self Image

One of the biggest obstacles to success is that it would change your identity. Your self image, or identity is a large part of your model of the world. It’s a strong piece of the jigsaw which holds your world view together.

Your self image is often made up of the people in your life, your job, your purpose, and your place in the world. Having a big money shift can change a lot of things at once and damage your self image.

You might quit your job and lose your friends for example. This can be dangerous to your mental and physical health.

It’s well known that someone aged from 40-60 suffers a mid life crisis – a period of transition in life where someone struggles with their identity and self-confidence.

Sudden changes in circumstances can trigger these kinds of events and knock your confidence and direction in life.

Uncovering Your Success Blockers

So there’s some of the reasons why someone might sabotage their own success, whether they admit it or not. Often these things are sitting below the radar of the conscious mind and you haven’t even thought about them. Shining a light on these “success blockers” is a good way to get them out in the open. Once you do, you can have a conversation with yourself about them which can help bring clarity to the situation.

If, on the surface, you feel as though you’re struggling to attain something which never materialises, these could be your reasons to never quite get there, wherever “there” is! To help uncover some of your own, personal success blockers, make a list of all the potential reasons why you might NOT really want the success you say you want.

Success brings challenges – people will see you differently, it could change your relationships. You might face loneliness, separation and people might start asking you for handouts. Once you see these potential challenges and face them, they have a lesser hold over you. Once you have spent some time writing out your reasons NOT to succeed, write down all the reasons you want success.

Write out all the reasons which might be holding you from taking action towards success
Write out why you want success – how your life will be different, the benefits

Look At Your Lists

Did you learn anything from this exercise? If you haven’t done the exercise I highly recommend it. I learned a lot from writing out these two lists. In particular, I found I had a huge list reasoning why I shouldn’t be successful. I uncovered a lot of fear associated with success. My list holding me back was pretty long and filled with fears about the negative consequences of attaining wealth:

How I would perceive myself differently (identity)
How others would see me (negatively)
The person that I would have to become (and the conflicts this brought up)

But on the positive side, I also found a number of reasons why I wanted success, many of which were practical reasons such as:

Paying off debt
Living where I wanted
Being free of a job/boss

Unconscious Saboteurs Of Your Success – Summary

There’s many reasons why you might be struggling with attaining success on the surface which you may or may not be already aware of. But there’s also a bunch of reasons why you are unconsciously sabotaging your own success in more covert ways.

Pay attention to how you speak of yourself and your inner dialogue which runs in your head. Who do you hang around with and what are their views on you becoming successful? Do they value success or see it in the same way as you?

“You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with” – Jim Rohn

If your mind is predominantly filled with plans for your success and positivity, you are probably well on your way to the life you choose. However, if you fill you mind with contrary thoughts and negative influence, your subconscious mind has no option but to deliver results of a likeness to the thoughts and emotions you continually give energy to.

As Napoleon Hill shares in his book Think And Grow Rich: “The mind is a fertile garden spot in which weeds will grow in abundance if seeds of a more desirable nature are not sewn therein”.

By uncovering the ideas which you hold dear in your mind, you are becoming more conscious of them. When you do, you can become a more active “player” in the story of your life, rather than a victim of your unconscious bias. This way you are becoming a more conscious creator, rather than letting your unconscious mind sabotage your best intentions with unconscious counter-intentions.

Why Gratitude Is The Affiliate’s Superpower

There’s a few reasons gratitude is the affiliate’s superpower. One of the main things you’re going to experience as an affiliate is frustration. All affiliates will, at some stage, want to throw their laptop through the window! How you react in those moments will determine whether you continue to pursue your affiliate business or not!

In my darkest days, I was working hard on my affiliate business, and getting nothing back in terms of results. I couldn’t understand it. I was desperate for results! Which is perhaps why they eluded me for so long! It was the result I was looking for, and by looking, and finding none, I was placing myself into an energy of perpetual frustration and anxiety. The harder I worked, the more I was frustrated by my lack of results.

The result of all this endless work and frustration – burnout and disappointment. I wasn’t enjoying the journey, and ultimately gave up several times. Fortunately I was part of an online community and was able to reach out for some assistance on the cusp of quitting.

I wasn’t given advice on my marketing strategy. Rather, I was advised to start a gratitude journal and read a book: The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. How odd I thought! But, by this point I was ready to listen to anything, so frustrated was I.

Why Gratitude Is The Affiliate’s Superpower – Shifting Your “Vibe”

When you are running towards something, desperate to have it, you don’t get the thing, the object of your desire, you get the results of your actions, whatever they are.

Now, I wanted a profitable online business, but I wasn’t taking the actions I needed to take to achieve that outcome! I was doing more and more of what didn’t work – because those actions satisfied my criteria, not the reality!

I read the book and I started a gratitude journal, as advised. Also, I shifted gear in terms of my actions. I joined an online group and started learning about video marketing. What happened almost instantly though was a shift in my “energy”, or my “vibe”.

From being anxious and desperate, the kind of being-ness where nothing new can enter, I shifted to a more relaxed and “at ease” state of being. This shift alone I attribute to my sticking with affiliate marketing, and not quitting.

95% of affiliates will quit. And I believe this is due to the frustration and anxiety associated with the initial struggle. In particular this happens in the early days of starting an affiliate business.

But if you can equip yourself with the power of gratitude, by creating and keeping up with a gratitude journal, you have the power to shift your state.

Things won’t be any less stressful and anxiety provoking, however, you’ll be empowered to shift that stress and anxiety and maintain a positive, and more powerful and empowering state of being-ness.

Why Gratitude Is The Affiliate’s Superpower – The Tipping Point Of Frustration

If you get frustrated with your affiliate business, or anything for that matter, there’s a point where you’ll lose your shit! That’s the point where you throw your laptop through the window, or some similar outburst!

Conflict de-escalation is taught on the understanding of this idea, too. Once someone gets to a certain level of anger/frustration, it breaks over into physical violence. So to de-escalate the potential violence of a conflict it’s wise to be mindful of this image (below) and keep the individual on the left hand side of this (violent outbreak) thermostat:

If someone is verbally abusive, for example, chances are they are close to Stage 5 where they might spill over into physical violence. To keep them from “tipping” over into violence, you might for example, avoid raising your voice or becoming abusive yourself!

While this is a different situation to your own state of being when building your affiliate business, there’s definitely some pertinent similarities. Stage 5 in your affiliate business is perhaps when you’ll quit for good! It might be the fifth time you throw your laptop through the window, for example!

By understanding your state, and using gratitude, you can put yourself in a calmer and more resourceful place of “being-ness”. In this state, you can make better choices and avoid losing your shit! Knowing when it’s time to step away from the laptop is something you will learn through experience, of course, and you’ll fine tune this as you go, for optimum output/performance. But initially it can help to use gratitude and other outlets such as exercise to maintain a positive outlook and state of being.

Controlling Your State

Controlling your state is a powerful life skill, whether you’re an affiliate or not. But particularly when you’re building an affiliate business, your state is super important.

When you come up against a roadblock in your affiliate business, who do you turn to? More often than not, affiliates will have to solve their own problems. If you are always looking for help and support, whenever you get stuck, you’ll waste a huge amount of time waiting for it.

If you can solve your own problems, through online research, for example, you’ll get things moving far faster than if you’re always wanting someone else to help you.

I’ve definitely had some difficult moments as an affiliate. I’ve felt like quitting on more than one occasion. But affiliate marketing is very forgiving. You can always start again, but this time with more insight and knowledge than you had before. The main key skill though, I personally believe is to have an insight into your own mind, and maintain a positive and empowered outlook.

Summary

So that’s why gratitude is the affiliate’s superpower!

Gratitude is a super useful “tool” for the affiliate marketer’s tool box. If you can learn how to shift your mindset when things are becoming uncomfortable for you, you’re much more likely to overcome the challenges that come with building an affiliate marketing business.

If you find yourself in a frustrated and anxious state, it’s much more difficult to be resourceful and clear-minded. With a simple shift, and the ability to step away and come back with a calmer head, you can overcome many of the obstacles which would be seen as insurmountable to those who quit.

When I reached out for help and support, I was in a desperate “groove” of depression, anxiety and frustration. I didn’t see it at the time, but these days, through having gone through it, I’m able to maintain a much more productive and resourceful state of being-ness.

You can too by utilising the power of using a gratitude journal. Write in it every day just 10 things you’re grateful for. Make those things different every day. Soon your mind will be searching out things to be grateful for, and positive about. Just watch as your life changes when you keep up this habit for several months in a row!

Too Many Mind

If your mind is split, going in too many directions, it is known as too many mind. “No mind” is the Japanese idea of 無心 (むしん: mushin) or having a “mind free from thought”. In this focused state, we can be fully present and focus intently on the job in hand, directly in front of you.

If you’re building an affiliate business, this concept is important too. If you have become stuck in your affiliate business for example, your mind might be in a whirl of doubt and frustration. You are full of questions without answers. “What if I do this?” “Will it work if I do that?” “How long is this going to take?” With multiple open ended questions and no definite answers, this leads to inaction, and perhaps even quitting altogether.

A simple solution is to break down the big picture (a profitable online business) into tiny, easily achievable steps. Make these steps into daily habits, and focus only on the step in front of you, not the long road ahead. Don’t look for evidence that your step is “working” because it likely won’t produce a tangible result immediately. Instead, focus on the small steps each and every day. Focus on the action, and keep your mind steady and clear on your objective right now, not in the future, or in your results (or lack of them!).

Too Many Mind – Not Being Present/Focused

While writing I noticed I was distracted by Facebook and I wondered off to watch a video! What irony! Anyway, back to the post! An important case in point of the distractions we all face when online.

“The wise man lets go of all results, whether good or bad, and is focused on the action alone” – Bhagavad Gita

A old mentor of mine back in the early 90’s said : “Don’t focus on your results, focus on your actions”.

This is solid advice when it comes to building an online business. When I become disillusioned by a lack of results from blogging, for example, it fills me with uncertainty. That stops me enjoying the process. So I stop creating content! But when I’m in “flow” with blogging, I could happily keep going regardless of the outcome.

This is the key to getting traction with an online business. Focus on the action in front of you and keep going regardless. Stop looking for results before you’ve done the work!

Looking For Confirmation – Focusing Into The Future

Of course you will want some confirmation that the actions you take will lead you to the end result – money in your bank account, perhaps. But by looking for confirmation too soon, you are scattering doubt on your strategy, undermining your confidence.

With an organic marketing strategy, such as blogging or creating a video channel, you need to provide the content first, before you can see the results of your efforts, in terms of sales. Without putting the work in first hand, or by only timidly working a little, before looking for confirmation, you will be unlikely to generate the traction needed to produce the results you desire.

This is where I was for quite some time. I put the cart before the horse – I was wanting the outcome before doing the work. In that energy of “wanting” I struggled to take action because I wasn’t being present in the moment, focusing on the step in front of me.

So, what’s the solution? The solution is to choose a path which aligns with your values. Create content/choose actions which give you personal satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment. Fulfilment through an online business doesn’t come only with the money. In a recent conversation a friend of mine pointed out that “with no true value brought to the table, you may well convince some people to part with cash but it won’t fulfil“.

He is right. The fulfilment comes through the work, whatever that may be for your own particular path.

Too Many Mind – What Energy Are You Feeding?

If, like I was, you are focused on only the end result for your business, but aren’t taking any action, you are feeding the energy of desperation, frustration, procrastination and/or entitlement.

The more you focus on the results you don’t yet have, and your indecisions about what you “should” be doing, as opposed to what you are actually doing, the more this frustration will build.

In this state it becomes more and more difficult to take action. Your mind gets filled with questions and conflicts. The more you think about it, the more conflict arises. There’s only two outcomes which come from this energy – action or inaction.

To take action, you must step out of this cycle and focus on a single “baby step“.

Breaking The Cycle Of Procrastination

To break the cycle of procrastination you need to take action. The inner state of conflict and indecision can become exhausting. To break the cycle, take a tiny, easily achievable step forwards in some area of your business. It might be watching a training video, joining a group or trying some new marketing strategy such as blogging, video, paid ads etc.

A small action is far better than giving more energy to this state of confusion and inner turmoil! Here’s a few actions which can help break the state of not-doing through inner conflict:

Exercise – particularly cardiovascular exercise which gets your heart pumping
A gratitude journal – when I was struggling with my affiliate business, I got help and was recommended to start a gratitude journal, which helped massively shift my mindset
Self help books – I’ve always been an avid collector of self help books – checkout some of my favourite motivational ebooks in pdf format here.
A tiny “micro-step” in your affiliate business – a micro step focuses your mind and gets you out of procrastination and towards momentum. Even a super tiny step to break your state can have massive implications if you maintain the momentum, no matter how slow.

Summary

Whether you’re stuck, procrastinating or disempowered in your action steps by focusing too much on the future (looking for confirmation) rather than being fully engaged in the action step, you can likely benefit from the concept of “too many mind”.

Too many mind is a concept which is massively important for today’s fast paced world with all its distractions. In the process of writing this article, it’s ironic how many times I have been distracted by: phone calls, social media accounts and videos! When you have a phone that offers an endless loop of dopamine, it becomes difficult to focus on tasks that don’t provide the same instant gratification.

As we become addicted to our distractions, we are less able to focus on tasks for our online business. So the best thing to do if this is something you’re experiencing is to lower the ability of your laptop and phone to distract you. Spend a day in digital detox. Notice how many times you desire to check your phone, or look on social media. How could you build an online business with a brain that’s running rampant for stimulus for most of the day?

Too many mind.

Remove distraction, find a daily routine you can stick with, and keep taking actions, letting go of the need for validation or results.

The Tipping Point In Blogging

There is a tipping point in blogging, where your previous work culminates in a steady growth in traffic. Ultimately there becomes a “tipping point” where it goes supersonic. More traffic means more shares and backlinks and this in turn can “tip” your traffic upwards so you experience exponential growth very quickly.

Here’s what it looks like on a graph.

The Tipping Point In Blogging

When I started blogging way back in the early 2000’s I struggled to get anyone at all to visit my blog posts. I admit, I wasn’t very good at it and most of the stuff I shared wasn’t particularly useful for anyone. My intention was simply to make sales back then, and it was before I knew I should be adding some kind of value through blogging. So my posts were full of affiliate links and not much value.

Plus, I was new to blogging. I used free blog platforms which didn’t rank well on the search engines. So getting traffic was a difficult thing to do (for anyone) on those platforms, especially someone with only a handful of blog posts!

But I persevered with blogging because I wanted to learn how to earn an income online and I had very little spare money for advertising. It’s been a long journey and my hopes of getting a post to “go viral” were never realised!

I jumped around a lot too, from topic to topic and I must have created several hundred websites overall before this one! That’s not a great plan because you are spreading yourself very thin. My advice is choose a topic you can stick with for the duration and don’t deviate from it. Write content which is helpful to your audience and find an affiliate product you truly value. Once all that is in place, get blogging and never quit!

The Tipping Point In Blogging – Get Back On The Horse

Having recently been through a breakup and house move, I fell out of my blogging habit for several months. As a result, I watched my traffic take a big dive! Despite all the work I’d put in previously, I’d lost momentum. In addition, Google has somehow penalised my website and it fell from the rankings.

There’s over 800 blog posts on this website, so I took that pretty badly! After my pity party, I decided to start the habit up again, but this time I’d create longer and better posts. I knew from experience that the peak of my traffic had come from a long, sustained effort at building content on a regular basis and promoting it too, every day, or at least most days. Some days I simply couldn’t write a blog post though. I lacked inspiration or I had been blogging all week and just needed a rest!

The fact that I still had any traffic at all was promising. Especially as I hadn’t even looked at my website for a few months.

The Tipping Point In Blogging – 1 Post At A Time

I went through a lot of procrastination about blogging of course: “Is it worth bothering with?”, “Will I make any sales?” “Maybe I should do something else, such as paid marketing?” These were the questions running through my mind.

The endless procrastination led me nowhere and, since I was short of advertising budget, I was led back to blogging once more! After all, it’s free, cathartic and I quite enjoy it really!

Now I’ve covered a lot of topics already on this website. Just have a search using the search bar at the top of this website and you can find posts in pretty much any affiliate topic you care to think of. So I wondered how I was going to come up with yet more content for affiliate marketing!

The answer was simple: I would inspire myself back into the habit! So my last few posts have been on the topic of my own personal battles. Here’s a few of my latest posts:

articles about blogging and affiliate marketing

You can see at the bottom I’ve written a post on overcoming procrastination!

Intrinsic Motivation Vs. Extrinsic Motivation

Intrinsic motivation comes from within, extrinsic motivation is wanting something on the outside. I realised that my affiliate sales from my blogging habit didn’t come about through wanting those commissions alone (although I did want them of course!). No, it came from a rather arbitrary motivation – getting my content ranked and getting FREE traffic.

“The man who likes walking will go further than the man who wants the destination”

So in the first instance, my motivation for this website was to get free traffic from the search engines. Although I only had some modest success with this strategy, I did get free traffic ultimately. However, what came about from my attempting to rank my content on Google was the habit of blogging that was formed as a result.

It is this habit which resulted in the traffic I obtained and of course the habit of sharing my content with my email list and on social media, too.

Simple Daily Habits Vs. Goals

If you’re not a fan of goal setting, which many people aren’t, consider formulating a daily habit ritual instead which leads you to your desired outcome. It is the ritual of a daily blog post which has made the most impact for me in my life and not just on my affiliate business. The process has given me structure and discipline, without which my life would be more chaotic than it is!

I was always focused on the outcome (of the affiliate sales, for example) rather than the journey. But when you consider the journey, and how you would like to live, if you can find a strategy to enjoy your days while working towards your outcome, you’re on to a winner. Many people quit with affiliate marketing simply because they only want the outcome, rather than the journey. Those who succeed, enjoy the process and the personal growth which comes with that process.

Blogging is no different and it’s a long journey. But if you choose a topic you’re passionate about, and enjoy writing, there’s no reason you can’t make it work if you stick with it!

Summary

When you’re so busy enjoying the process of creating and sharing content, you’re definitely on track for reaching a tipping point. For so long I was checking my traffic, unhappy about my sales, desperate for “success”. When you look for the result before you do the work, the outcome is to feel disappointed, frustrated and inadequate. But wanting isn’t an inspiring emotion.

When you shift the desire to “get” into the desire to give and find a purposeful way to create, you’ve already arrived because it’s a joy to do! When you can tie that in with generating an income you have found your “groove” in life.

Ikigai is a Japanese word meaning “reason for being”. I always struggled with it because I was too focused on “never enough”. When I realised that I was carrying the belief “I’m never enough”, I was able to work on it and find simple joy again in being, without “need” or “wanting” attached to what I was doing. See also my post on overcoming limiting beliefs about money and poverty consciousness.

I believe the tipping point in blogging comes after you have realised this in your work. Find something you love writing about and you can write forever without the need for approval or reward! That’s the kind of intrinsic motivation you need to “tip” your blog posts into the stratosphere!