AffiliateMentor, Author at Affiliate Marketing Mentors

Affiliate Marketing Through Blogging

Affiliate marketing through blogging is a good way to start out, especially if funds are low. Blogging however is a long term strategy and less scalable than through running paid advertising. If you’re unfamiliar with affiliate marketing it’s one of the most popular business models used to earn income on the internet. As an affiliate you refer people to products and services online. When they sell, you make money!

Sounds pretty straight forward, right! With a blog, you create content to bring in people to your blog. As they browse your blog posts they can click on your affiliate links and join your email list. From your list you can promote your affiliate products further and for a longer time span. On a website someone has only a few minutes to purchase a product. Most people don’t buy from websites they don’t know. Often there’s a period of getting to know, which can be done through building an email list.

Once on your email list, you can build relationships with your email subscribers. Get them to know, like and trust you over time and they are more likely to buy something which you recommend.

Affiliate Marketing Through Blogging

But before that can happen, they need to find your blog! This is where you create lots and lots of content which will be a good match for your ideal customer. This is worth giving some serious consideration before you start because getting people to your blog posts isn’t the only factor in play with a profitable blog/website. You also need to get the right people to it, or no one will buy from you.

Affiliate marketing through blogging can be a great way to earn a living. But unless you get it right, it can be a very frustrating experience too. You need to choose content carefully because that content is going to draw a certain person to your blog. Write for your perfect customer, not just for anyone.

Who your perfect customers is will depend on your affiliate products. Ideally choose affiliate products which are a good match for your interests and passions. That way, you can write freely about the things which are of interest to you. This will draw in the right audience and they will buy from you.

So to sum up, your success as a blogger will depend on you getting traffic and making sales. Without the right content, or the right products, this can be a challenge. So it’s important to set yourself up for success from the get-go.

Affiliate Marketing Through Blogging – Starting With Your Affiliate Product

Your choice of affiliate product/s is pretty important. You should ideally choose products which are a good match for some interest or passion you have. Blogging takes time and is a long, slow process. It can take months and even years before you build up a good solid following and start getting traffic, leads and sales. Before this can happen, you’ll need to create some great content and the best way to set yourself up for success is to choose a topic close to your heart.

Choosing a topic just to make money is not a great idea. Remember you’ll have to create content which speaks to your target audience. Be yourself and you’ll have an easier time of it. Try and pretend to be someone else and you’ll soon run out of steam.

Some bloggers start out with a passion topic and don’t monetise it until much later: after they have built a huge following.

What Not To Do

I made a big mistake several years ago and I built a website based on a topic I knew nothing about. Worse still, I had no passion or interest in the topic either! The site was called whentoharvestgarlic.com and it no longer exists! I spent a good six months researching content and building the site. It did rank top of Google for the very uncompetitive terms I was aiming at. However, I had no passion for the topic and after 6 months I was simply burned out. It was difficult to monetise the topic too, and it made next to nothing despite my hard work.

But I learned an important lesson. If you’re going to put months into your blogging, and build a business out of it, make sure it’s good and that you love it! Because a year down the line you’re going to want to enjoy what you do. Don’t put the money before the work. Focus on what you’re passionate about and the work will become a joy.

When it does, it’s so much easier to keep going when things get tough, as they often will.

Getting People To Your Blog

So you’ve chosen your topic and you’re ready to get started. You can even choose to build your blog/website around certain keywords which can help it in the rankings. See this article. But this isn’t totally necessary as the content is the most important aspect. See also best micro niche for blogging. To get people to your blog, you’ll need to write good quality content which is suitable for your particular niche. You can use Google’s keyword planner to help you find the keywords which are already being searched for. See also affiliate marketing content ideas.

Use an SEO (search engine optimisation) plugin to help you write SEO friendly content. This will help you get the right balance of keywords in your content to give you more chance of getting it seen in the SERPs (Search engine results pages).

Once you’ve written your first piece of content your job isn’t over. You’ll want to promote it as much as possible. Newer websites will usually have a longer wait before Google (and other search engines) rank they content.

A high ranking on the first page of Google is a great result but never guaranteed. Remember your ranking will depend on a number of ranking points such as length of content, content quality, domain age, back links, social media presence domain name and so on. It also depends on your competition so for a competitive niche such as affiliate marketing it will be so much more difficult to get free traffic to your blog.

Less competitive niches should be easier to get free traffic from, if you blog regularly over several months and promote your content well.

Useful Plugins

There’s a few useful plugins you can use to help you promote your content. Revive old posts is a good plugin, by revive.social. It lets you connect your new and old posts to be syndicated throughout your social media presence online. There’s a free version and a paid version you can use according to functionality but both are useful.

You can also get social media share plugins too which will show on your site. These make it easy for your readers to share your content on social media, so it’s worth choosing one which you like. There’s many free versions available.

I’ve mentioned already an SEO plugin is a useful thing to get too. I use Yoast SEO which helps me write content which is more SEO friendly.

Keep Going – Gaining Momentum

Blogging is a great way to earn from the internet but it takes time. Remember that it’s a long game so prepare yourself for a marathon not a sprint. Make habits out of creating content and over time your habits will serve you.

Here’s a snapshot from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. I thought it particularly relevant to blogging because it can take so long before the fruits of your efforts begin to show. And it’s not a linear journey. There’s a lot of work involved in blogging which appears as if it’s for nothing at times. But hang in there and keep going.

A good analogy of blogging is the Chinese Bamboo tree which has a 4-5 year gestation period and within 6 weeks grows up to 90 feet tall. So for four or five years nothing shows at all! Blogging can be a little like this too. You can work really hard for a long period and nothing shows. It can be tempting to quit. But if you carry on and keep going, you will see a slow generation of traffic. Offer some valuable giveaway on your blog and you’ll see the occasional lead (email sign up).

Use these small successes to motivate you to keep going. They are the “sprouts” of the bamboo tree!

Affiliate Marketing Through Blogging – Summary

Affiliate marketing through blogging can be a rewarding way to build an affiliate business over the longer term. Paid marketing can considerably shorten the journey, but it’s not for everyone, and requires more financial investment rather than an investment of time. See affiliate marketing business models.

Before you get started blogging, consider a topic or subject which you have an interest or passion for. By choosing your topic and aligning it with your interests you have a much better chance of success and for staying the course when times get tough. Creating content will be more of a joy and less of a burden with a topic you love.

Each piece of content on its own won’t make your affiliate business grow. But together and if you promote each piece of content well, you’ll be able to use your blog as a resource to attract your perfect audience. Over time, as your blog attracts more attention, you should see a rise in traffic and leads. You should start making some sales too. But this doesn’t happen immediately, at least in my experience. So be prepared for a long term strategy which compounds on itself over time.

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Affiliate Marketing Content Ideas

I often get asked how I come up with new affiliate marketing content ideas. It’s simple! I just use Google’s free keyword planner to look for keywords which are suitable for my target audience. Then, I head over to Google and check how competitive these keywords are. If I get a good long tail keyword which matches my target demographic, and I think I can write some content on the idea, I’ll start planning an article.

If you’re a content marketer, you can create a lot of content which doesn’t really do much. You need to actively promote your content while creating new content to boot! This can take a heap of time and energy. So you need to make sure you have a couple of criteria right when you create any content. For me, these are the criteria:

The keyword or content subject has to be something I’m interested in writing about and have some knowledge on.
There needs to be already people searching for the keyword (hence using Google’s keyword planner)
Low competition – I look for long tail keywords which mean I have a chance of getting free traffic over the longer term.
Buyer keywords – not all content is “buyer” content. But your content should at least be aligned with the products and services you offer as an affiliate. Otherwise you’ll be doing a lot of work for nothing.

Affiliate Marketing Content Ideas – Keywords

Start with your own specific affiliate product and make a note of your main keywords. Whatever your product or service is, you’ll likely have thousands of related keywords which you can find using Google’s free keyword tool. This website’s main keyword is affiliate marketing.

But of course affiliate marketing has a lot of competition. So don’t aim for the short phrases which will drown you out in the search engines. Instead, find the long tail “low hanging fruit” which will each bring you a trickle of website traffic each and every month. Then create a tonne of great content which does the same.

If I’m unsure of what keyword to use, I spend a bit of time on Google’s keyword planner starting out with my main “seed” keyword. Here’s a short video which shows you how to find long tail keywords within your niche which you have more chance of getting free traffic for.

Affiliate Marketing Content Ideas

Once you get into the habit of finding keywords like this, you’ll start getting better at it. I like to find ideas which I’m enthused about. It’s much harder to create content if you don’t actually want to write, or create a video about the actual topic. One site I built was about mushroom harvesting! 6 months in and I was more than ready to throw in the towel!

With a good topic which you have enthusiasm for, you can create content for much longer. This will give you the best chance of success as an affiliate. Don’t pick a topic you don’t have an interest in! See best micro niche for blogging.

If you find yourself creating content in a niche you don’t care about, change to one which you do. You’ll find content creation can be much more joyful and lucrative if you pick a topic you love.

Content Creation & Ikigai

Ikigai is a Japanese concept meaning “reason for being”. But it’s much more than that too. In Japan, it encapsulates who you are and how you serve the world while creating an income. In terms of affiliate marketing, if your reason for getting up in the morning is lined up with your purpose and how you earn a living, you’ll be all the more happy for it.

Whereas if your purpose, passion and income source are misaligned, you’ll struggle finding a path for content creation in affiliate marketing.

Content Creation Using YouTube

You can also use YouTube to find content ideas in a similar way to using Google’s keyword planner. Simply type your seed keywords into YouTube and you should see a number of keyword suggestions come up under the search bar tool. This can give you an idea of what people are already searching for on YouTube.

A great little resource site to use is called keywordseverywhere.com. This can help you identify keywords in your niche which are already being searched for and also show you the search volume and relative competition.

Once you find a suitable keyword which suits you, your niche and offers less competition than the rest, you can create a video and use those keywords within the title and description of your video.

Affiliate Marketing Content Ideas – BuzzSumo

Another useful site is called Buzzsumo.com. Buzzsumo can show you content which is trending on social media. This can be useful in a number of ways. You can use the titles of these trending topics to give you ideas and inspiration for your own title content.

You can also use the content itself in conjunction with a clever little tool called Snip.ly. Snip.ly can let you use existing content and link to yours within it. I mention Snip.ly in my article 22 ways to promote affiliate products. Here’s a video I created on how to use Snip.ly:

Use Your Enthusiasm

Sometimes you get inspired to create content at odd times! If you can jump on this inspiration, it’s the best time to create it. Other times the creative flow just isn’t flowing. Use your enthusiasm for your topic to create it, rather than “trying” to do it when there’s a resistance. Create content about things you’re genuinely inspired by yourself. You’ll find content creation can be a joy rather than a burden. If you do a little each day, you’ll soon build a habit out of it. If you overwork, and try to create too much in too short a time, you’ll stifle that creativity.

Work on those things you are enthusiastic about, when you’re enthusiastic about them! That way, you’ll be genuinely turning “work” into joy, and your affiliate business will become a joy to work on. If you’re constantly struggling, you’re doing something wrong. Find an easier way and don’t make your life more difficult!

Building A Niche Website For A Local Business

Building a niche website for a local business is a great idea! One of the best strategies you can use if you have a locally based business is to build a niche website. Ideally choose your keywords based on the most searched for term in your local area. In the video below, I’m using the example of “dog walking leeds”.

This strategy can be used with affiliate marketing too of course. Although it works wonders for locally based businesses because there’s a lot less competition.

A quick keyword planner search of the terms “dog walker leeds” brings up a number of 590 searches a month for this (or similar terms). You can also use dog walkers or dog walking in leeds and so on. The terms are often bundled together so you can look for a suitable domain name on namecheap.com to purchase one which is a good fit.

Building A Niche Website For A Local Business

With a locally based business you have the added benefit of a much smaller audience. So with the results for my search of “dog walking leeds”, I can see there’s a good chance of ranking my website.

Once you have found your keywords and done some research on the level of competition, you can build your site. This article explains a little about how to build your website and optimise it.

It can take a few months for your website to start showing up on Google. You’ll need to create some content and build it up over time. Use SEO (search engine optimisation) plugins and social sharing plugins to help you get it noticed and ranked.

Don’t Forget Your Google My Business Listing

If you do have a locally based business, don’t forget you can also build a free listing using Google my Business. It’s a free business listing for locally based businesses so it’s definitely worth an hour of your time to set it up. Once setup, it’s done for life and can give you free customers forever!

As you’ll see, Google My Business listings appear generally at the top of the page. However, if someone advertises their business using paid marketing, they will appear even higher on the page.

If you want to use paid marketing, you can use Google Adwords program. Bing and Yahoo also offer similar services so don’t forget there’s traffic there too!

Building A Niche Website For Affiliate Marketing

Building a niche website for your affiliate marketing business can be done in just the same way. Certain topics within affiliate marketing are much more competitive than others of course. This strategy works better in the less competitive topics, although it can work in any. Affiliate marketing as a topic is very competitive and although I’ve built this site in an affiliate marketing niche, it’s been a tough cookie to crack!

That’s because there’s just so much competition. But there’s other affiliate niches which you can tap into using this exact same strategy. Just make sure you do your research and only target keywords with low competition.

I generally go for keyword phrases with less than 10,000,000 competition in a search on Google. Look for the number which appears under your search on a desktop computer. (See below)

How Successful Is This Strategy?

The success of this strategy will depend on some key elements:

The keywords you choose
The competition for competing websites
How you build your website (content backlinks etc.)

However, I’ve had some great success with this strategy, particularly for locally based businesses. With the affiliate sites I’ve built it has been much more difficult because there’s more competition. A local business will always be less competitive than globally based businesses.

So if you have a locally based business there’s no reason not to give this strategy a go!

See also get traffic to your website free for more information on building up your site over time and getting its domain authority to improve.

Overworking And Burnout

If you’re an affiliate you’ve probably experienced overworking and burnout. Because affiliates are only paid when they make a sale, there’s often a lot of work involved; particularly in the beginning of your affiliate career. Initially you’ll do a lot of work and not see much in the way of results. Over time, your work can compound to generate a passive income even, if you stick at it long enough.

If you can see this eventuality, there can be a compulsion to over work. Over time this can lead to burnout and even quitting. So it’s important to notice when you are emotionally, spiritually or physically exhausted through over work. Don’t quit, just rest.

When this time comes, and it will, you need to be prepared to let go and unplug. It can be difficult to unplug from your affiliate “baby” but it’s well worth doing so. You’ll come back stronger and with more clarity if you do.

Overworking and Burnout – Shifting Strategies/Tasks

If you belong to a community of people who can help you, you can also switch tasks: watch a webinar or join a new training course. Try something different to what you are doing on a daily basis in your affiliate business. Or have a full week or day off the computer completely.

Screen time can affect your sleep too and it can be easy to continually have a screen stuck to your face as you check emails endlessly and look at your website traffic.

Here’s an awesome video I found from Tim Ferris in which he explains how to use your phone! I’m sure you think you know how to use your phone, but after watching this you’ll know how to not let your phone use you. It will also help your sleep which is a vital part of success in any venture.

Exercise and Sleep

If you’re experiencing burnout it’s also useful to prioritise some of the things you’re probably taking for granted. Exercise and sleep are often two of the main things which start slipping if you’re overworking. Take time out and focus only on activities which are the most important in your business, if you can’t completely stop.

Remember Wu Wei – effortless effort? Wu Wei is a philosophy where you use just the right amount of energy in the appropriate time and place. Sinologist Jean François Billeter describes it as a “state of perfect knowledge of the reality of the situation, perfect efficaciousness and the realisation of a perfect economy of energy”.

That’s all very well if your affiliate business is running on all cylinders. But if you’re just starting out, you could spend months without seeing any results in terms of sales. This can be super frustrating but as with many things, stepping back and looking at the bigger picture can often lead to larger breakthroughs than by maintaining work for work’s sake.

Why Work Doesn’t Always Work

Work doesn’t always work because often you can spend time in all the wrong places. Affiliate marketing is hard, at least at first. So it’s important to develop a growth mindset so you are working in the most efficient way possible for your business. This sometimes means not working. Practice a day of “mindful inactivity”. This can be very difficult for productive people, especially if you’re desperate for success with an affiliate business. But often the very nature of being “desperate” can push success away. A stressed and fearful mindset is seldom one which makes good decisions for your business.

Sometimes some time out can allow your mind to settle and you can often receive insights and inspirations which you were blocking out through overworking. Cloudy water soon settles when it is still.

Overworking and burnout is common and not just in the affiliate marketing business. By taking time out, prioritising diet, exercise and sleep, you can solve problems which only existed in your mind. Let the cloudy water clear! Namaste!

Growth Mindset and Affiliate Marketing

A growth mindset and affiliate marketing should go hand in hand. For a long time I looked to affiliate marketing as a means to only make money. “Where’s the money?” I thought. But over time I’ve come to appreciate that there’s a great “gem” to be taken from working an affiliate marketing business. That gem is personal growth. I’d always been fascinated by psychology and self help books have been my constant companion for many years.

In my 20’s and 30’s panic set in. I was broke and desperate so I though this was the perfect time to start an online business! Ha ha! Of course I didn’t realise that the mindset I brought with me almost guaranteed failure. Being broke and desperate meant I tried all the free stuff and quit too soon.

Growth Mindset & Affiliate Marketing Course after Course

I couldn’t afford to pay for training and courses, and I didn’t have the time either! I needed money now – yesterday in fact. The debt was eating me up and I was desperately unhappy while being desperately poor too.

So I looked to the internet as a means to solve my problems. Of course there was “easy money” to be made – I knew this because the “guru’s” told me so! But after months of struggle I knew this couldn’t be so. “Perhaps I hadn’t found the right get rich quick scheme yet”, I thought to myself. So I would buy another one, and another, and another.

Being addicted to “make money online” courses was as addictive as self help books. They always promised but never seemed to deliver. So I would abandon the course I was on, and look for another one. One which worked this time!

But of course I never thought to look into my own mindset – filled with fear and dread, desperate, broke! That’s not a good state of mind to go to the doctors, let alone start a business. But I didn’t want a business, I just wanted quick cash from the internet!

Giving Not Getting

I had a poverty consciousness and wanted to “get” not give. I had nothing to give, or so I thought. Over the years things changed most dramatically for my affiliate business when I understood that I needed to be of value. I let go of getting and started trying to give first.

When you’ve struggled for a long time through it becomes part of who you are. I was definitely becoming more “me” centric as I became entrenched in my personal drama of struggle. But after learning from coaches mentors about learning to let go of my own personal needs and wants, that’s what I set about doing. I had built a list by this point and had a few thousand people on it.

So instead of sending messages such as “click here” get money, I changed my emails to a more educational angle. I talked about my struggles and what had helped me, rather than sending spammy messages with an “urgent click here” rhetoric!

Low and behold things changed. People started buying, not because my products had changed, but because my attitude had!

Growing Vs. Making Money

There’s no doubt that personal growth is linked to income potential. But if you’ve been in a frustrated energy for a while, it materialises into physical life in many ways. Money was most definitely one of them for me. When you’re in a desperate “energy” of never having enough, you simply create more of what you focus on: not having enough. If you have looked into the law of attraction, and The Secret – the Rhonda Bryne book, you’ll have seen this concept before.

A desperate shop keeper is a good example of how someone pushes money away by trying too hard to sell to his customers. As a customer, you came into his shop to look around. You get a vibe for the place to see if you’re comfortable. A pushy sales person comes up to you and won’t leave you alone. Do you buy something? For me the answer is always a no! Yet that is what I was effectively doing with my desperation to make online sales – pushing people away!

If you find yourself in a similar place, go back to learning and growing. Put yourself in a growth mindset where you see personal growth as the answer before the actual cash/sales. Join webinars and seminars, and network with other entrepreneurs. You can join a program through this website. Simply sign up using the form and you can access the free video series.

How Much Does The Average Affiliate Marketer Make?

How much does the average affiliate marketer make? How long does affiliate marketing take? Is it worth your time and when will you be able to replace your employment income?

Because there are so many affiliate marketers, it’s difficult to determine just how much the average affiliate marketer makes. The Affstat affiliate marketing benchmark report shows the following in relation to affiliate earnings:

This report was a few years ago now and no doubt there are many more affiliates since this report was carried out in 2016. As you can see from the image above, only 3.16% of affiliate marketers make $150,000 or more per year. The larger proportion (48.36%) make less than $20,000 a year. Many new affiliates won’t be making money at all. Here’s a view of the countries represented in this report.

How Much Does The Average Affiliate Marketer Make?

In 2015 this was the result of the AffStat report into affiliate’s earnings:

As you can see the statistics are similar to the following year as per the first chart. It’s also useful to look at the spread of affiliates who took part in the study. The following image shows the length of time affiliates had been affiliates and relates to the 2016 report:

affiliate since chart — Source: https://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/2016_affstat_final

Based on the 2016 Affstat report, a massive 48.36% of affiliates earn less than $20,000 a year from their affiliate efforts. It’s difficult to get more specific about earnings than this but as a beginner affiliate, you shouldn’t expect too much. Every new affiliate starts from zero and earnings are performance based. Many of the affiliates in the test group had been affiliates for several years, too.

Is Affiliate Marketing Worth Your Time?

Affiliate marketing works for some but not for others. Many jump on the affiliate marketing band wagon expecting an easy win, but are disappointed by what they can achieve easily, so they give up. The affiliate marketing failure rate is therefore pretty high.

But for those who stick at it and overcome the difficulties, there are great rewards. It’s worth mentioning too, that there are many ways to approach affiliate marketing. Not every affiliate has the same approach to it. Here’s an image from the AffStat benchmark report from 2016 showing the various strategies implemented by the affiliates who took part in the study:

Source: https://issuu.com/affiliatesummit/docs/2016_affstat_final

From this image you can clearly see than most affiliates use SEO (search engine optimisation), leveraging social networks, blogging and email marketing. Only 34.28% use pay per click marketing and far less use the other mentioned methods.

Is affiliate marketing worth your time then, you may ask? Well it depends on how you value your time and your individual circumstances. Some new affiliates are desperate to escape their corporate jobs and would do almost anything to make it happen. They will be far more motivated to make an affiliate business work than someone who is just “having a go” for some extra income. Plus, they will have more disposable income to start and advertise a business.

Your income is a factor too. On a low income, you may not be able to access high ticket affiliate programs and use paid marketing strategies. If you have time though, you could pursue cheap and free marketing strategies, although this route will be considerably longer. For someone trapped in a career which demands their time, they will have less available time for slower marketing strategies. So they should use other methods to generate traction.

Can You Replace Your Income With Affiliate Marketing?

Yes, you can replace almost any income through using affiliate marketing. But as you see from the stats, the high earners are in a minority. Transitioning from a high paying job to affiliate marketing does give you the funds to use the faster methods of affiliate marketing. See fastest legit way to make money online. But you’ll still need to invest heavily to use high ticket products and test and measure your paid marketing campaigns before you can be profitable. Not everyone is willing to take the risk associated with starting their own online business though, and nothing is guaranteed.

If you aren’t in a well paid career, there are other ways to build an income online. You can use cheaper marketing strategies and invest at lower levels according to your budget. But cheaper products pay less in commission. So this generally will take longer than the paid marketing route.

If you’re interested in starting affiliate marketing but are unsure where to begin, you can access a free video series which explains the different ways of generating income online. Click on the image below to access.

How To Blog For Profit Without Selling Your Soul

Wondering how to blog for profit without selling your soul? If you think building a profitable blog means working tirelessly writing about something you don’t care about, you’re dead wrong! Blogging can and should be an enjoyable way to earn a living. Not all bloggers are profitable though and it’s important to establish a realistic expectation about what a blog can do for you. Yes, some bloggers make a great income from their efforts, but often they have been at it for years.

Don’t expect to start a blog, work sporadically on it and be able to quit your job! You’ll need to put in the effort to build even a modest, reliable income from a blog. There’s millions of blogs on the internet. In order to stand out you’ll need to work regularly building content for some time. Depending on your particular niche topic this could be months or years. But if you enjoy writing on your blog you’ll have some distinct advantages over those who are only blogging for profit:

You’ll enjoy the process and do it with or without payment
This means you’ll be able to sustain your efforts for much longer than the competition
If you’re passionate about your topic it will come across in your content and attract a larger audience.

How To Blog For Profit Without Selling Your Soul – A Short Story

When I started out as a blogger, I was determined to make money from a blog! I built multiple websites and blogs with the sole goal of making money. Unfortunately most of my efforts were wasted. I didn’t spend nearly enough time or energy on most of my content. In one particular case, I built a website around the keyword “when to harvest mushrooms”. A friend, who was also affiliate marketer, had had some success from a potato harvesting website! So I scoured the keyword planner for keywords which I could rank a website for on Google to get free traffic.

A Niche Website

When to harvest garlic fit the criteria of having monthly searches and not much competition for other websites. So I set to work! I bought the domain name whentoharvestgarlic.com and built a WordPress website on it. I wrote content using Google’s free keyword tool to title all my articles. It did rank top for those keywords for several months. But I ran out of steam. It was incredibly labour intensive researching a topic I knew nothing about – nor was I interested in it! I just wanted the end result. After 6 months of building content I gave up on the site and soon it drifted down the rankings.

It was a difficult topic to monetise too, with little to offer in terms of affiliate products I could sell from the site. I monetised with Google Adsense and found an affiliate program offering vaguely related products. However, the site was largely a failure, and I now use it as an example of what not to do!

The main takeaway from this is that my foundations were wrong. I put the “cart before the horse” and wanted the outcome more than the process. I was selling my soul! How to blog for profit without selling your soul? That’s an example of how not to do it.

How To Blog For Profit Without Selling Your Soul – Ikigai

What fires you up? Maybe you’re unsure what really floats your boat? Perhaps you haven’t found your “thing” yet. But a good way to determine what you’re all about is to ask yourself what you would do if money didn’t matter? How would you like to spend your life if money was out of the equation? If you could be with complete integrity with yourself, and not compromise, what would you do? The answer lies somewhere in what comes up for you here and the Japanese have a saying for what this is: Ikigai.

Ikigai is where your passions, interests and vocation all line up. Blogging is an awesome way to line up your passions with making an income. But you need to create the content first before the money comes. To create enough content and content which is good enough to get noticed, you need to keep at it for several months or years and become consistent at creating content. If you choose a topic which you’re not interested in, the chances of your blog making money for the long term is vastly diminished. But build a blog you love, and pay into it regularly (by creating content) and over time your blog can pay you handsomely.

Just Get Started

Whether you know or not just what your passion is, it’s also a good idea to just get started. Blogging is a long term endeavour and it takes time for you to find your feet. Often by starting something you can find your way. You can start out by purchasing a domain name. A good domain name can make a difference to how your visitors perceive your blog. If you’re unsure, just use your own name. You can also build a blog around a specific keyword which can help you with your rankings. Here’s a blog post on the process of purchasing a domain and getting your site hosted.

You’ll also need to regularly create content on your blog in order to get any visitors. This is where your passion should come into play. Without a driving focus and belief in and love for your topic, you’ll find just doing the necessary work far more problematic when blogging for any length of time. With a passion for your topic, you’re much more likely to succeed and you’ll enjoy the process too which is vital if you don’t want to sell your soul!

Monetising Your Blog

Monetising your blog can be done in several ways. The main two ways are through affiliate marketing and advertising. I use Google Adsense on this blog and several others. With Google Adsense, you can place code on your site which Google converts into advertising. When visitors click on your adverts, you make a small commission each time.

With a lot of traffic, you can make a nice extra passive income from this over time. But the key is traffic. With little or zero traffic, you’ll not make anything. Traffic therefore is linked to creating content and we’ve already said why you must love your blogging! Without a healthy zest for your blog, you simply won’t be able to keep up the work for long enough to make it pay.

The other way to monetise a website is through using affiliate products. Of course if you have your own products or services, you can also promote them directly from your blog, too. If not, affiliate marketing is one of the best ways, if not the best way to monetise a blog and start profiting from it. That being said, you need to choose your affiliate products carefully. Most importantly they need to be a good match for your audience and content. Without a good match, it’s unlikely your visitors will purchase something from your site. See how to know your target market.

Building An Email List Of Subscribers From A Blog

Building an email list is the best thing you can do to monetise a blog. Without a list, you’re depending on visitors to your blog taking some buying action on your site or clicking on your advertising. Most website visitors won’t purchase immediately from a blog or website. But by giving away a powerful “lead magnet” you can obtain your visitors email address and continue giving them valuable content through your email marketing campaigns. See the power of email marketing.

With an email marketing campaign, you can build relationships with your subscribers over weeks, months and even years and decades. On a blog, you only have a few minutes to make a sale. But an email list extends this time period dramatically.

Again, coming back to the main point of this article, you want to align your values with your content. If you don’t believe in the products you’re selling, you will feel like you’re selling your soul! So choose affiliate products you would purchase yourself to promote. Otherwise the disconnect will be reflected in the way you communicate through your content – both blogging and emailing.

Choosing The Right Affiliate Products

Selling anything doesn’t always gel with people and if you’re creative, this can be a sticking point. Ideally start with your passions and interests. Then look for affiliate products which relate to this. A simple Duckduckgo.com search for “your niche/topic affiliate program” will help you zone in on products and services which you can promote from almost any blog. Whatever your blog topic, you can monetise it through affiliate marketing in some way. But the best way to sell products is to choose products you’re genuinely aligned with and believe in.

I made the mistake early on in my blogging career in promoting products I had no clue about – just for the money. The problem was, I couldn’t create any content which was helpful to anyone in making a purchasing decision and therefore didn’t make many sales. Finding the products and services you want for yourself is the best way to find the kinds of products you are best positioned selling as an affiliate.

Consider selling something you care nothing for and actually don’t believe in! Then compare this to talking about your favourite topic or thing. What lights you up will come across in your content while you’re creating your blog and this is important if you want to create a worthwhile blog.

How To Blog For Profit Without Selling Your Soul – Summary

As Simon Sinek puts it “Start With Why“. Blogging takes some time to generate traction and if you choose a topic you don’t care about, it’s take twice as long and be half as effective! But choose a topic you love and your passion will turn into your vocation. You’ll find more content to write about and love every minute. If you hate the process, you may as well have a job you hate! At least you’ll get paid a regular wage!

You can monetise a blog with advertising and affiliate products but again, choose products you align with and personally would choose to purchase. Otherwise, you’ll be selling your soul! When you believe in what you’re doing, you’ll have so much more energy for it and it will be less difficult.

Find your Ikigai – ikigai is a Japanese term meaning reason for being. When you align your values and passions to your vocation, you’ll love working and it won’t seem like “work”.

Promote Link And Earn Money

As a beginner in affiliate marketing, it seems as simple as to “promote link and earn money“! With an affiliate link, you can simply promote it and if someone purchases a product, you get a commission. But is it really so simple? Can you really just promote your link and earn money? When I started out as an affiliate marketer in the early 2000’s, I used to think so.

But no, it’s not so simple as to do that. There’s a lot more to it. You can of course get lucky a few times. But to earn money consistently as an affiliate marketer, it takes a lot more than just to promote your link and earn money. Firstly, you need to know how to promote your affiliate link and where to promote your affiliate link. As a beginner, you get your affiliate link and simply paste it anywhere on the internet you can! I pasted affiliate links everywhere, expecting any random person who landed on it to snap up whatever I was selling! Sadly it just didn’t happen like that!

Promote Link And Earn Money

To promote an affiliate link and earn money from it, you need to actually make a sale. Pasting your affiliate link willy nilly anywhere you can doesn’t guarantee any sales. In fact most of the people finding a long messy affiliate link will massively resist clicking on it! Why would they click, just so you can earn money from them?

An affiliate link pasted on your social media platform, for example, isn’t nearly as attractive to a potential customer as one which saves them money on their bills, for example. Or one at the end of a review they are seeking for something they actively want to purchase already. Moneysavingexpert.com is a website which helps people save money on their bills and is also an affiliate website. It’s a good example of how to promote your affiliate link and earn money. But the site wasn’t built overnight.

Many affiliates think that they can make quick money online by getting an affiliate link and pasting it everywhere they can. But their best bet to make money from affiliate links is to give value first. This can be in the form of some information on a website, an ebook or a free downloadable pdf. Or even a free video series to learn about earning online.

Promote Link And Earn Money – Strategies

There’s many ways you can promote a link and earn money online. Once you join an affiliate program, you can get a unique affiliate link which is tracked back to you. Should someone purchase the product/service having gone through your link, you’ll earn a commission.

There’s many strategies affiliates can use to make affiliate commissions using their unique affiliate links. You can build a blog, like this one, build an email list of subscribers, or link through your social media profiles. But making consistent sales through affiliate links can be tricky; especially if you’re relying on passing traffic clicking on your links.

It can be very disappointing as an affiliate beginner when nothing comes of all your link pasting! So you need to be pro-active in building a following and pasting your links in the right way. Read my article on this titled 22 ways to promote affiliate products.

The key to getting people to your link and to want to click on it is to provide value upfront. This can be done through:

Creating content which help solve a problem for your potential customer – whether a blog, a video or through emails
Running advertising to build an email list – see the power of email marketing.
Finding relevant people for your products – through social media, for example.

Common Problems For Affiliates

Do you want to buy a new tyre for your car? Here! Buy this tyre {insert affiliate link}. You don’t want to buy a tyre from me do you? Why? I sell great tyres!? But this is an article about how to “promote link and earn money”! So it’s the wrong content and audience to sell a tyre. If I had a blog about tyres, it might make for a more suitable place for a tyre affiliate link.

This sounds obvious but it’s a common mistake.

I made this mistake too when I first started out as an affiliate marketer. I tried to sell everyone courses about making money online. Most people aren’t searching for such courses. Many don’t believe they can make money online and many don’t even want to try. But I thought that because I was so enthusiastic about it, everyone would be!

Therefore one of the keys to becoming successful as an affiliate marketer is to know your target audience/market. Knowing your target audience is a massive key because when you can get very clear on who would come rushing to your product with their credit card in hand, you know your audience!

That’s a hot audience and a review website is a place where you might find such a customer. With a review website, someone is in the last step of the buying cycle. They aren’t browsing and thinking about it, they are often just about to purchase. They just want to know some tiny detail, or be reassured that their purchase is the right one. Then they will purchase – hopefully through your affiliate link!

By creating content around your affiliate link which draws in the right kind of customer, you can make money from it much more efficiently than by pasting your link wherever will let you! See where to promote your affiliate link.

Making More Money From The Same Link

Not all affiliate links are equal either. Some affiliate links point to low cost products like you’d find on Amazon, for example. A $100 product on Amazon, can make you anywhere between $1 and $12 as an affiliate. Amazon’s affiliate commissions are notoriously low, see affiliate marketing commission rates.

But with digital products you can make $30-$40 for the same amount of work, as an affiliate. So it’s important to know which are the best paying affiliate products, before you start out. Some programs offer recurring commission products and others still pay out high ticket commissions.

If your affiliate link points to a product on Amazon, you can earn a few dollars/pounds. But if it points to a high ticket product range, you could earn lifetime commissions for the same, or a similar amount of work.

Using Paid Marketing To Promote Your Link Vs. Free Marketing

The fastest way to earn money through affiliate marketing is to use paid marketing to build an email list of subscribers. In conjunction with a high ticket product range, you can get a good return on your investment through the selling of high ticket digital products which offer the highest levels of commission.

In order to profit from using paid marketing, your return will need to be greater than your investment – both in advertising and product investment. This means you’ll need to use large value items within a digital sales funnel. Physical products tend to pay much lower levels of commission than digital products. So it’s much more difficult to profit through the selling of physical products as an affiliate – especially if you’re going to use paid marketing.

Paid marketing has two distinct advantages over free marketing strategies. When you set up a paid marketing campaign, you get results very quickly. You can see whether your campaign is working or whether you should stop your campaign before burning through your budget. You can also increase your marketing spend and scale up quickly using paid marketing. With organic marketing, promoting your affiliate link takes time. You can’t see immediately whether your content building efforts are coming to fruition. You also can’t scale up quickly through organic content marketing.

Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

Is affiliate marketing dead? Well, according to Statista, affiliate marketing spend in the U.S. is set to reach 6.82 billion in 2021, and 8.2 billion dollars by 2022 (up from 5.4 billion in 2017). A recent study by VigLink also shows that over 77% of affiliates experienced an increase in revenue every year since 2016.

Between 2017-18 alone, online searches for the term ‘affiliate marketing’ rose by an impressive 44% according to Google Trends. Spending in the affiliate area has consistently grown by 10.1% yearly. Affiliate marketing is responsible for generating an average 16% of the orders received online. See more affiliate statistics here.

But although there’s a huge surge in the use of affiliates, does this translate to affiliates themselves being successful? After all, many affiliates struggle and they spend money on advertising to make these sales. Affiliate marketing is a useful cheap marketing option for businesses, but do those affiliates succeed in their own right? Are most affiliate businesses profitable? When a business uses an affiliate, they only pay when the sale is made. Affiliates therefore are a relatively cheap marketing source for some businesses.

Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

A recent Gallup poll showed that a massive 85% of workers were dissatisfied with their jobs and particularly their bosses. Many of these dissatisfied workers are looking to the online world for a solution. Will they find it in affiliate marketing? Well, the statistics of affiliate marketers who actually succeed and make a full time living from it are pretty low. Only around 5% of affiliates are known to make a success of affiliate marketing. See affiliate marketing failure rate.

But looking at this statistic, that’s including many would-be affiliates who are seeking an overnight success. Many people think affiliate marketing is some get rich quick scheme and then quit immediately when they don’t see instant success. Plus there’s many who sign up to an affiliate program but put zero work in.

Affiliate marketing is something with very low overheads which anyone can “try”. This means there’s a massive drop out rate. The same would be true of any business but with brick and mortar businesses, financial barriers to entry prevent many people even attempting it. But affiliate marketing is different because you don’t need a building, staff or any equipment. Barriers to entry are very low and anyone can”have a go”!

All you need is a laptop and an internet connection. But those who think of it as a quick win are misinformed and affiliate marketing is changing. There’s more competition than ever, particularly since 2020 and the pandemic lockdown measures ruining people’s livelihoods.

Is Affiliate Marketing A Solution?

For those who are solution focused and have a big enough problem or reason to make it work, affiliate marketing can be a lucrative career path. But it takes time and effort, like with building any business. To replace your income inside a year is pretty rare, although it can be done. Many affiliates don’t realise this and get disappointed and disillusioned within a few months. They blame the business model and wonder why affiliate marketing doesn’t work?

But the problem is in fact those who have gone into a business without the necessary mindset and support. Transitioning from employment to entrepreneurship is a huge deal. As an employee, you’re trained to turn up, work and get paid. An entrepreneur needs a different mindset. They can’t expect to bring their “worker bee” mentality to a business and expect the same in return. They must learn entrepreneur mindsets and overcome their own sometime limiting ideas and behaviours.

Affiliate marketing is a skill and it takes time and effort to learn. Like any career path, you shouldn’t expect something for nothing, and you get out what you put in. If you’re looking for quick riches and an easy path, I wouldn’t recommend affiliate marketing. But if you’re prepared to learn new skills and commit for the long term, anyone can make it work for them.

Earning With Affiliate Marketing – Issues

There’s many issues you’re likely to come across as an affiliate marketer. You can easily waste your time and get nowhere if you don’t get the right training and support. Ultimately you get paid for results in affiliate marketing, not for your time. In a job, you’re paid for your time. Unfortunately this can train us to think our time is worth something, even when we do nothing with it!

There’s many strategies for affiliate marketing too. Blogging, paid marketing, list building and video marketing are just a few. As someone who browses the internet, you’re likely to find a number of affiliate marketers – whether you know it or not. You may have even purchased items through affiliate links online. As an affiliate, you’ll no doubt become more aware of your competition, of which there’s plenty.

As an affiliate, you’ll need to find your own way of getting products and services in front of your audience. With a growing number of affiliates, this can become more difficult, especially if you compete for a finite position on a particular platform.

But there’s many ways to skin a cat, as the saying goes and affiliates aren’t limited to a single marketing strategy; there’s thousands of social media platforms to choose from.

Business Models

There’s various affiliate marketing business models available to new affiliates. Amazon, for example pays affiliates from 1% to 12% commissions on a sale they generate. Digital products pay much more – more like 40% in many cases. Then you have recurring commission affiliate programs which pay you ongoing commissions for previous sales. And of course high ticket commissions pay the most to affiliates.

As a new affiliate marketer with no training or experience, you’re likely to find a lot of problems. You can pick the wrong business model and choose the wrong marketing strategy too. In 6 months of hard work you can get absolutely nowhere. This is why your education is so important if you are to become successful as an affiliate marketer. Armed with support, the best business models and training, you’re much better off than going in blind and alone. You can go down a rabbit hole for months and still fail without it.

Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

So is affiliate marketing dead? The simple answer is no absolutely not. Many people are already making a good healthy living from affiliate marketing and many will join them over the coming few decades. With the current climate and the growth of automation replacing jobs in many sectors, plus growing uncertainty and dissatisfaction with jobs and bosses, affiliate marketing offers an attractive proposition no matter how difficult it may be to get the wheels of an affiliate business turning.

Anyone can start an affiliate business from anywhere globally without a business premises or any staff. You only need a laptop and internet connection, you don’t need any experience and you can work from anywhere. But with these huge benefits you need to weigh up the 95% failure rate. Not everyone will succeed with affiliate marketing, but many can and will.

Learn more and access a free video series here.

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate

The affiliate marketing failure rate is pretty high and at 95% it’s enough to put many people off! But why is the failure rate so high in affiliate marketing? Why do only 5% of affiliates succeed and make it their full time income? Affiliates get paid for promoting other people’s products and services over the internet.

When you successfully refer a customer to a product online, you earn a commission. But so many would-be affiliates simply aren’t patient enough and expect it to be easy. When they struggle to make sales many simply quit. But this is a big mistake. Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative; there’s just more to it than most people assume.

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Assumptions

They say when you assume, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. But with affiliate marketing you can be forgiven for making assumptions. Affiliate marketing is a huge business and there’s millions of potential customers for the unscrupulous to exploit! People get drawn in to exaggerated claims of what you can earn. Take a look at the advert below which is one I found on Clickbank.

If you get drawn in to this type of hype, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you can make this kind of money easily online through affiliate marketing. But the reality is that it takes time and effort to build up a regular and stable income from affiliate marketing. Unfortunately, many marketers will use bold claims to put people off guard and take their money.

You can make a lot of money with affiliate marketing and many marketers will show you their earnings. Some are even legitimate but often they neglect to explain how they got there and what they spent on marketing!

When you join a program based on such assumptions, you’re bound to be disappointed with the results – that’s if you actually do any work in the first place! This leads us nicely to the next reason why so many affiliates fail.

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Newbies Expect An Easy Win

Not only do new affiliates have a false expectation of what they can earn online, they also have an exaggerated view of how “easy” it will be. This can come down to the sales tactics and marketing messages, too. If someone promises you something which sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The 5% who actually make affiliate marketing their full time income work long and hard at their businesses. They invest time and money; they test and measure their marketing, they keep going when things are tough; they never give up!

This often doesn’t show in their marketing. Instead, many marketers show large earnings and images of their “perfect” lifestyle instead! They show pictures of expensive sports cars and dream houses! They sell the dream and this gives new affiliate marketers a distorted view of what’s involved in becoming successful as an affiliate.

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Why New Affiliates Fail

As a beginner in affiliate marketing, I jumped from course to course and got nowhere. I expect it’s the same for many people entering into affiliate marketing for the first time. I bought all the courses which told me how easy it was going to be! That’s the message I wanted to hear! Because it wasn’t easy, I assumed I needed another course; which taught a different strategy. So the pattern continued.

This is known as “shiny object syndrome”. As long as you believe that it should be easy, you’ll continue to come up against the reality that it isn’t! It’s a business like any other. You need to sell things to make any money and that’s a skill.

Another problem affiliates have is controlling their time. With a job you get paid for showing up but with affiliate marketing you only get performance related pay. As a beginner, I wasted a huge amount of time on activities which were unproductive. I would spend time on making a website look nice, or on a logo. Meanwhile I had no traffic, no sales or marketing strategy! Just a shiny looking website and zero visitors, let alone sales!

The Catch 22 Of Marketing An Affiliate Product

Initially when you become an affiliate marketing there will be some learning you need to do. You can set up your sales funnel, websites and start building. Once you have some skills under your belt, it’s important to use them and not get stuck in learning mode.

Learning mode can feel like progress so it can be addictive. You feel as though you’re making progress when your learning. But you must remember affiliate marketing is performance based so you’ll need to switch your time to actually building your business but also keep learning.

The ratio at first is 100% learning. Once you know some stuff switch it to 80% implementing and 20% learning, otherwise you won’t make any progress.

The catch 22 of affiliate marketing is when it comes to implementing a marketing strategy. Whether you’re running paid ads or building content, you’ll get better results the longer you do it for. But as a beginner, you’ll be looking for evidence that it works! You can completely hamper your strategy with doubt and uncertainty. Timid marketing campaigns are cut off when your fear kicks in! So the results are poor. But without a strong campaign, you won’t get results.

As a beginner you’re sceptical and doubtful and so reluctant to spend a lot of money on marketing, or spend a lot of time building content without proof that it will work! Here’s the catch 22! Without work you won’t get the results. Without mistakes you can’t learn and collect data to build from. Imperfect action is better than perfect procrastination!

Low Barriers To Entry

The affiliate marketing failure rate is also so high because there’s such low barriers to entry. Anyone can “have a go” at affiliate marketing for very little. Most affiliate products offer partner programs anyone can join for free. Some don’t even require you to show you have a website.

Once you have joined a partner program, you’re effectively an affiliate marketer – at least on paper; no investment, no sacrifice. YouTube videos and blogs can help affiliates so much, but basically you’re on your own unless you invest in a mentorship program. Having mentorship and software can help you as an affiliate, but you still have to make it work. Spending money on programs, training and sales funnels doesn’t guarantee success. Here lies another potential problem for those forking out for expensive courses and training; entitlement.

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Entitlement

“I’ve spent money on a course, why haven’t I earned anything yet?” A course or series of trainings is just that; a course or trainings. No course should guarantee any results ever because ultimately it’s down to you to put in the groundwork and make your business work.

I’ve been there too and it’s heartbreaking. I worked for years and nothing seemed to work. I expected a certain course to action to yield results, quickly! It didn’t work. The 95% quit and say “it” doesn’t work whereas the 5% ask themselves: “why didn’t that work and what can I do differently?”.

When you’ve shelled out your heard earned cash and got nowhere, it’s a bitter pill to swallow. But ultimately it comes down to your reasons why you’re doing it. If you have a cushy job and it’s just a hobby, it’s no big deal. But if you simply have to make it work to survive, or to escape your miserable boss or job, there’s a different motivation and mindset involved.

A strong “why?” can overcome almost any “how?”.

Employee Mindset Vs. Entrepreneurial Mindset

You’ve been programmed. Yes you have. Don’t deny it! If you’re an employee or have been one, chances are good that you expect a hard day at work to yield a certain amount of money. With an online business and affiliate marketing, a hard day’s work doesn’t show any results, in most cases! A week of work might not yield any results either, in monetary terms.

When you’ve worked for years and there’s nothing to show, you might want to change your strategy! But in a job, working doing those same tasks again and again yields rewards. Why then doesn’t it work for affiliate marketing?

With an online business you can’t bring your employee mindset with you and expect the same results you would receive in a job. In a job, the boss tells you what to do. In a business, you must be the driving force overseeing the operation, not just working as a “technician” playing a small role. As employees transitioning into entrepreneurial life, we can’t help but bring some of our old programming from old jobs and habits with us.

These old habits can stand in the way of our affiliate success.

Training & Education

I was so excited to get started in affiliate marketing because I was told how easy it would be to make lots of money! Sadly it wasn’t true. It took me years to find a good course and community of online business mentors to help me. Even then my journey was just beginning.

Here’s another reason why the affiliate marketing failure rate is so high. New affiliates expect too much and don’t invest in their education. Expecting things to be easy, they simply jump in and fail, then give up. Only a small amount of affiliates actually invest their time and money and learn the skills they need to be successful.

When you’re more invested, you will go further.

Business Models and Marketing Strategies

There’s various business models and marketing strategies within affiliate marketing. You can go it alone and learn from free videos and blogs on the internet. Or, you can invest and learn from affiliate marketing mentors. Some affiliate products you can promote for free and others require a subscription. But one key to earning online is to use the right business model. Affiliate marketing business models vary across the board. You can sell a physical product from Amazon for example for $10 and earn $0.03. At 3% commission, you’re going to need to sell a lot of products to make an income.

Alternatively, you can promote recurring commission affiliate programs and high ticket affiliate programs and earn much larger commissions doing what can be the same amount of work. Digital products typically pay much more than physical products too – 40% commissions compared to 3-12% for physical products.

Trust & Direction

As a beginner affiliate, it can be easy to follow a strategy for some time which doesn’t work very well. As a beginner I joined a course which offered a strategy which was rapidly becoming out of date. It suggested I built niche websites with the aim of ranking them on the search engines and getting free traffic. I launched several sites and worked on this strategy for months. All but one of my sites were complete failures; and that one made only one or two sales!

Trusting a particular direction is difficult too. When you’ve seen sales come in from a strategy, you know for a fact that it works. But in the early days as a beginner, it’s all on faith. If you don’t believe in the strategy, or fail to implement it correctly, all your work can be for nothing! That’s a tough pill to swallow and accounts for many affiliates who simply give up. I was nearly one of them!

Fail, Fail, Fail Some More!

A common experience in affiliate marketing is not getting any sales. In the early days you need to take some encouragement in the small wins. A small win might be posting an article on your website, or setting up an advert. It could be a click on your article or a lead subscribing into your email list. You can’t expect money to just flow in from the get go. Instead, success comes by celebrating the small wins and keeping going no matter what. Take small steps forwards each and every day.

Trying things you haven’t tried is also key. Most affiliates quit because they don’t get sales. But they don’t stick with it for long enough – they’re too impatient. Failing forwards is a phrase used to explain the journey of an affiliate marketing. Without failure, you can’t learn. Most of what you do in the early days of being an affiliate won’t count for much. But eventually, over time you should see some small wins. Celebrate them! Keep going, and never quit! That’s what the 5% do!

If you’re serious about building an online business, expect to spend time learning and growing personally. You have to earn consistent success with affiliate marketing and it’s not easy route. But there are great rewards or those who stick the journey.

Here’s a great explanation of how it is with affiliate marketing from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits.

The valley of disappointment is where many affiliates quit. As new affiliates you expect your progress to be linear. But instead, there’s a lot of work to be done which appears to be unrewarded.

The Chinese Bamboo Tree

Also the analogy of the bamboo tree is worth a mention too here.

If you plant a Chinese Bamboo shoot, you might be forgiven in thinking that it’s dead, and give up! In fact, the Chinese Bamboo tree does nothing for four years. So you can water it and fertilise it, and nothing will show – for four whole years!

But in a six week period the Chinese Bamboo tree grows to be 90 feet tall! It has also been measured to grow 48 inches in a 24 hour period!

An affiliate business works like this too. There’s a lot of work to be done before you see any results at all. But if you stick at it, results can appear and increase exponentially over time.

The 5% of affiliates who succeed keep going through the tough times and trust the journey. The 95% don’t see the bigger picture and quit, assuming it just doesn’t work!

Another Analogy

Another analogy for new affiliates is this one. The long term super affiliates have made thousands or even millions of dollars from affiliate marketing. This is true. But they usually have also spent thousands or millions in marketing dollars too. They tested and measured countless adverts before they were successful – often at vast cost.

Once they figure out which adverts work they then start optimising those ads for performance. With all this experience, long term affiliates are effectively trawler ships looking for fish. They have huge fleets of ships scouring the seas which have huge nets. So they can catch a lot of “fish” i.e. customers for their products!

A beginner has zero experience and they are given a fishing line and bait.