AffiliateMentor, Author at Affiliate Marketing Mentors

Does A Poverty Mindset Hold You Back?

Does a poverty mindset hold you back from the life you desire? If you feel like you’re never enough, and you never have enough, you might have some limiting beliefs which are holding you from the life you deserve.

What are limiting beliefs? Limiting beliefs are those ideas you have which stop you from taking action in a positive direction in your life. In terms of a poverty mindset they might be things such as:

Money is the route of all evil
Rich people are greedy
It’s unspiritual to want more
It’s more virtuous being poor
I’m never enough
I’m always broke
I hate money
I can never get ahead
All the good jobs are taken
I can’t afford it
etc.

If you’re holding on to an identity of always being broke, or of never being enough, no amount of effort on the outside can compete with this inner saboteur to your success. At some point, your inner voice will kick in with it’s limiting ideas and scupper your best intentions. So it’s far better to uncover your beliefs which hold you back and change them, than to struggle on only to self sabotage later.

Does A Poverty Mindset Hold You Back From Building A Profitable Online Business?

In terms of building an online business which is profitable, a poverty mindset can hold you back in multiple ways. You might be sceptical of purchasing a training course, for example, because you believe you can’t afford it. Or it might stop you buying something you need to grow your business, such as an email autoresponder. (Get one free here).

In my early years as an affiliate I avoiding buying anything because I had so little money to spend. Money was genuinely a concern for me and I had a poverty consciousness too which meant I perpetuated the situation. I tried to do everything on the cheap and struggled as a result, avoiding getting proper training and support, and buying the tools I really needed for success.

A limiting belief might stop you from taking action on an opportunity, or from taking a certain action. But it can also sabotage your efforts more subtly too. Imagine that half of you genuinely wants to succeed and earn a good living online, while the other half secretly hates the very idea of money, and finds it repugnant. How do you think that will play out in your life and your business?

Does A Poverty Mindset Hold You Back? – Self Image/Identity

Your self image or identity becomes a solid foundation of your world view. The world can be a scary place without something to hold on to. For many people a large piece of their world view “jigsaw” is their identity. How you see yourself in the world can give you something solid and tangible to “hold on to” particularly in tough times.

However, if this identity is wrapped up in hatred for money, and conflicting ideas which push money away from you, you’ll act out these beliefs in your life, creating obstacles for yourself which reflect those beliefs.

In a recent coaching call I had with one of my subscribers, it became apparent that there were more than a few conflicting ideas around the topic of money. No wonder they were having trouble building their online business when there was a distinct hatred of the green stuff.

If you harbour negative ideas towards money it will have massive affect on your ability to create it, spend it and keep it, however you attempt to earn it.

How To Shift Your Money Mindset Towards Abundance

The opposite of lack or limitation is abundance and plenty. Think about your current situation and you should have an idea about whether you are living in limitation or in abundance. The reality you’re presented with today, comes from your thoughts about money, lack, limitation and abundance and plenty.

Why do you think you are not living the life of your dreams in terms of financial stability/abundance yet? What are the reasons for your current reality? Often a lack of money stems from a history of lack. If you’ve grown up with parents who have struggled, chances are good they have likely shared their views on money, the wealthy/rich and poverty. Perhaps some of your limiting ideas around the subject come from your childhood and growing up with lack and limitation?

Often limiting ideas are unconscious beliefs which have a powerful control over your life without your knowledge. As is often quoted from C.G Jung ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’

The first step towards shifting a poverty consciousness is therefore to make your limiting beliefs more conscious.

“The Word Became Flesh” – Watch Your Words

John 1:14 – “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”. Are you talking money away from you saying things like “I can’t afford”, “I can never get ahead”, “Money doesn’t grow on trees” and other such ideas?

From your words becomes your reality and you are speaking life into your reality through your choice of speech. Notice in particular how you talk about money, work, the rich/wealthy and ideas relating to you own financial well being.

If you are negative towards yourself too, this can be an indication that you are speaking against yourself and negating yourself. “I’m never good enough”, “I don’t deserve it”, “Why don’t things ever work out for me” etc.

As you start to uncover some of your negative programming, you can turn these ideas slowly around to be more positive.

Mantras For Success And Abundance

When you notice yourself talking money away, or negating yourself with your words, stop and pay attention. Those are the key learning moments for you to alter your self talk and speech patterns.

Replace negative ideas with more positive counterparts which are more in line with what you want to create:

I’m never enough – I am enough
Money doesn’t grow on trees – money comes easily and frequently
Why do I never get ahead ?- how can I get ahead ?
It’s no use – where there’s a will, there’s a way
Rich people are greedy – rich people create opportunity/are generous
Money is the route of evil – Money is neutral, the actual quote (from the bible) is “the love of money is the route of evil” – (or greed)

1 Timothy 6:10: For the love of money is the root of all of evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

By shifting your unconscious ideas about money which talk it away from you, to more positive and life affirming ones, you can radically change your unconscious saboteurs to success. Use new mantras in place of your limiting ideas which often come up in conversation (or in your mind) when the topic of money comes up.

Summary

A poverty mindset can act like a hidden “saboteur” in your unconscious mind. It shows itself with ideas like “I’m never enough”, “I’ll never have enough”, “I can’t afford it”, “It’s unspiritual to want money”, “It’s noble to remain poor” and similar limiting ideas.

If your unconscious mind has some limiting beliefs they can sabotage your best efforts to move forwards in creating the life you want. There’s a payoff for remaining in your same situation such as a consistent world view and identity. Less conflict with your circle of influence (family and friends). You get to sustain the status quo and don’t upset the applecart between unspoken conflicts of interest.

If your financial situation changes, it can change many relationships, for example. Your unconscious mind might be battling with your efforts to improve your finances because of your self image, for example, or to remain “equal” to your circle of friendships on financial terms.

To change things on the outside you must change them from within. This might involve looking into your past and uncovering some trauma from childhood too.

Access my eBook Shift Your Money Mindset below:

Why Failure Is Necessary

There’s a reason why failure is necessary for success in an affiliate business. Everyone starts at the same place with affiliate marketing. They choose a product to promote and, more often than not, they fail at selling it. Those who succeed are the ones who carry on, despite the setbacks.

There’s many ways to sell affiliate products and earn a living online:

Blogging
Paid advertising
YouTube videos
Social media marketing
SEO – search engine optimisation
Offline advertising (choose your own marketing method – newspapers, magazines, flyers etc.)

But what makes affiliate marketing a business model worth pursuing is the ability to automate and scale it to multiple sales per day. No matter what you currently earn in a job, that figure can be matched and superseded by your affiliate business.

This is why affiliate marketing is so appealing to anyone who dreams of earning a living on their own terms. The ability to earn an independent income means freedom, flexibility and not having to earn an income from a job. Live anywhere, work from your laptop, yada yada you know the rest!!

Why Failure Is Necessary – The “Journey”

But with that comes a journey where you’re going to want to quit many times!

95% of affiliates quit which means you’re going to need to stick at it for much longer than most. But when most people meet a challenge or setback they presume that “affiliate marketing does not work“. Or that it’s “just too difficult”. But that presumption is only founded on their current knowledge – which is flawed. They maybe have only tried a single advert, for example. Or, they’ve written a single blog post or uploaded a single video to YouTube. The ones who succeed have tried (and perhaps failed) many times before that sweet message drops in to their inbox “You’ve made a sale!”

I have failed many times as an affiliate, too. My first sale came after I published a number of posts plugging my affiliate links on a free blogging site (Hubpages.com). It was a review of a product I had bought and it gave me hope. However, if I would have quit after only a few posts, I wouldn’t have seen the light at the end of the tunnel!

The first sale is an important milestone for affiliates for one reason – it gives you a “glimpse” of what is to come. It inspires you and gives you hope. But when that sale comes depends on what actions you are doing and, more importantly how many times you can “fail” without quitting!

Reframing “Failure” In Affiliate Marketing

Failure isn’t the best word to use when you’re learning affiliate marketing, even though most will see it that way, (myself included in the early years of my journey). Instead of calling the lack of “success” in monetary terms it’s wise to view action steps in a more positive light. Every time you try a strategy out and fail to make a sale, that’s more opportunity to learn from your strategy.

Another way to reframe “success” in affiliate marketing is to change your frame of reference. Rather than seeing the “sale” as your frame of reference, look to the actions you are taking on a daily basis. I’ve made this mistake too many times to mention. I spent far too long looking for the sale when I wasn’t doing any actions to bring it about.

Reward yourself for taking actions on a constant basis, whatever the outcome. Focus on the blog post, running the advert, watching the training videos, etc. When you start taking the actions, you’ll start to see small wins such as a hit on your website, a lead dropping into your sales funnel. These are the “sprouts” from which great success can and will come, if you keep going!

The Chinese Bamboo Tree – An Analogy

The Chinese Bamboo tree makes for a brilliant analogy for affiliate marketing. It has to be watered and fertilised in the ground where it has been planted every day. It doesn’t break through the ground for five years. After five years, once it breaks through the ground, it will grow 90 feet tall in five weeks!

The cultivation of your affiliate business is very similar. In the beginning you are planting the seeds (learning by watching videos and reading, for example). Then you set up your system for selling an affiliate product (watering your plant). The next step is to learn a marketing strategy and get good at it.

This requires actually attempting it, and “failing” perhaps many times. Eventually you hit upon a strategy which works for you, and you start to see sales dropping in (shoots coming through the soil). Depending on your marketing method, time spent on building your affiliate business and the time spent in “learning mode”, this could be between several months and a few years.

So if you haven’t seen a “shoot” come through the soil yet, don’t despair! Keep going! Remember your Bamboo tree can grow 90 feet in five weeks! When you get those sales dropping in, things can change dramatically and within a very short timeframe too.

So Plant Your Affiliate Business, Nurture and Water it, and Watch It Grow!

If you haven’t started out with affiliate marketing this is a good place to start. Once you have some knowledge behind you, it’s time to find a product to promote and a method of promotion. Make sure you take some action every day, and keep taking those small actions. Over time, your work compounds and you’ll start to see some growth.

Don’t judge your growth by those making “millions” in the affiliate space, because that is likely to demoralise you lead to inaction. Focus only on the next step, and keep going, no matter how slowly!

Make a daily habit out of doing something towards your business growth and keep doing it. “Failure” is just part of the process, and necessary, so take those action steps which are uncomfortable and keep going!

Get a step by step program for building a from scratch affiliate business here.

Turning Simple Daily Habits Into A Tonne Of Website Traffic

Here’s a post on turning simple daily habits into a tonne of website traffic. If you want to make affiliate sales you need traffic. There’s no way around it. You either pay for traffic with your time or with your money! Since most ad campaigns don’t give a positive return, you can easily spend a lot of time (and money) testing and measuring advertising that simply burns through your marketing budget like a hot knife through butter!

It’s great once you have a profitable campaign, granted. But are you prepared to put yourself through the multiple ad creations and expense of that for the outcome? How long are you prepared to stick at it and how much money are you prepared to throw at it?

If you’ve had enough of paying for traffic, or you simply don’t have the funds for a marketing budget, organic marketing is probably the answer. If you still want to build an affiliate business those are your choices: paid marketing, or some free traffic strategy.

Turning Simple Daily Habits Into A Tonne Of Website Traffic – Identify A Habit You Can Create

The first step of this journey is to identify a simple habit you can repeat on a daily basis. There’s multiple ways you can generate traffic to your website/affiliate offer:

Blogging
Video blogging
Social media – joining groups and interacting
SEO – optimising website content for the search engines
Email marketing – sending out content to your email list
See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products for more ideas

Blogging, for example is a simple strategy you can use on a daily basis to build traffic to your website over time. If you stick with it, and post regularly, it can have a dramatic effect on your traffic. However, if you dabble, and only post content once in a blue moon, your results will reflect that. You need to be consistent with an organic strategy for the results to compound.

Turning Simple Daily Habits Into A Tonne Of Website Traffic – Inconsistency

Due to the nature of my film work (I worked as a stunt performer), I would get jobs out of the blue and be working away for a week or two. So my income was sporadic. I started learning affiliate marketing so I could build an income around the stunt work, for when it went quiet. So when I started I got into blogging. The problem was I wasn’t consistent. Once I got into the flow of writing every day, a job would come in.

stuntman — Here’s me doubling Stellan Skarsgard on a TV show called River

By the time I got home again, it would take me a week to get back into my blogging routine. Initially, I would also lose interest in blogging every day because I didn’t trust that it would bring in sales. So, after a week or so of blogging, I would give up! Within a week or two, a sale would drop in from my blog and I would kick myself for not keeping up the habit!

The sale would give me confidence again (and belief) and I’d be back at the blogging every day! So here’s the thing, you must trust the process, but without evidence your belief will wane. That leads to inaction and you’re back procrastinating again. To help get around this problem, choose a topic you love writing content around and a product which is aligned to it which provides massive value to your audience.

Turning Simple Daily Habits Into A Tonne Of Website Traffic – Consistency

To start with you must develop a habit out of your traffic strategy. So whether that is blogging or uploading videos to YouTube, you must do it every day, or at least several times a week. Consistency is the key to organic traffic. Here’s an example of my daily habit strategy:

Create a blog post
Send it to my email list
Post it on my social media accounts

At first, nothing much happens. You might get a few hits on your website as your email list and social media presence attracts a few bites. This will also depend on the size of your email list and your social media presence. You might get nothing! But don’t be disheartened. At this stage you’re only developing a habit out of these basic daily steps.

turning simple daily habits into a tonne of website traffic

On day 2, you do the same, and on day 3 and on day 4 and so on! Within a week or so something magical will happen. You’ll start to see growth in your traffic! It might be sooner or later, but if you keep going you’ll get more and more traffic over time. You’ll also get better at your strategy over time too, so don’t let the habit slip.

Why Results Compound

On day 1, you have only created a single blog post, for example. You share it with your list and your social media following (which may be very small). However, on day 2, some of your day 1 emails and social media posts will just be getting found. Often it can take a little time for the social media “feed” to trickle down. Plus, not everyone is on social media when you post your links.

On day 3, you’ve now got a little more comfortable in your habit pattern. Plus, you’ve got 3 days worth of social media shares and emails that’s you’ve sent out. Not everyone will click on your link or even open your email message. But as you continue with your daily habit, momentum will kick in.

Each day, you not only have your new blog post that some people will be finding, but you’ve also got the previous day’s messages and posts that certain people will still be finding. Added to which by building regular content on a blog or video channel, you’re finding people organically as your SEO (Search engine optimisation) improves as you build authority with the search engines.

The Success, Failure Curve

It’s useful to understand the “success, failure” curve at this point because you’ll want to quit before you can appreciate the power that consistency has in your affiliate business. Here’s an image from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits:

When we achieve a certain level of “success”, we lose interest/motivation at pursuing our goals. If our early motivation is, (for example) to escape poverty and get “comfortable” financially, when we achieve that we put our feet up a little.

With blogging, I’ve definitely found this to be true. When I’m comfortable, I slacken off with my habits. When I’m in a desperate financial state, I ramp up my motivation and get busy.

To stay consistent it’s useful to recognise this pattern so you don’t fall back towards the “failure” part of the image above.

Habits Are Your Friend

At the beginning of your affiliate marketing “journey” you are filled with excitement and enthusiasm. This can quickly disappear when you’ve been working away for several weeks or months without having any kind of positive results. Remember to focus on your action steps and avoid looking for results in the beginning. Reward yourself for your actions; the results will follow if you stay consistent.

Motivation doesn’t last so you need to turn motivation into a habit pattern which can serve you and your affiliate business. Make this habit so strong that even on your worst days you can still do it! Some weeks you won’t make sales, but stay consistent. Some months will be good and you’ll start to see sales dropping in, stay consistent!

If you’re procrastinating, just look for the next step. Don’t overwhelm yourself with too many options. See my post on how to overcome procrastination in your affiliate business.

Make Sure You Build Your Email List

As you send more and more people to your blog posts, or YouTube channel through your new content, you will want to use this traffic to help you build your email list. An email list is super valuable to affiliates because it puts you in control of your traffic.

You can see the work that’s going into this traffic generation as you continue to create content on a regular basis. So it’s worth offering your visitors a cool opt-in offer to help you build your email list.

Content promotion is just as important as its creation too, so don’t skimp on promoting your blog posts or videos.

For a long time I created blog posts and simply hoped that Google would rank them! It’s a flawed strategy because this might never happen. You simply must promote your content every time you publish something!

Promotion Methods

To promote your content there’s various methods and strategies you can use. Make sure you use at least one of two of these as your daily routine after creating your content:

Post on social media
Email your list
Backlink from other websites in your niche (good for SEO)
Blog comment on other blogs in your niche
Use Q&A websites to post links back to your content (See using Quora for traffic generation)

Make a daily habit you can stick to for the long term and cut out some space in your day to make it a priority. If you’re just getting started, don’t try and make it perfect, just establish the habit first and you’ll improve as time goes on. See also my post on how to build momentum with organic marketing and this post if you’re feeling stuck.

Why You’re Stuck In Your Affiliate Business

There’s a few reasons why you could be stuck in your affiliate marketing business. Perhaps you’ve just started and have been watching videos, absorbing information and learning? You could be stuck in “information overload” – processing what you have learned.

Or perhaps you’re full of doubt, fear or scepticism? If you don’t believe you can build a profitable affiliate business, it’s going to be difficult moving forwards given this negative outlook.

Or, maybe you are at a crossroads? You’ve done some study and found something you want to promote. Perhaps you have even setup a website/platform to sell something from after purchasing a course or selling a system of some kind?

The once exciting phase of buying a course and setting up your selling system soon turns to dismay when you realise you now need to promote that website or get leads for your sales funnel! The marketing aspect of building an online business is where the “rubber meets the road”.

Without a marketing strategy you don’t have a business.

You may have even tried already using paid advertising and/or organic marketing methods but to no avail? So you sit on the sidelines, sitting in a no-man’s land of procrastination, doubt and fear! (See my post on how to overcome procrastination if that’s you).

You’re stuck; and despite trying to think your way out of it, nothing seems to happen!

Why You’re Stuck In Your Affiliate Business – And How To Dig Your Way Out

Depending on where you are personally, there’s going to be a different solution accordingly:

Not begun – get some training
Haven’t chosen a product to sell – Choose your niche & get a product
Not sure of your marketing strategy – Test a new strategy
Out of marketing budget – choose an organic marketing method
Fed up of blogging/organic marketing – start testing a paid marketing strategy

Why You're Stuck In Your Affiliate Business

If you’re stuck in a cycle of procrastination you need to break the cycle and get into some kind of action taking. Imperfect action is far better than no action. But there’s likely a probable cause as to why you’re sitting on the sidelines and it’s likely to be the discussion you’re having with yourself – whether verbally (out loud) or inside your head.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Why You’re Stuck In Your Affiliate Business – Sharpening Your Axe

Here’s a picture (crudely drawn on my noticeboard!). It shows the thoughts and ideas which either contribute to your taking action, or dissuade you from taking action.

On the left of the action step you see thoughts such as these:

I’m not sure
I’m not good enough
It won’t work
Its a scam
I’ll never be able…etc.

These kinds of thoughts and ideas are going to stop you from taking any action at all! Simply put, no action will be taken if your mind is filled predominantly with these kinds of messages. Each time you give energy to one of these thoughts, or one like it, the needle moves downwards – away from the action step you need to take.

On the right hand side of the action “needle” I’ve written some more positive ideas which are likely to inspire you into action. They move the needle towards the action step:

I am good enough
Other’s have done it – so can I
I can build a passive income
I can escape my job
A passion business I love
Escape the commute
Ditch the boss
Be the boss

Why You’re Stuck In Your Affiliate Business – Unconscious Self Sabotage

Which side are you spending most of your mental energy on? Is it the side which leads you to taking action ? With each thought you’re either giving energy to taking action or not taking action. Whether or not you have identified the action step you need to take, your thinking patterns are going to affect it. These are affected by several things you may or may not be consciously aware of such as:

Limiting beliefs, habit patterns, childhood trauma
Circle of influence – who you spend the most time with
Consumption habits – news, social media, books, videos etc.

Limiting beliefs such as “I’m not good enough” can come from childhood trauma, for example. Your circle of influence is a reflection of your belief system too. You surround yourself with people who think like you.

What kinds of information are you digesting on a regular basis from the news, social media, books and magazines? Are they positively affecting you or negatively?

Positive Mantras For Transformation – Yes You Can!

If you are carrying a limiting belief such as “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t have (such and such) skills”, then you’re likely operating from a self image/identity which isn’t helping you. The self image is a strong factor when it comes to new challenges and if we identify as someone who isn’t good enough, for example, it’s the perfect excuse for giving up or not even trying.

If we carry this belief “I’m never good enough”, no amount of trying will alter it unless you get “under the hood” of your unconscious mind and change the belief.

C.G. Jung — ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’

To help you shift the limiting beliefs which are holding you back you can use mantras:

“I’m good enough”, “I’m a powerful man/woman, on a mission”, “I now make 10 sales a month” etc.

Although initially your conscious mind is likely to reject positive mantras like this (because you’ve been repeating the negative ones so often), they are worth making habits out of. Over time they will change your negative self perception and this in turn helps you take more positive actions going forwards.

A paradigm is a belief system which you hold about yourself or the world. Changing it is a powerful way to alter your self perception and make powerful changes in your life.

Producing Not Consuming

We are trained to be super consumers! But if your intention is to build a profitable affiliate business, you need to change this pattern and become a producer.

Think about how much we consume. From the food in our kitchen, to the social media channels and Netflix channels we absorb. How much time do you spend consuming as opposed to producing online content?

To shift this balance towards building your affiliate business you need to become a regular producer of content, rather than being solely a consumer of it. By regularly producing content you are building a habit pattern which compounds over time.

With each blog post, for example, I’m building a strategy for online growth of my affiliate business, a tiny step at a time. If I gave up, or didn’t start at all, I’m guaranteed to not make further progress.

So even if a single blog post has only a tiny affect on my affiliate business, it’s still a step in the right direction. What tiny step can you make towards building your profitable online business today? A small step might not make your affiliate business overnight, but it has the power to shift your mindset into positive focused action, which can launch you into regular productive action.

Why You’re Stuck In Your Affiliate Business – The Pain Body

There’s another reason why you aren’t taking any action in your affiliate business too. I’ve experienced this many times and it’s linked to what Eckhart Tolle calls the pain body.

According to Eckhart Tolle, the pain-body is a mass of negative energy that occupies your body and mind. It is like a parasite, living in you and feeding on you. The pain-body only has as much power as you give it, though. It feeds on the negative energy that is created when you focus on things which produce negative emotions.

When I get stuck with my affiliate business, I’m frustrated. I look at others far ahead of me and start to dwell on my frustrations. Why are they so far ahead? Why can’t I do it? I focus on reasons why I can’t have their success.

The pain body grows through this focus on frustration, anxiety, jealousy and suffering. The more you give energy to it, the more it has you in it’s grip! So if you’re looking at other influencers perhaps, who appear to be very successful, and feel inadequate as a result, you’re feeding your pain body. To escape you first need to notice when you’re feeding it. Stop it! Stop focusing on those things which are making you feel bad, jealous, inadequate, less than and inferior.

Start becoming more conscious about where you mind is on a moment by moment basis. Meditating for just 10 minutes daily can help you bring awareness to what is going on inside your mind. Once you have some mental clarity, the path will become clearer for your affiliate business.

Summary

Your mindset has a great deal to do with how you tackle your affiliate business. So it’s a good idea to prioritise your health and mental fitness too. Make sure you are living in a tidy environment. If you’re working in clutter, it’s going to affect your mindset.

What’s going on inside your mind is going to affect your ability to work on your affiliate business too. What things are distracting you? Having the space to work on your affiliate business is vital. If you haven’t made the space, or you simply don’t have the space and time for working on your affiliate business, perhaps it’s simply not a priority for you. That’s ok, but just be reasonable with yourself and honest about it!

Have you set a goal for your affiliate business and made a plan of how to get there? Without a goal it’s difficult to hit it! It can be helpful to set a large goal and then set out smaller, shorter term goals too to break it down into small easily achievable steps.

Take your smaller goal and break it down into daily habit patterns which will get you there but are easily achievable “chunks” you can rinse and repeat on a daily basis. Is your goal is too big? If you you don’t have small steps to take which are carefully laid out, it becomes an emotional battlefield each time you try and take some action.

Haven’t started building an online business yet? Get started here.

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How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing

If you’re wondering how to build momentum with organic marketing, or even struggling to get started, this one’s for you! Once you are on a roll with your organic marketing campaign, you will see more traffic, leads and sales. But this can take some time. Before you get into 5th gear you need to drop the clutch, put it in first and slowly move forwards.

That can be daunting if you’re unsure about your topic, what to write, (or create videos about) or if you’re shy on camera or even doubt your own writing ability, for example. All these factors can and will stop you from even getting started. So that’s where to begin. I was super shy on camera shooting my first few videos but over time I got over it. Still, there’s work to be done too!

If you’re shy or lack confidence, keep in mind very few people will see your stuff when you are just starting out – (silver linings to no traffic!) If you lack confidence, that’s going to you hold back in promoting your content too. So on the plus side, you will naturally attract a larger audience when you gain confidence and that might be somewhere down the road.

For starters, lets look at your niche as what topic you decide to delve into is massively important.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Choosing Your Niche

Your niche is the topic you decide you’re going to be creating content about. Creating content in a niche you are passionate about is always going to be much more enjoyable than one in which you have zero interest. Plus, you probably already follow others in your niche who can give you content ideas as time goes on.

It’s likely that your niche is related to the topic/s you’re already following online. Have a look at your YouTube channel and other social media platforms. What kind of leaders are you following? What are you interested in? If you align your niche with your passions and interests, you won’t ever run out of ideas and your own personal growth is tied in with your content production.

Choosing a niche you have no passion for is exhausting. I tried it once and lasted about 6 months before I completely burned out. Pick one you can keep working in for the long term, and in which you are investing in continual personal growth. You don’t have to know everything about your topic either, because you can always learn more. The key is to pick a topic you’re aligned with.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Your “Why?”

Suppose you’re a Tony Robbins fan, for example. He’s big on personal growth and the psychology of success. You could watch a video of his on YouTube and take a single idea from it to create a video or article of your own. Here’s the first video I found of him and here’s an interesting question he asks “What is your motive for action?”

An intrinsic motivation is different to an external motivation. Intrinsic motivation comes from within, while extrinsic motivation arises from external factors. When you are intrinsically motivated, you engage in an activity because you enjoy it and get personal satisfaction from doing it. When you are extrinsically motivated, you do something in order to gain an external reward.

The man who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.

Don’t forget there’s over 600 million blogs on the internet and more than 114 million active YouTube channels too. So whether you’re creating written or video content there’s huge competition for organic traffic. What’s NOT going make you stand out is if you copy someone else and/or are solely money motivated in your actions. To build momentum with organic marketing you’re going to need to enjoy the journey and have intrinsic motivation.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Your First Piece Of Content

Your first piece of content is the start of this journey but remember that you are building momentum here! I find an inspiring idea will help me to get the wheels turning. Before you can create your first piece of content you need a website, or access to a video platform such as YouTube or TikTok.

If you haven’t done this before consider it a dry run. That takes the pressure out of it and lets you experiment. Consider your first YouTube video a practice in shooting a video and then uploading it. Or if you’re blogging the act of publishing your first piece of content is a major first step. You can even use free blog platforms such as Hubpages.com. Hubpages is where I first published an article and where I made my first affiliate sale too!

If you’re procrastinating here, try and take the pressure out of it for yourself. Checkout my post on overcoming procrastination in your affiliate marketing business. You may need to take a step or two back: clear your desk, outline your concerns or remove the importance around the issue somehow. Mental blockages can stop you moving forwards. This could be genuine concerns about a work colleague or boss seeing your video and it affecting your work somehow, for example. Or your belief that you’re not good enough, or will be criticised for your work. I’ve personally found that the inner critic (yourself) tends to be worse than anyone else who might openly criticise you.

You’ll need to deal with these issues before you can actually move forwards. By bringing them into your conscious awareness you can help to resolve them. A first step might be writing down all your inner conflicts. Then work through them one by one until you have resolved them.

Take the importance out of the initial step of creating a piece of content and give yourself a reward of some kind for having taken it.

How To Build Momentum With Organic Marketing – Congratulations!

Congratulations you’ve created your first piece of content and published it! Whether that’s a YouTube video or a blog post, well done. Don’t diminish the importance of taking a small step because momentum is created by taking small steps again and again. As the saying goes “a journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step”.

Building momentum with organic marketing is firstly about creating habits out of creating content. So you want to create a habit of doing this by creating content again and again. As you do so you’ll get better and better at it too and more confident and self assured in doing so! So don’t worry if you’re not happy with your content at first. The key is to get into motion and start taking small, positive actions in the right direction.

Now you have created some content you can share it on your social media accounts. That’s a great, free way to get your content out there. It’s useful to also create a habit out of content promotion. Without it, your content won’t get seen by anyone.

To get momentum through organic marketing, you’re going to want to make habits out of:

Creating (useful) content for your audience
Promoting that content

To build the habit, you only need to get started. As you progress, you will find your content will improve as you become more comfortable creating it (and sharing it).

Aligning Content With Your Product/s

It’s worth a mention here that your content should serve your audience in some way and be helpful to them. Otherwise, you’re not going to attract the audience you want with your content. Your content should also serve to attract an audience you can serve with your affiliate products (presuming you’re monetising your content with this strategy).

how to build momentum with organic marketing

So before you rush off and create a tonne of content, be advised that not all traffic is targeted traffic. If you’re building an affiliate business with your content you want that content to attract the right audience. To do so you need to align your niche carefully with your content and your affiliate product. Otherwise you’ll be spending a lot of time and effort in attracting the wrong audience!

See the customer avatar worksheet pdf and spend some time learning about who you want to attract with your content.

Content Promotion & Self Belief

Content promotion is as important as content creation. If you spend all your time creating content, in the hope that “one day” it will be found, you’re not going to create the momentum you really need to build an affiliate business around it. So content promotion should be tended to as a matter of urgency once you publish your content.

I struggled with promotion partly because of shyness, lack of confidence and insecurity as well as my not understanding the importance of promotion. The same reasons which can hold you from getting started in the first place can stop you from attracting the audience you deserve. When you look at the lack of traffic you have, you may consider that organic traffic “simply doesn’t work”. But in fact it is your own cognitive bias working against you (through lack of self belief) and/or lack of action.

Hence this is why you must work on yourself as well as your affiliate business. If you’re full of doubt, your results will mirror that doubt. When you’re full of passion, self belief and inspiration, your results will mirror that too – but only if you take action!

Some promotion methods include:

Social media posting
Email list – don’t forget your email list
Paid advertising
Q & A websites – drive traffic with Quora
SEO – Search engine optimisation
Offline advertising

Rinse & Repeat

Now you have the ball rolling, it’s important to keep it rolling. Don’t burn out though but instead commit to a daily/weekly habit schedule you can sustain over the longer term.

Momentum doesn’t happen with one action but with many actions repeated over time. So in the beginning it’s important to take small regular actions which can be repeated to build habits. Motivation doesn’t last, it only gets you going. Once you have overcome the inertia of not doing, you need to maintain the action steps which will build momentum over time.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss” and it takes much less effort to keep a stone rolling than to start it rolling!

A good daily/weekly habit pattern to begin with is to:

Create a piece of content (every day ideally, but whatever you can manage at first)
Publish and promote it – through your email list, on social media, etc.

Get this habit pattern down to the extent that it feels wrong NOT doing it. This usually takes a month or two of consistent action.

What To Expect

At first you’ll likely not notice much shift in your traffic. However, that’s because you haven’t yet built up momentum. Don’t be too eager to look for results at this early stage because it will likely send you into doubt and scepticism. You know what happens when you’re in the state of doubt? That’s right – nothing! You’ll doubt your course and STOP moving forwards. Then, nothing can happen.

I’ve been here many times, lacking motivation and lacking a habit which drives my business forwards. It’s not a great place to reside if you want growth! Focus instead on the small wins – your daily/weekly habit patterns and the hits you receive on your website as a result. Take these small wins as major achievements because they are – you’re learning to build organic traffic to your website.

If you persist, your traffic will continue to grow, albeit slowly. Keep examining your content generation, intentions and promotion methods as you move forwards, improving in every area. Once you’re a month or two in, you should have found a nice momentum.

I’ve had times where I lost the faith in my blogging habit, so I stopped. Then a sale would drop in and re-inspire me to take action again. I would kick myself for losing the faith and stopping, having lost what would have been even more momentum.

Keep your belief high by fuelling it with your passion on your topic. Follow other leaders in your field and use their content to inspire you for your own!

How To Get Organic Traffic To Your Website

If you’re wondering how to get organic traffic to your website, this post is for you. Organic traffic is free traffic which is perhaps why it’s so appealing. When you’re paying for traffic, you want that traffic to convert into sales and revenue. When it doesn’t do that it feels like you’re simply throwing money away!

But with organic traffic any sales you make from your website is a bonus. It’s pure profit once you’ve done all the hard work! The downside about organic traffic is that it comes at a price too – hard work and consistent content creation and promotion.

But before you rush in a start creating content on your website, there’s a couple of important things you should know. Firstly, you don’t want to be bringing the wrong kinds of visitors to your website. You want buyer traffic and that means you want to craft very specific pieces of content which attract that kind of website visitor. So first, define your audience. Who do you want to attract and what kind of information are they looking for?

Spend some time on the customer avatar worksheet pdf which will help you identify the kind of person you want to land on your website. Think about the content they want to find and start there. After all, with all the work you’ll be putting in, you want buyers, not tyre kickers!

How To Get Organic Traffic To Your Website – The Search Engines

Once you’ve identified your target audience (customer avatar) you might want to consider how your content will be found. Ideally you will want some organic traffic coming from the search engines: Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, Yahoo etc. This can be a challenge whatever your niche and particularly in a very competitive one. But to give yourself a better chance of ranking your content, you can find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty in your niche.

The top searched for keywords in any niche are super competitive. You’ll struggle to rank any of your articles for the most competitive keywords. So instead, you can go for the “low hanging fruit”. These are the keywords in your niche which have the fewest competing websites/webpages.

As such you have a stronger chance of ranking your content for them. So for example, if I wrote an article titled “affiliate marketing”, my chances of ranking that title for it’s keyword are zero! However, if I choose a long tail keyword such as “step by step affiliate marketing for beginners pdf” for example, it has a much higher chance that I’ll rank it on one of the search engines and get free traffic.

Nothing is guaranteed with the search engines and particularly Google. They will change their algorithms regularly. But if you create high quality content for those type of keywords, your chances of a ranking on page one of the search results are vastly improved.

How To Get Organic Traffic To Your Website – Social Media

Another important strategy for getting free traffic is social media: Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube, X, etc. By sharing your content on social media sites, and finding people who are likely to be interested (and connecting with them), you can quite quickly lead people to your content through your social media presence.

In the case of social media, a good title can make all the difference. You can find currently trending articles which have gone viral using a website called Buzzsumo.com. Buzzsumo shows you trending content and that’s useful because you can identify headlines which have gone viral . Then, use them for ideas for your own content.

See also 10 article headline examples which went viral her e. A catchy title is much more likely to result in views and shares than one which doesn’t elicit any emotion or interest.

How To Get Organic Traffic To Your Website – Creating Content

Now you have some idea about how you might get some free traffic, you can start to investigate some content creation ideas. Ideally choose a topic you are interested and/or passionate about. It’s much easier to create content in a topic you love as opposed to one in which you have zero interest. You’ll also need to create a lot of content.

Blogging can take months before you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Take small steps initially and build momentum over time. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Your website won’t be suddenly overflowing with visitors after just one blog post either!

Choose your title and get a plugin which helps with your SEO – Search Engine Optimisation. Whether your blog post ranks or not, it’s worth doing this for the overall SEO score of your site as a whole anyway. I use a plugin called Yoast SEO and it helps you identify where to use your keyword in your articles.

Ideally write at least 1000 words in each piece of content to give your content the best chance. Make it of high quality so it stands the test of time! Make a habit out of creating content regularly, at least a few times a week over several months.

Blog Promotion

Promoting your content needs to become second nature too. Unless you actively promote your blog posts, you are effectively relying on the search engines to rank them, which might not happen.

In any case, a new website will be “benched” from the search engines for a few weeks at a minimum. It simply won’t rank a new site, even if the content is great! So you won’t see any “hits” on your website unless you start promoting your content as you write it.

You can do this in a number of ways:

Post your content on your social media accounts
Link to your content from other websites (blog commenting, guest posting)
Send new content to your email list (get an email list if you don’t have one already)
Use question and answer forums/websites to link to your content (see using Quora to drive traffic)
Encourage visitors to like and share (use a social media share plugin)
Build your email list with an attractive “opt in” offer through your blog posts

There’s various tools and plugins you can find to help you do this too. A good one is called Revive Old Posts which lets you syndicate older content throughout your social media presence automatically. See also best free blog plugins for WordPress.

Expectations

While at first it can be an adventure blogging, it can get tiresome pretty quick if you don’t see much in the way of a response and you’re doing it only for the outcome. If your motivation is intrinsic, and you enjoy the process, you’re much more likely to succeed in the longer term.

Keep in mind that your content is going to attract a very specific audience so not everyone will be interested in it. That’s good though because you only want targeted traffic to your site. Those are the people who will also be interested in your product/s (if you have carefully aligned your topic with your target audience/customer avatar).

If you have chosen a topic you are unfamiliar with, or have little interest in then this is going to be a much longer journey. So make sure you pick a topic you enjoy! Chances are good that this will take some time and dedication. Look for the small wins and keep going.

Blogging will take at least a few weeks/months of consistency before you start to see any traction in terms of website visitors. Leads and sales will naturally take even longer since only a small percentage of visitors will sign up to your email list, and a smaller percentage will buy your product/s.

Get a stat counter on your website so you know how many visitors you are attracting week by week.

Summary

Many bloggers start with high hopes only to ditch their blogs down the road. For real success in generating organic traffic to a blog you must have a long term view. If you only want the outcome, it’s likely you won’t sustain the necessary effort for long enough to get traction.

I now have over 800 blog posts on this website and here’s a snapshot of the daily hits on this website since 2019. Keep in mind though that affiliate marketing is a hugely competitive topic. So if you are in another niche, it might be an easier journey.

Other things which will determine your success are your intrinsic motivation to create more and more content. “The man who enjoys walking goes further than the man who wants to get somewhere”. If you enjoy the process, you’ll likely stick with it much longer than most, and have a greater chance of success.

I haven’t always been consistent with my blogging, (or of the promotion of my posts), so that’s definitely a consideration too. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. If so please share it!

Good luck!

How To Get 10 Leads A Day For Your Affiliate Business

In this post I’ll share how to get 10 leads a day for your affiliate business. Although some affiliates will be way past 10 leads a day, 10 is a good benchmark for a beginner to aim for.

Once you’ve achieved 10 leads a day, you have the foundation to build from. Top affiliates are getting hundreds of leads a day. However, many of them are using paid marketing only. This can be daunting to a beginner and it’s super frustrating spending money on advertising when much of it doesn’t give you the result you want immediately.

It’s definitely worth persevering with paid marketing but start with a budget you can easily afford. Be prepared to spend regardless of the outcome. That way, your emotions don’t get in the way and you can learn from the ads you run. If paid ads aren’t for you then this post will definitely help you get going.

How To Get 10 Leads A Day For Your Affiliate Business – Why Leads?

Why collect leads? If you’re wondering why leads are so important for an affiliate business I’ll start with that. There’s a tonne of things you can do as an affiliate. You can build content, run ads, watch training videos, work on your logo and on and on it goes. But a lead is good because it’s the foundation of your email list. An email list is super important for affiliates for a number of reasons:

You can build trust from an email list (much harder on a website)
An email list gives you multiple “touch points” with a prospect – a website is usually only one point of content where the visitor lands on your website (and usually leaves forever). Statistics show that many customers will require between 6-8 touch points before they buy online (especially from a stranger/unknown website.
You control the traffic once you’ve got a list – building content takes time, buying traffic costs money (and email list gives you control)
You can build a list into the tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers. This gives you massive leverage. When you send one email, even if only a tiny percentage of subscribers buy from you, it can be a big day for sales!

Of course you also need to build a very focused email list with the right people on it. Make sure you know your target audience/customer avatar very well before you start building your list. Otherwise you could be attracting the wrong audience. Make sure you have a sound offer/product to promote through your list which is aligned with the needs of your subscribers. If you’ve nothing to sell check out this course and get a product range to promote.

How To Get 10 Leads A Day For Your Affiliate Business – eBook Giveaway

my ebook - affiliate marketing beginners guide

Ok with all that out of the way it’s time to start attracting leads to your business! One of the best organic methods of attracting leads is through creating and promoting your own ebook. I’ve created several ebooks and they’re a great little tool for building your email list. You can write an ebook around the topic you choose and of course it must align with the product/s you’re selling. You want to attract people to your list who are looking for the answers you provide with your products.

So write an ebook with this in mind. Here’s an ebook of mine which I use on this website to collect leads organically. I even uploaded it to Amazon’s self publishing service and got a physical copy:

Writing an ebook is super easy. Simply use your computer to write it out and save as a pdf document. You can get a 3D cover done for you very cheaply. I used Fiverr.com to get my cover done and you can find services to do this for less than $5!

Once you’re done you can promote your ebook through a page on your website using an email capture form. Then send the ebook out to your email list with your first email message. If you don’t already have an email service provider you can get free access by clicking the image below:

How To Get 10 Leads A Day For Your Affiliate Business – Promoting Your Ebook

Now creating an ebook is only step 1! You’ll also need to promote it to attract people to your landing page. So firstly, create an ebook which helps your audience out somehow with a specific problem – such as understanding affiliate marketing in the case of my eBook. Create a simple page (like this one) to send your website visitors to so they can download your ebook – (by signing up to your email list).

The next step is to promote that page on your website. You can do this using a simply pop up tool. I use a WordPress plugin called Icegram Engage which lets you create drop down menus which appear on your website. This is useful if you’re a blogger because it showcases your ebook on every page on your website. So any visitors you get that land on any page will see your ebook offer.

How To Get 10 Leads A Day For Your Affiliate Business – Attracting Website Visitors

Now you’ve got your ebook set up and a landing page and email capture in place, you need to attract visitors to your website. There’s multiple ways you can do this and I’ll cover some of them here. Here’s a quick overview:

Create content through blogging
Post content on social media
Use some paid advertising to get visitors
Use SEO – search engine optimisation to get your posts found on the search engines
Link back to your content from other websites like your (guest posting or blog commenting)
Upload videos to YouTube/TikTok linking back to your content
Use question and answer websites to link back to your content (Using Quora to drive traffic)
Showcase your ebook in your social media profile – linking back to your landing page
Offline advertising methods – key rings, posters, flyers, t-shirts etc. with your website address on.
Find groups/people who are likely to be interested in your ebook – on sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, X.com etc.

This seems like a long list but remember you don’t need to do ALL of these. You can focus in one one strategy which you gravitate towards and get really good at that one. Here’s a simple Facebook strategy you can use to find people who are likely to have an interest in your ebook.

How To Get 10 Leads A Day For Your Affiliate Business – Using Facebook Groups

Facebook has a groups feature which has multiple groups in it which you can join. Use the groups search feature to find groups in your specific niche. So with my ebook, for example, (affiliate marketing for beginners) I might want to join groups about the topic of affiliate marketing.

Make sure you agree to the terms when joining groups many of which will specify no spam. If you start just posting your links in these groups you’re likely to get thrown out of them! Instead, interact with other members of the group and join the discussion.

Spend some time each day doing this and over time you will attract people to your Facebook profile. Here’s where you want to set up your “shopfront” by showcasing your ebook in your Facebook profile. Then, when members of those groups find your profile, they’ll immediately see your eBook and the link to your website (landing page) where they can download it!

You’ll need to make a regular habit out of spending time commenting in groups for this strategy to gain any momentum.

Using Quora.com

Quora.com is a question and answer website where you can find people who might be interested in your ebook (or whatever lead magnet you decide to use).

With Quora, type your subject topic into the search bar and you’ll find questions which relate to your particular niche. So for my ebook, for example, I might type “affiliate marketing” into the search bar and look through some of the related questions.

Here’s a few of the questions which have been asked in this particular topic:

Once you find a suitable questions which you can answer, spend some time fully answering the question to the best of your ability. Here’s an example of one of my answers:

By answering questions regularly in your niche, you can generate traffic back to your website by placing a link in your bio to your ebook or lead magnet. When someone finds your answers useful, they’re more likely to see you as an authority on your particular niche.

You can also place links to your content as part of your answer if it is relevant. However, be careful when placing a single link too many times. Quora has a strict policy on spam and will often delete answers if you appear to be spamming rather than offering real value in your answers and links.

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to generate website traffic for free. It does take some time and dedication though but if you have a topic in which to create an ebook, chances are good that’s you’ll know your subject.

That means you can create a lot more content in it! A good place to start when it comes to blogging is Google’s keyword planner. It’s a free tool which tells you the keywords being search for on Google in your particular niche. Start by typing your main keyword into the planner like this:

Look at all those monthly searches for the keyword “affiliate marketing programs”. Wouldn’t it be lovely to get some of that traffic to your blog for free?! Sadly, the short term keywords (3 or less keywords) are super competitive and you’ll have a snowball in hells chance of ranking your article on Google for those particular terms.

However when you look at the less competitive terms, you’ve much better chance at ranking for these. If you click on the Avg. monthly searches box at the top of the search volume column, you’ll be able to “tab” between the highest search volume and the lowest. As you’ll see in the picture below, this gives you much longer tail keyword terms which have far less monthly searches.

Low search volume keywords are usually much less competitive to rank for on Google. So you’ve a much greater chance of ranking if you write articles using these types of terms as your titles. See also my article on find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.

Try also looking for keywords within your niche which contain the keywords:

ebook
pdf
download
blueprint
etc.

Creating high quality content in key areas where the competition is very low gives you a much greater chance of ranking your blog titles for these keywords. If they are aligned with your ebook or lead magnet offer, so much the better. They can give you a nice free source of website traffic for some time!

Paid Marketing

The strategies listed about are mostly organic and free. But with that comes a lot of work and effort. To start seeing results with most of these strategies, you’ll have to do them each day for some time. Some you’ll see working quickly and others might take a little longer depending on how much time and effort you put in. If these methods aren’t for you, and you want to see results coming a lot quicker, you’re going to need to use some paid marketing.

Paid marketing is far faster and far less hassle than these slower organic methods. However, be prepared to spend your budget while you’re learning. The good news is that you can spend as little as $1 a day if you wish. But the bad news is you don’t get much traffic for that.

Whatever strategy you use in your paid marketing approach, it’s definitely worth setting up a re-marketing campaign. Re-marketing is advertising to those visitors who have already landed on your website and left. So it’s a good thing to do in combination with some of the methods mentioned here already. It’s super cheap and you should find your lead cost is lower than with an ordinary campaign.

Use Google Adwords or Microsoft Ads to get started and learn about the keywords you want to target which will likely bring in your customer avatar – someone who is aligned with your lead magnet. See also paid advertising versus organic.

Summary

10 leads a day is a good basic starting point if you’re building an affiliate business from scratch. Once you have mastered a single method to bring in 10 leads a day, start aiming higher – 20 leads a day, then 30 and so on. Keep with it and stick to a strategy for long enough to see some results.

With some organic methods, you’re going to need to spend a few hours each day over a few weeks before you start to see trickles coming in. Get a counter on your website so you can see the visits – (which won’t all turn into leads). But it gives you a heads up when things start trickling down from your efforts.

Keep doing the work consistently and you’ll start to see results. If you “dip your toe in” or take only sporadic steps, your results will reflect that. Consistency is the key!

You don’t need all these strategies either. Just focus on one of them and get good at it rather than jumping round from one thing to the next! In fact, you’re more likely do better by sticking to a single strategy you can get good at. Once you’ve mastered it, you won’t need another one!

Good luck.

If you haven’t started out online yet you can get a step by step process and start from scratch here.

Driving Traffic To Your Website For Free

Driving traffic to your website for free is the goal of many bloggers and affiliates. If you can get free traffic, you can make sales without spending any money on advertising. That means any sales you make from affiliate marketing is 100% profit. Since most paid adverts don’t work and you’ll end up spending a lot of money (at least initially) just to break even, it makes sense to have an organic strategy.

Top marketers attest to spending thousands on their marketing budgets, only to double their spend. And that’s after they’ve found a profitable advert – which takes a lot of testing and measuring of their budget. So figuring out a profitable ad can be costly. So if you don’t have the funds (or the temperament) for this, organic traffic gives you an alternative and free option to build an affiliate business with.

The downside of organic traffic is that it takes time and there’s no guarantees. So if spending months on end blogging or creating videos isn’t your “bag”, it’s probably not for you. Plus, you can’t easily scale organic traffic as with paid advertising. Long term returns can be good though if you’re willing to put the effort in upfront with little or no short term gains.

Driving Traffic To Your Website For Free – Finding Your Niche

In a competitive niche you’re going to have to work for much longer too and despite a niche being highly sought after (and profitable), that also makes it very competitive. Consider that fact that you’ll need to work at your blog for several weeks, months or even years before it brings in a nice monthly income for you. In a top niche it’s likely to take longer than a relatively uncompetitive one. So it’s worth considering your niche before you start out. I spent a long time in the wrong niche, thinking since it was untapped and uncompetitive then it would be “easier”.

However, what I didn’t consider is blogging for 6 straight months about a topic I had no clue (or interest) about. This makes it considerably more difficult. The topic I found was garlic harvesting! Since I knew nothing about it, I had to research every article I would write. After 6 months that became incredibly tiring. I lost interest and my blog fell from the search engines. It was also difficult to monetise, which is another consideration.

So ideally choose a topic which you’re passionate about, find a high quality product which aligns with that passion and start your blog. Expect to create content for several months to establish yourself.

Driving Traffic To Your Website For Free – SEO

A good place to start is with some keyword research using Google’s free keyword planner tool. Strart by looking for long tail keywords with low SEO competition. You can find these by typing your main keyword into the planner tool. Scroll through the keyword suggestions until the monthly search volume drops to the lowest number (10 or lower). Here you should find some longer tail keywords which although offer less traffic, offer the new blogger a better opportunity at a ranking for their content. Going after the main keywords in your niche is unlikely to result in any of your content ranking on Google. There’s simply too much competition for a new site to rank for competitive keywords.

Google will usually “sandbox” new websites anyway until they have proved themselves with high quality content and regular new, fresh content. Some bloggers even recommend going after zero search volume keywords. The thinking here is that many new keywords are being searched for which haven’t yet shown up in the keyword planner. By going after these keywords you’ll benefit your SEO (Search engine optimisation) score with Google and give yourself more chance of ranking for relatively uncompetitive keywords in your niche.

SEO Tools

Once you have found a suitable keyword to target with your article, make sure you use an SEO tool such as Yoast SEO. This free WordPress plugin lets you optimise your articles for the search engines. It will let you know the optimisation score and keyword density for each post you write. This will involve getting your keyword in your titles, image alt tags and meta descriptions and so on.

There’s various other tools you can use too. I use social share icons to encourage my visitors to share my work on social media sites. You can also syndicate the publishing of your older posts automatically using a plugin called Revive Old Posts.

It’s a good idea to automate as much as possible because it will take up quite a lot of mental space just creating, publishing and sharing your content manually each time. So having some automation helping you is no bad thing! See also my post on best free blog plugins for WordPress.

Driving Traffic To Your Website For Free – Write Long, High Quality Posts

I would also suggest to write as long and as detailed and high quality posts as you can. Over time, there’s more and more bloggers added to the online mix. As your older posts gather dust, they get overtaken by other bloggers content, especially if they are of low quality. So make them stand out from the rest by writing long posts (ideally over 1000 words) and make them high quality so they stand the test of time.

Write to help your reader, not to “rank” or impress the search engines. Your plugin Yoast SEO will help you optimise for the “bots” so that’s taken care of. Google’s search engine algorithms constantly change and evolve. So over time SEO tools will change too. The Google “bots” can easily see how people interact with your content and they know whether it’s good or not by virtue of the way people interact with it. If you content isn’t worth reading, people will click away and the “bots” will see this. So write high quality posts for your audience’s benefit.

Will Google Rank You?

The internet houses a staggering 1.9 billion websites, including over 600 million blogs. So the chance of your content ranking top place on a Google search are pretty low; especially with a brand new blog with not much on it. You’re often competing with bloggers who have been around for decades. They’ve got hundreds of thousands of back links and decades worth of content. So don’t hold out for your 10 page website to suddenly bring in a tonne of traffic overnight! It just ain’t going to happen!

However, if you stick with it and continue to post regularly for several months, your authority will grow and you should see some changes. There are other search engines who will pick up your content and rank it too – Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo, for example. But just don’t rely on Google (or any search engine) to do your bidding for you as you’ll be disappointed. Instead, take charge of your own blog promotion by:

Actively and aggressively promoting your content throughout your social media presence
Building an email list of subscribers and sending them your new posts as you write them
Placing share buttons on your blog to make it easy for readers to share your posts
Using social media planners and plugins to syndicate your content throughout social media platforms automatically
Building back links through guest posting and blog commenting on other websites/blogs in your niche
Using Q and A websites to link back to your posts (E.g. Quora.com) – See using Quora to drive traffic.

Aligning Your Content With Your Offer

Before rushing out in high hopes that your blogging is going to make you millions, it’s worth understanding how you’re monetising your blog first. Unless your blog posts are aligned with your products in some way, you’re not going to make any money from all this work!

I’ll say that again: unless your blog posts are aligned with your products in some way, you’re not going to make any money from all this work. So before starting out on this journey it’s worth getting this very clear: you must align your audience with your product. Failing to do this will result in a lot of work for nothing.

Now if you love your niche and it’s just a side hustle, perhaps you’re not too bothered. It is much more interesting and satisfying writing about something you’re dearly interested and enthusiastic about. In fact, it’s much more difficult sustaining the necessary effort involved if that’s not the case.

However, if you want your blogging to bear fruit at some point in a monetary sense, make sure your affiliate product is linked with all your content. So when you’re doing your keyword research, ask yourself this question:

“Does this search query bring a targeted visitor to my website who might want the product I promote”

If the answer is no, you might be wasting your valuable time on that particular piece of content. It’s worth checking out this post on the customer avatar to get clear on who you want to attract to your website.

Summary

Driving traffic to your website for free can be very rewarding if you stick with it. Plus, all your sales are 100% profit, unlike when you’re using paid advertising.

Before setting out with your article or content creation, do some research. Does your keyword have a good chance of getting found on the search engines? Is it aligned with your target audience? Don’t rely on the search engines in any case and make sure you aggressively market and promote your content personally, using manual posting and/or automated plugins or post planners. You might even want to test out some paid advertising too to give your traffic a boost.

Make sure you get a few plugins to help you both write and promote your content. See best free blog plugins for WordPress.

Progress though blogging can be painstakingly slow. So create a routine which helps you overcome procrastination and get moving, however slowly it might be at first. Define your niche – choose one you’ll love writing about for several months at the least if you want to make it work. Choose a high value product which is going to last and stand out among the others.

Keep going and never quit!

Good luck!

How To Use An Email List To Grow Your Affiliate Business

I always wondered how to use an email list to grow my affiliate business. I had joined several email marketing lists when I started affiliate marketing back in the early 2000’s. Some of them would just send out a single line of text with a link in it. “Hey check this out it’s HOT” – or some shit like that!

I quickly learned that every singe email of theirs was to a product they wanted me to buy. No value in their emails, just spammy sales links wanting me to purchase something.

I of course tried this too when I started out, to no avail. So desperate was I to make that first affiliate sale that I tried pretty much everything. The problem with this approach is that there’s no trust there. Everyone is doing this so the discerning consumer quickly learns to unsubscribe and find their products (and information) elsewhere.

How To Use An Email List To Grow Your Affiliate Business – Patience

One mentor of mine taught that you should do the opposite to this spammy approach. Instead of trying to sell to your subscribers on every single email, connect with them instead. Ask them a question “How come you joined my email list?”

Some will of course ignore this email, but often I’ve had replies. This is really quite helpful because it allows you to connect with subscribers and find out what their particular problem is. Often too, subscribers will delve into their individual circumstance.

how to use an email list to grow your affiliate business

This is helpful when starting to understand your customer avatar. With a well defined customer avatar, you can more easily attract the kind of people you want to deal with (and those that will buy from you because your product can help them). You can also more easily relate to them when you understand your subscribers and this helps you craft more relatable and useful email messages.

You also want to help your subscribers with something through your emails. If you do this successfully, and your emails are designed to help instead of sell, you’ll build trust. It’s also a much more rewarding way of interacting that “Hey Joe, click here before this page is gone FOREVER!” or some other sales crap like it!

How To Use An Email List To Grow Your Affiliate Business – Slowly Slowly

Of course this takes time but your emails will work with or without you being there. Once set up your email messages are automated. You’ll want to ram those products down your audience’s throat in the beginning because you want to prove that affiliate marketing can actually work for you.

But because this is what a lot of marketers do in their emails, you’ll stand out by not doing it. Build trust instead and focus on long term service over short term sales. Recently I made a sale from someone who was on my list for 5 years!

Now I wouldn’t want to have to wait five years before a subscriber bought something typically. But it illustrates the point of relationship building. Not everyone is ready to buy when they sign up to your email list. But to keep them opening your messages, provide value and make them worth opening.

If all your messages just say “Click here quickly before this deal is GONE FOREVER”, how soon do you think your subscribers will stop opening them?

A good analogy is with a sales person in a shop. When you visit a shop to browse, and the sales assistane is hovering round you, desperate to sell something, it’s off-putting. You leave the shop if it becomes uncomfortable!

The same is true with email marketing messages which only show the sender as someone who wants to gain, rather than help. You will quickly unsubscribe from them.

Answer Questions Your Audience Already Has

Often your subscribers will have a heap of objections already in their minds:

I’m too old for this business
This is going to be too pricy
I’m not technical minded, will that be a problem
Is this guy trustworthy?
Is there a money back guarantee?
Will the product work for me?

Have a think of the ten most popular objections your audience might have about your product. Then craft an email (or emails) which handle/s those objections. Often your subscribers won’t want to break radio silence! They won’t necessarily want to show up with their objection as they might feel shy or silly. By handling the topic through your email messages, you get their attention because you’re talking about them and their fears and objections.

A money back guarantee for example is definitely worth mentioning if your product carries one. It lets someone know they can change their mind if they don’t like the product once they get it. As with my recommended course, if for any reason you’re not happy, email support and get your money back within 30 days.

Digital products in particular are sometimes difficult to understand. So a 30 day money back guarantee lets someone test it with no obligation.

Exacerbate The Pain

Of course it’s much easier to sit on the sidelines and never take any action when on someone’s email list, no matter how hard they try! That’s ok because it’s those who are pretty motivated to take action who actually do something and buy from you.

But there’s often some motivation for NOT taking action too, whether that is comfort or fear. People make the decision to buy something when their desire to buy is no longer inhibited by their counter desire/fear.

These could be things like:

I could buy the product any time, it’ll still be there tomorrow
I don’t really need it, or it’s not right for me
I’m afraid it won’t work for me
I don’t want to be conned out of my money/ maybe it’s a scam?
My job is not so bad, I’ll wait another year then buy it..

For time bound decision making there’s always tomorrow. That’s why many marketers with an email list will use countdown timers. When the timer reaches zero, the product is gone! Or the price goes up! That removes some objections and financial motivation kicks in.

For a business related product, such as an online business from scratch, for example, the motivation might be to escape their employer. Often I’ll mention my own personal motivation for escaping employment – the thought of another 10 years doing the same thing. That’s a strong motivation for someone who hates their job!

Often the thought of not taking action (therefore having to keep turning up to a job with no escape route) is enough to push someone over their resistance barrier. By juxtaposing what they could have, with what they have now (using your product), you can create a strong motivation through your messaging and help them overcome any resistance to taking action. There’s lots of great books on this topic such as Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and Influence by Robert Caldini.

Summary

So there’s many ways in which you can become more effective with your email marketing campaigns. Stand out by being of actual service.

With so many marketers spamming their emails out with affiliate links, when someone is helpful, you’ll know it. Sign up to a few email lists of people in your business topic/niche and decide for yourself which ones are worth opening over the longer term. This will give you an idea about how to come across in your own emails.

I’m still on a couple of email lists of people who I personally find useful. They don’t spam out affiliate links and instead they provide real value through their emails – helping first, selling later. Start by building trust by delivering value. When you can do that consistently, people will trust you and then they are more likely to buy from you if you’re offering something which is useful to them and is a good fit.

Make sure you stand by the product/s you are selling and they are the best products in your niche.

Overcoming Procrastination In Your Affiliate Marketing Business

So what are the best ways of overcoming procrastination in your affiliate marketing business. You know what I’m talking about. With great intentions for our business, it can still be easy to fall into bad habits and accomplish nothing. It’s easy to get sucked into social media channels and waste your time!

You need a system and a routine to create some positive habits which you can do on a daily basis – no matter how small.

In fact, breaking your big tasks down into inconceivably little tasks is one of the best ways to overcome procrastination. When we look at the mountain in one go, it’s overbearing. It’s too much to take on board all in one go. You know the saying about how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Overcoming Procrastination In Your Affiliate Marketing Business – Baby Steps

With a monumental task of building an online business, it’s easy to procrastinate. You can’t possibly do it all in one day. But by breaking down the big steps into small, easily achievable goals, and making habits out of them, you can easily get back on track.

Tasks you might be considering with your business are:

Building a profitable ad campaign
Building a YouTube channel for organic traffic
Building traffic to your blog
Creating an email campaign for your list
Learning a new strategy for marketing

However, these tasks are already too big when you’re not in the mood. You need to create smaller tasks which you can do on a daily basis and make habits out of:

Set up a single low budget advert (just to learn the skill)
Shoot a tester video and upload to YouTube (to lay the habit foundations)
Write a blog post on your blog
Write a single email to add to your outgoing messages for your list
Watch a single video on marketing

By breaking down the big tasks into smaller tasks, you are making it easy for yourself to take positive action – no matter how small. A rolling stone gathers no moss – once you’re “rolling” it’s easier to maintain momentum

Overcoming Procrastination In Your Affiliate Marketing Business – Remove Emotion From The Action

Big tasks are often tanged with heavy emotion. For example, building a YouTube channel which gets lots of traffic might take a huge amount of time and effort. If you’re uncertain of your direction, the videos you want to shoot and so on, this further adds to the blockage.

Remove that blockage by taking a super-tiny step towards the outcome your ultimately want. So in this case, shoot a “tester” video and upload it to YouTube. By calling it a “tester” video you don’t have to give it any importance and so that takes some pressure off you. You don’t even have to set it to “public” either. This takes all the pressure of “performing” and putting yourself out there. You only need to take a tiny action and learn the basic steps in uploading a video to YouTube.

You can use this same principle with building traffic to your blog. When faced with a large task like this, it’s overwhelming. How will you do it? What will you write about? Will it even work after all the effort you have taken? These types of questions only fuel your doubt, indecision and uncertainty. So you procrastinate. But without action you can be certain of failure!

Remove the emotion by taking micro steps towards your larger goals – every day. So instead of “building traffic to your blog” create a daily baby step of “writing a blog post”. It doesn’t even have to be a great one, just 400 words and you’re done. Then you’ve created some momentum and released yourself from the blockage.

Create A Daily Plan

With a daily plan, you take action every day. Monday might be a blog post, and to write to your email list. Tuesday might be to check your ads, or shoot a video. Wednesday is posting on social media day, or Quora answers day – see affiliate marketing on Quora.

When you focus on the big picture that is your profitable online business running on all cylinders (some time in the future), you create problems. But when you break large tasks into small, easily manageable steps, you start to take action. That’s where the magic happens.

Without action you know you’re not going to have a business. So procrastination needs to be dealt with with micro steps which are easily achieved. Breaking down goals into smaller steps is a powerful tool in the entrepreneurs box! Use it to create a day filled with small easily achievable actions, no matter how insignificant they might seem.

Even if the step only has the effect of dissolving your procrastination, it’s been worthwhile.

Look At Your “Foundations”

Have a look at your environment. How does it make you feel? If you’re surrounded with a messy environment, with unfinished projects all around, it’s unlikely to help you with finding the right state of mind for top tier productivity. Set up your “stall” and clear your working space as a priority.

The same goes for your emotional state. If you’re a bag of conflicting emotions and unresolved conflicts, it’s highly likely that it’s affecting your ability to work and focus. How is your health? Are you exercising?

overcoming procrastination in your affiliate marketing business

Getting the proper sleep and looking after your health should be a priority if you’re attempting to build something such as an affiliate business. You can’t build a skyscraper with the foundations of a cottage. So make sure you’re eating properly taking exercise and looking after yourself first!

If you’re stressed about something, it’s likely going to affect your ability to build an affiliate business. For years I was stressed about money and it did me no favours when it came to building an online business. I was building from a foundation of a poverty mindset.

Summary

So if you find yourself struggling with your affiliate business, take the long term view of your business and break it down into steps you can do right now, today. Don’t fill your mind with all the aspects of what you need to do in the far flung future; what you don’t know, or understand and how large the task is ahead of you. That only fuels the frustration you have been creating! Focus instead of a tiny first step you can do right now, however small.

Keep doing that and set yourself a weekly schedule of these tasks, and you’ll soon find yourself moving forwards again. Once the procrastination has subsided, you’ll find other things you can focus on to move your business forwards too.

If you’ve enjoyed this article please share it on your social media platform! If you’re interested in starting an online business from scratch you can get more information here.