Category: Affiliate Marketing Mentor Blog

Here’s my affiliate marketing mentors blog! I’ve been an affiliate marketer since the early 2000’s and I ran into a lot of problems which, perhaps you have too?

I tried all sorts of strategies at first from building niche websites, running Google Adwords ads, blogging and using free blog platforms such as Hubpages and Blogger.com.

The struggle was pretty real but I was determined to make affiliate marketing work for me because life was so difficult in the many jobs I juggled to keep the wolf from the door!

In 2014 I found a community of online marketing mentors. I decided to start agains from scratch and “empty my cup”. It was tough and it’s hard to let go of thinking you know something when you really don’t!

I don’t consider myself an affiliate marketing mentor, although I hope that this website helps people who are learning. No, I’m still, and always will be a student, which means I can keep emptying my cup when it gets too full of the idea that I know something. The online world changes a lot and very quickly. So just when you think you are getting somewhere, everything is different and you’re starting all over again!

Welcome to affiliate marketing mentors!

How To Pull Yourself Out Of A Rut In Affiliate Marketing

How to pull yourself out of a rut in affiliate marketing? In the last few posts I’ve talked about getting people to your affiliate link. That’s the basis for making money online with affiliate marketing. Although it’s relatively simple to do this, we often complicate things as the complex humans that we are! We can get lost in hours upon hours of training videos, and dawdle for days, weeks and even months, getting nothing done!

But nothing happens in affiliate marketing unless you actually do the work. That means actually taking action, and the actions which bring people to your offer. Even here, we can start looking for results before we have done much. Then we get demoralised and doubt ourselves and even whether affiliate marketing works at all! But it doesn’t work unless you do!

You need to put in a lot of effort upfront with affiliate marketing in order to see some results. When results come your belief grows. Once you have a huge belief in what you’re doing, you tend to work all the more because you know you can succeed. But before this stage, you can procrastinate on your marketing method, doubt yourself or the products you’re selling and generally stagnate. This can lead you into a rut, where you do nothing because your belief is so low.

How To Pull Yourself Out Of A Rut In Affiliate Marketing – Belief

So before you even begin with a marketing method to drive traffic you need to work on belief! If you’re full of belief then checkout the marketing strategies you can use. When you’re fired up with belief, no job is too difficult. But when you’re feeling down and out, you’re discouraged and demoralised, even a small task feels like a massive burden.

Having a tool to fire up your belief is therefore pretty useful when these times come, and they will! When your belief is low, you’ll tell yourself things such as:

I don’t know what to do
It doesn’t work no matter how hard I try
I can’t afford it
It’s not worth the stress
I can’t..
Etc.

Your mind fills with negative thoughts and the result is zero action. The result of this is most definitely not going to be a successful affiliate business. When you start taking action, you start to see results, even if they are only small results. But if you fill your mind with negativity you simply won’t want to take any action, which is why you’re stuck.

How To Pull Yourself Out Of A Rut In Affiliate Marketing – Repetition

One of the best resources I’ve found on this topic is called Cybernetic Transposition. An MIT professor named Stuart Lichtman wrote a book in which he shares his strategy for achievement of a seeming impossible goal on the first try! See also Stuart Lichtman Cybernetic Transposition.

After developing his cybernetic transposition technique, he tested in on a group of 50,000 people. 81% achieved a seeming impossible goal on their first attempt.

The main strategy in CT (Cybernetic Transposition) is repetition of a meaningful goal – writing it out repeatedly again and again. Now when you’re in a state of demoralisation, you probably don’t feel incredibly inspired by anything, so it’s useful to start small.

Find an attractive goal you can believe in which you can see yourself accomplish in the next couple of weeks. Don’t choose something which is seemingly impossible, because you need to build up your belief in CT first, before you move on to more difficult accomplishments.

How To Pull Yourself Out Of A Rut In Affiliate Marketing – Start Small

A small goal which will get the ball rolling is what you want. If you’re in a rut, you’re probably repeating negative ideas in your head. Each time you go to do something on your business, you stop because your belief is so low.

“What’s the point”, “It never amounts to anything anyway”, “I don’t know where to begin” and so on and the inner mantras which keep you stuck. You repeat them over and over in your mind, so it’s no wonder you don’t know where to start!

We need to reverse this pattern and start focusing on some positive suggestions instead of the negative ones. This is done through finding a positive goal/intention you want for your business. Here’s a few ideas (starting small):

I’m now in a flow state, taking action on my business every day
I am ready to build a new positive habit for my business
I’m now making sales in my online business on a regular basis
I now make 5 sales a month/week/day in my online business

You get the idea. The key is to focus on a goal which you’re comfortable with and which gives you some positive emotion. If it’s too hard, you won’t believe it. If it’s too easy you won’t care about it. But ideally find something which you can achieve fairly easily within a few weeks for your business.

For me, writing an article a day is a good place (for me) to start. So I would write, “I am now writing an article a day on my website”.

Repetition

Once you have found a small easily achievable goal, the next step is to write our this goal at least 10 times each day. It can take some time to find a goal which you are excited about, and which spurs you into action. But spend some time finding it because it really does work!

The goal is only one which gets you out of your rut and into a slightly better mental state where you’re taking consistent action in your affiliate business, or whatever goal you have selected. Once you are out of the “rut”, and into a space of regular action, you’ll start feeling better. Even if your action is just a small one you can take each day!

After your 2-3 weeks has passed you can re-evaluate, based on what you have achieved. The key concept is to build up trust in CT (Cybernetic transposition) technique so you can step up the difficulty over time. Now you are in a better state of mind, and have achieved a small “win”, you can increase the difficulty.

Summary

When you’re in a rut, your mind is focused on the negative. You tell yourself things which don’t move you into action. By choosing a small, easily achievable goal, you can use repetition to change this tendency. Instead of repeating a mental habit which keeps you stuck, you find a mantra/goal you can repeat which moves you into a slightly better mental state and helps you instigate some small action step.

This step alone isn’t some massive goal or milestone. It’s more designed to be a small enough goal to move you into a better mental state and shift your energy into one of action taking. From this place, you’re much more empowered. You can build your belief in the process over time, shifting to larger goals as you go.

Choose a positive mantra/goal to repeat to your mind over and over. This has a two fold benefit: one is you don’t have room in your mind for your old mental repetitions of the negative ideas because you’re busy repeating the new, positive idea. Two, your subconscious mind is listening to your every thought and it will come up with ideas and suggestions for how to bring about your new intention.

Do this for long enough, and you will receive ideas from your unconscious mind for action steps to take. It’s also helpful to have write down a goal which is easily remembered. That way, whenever the negative thoughts come up, just start repeating your new positive mantra/goal in place of the old pattern.

If you’re in a rut, the other thing I’d recommend is writing a gratitude journal. See also why gratitude is the affiliate’s super power.

Attracting The Right Audience For Affiliate Marketing

Attracting the right audience for affiliate marketing is definitely something to understand. As a beginner, I thought everyone was going to want my products, whoever they were! But just because you see the value in an affiliate product doesn’t mean that’s what everyone sees. In fact your own prejudice can distract you from learning what’s most important with online selling; knowing your customer.

There’s a saying in sales – try and sell everyone and you sell (to) no-one. When I first discovered affiliate marketing I assumed I could simply post my affiliate link on my social media platforms and make sales. But that only happens if you’re also attracting the right audience and relaying information to them which they actually want. Most people online don’t give a hoot about your product. When you get really, really clear on who does want your product, things will massively change.

Attracting The Right Audience For Affiliate Marketing – What Happens Next?

Two things happen when you understand your audience. One is that you can target them more specifically with your advertising and content. When you can get your messaging in front of the right people things change massively. The second thing is when you understand them better you can communicate to them better. So you can relay marketing messaging which is useful to them.

If you understand your audience’s pain points, for example, you can use this to convey the value of your product in solving them. If you don’t understand your customer avatar (target audience), you’ll throw endless content and advertising at the wrong people and waste a lot of time and money.

The key is to get pin point accurate about who you target with your marketing. Focus on the tiny slither of the online marketplace who is most likely to want what you have – not the endless critics who don’t care about your product!

The problem with the online space is there’s millions of people in it! When you can zone in and communicate with a specific person who has specific problems which your products can solve, you’re going to sell more for less! It’s a “sniper” approach rather than a scatter gun approach!

Attracting The Right Audience For Affiliate Marketing – Define Your Target Audience

So before you do any marketing, it’s worth spending some serious time thinking about who your products serve the best. If you already have customers, can you identify what they have in common? If not, what kind of person are you looking for? How old are they? Do they have a family? If you’re selling a business course, it might be you’re looking for people over 30, for example. If you’re selling dating advice for men, you’ll want to target only men in your advertising.

It’s also worth looking at the issues your target audience might be facing. Those are the things to talk about in your advertising. So for example if you’re selling an online business course to someone who wants to escape their job, you could talk about the pain point of working 60 hours a week in a job and how your course is a solution.

The more advertising you run, the more you should learn about your target audience. Those people who buy from you are a strong indicator as to the target demographics of your perfect customer avatar. Look at the things which tie your customers together such as age, sex, location, interests and so on. When you understand your target audience you’ll spend your advertising much more prudently and you’re more likely to become profitable.

Why Affiliates Quit

It’s a fact that affiliate marketing has a super high drop out rate of something like 95%. That means only 5% carry on long enough to make affiliate marketing pay long term. But one of the reasons for this is the lack of understanding of the target audience or customer avatar.

As a beginner you’re throwing a lot of “mud” at the wall in terms of your marketing efforts. But much of this is wasted. As you gain some experience, and learn more about your “perfect” customer, you’ll spend less to acquire more customers.

This is a major tipping point and the result of a lot of hard work. But ultimately once you reach this point, it’s going to get easier. You’ve learned from all the testing and measuring of the work you’ve done previously. The trouble is many new affiliates consider this work to be fruitless because they haven’t turned a profit yet. But if they only stick it out and learn from the data, they can fine tune their marketing efforts and focus on the right audience.

This means they’ll spend less and earn more.

Communicating

Communicating to your “customer avatar” is just as important, if not more, than knowing who they are in the first place. If you throw out beige marketing material that doesn’t speak to their pain points or needs, it will have no effect. That’s because you’re not talking to your customer directly. You’re trying to talk to everyone. A specific marketing message is meant for a specific person with their own individual pains and needs.

When you talk to the pains and needs of your customer avatar, they recognise the value in what you’re saying because it relates to them specifically.

So, for example, if someone wants to escape their corporate career and you talk about sales funnels, in your advert, they can’t relate to it! They don’t know what a sales funnel is! They click away from your advert!

If you explain how an online business allowed you to escape your corporate career, you have their attention! They can relate because their pain is their career is sucking all their time away and they feel trapped. When you speak to the pain points of your potential customer, you become relatable and build trust.

Pre Sell Affiliate Marketing

Pre sell affiliate marketing is a means of positioning your affiliate product before the sales pitch. A pre sell page is often the first point of contact with the customer. It is used to educate customers about a product and persuade them to take action when they hit the sales page! With the right pre sell page, your sales rate can dramatically increase.

A pre sell page can use bullet points, testimonials and benefits in order to highlight the case for purchase.

It’s used to “fire” up a customer and turn them from a warm lead into a “hot” lead.

Pre Sell Affiliate Marketing

In yesterday’s blog post I talked about getting people to your affiliate link. But it’s often how you get them there which makes the most difference. Most people when they land on a sales page aren’t ready to make a purchase. This is why the email list is so important. When you spend your advertising dollars on directing people directly to a sales page, you waste most of it. That’s because most people will simply bounce.

Why? Studies have shown that most online consumers will want at least a few touch points with a product or website before they make the sale. They want assurance that the product/website is genuine and that it will genuinely help them. You can’t really blame them, I’m the same with someone I don’t know, particularly in the online world.

Amazon perhaps is one exception because it has built up a recognisable and trustworthy brand. But if you’re an affiliate you haven’t done that! That’s what the email list is for. With an email list you can build trust through offering value to your potential customers.

Pre Sell Affiliate – Positioning

Pre selling is simply positioning of the product through the building of trust. Often a pre sell page will have testimonials, or benefits on it. This positions the product in a more attractive light, so when the customer lands on the sales page, they’re more geared up to buy.

“Pre selling” can be done through an advert too and it is the affiliates who make a lot of effort on their “front end” advertising who do the best. That’s because they have positioned their product to their audience before they even sign up to your email list.

A good video advert simply makes the business work. If you communicate the value of your product through your advertising, there’s a lot less work needed to do the selling. You’ve already “positioned” the product in a way which speaks directly to the needs of your audience.

This is why it’s so important to know who you’re selling to. I mentioned this in my last post too. It’s not enough to get people to your affiliate link. You also need to get the right people to it and position the product in a way that communicates its value directly to their needs!

Pre Sell Affiliate Marketing Example

For example, one of my YouTube adverts talked about my own personal journey in becoming an affiliate marketer. I knew I was fed up of struggling with my previous career, but I was stuck in it! In my advert I stated that “I didn’t want the next 10 years to be the same as the last” – meaning my struggling with money and juggling work commitments.

I picked up customer from this messaging because her own situation was similar and she wanted to spend more time with her family and less time in a corporate career.

By positioning the product I promote, the online business training, (learn more here) as a solution to her problem, I was able to communicate it’s value through my advertising.

Summary

The pre sell works if you’re an affiliate and if you can position a product to a very specific audience and get the messaging right, your sales can get a massive boost. The key is to know the type of person who would benefit the most from your product and create a marketing message which speaks to their pain or needs.

This is the customer avatar and it’s worth spending some time learning exactly who you wish to help with your products. When you have absolute clarity as to the small slice of the online marketplace you want to put your products in front of, it gets much easier promoting them because you know for a fact they are a good fit for your customer.

If you’re harbouring doubt about your product, you’ll likely convey this in your messaging. At the very least you won’t feel right promoting something you’re not aligned with and this can have a negative effect on your affiliate efforts.

Get People To Your Affiliate Link

Affiliate marketing is simple – just get people to your affiliate link! Well, ok it’s a little more complicated than that. But that makes for a good starting point. Once you learn how to get more people to your affiliate link, and more of the right type of people, you will understand how to make money with affiliate marketing.

It’s easy to complicate things. You procrastinate on your direction, your marketing method or you want everything to be perfect before you start. You spend hours straightening out your desk and tidying your room. Then, when it comes to actually doing the work, you hesitate. Suddenly the house needs tidying. Or you need to do some other urgent activity, such as sorting out your sock drawer!

If you’re ever finding yourself in procrastination mode, just remember: get people to your affiliate link!

Get People To Your Affiliate Link

I’m no stranger to procrastination and have recently been through some life turmoil which has thrown my affiliate habits into disarray. But the one thing I know which will help me climb back up into productive action steps is to get people to my affiliate links.

Fortunately for me I’ve already made some sales. This means I have some habits and evidence to back up my beliefs around the topic. If I were a complete beginner, I would have all sorts of conflicting beliefs holding me back – see goal setting and identity shift if that’s you.

But once you have cleared the mental baggage, it’s time to roll your selves up and do the work. That’s much harder when you’re in some kind of mental conflict over it, which incidentally I have been for some time.

People Only Care About WIIFM – What’s In It For Me

Here’s an important point when you’re attempting to get people to your link. They only care about themselves. Not to judge, but that’s just how people work. You don’t care about a blog post you’re reading and whether an affiliate makes a sale from you. You only care about what you can get from it. When you’re trying to sell something online, this important fact is worth bearing in mind.

So before you promote your affiliate “link” you need to know who is serves the best and how you can help them. People don’t buy from “links” because there’s a link there. They buy when there’s something in it for them. So don’t sell the product sell the outcome. This is what affiliates mean when they say focus on the benefits rather than the features.

A feature of the program I promote, for example, is that it lays down step by step video tutorials which are easy to follow. The benefit is that it can help you to make a living online.

People don’t care about features, so don’t talk about them. Focus on the benefit to the customer because that’s the reason they buy from you.

How To Get People To Your Link

There’s lots of ways to get people to your affiliate link and here’s just a few:

Use email marketing – promoting affiliate products through links in email messages
Use pop ups on your website to offer some giveaway (lead magnet) which encourages someone to sign up to your email list
Blogging – this blog post is being used to attract potential customers (I’ll share this on social media and send it out to my email list)
PPC – pay per click advertising gives you a fast way to generate traffic to a piece of content, and email list or some kind of offer.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation is a way to rank content online and find traffic from the search engines

Of course different methods produce different outcomes and paid advertising is much faster than SEO for example. But the main thing to focus on is some activity which produces momentum you can maintain and add to over time, even if it’s only a small action daily (such as writing a blog post).

Finding Motivation For Daily Action

To get more and more people to see your offer, and therefore click on your affiliate link, you need to create momentum. It’s so easy to lose this by focusing on the negatives. You mind harbours beliefs around many things. The ideas you focus on will either drive you towards action or away from it fuelled by the thoughts you are giving energy to.

So make sure the content you absorb is giving more weight to the actions you need to take to build your affiliate business. If you’re focused on bad news, endless conflict on social media, it’s not going to help. But focus on positive content and you’ll soon shift you thinking and therefore actions.

Small daily steps you take are much better than grand ideas which never happen! When you take these steps daily, it becomes a habit. This is hard to break over the long term the more established it becomes.

As Bruce Lee once said, “long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity“.

One Step

So write down one thing you can do now, today which will attract more people towards your affiliate link. Even if it’s only one person, just make the commitment to do that one little thing.

Do it now!

Did you do it?

When you do this rather than procrastinate around the large things which are much further from your grasp, you begin to create momentum towards your goals.

Break big goals into small achievable chunks and they become much, much easier.

What To Expect With Affiliate Marketing

What To Expect With Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is a means of turning online action into cash! You don’t need any products of your own and you don’t need any experience. In fact almost anyone can do affiliate marketing. You only need an internet connection and a laptop.

But what can you expect from affiliate marketing? How much can you earn and when do you start earning from it?

I chose affiliate marketing after trying out several “online earning” strategies. Although making money with affiliate marketing isn’t a walk in the park, it’s definitely one of the simplest ways to do it. I tried other things such as Forex marketing, eBay and Adsense (earning through advertising clicks). I even tried to sell my own ebook, without much success.

But it was with affiliate marketing where the success seemed to come easiest for me.

What To Expect With Affiliate Marketing

That’s not to say affiliate marketing is “easy”, although it can be at times. The “ease” tends to come after a lot of work. I believe this is often the reason why so many quit too early. Unlike a job, you don’t get paid as an affiliate for “time served” but rather for results. If you don’t make any sales you don’t get paid. So if you put in a certain amount of hours, and expect to come away with a pay packet just for showing up, you’ll be disappointed.

On the other hand you can get lucky. In principle you could join an affiliate program, post your link online and make a sale instantly.

Some people seem to have faster results than others. It really depends on you. That’s why affiliate marketing is best suited to entrepreneurial types who want to be their own boss. They’ll work much harder for their own money, than they would in a job, for example for a pay packet.

If you’re highly motivated to be financially independent, affiliate marketing might be the ticket!

What To Expect With Affiliate Marketing – Hurdles and Personal Growth

I definitely wouldn’t have stuck with affiliate marketing as long as I have if I wasn’t interested in personal growth. In fact it was one of the main reasons to attempt such a challenging career.

I have been through periods of not earning from affiliate marketing and then earning large sums quickly. Then, it goes back to not earning much again. Each month is different when you’re getting the wheels spinning and in the beginning you can expect a lot of work for not much reward. While that’s not terribly inspiring, it’s the freedom it gives later.

You can earn passively from affiliate marketing and that’s one of my main reasons for doing in. Even after some time out, those recurring commissions still trickle in. Plus you can be your own boss. This means taking time off when you want, not when you boss allows it.

If you remind yourself of the reasons like these for doing affiliate marketing it inspires you to keep going through the rough patches.

How Much Can You Earn?

I’ve known affiliates who earn 6 figures and above from affiliate marketing and my income has always been sporadic with it. Still I’ve had months where I earn over $5,000 and months where I’ve earned nothing! But the sky is the limit and if you’re ambitious you can earn a high income if you choose the right program to promote and go about it the right way.

How long it takes to earn consistently depends again on the program you choose and your advertising methods. Some affiliates who use paid marketing have seen amazing results in less than a year. If you’re blogging, or using some other organic marketing strategy it will of course take much longer.

The benefit of a longer term strategy such as content creation is that you build up a “bank” of content you can use later. This content attracts the attention of the search engines and people will link to it – especially if it’s useful. This means over time you can benefit from passive traffic and therefore passive income from sales. But organic traffic is definitely a longer term and slower strategy than paid marketing.

Paid Marketing Versus Organic

Paid marketing also has the benefit of being scalable. So when you hit upon a strategy which is profitable, you can easily get more sales simply by increasing your marketing budget. With organic marketing this isn’t so easy. But the advantage or organic marketing is the slow burning trickle of traffic which keeps coming and you don’t pay for it.

Ideally you should definitely use some paid advertising, even if only a little. It’s much more difficult to get traction from organic traffic alone. Plus, if you’re in a competitive niche there’s a lot more competition.

It’s also definitely worth finding a product which has some kind of membership product attached. With a membership product you benefit from residual income from repeat custom. This piece of advice is worth a lot and it’s something I didn’t know or understand as a beginner affiliate. I choose to sell low cost items from Amazon and made tiny commissions.

Instead, choose high ticket items with subscription products which give you higher commissions and recurring commissions. It’s much easier to build an online business this way.

If you’ve liked this post please share it! Thanks and good luck!

Simplifying The Complicated

Simplifying the complicated is much more difficult than it might seem! An online business, for example, is complicated really. There’s multiple things to consider when building an income online. But once you have set up your marketing funnel and have products to sell, it’s fairly simple. The only thing you need do is focus on your marketing strategy.

When you’re in the beginning phase though, there’s lots more to think about. You wonder about what product/s to sell and how you’re going to sell them. You consider using paid marketing or whether to create content instead. It can all get completely overwhelming in the first instance which is why so many affiliates struggle to make any money online at all!

Dealing with overwhelm is done a small thing at a time. One of the best things you can do for your online business, and your life, is simplify it somehow. That’s done by taking a step by step approach.

Simplifying The Complicated – Step By Step

When you decide to take on a big project such as building an online business, you need to focus on the next step and only that. It’s too easy to get bogged down in indecision and overwhelm. Just recently I’ve found myself in a near constant state of overwhelm. Nothing has got done, nothing! In fact I’ve procrastinated for months because I’ve simply been juggling too many ideas in my head, and trying to do too many projects all at once!

The deadly social media platforms had me sucked in too. That’s what they are designed to do – suck you in. They are like an evil vortex and they’ll completely suck away your life if you allow it!

Of course the last few years haven’t been typical either and they’ve brought more of their fair share of anxiety to even the most grounded of people. But when the dust settles it’s back to the “grindstone” as the saying goes – although there’s probably a more positive spin on that! For me that means picking up my blogging again, which I have to say I have neglected for some time due to stress, a break up, a house move, money worries and various other things I’ve been juggling to keep mind and soul together!

Simplifying The Complicated – When Calamity Strikes, Start Again!

There’s no way of stopping calamity striking. When it does, sometimes the best thing you can do is to start again. Only this time, you’re better prepared and better informed. In my best moments with this online business I was writing posts I was passionate about. I enjoyed the process. But having been under fire financially lately I wasn’t in a fit state to do so! I had to find work and blogging took a back seat.

I’ve known other online business owners have problems too. It’s definitely not all plain sailing. In a business you have to do the work first, before you get paid! So the passion has to be the driver. When it’s not there, your business is dead in the water!

What inspires me about this online business journey is that it isn’t easy. I always get bored in a steady job because there’s no risk! Big rewards come with risks. As the SAS (Special Air Service) motto says, he “Who Dares Wins” – and also Del Boy from Only Fools and Horses (A UK sitcom)!

When Life Knocks You Down – Get Up Again

When life knocks you down, you can only get up again. The Japanese have a saying that looks like this:

It says “fall down seven times stand up eight“: Nana korobi, ya oki.

Since 8 is more than 7, the expression conveys a really strong will to get up after the fall. It means never give up!

I had a martial arts teacher once tell me that “most people’s minds are a mess”. There’s a lot of truth in it. After a fall, your mind is a mess. To get clear is the beginning. Then you only need to take a single next step. You can’t figure everything out all at once when you’re in a state of flux. So take some baby steps forwards and do only what is necessary when you are struggling. When you’re running on all cylinders, things can run more quickly when you know which direction you’re travelling in!

Summary

This post has been a bit of a rant but the purpose for me was to get back on the “horse” writing my blog posts again, which I used to enjoy so much! After a lot of confusion and flux in my life, I struggled to get back to the daily tasks which I had set myself. My good habits completely died.

I was confused and anxious about the future. The result was little to no effort on my behalf as I watched my online business dwindle! It just shows how important your mental health and well being are in life. The last few years have thrown a lot of curve balls at many people, me included.

The conclusion I would like to draw is to keep your head, above all things. Focus on the things you can control, and not the things you can’t! Simplify things in your life, but in your head first, since that’s where all your activity starts!

“Simplifying the complicated” really means keeping a focus on what’s important. In the last year I have forgotten this and became distracted with too much other stuff I can’t control.

Unless you keep your head, you’ll complicate everything. Particularly in business, you need your head to be in a good, focused state of being. This is something worth nurturing and avoiding distraction is one of the main things you can do to help with this, particularly in the internet age as we are being bombarded with contradictory messaging.

Is AI Changing The Face Of Blogging?

Is AI changing the face of blogging? There’s a massive increase in artificial intelligence being used online even by many bloggers themselves. So does this mean making money from blogging is becoming more difficult? I certainly think so. With over 600 million blogs on the internet and more arriving all the time, is now to time to throw in the towel if you’re a blogger?

I’ve definitely seen a decrease in my own traffic and other bloggers have said the same. Google now uses it’s own AI at the top of the search algorithm for many searches. This move for starters means hard working bloggers are sifting down the rankings more by the day – that’s if they had a ranking in the first place, which many don’t!

Is AI Changing The Face Of Blogging?

Despite the overreach of AI changing the SEO (search engine optimisation) space for bloggers, there’s still hope. Many bloggers attest to using AI at least in part when it comes to writing their posts. I personally enjoy the process of writing and coming up with ideas. However, AI can help you both write content and come up with ideas. You literally don’t need to think any more because the machines will do it for you! Much like the main stream news outlets (I’ll probably pay for that!).

I’ve also noticed a change in the paid for advertisements on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPS). They don’t appear at the top as frequently. Here’s the results at the top of the page for the search “making money online”:

The search term used to be full of paid ads but now there’s almost zero! I only found one of them at the very bottom of the page for this search term. AI is dominating at the top of the page followed by the organic results (high domain authority websites with millions of backlinks). There’s zero affiliates ranking anywhere near the top. Of course this is a super competitive term.

Blogging Versus AI

Writing a blog post of 1000 words can take a couple of hours. When AI can do the same job in a few seconds where’s the incentive to write? There isn’t any. When you see your hard work being corroded away by AI, and your rankings drop, it’s pretty tough to continue unabated as a blogger. There are of course other avenues to get eyes on your blog posts. You can post on social media, backlink from other sites and build an email list of subscribers to showcase your content to.

In an untapped niche, you’re going to have an easier time of it than in a very competitive one too. There’s still people who would prefer to read human written blog posts over AI written blogs. But when you can’t tell the difference, it gets tricky maintaining blogging as a viable living.

AI is here to stay and I know a number of people personally who have been massively affected by AI already. One of them made their living writing and has had her job completely replaced. Nobody wants to hire someone for $50 a post when AI can do it for free!

I’ve always enjoyed blogging but have to admit that I’m looking for alternative ways to connect with people online (such as video) due to the changing landscape!

Summary

AI is changing the world and to get ahead you need to be prepared for this fact. It’s coming for jobs in every sector and in the next 10 years a lot of people will need alternative income sources to maintain independence.

Blogging is definitely a sector that is being massively impacted by AI and I don’t see this changing for the benefit of bloggers anytime soon! If you’re a blogger and have been affected I’ve love to hear from you. Please leave a comment with your experience.

A Digital Vending Machine Business

A few years ago I bought an ebook on eBay to help me earn some extra money online. The book taught a system of how to buy and sell from eBay using the misspell tool to find bargains and sell them for a profit. But what struck me about the purchase of the ebook was the simplicity of it. I paid online (through Paypal) and the ebook was delivered automatically over the internet to my laptop.

It was a completed automated transaction.

Of course now in 2024 we are all pretty familiar with these transactions. But how many of us are using them to make money as opposed to spending it? We have all pretty much bought something online by now, from Amazon, or eBay or some other online store. But how many of us are actually earning through these online transactions?

A Digital Vending Machine Business

After a while of buying and selling on eBay I turned my attention back to the ebook I had bought. I wondered if I could sell my own ebook from a website and earn from each download. If so, I thought, I could create my ebook once, and sell it multiple times. I wouldn’t need to recreate it because it would be held as a digital downloadable product which was self multiplying!

I created the website and ebook and attempted to sell it by posting it on social media. However, I had some problems and the main problem was getting people to find my ebook. So I joined a course which taught me how to get more traffic. My hope was to learn this skill and then sell my ebook with it!
However, I discovered a much easier method of making money online and that was to sell other people’s products instead.

During the course I realised that I could sell the course I had just bought and make more for the referral than through selling my own ebook (even at 100% profit for my own book)!

A Digital Vending Machine Business – Affiliate Marketing

My ebook was selling for around $10, and the course was $100, of which I could earn 40% ($40). So even though the product wasn’t my own, I could earn much more from referral selling online than with a product I had created myself!

The business model is affiliate marketing and it’s surprising how few people are aware (even now) of this incredibly simple business model. With affiliate marketing you get paid for referrals. So if you find a product you would like to promote, you can earn an extra income simply through online referrals. You don’t have to deal with customers and you don’t have to personally handle products either.

It’s effectively a digital vending machine business where you use online content to send people to other people’s products. When you make a sale through one of your links, you earn a commission based on the sale.

Why Use A Digital Vending Machine

I always liked the idea of vending machines. They deliver products automatically to customers. At the end of the week/month, you collect the cash in the machine and top up the products. What’s better than an automated cash making machine which makes you money on autopilot? I’ll tell you – it’s a digital vending machine which doesn’t need filling up or the cash collecting. You get paid directly for the work you do online.

So what’s the catch? Why isn’t everyone cashing in on this digital gold rush? Well not everyone knows about affiliate marketing so there’s that. But there’s also a high drop out rate in the business too. There’s a lot of competition too, so that means it’s not that easy! You can’t just throw up a website, get automated traffic and make sales. It’s a little more complicated that that!

However, once you understand how to make a single sale online, you can repeat your efforts and automate the process. Think about an automated online vending machine selling for you over and over!

Why People Become Affiliate Marketers – Freedom

One of the main driving motivators for people when they become affiliate marketers is the freedom it can offer. Once you have a profitable campaign running with your affiliate business, you can leave it running potentially forever. It generates sales for you and pays you for the referrals. No dealing with customers or products. You only job is to refer online sales and there’s several ways you can do this:

Running ads – paid advertising is one of the best ways to generate sales online and it’s also globally scalable
Creating content – creating content can take many forms such as blogging or video blogging, for example
Social media marketing – some marketers use social media to post their content and others run ads on their social media sites.
Email marketing – most affiliates build a list of subscribers who they can promote products and services to.

If you’re interested in learning more about earning an income online through the sale of other people’s products/services checkout this video to get started.

Sharpening Your Axe

How does sharpening your axe relate to building an online business? Abraham Lincoln said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. It’s a useful analogy to remember whenever you’re attempting any large task or undertaking. The “axe” in the case of building an online business is your mind, or better yet your intention.

With a strong intention, clear vision and an awareness of your most likely obstacles, it is much easier to drive towards your goals and aspirations. But if you harbour doubt, are insecure about your mission or vision, or you are unclear about your path, you’re already inhibiting your intention with the seeds of doubt.

Doubt will kill off your ambitions pretty quickly as will uncertainty and even fear of failure. There must be no doubt in your mind. If there is, you might ask for someone’s approval, which is the surest way to add more doubt and uncertainty. Most people aren’t interested in your aspiring beyond their own goals and ambitions, if they have any. So keep things to yourself, set yourself a clear objective and fuel your intention with belief. Here’s how to do it!

Sharpening Your Axe

A little while ago I found a video online of a guy talking about building an online business. It seemed so magical to build a business online which could give me a life of freedom and flexibility. Little did I know the journey up ahead. After a few early sales online I thought I was on my way. But I found my “inner” world would get in the way of success for me.

My old patterns of thinking meant that I quickly spent my earnings, rather than re-invest them into the business. I soon found myself back at square one, with little marketing budget and this further fuelled my feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty. In turn, these inner demons cycled me into procrastination, doubt and depression. In such a state, it’s pretty near impossible to build something, especially if you don’t have a roadmap with which to do it.

But this cycle was a typical pattern for me, and I was well familiar with it. What I subsequently learned was the opposite pattern was what I needed.

Sharpening Your Axe – What Successful People Do

The habit of being down on yourself, talking yourself out of things which will improve your life might sound familiar. This pattern fuels inaction, doubt and procrastination. Ultimately it leads to more of the same. What successful people do is the opposite to this.

They inspire themselves with positive self talk, take action and use positive feedback to further install the positive self image which they build on over time. This is the cycle of belief which either leads you downwards or upwards. At any given moment, you’re either going up or down with your self talk, feelings and emotions.

You can “hijack” this unconscious tendency if you make it conscious, and focus on the things which will encourage and support a new self image and new course of action. Successful people tend to have this pattern “installed”, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Identify The Negative “Triggers”

Negative triggers can lower your emotional state. These are events or mental “triggers” such as a disagreement, situation, or a bad experience. Even small things can trigger negative emotions from experiences which happened years ago.

It’s well worth getting therapy if you have some childhood trauma, for example, which can help you clear and overcome this. Over time you can become entangled with negative triggers which lead you into a negative emotional state unconsciously. If this becomes your default state, you are literally feeling low most of the time. It can be very difficult to get out of this if you start identifying the state with who you are! See also goal setting and identity shift.

If this is happening to you, you might be dealing with grief, or triggering feelings of loss or grief which you haven’t dealt with properly. If you have deep grief from experiences in your life, it is these you experience when you come up against issues within your business. So, even a small hiccup in building your business can send you down into a pit of depression.

Identifying these triggers can help you avoid them and create a less painful experience. If you don’t identify them, you’ll likely come up against them and project their cause as the current issue, rather than the old, painful trauma.

These can be the likely hurdles to building an online business. Identifying them will help you keep from running into them again and again!

Set An Intention And Write It Down

Intention setting is a great way to clear out the debris, focus on what you would like to achieve and set it out clearly in a way your subconscious mind can understand. A good, clear intention should be written out a number of times and adjusted to fit a specific criteria:

You really, really want it
You 100% believe you can achieve it

Once you have your focused intention, you can write it out and repeat it over and over to yourself. As you do so, certain feelings/emotions will likely surface. As they do, pay attention. This is your subconscious mind communicating how it feels about your goal.

These are likely the blockages which you might use to excuse yourself from the task ahead! They are feelings of inadequacy, or doubts and fears. Notice them and pay attention. Are they justified? Perhaps your goal is too lofty for you to believe? Or you’re talking yourself out of it because you don’t really care about the goal?

Pay attention to these feelings as they arise and re-write your goal to align with the two main criteria:

You really, really want it
You 100% believe you can achieve it

If you don’t really want your goal, you’ll soon abandon it. If you don’t believe you can achieve it, the same will happen. When you align the two you will find a goal/intention which aligns all parts of you. When this happens, it’s much easier to overcome any feelings of doubt and internal resistance to your intention.

Cybernetic Transposition

A MIT professor named Stuart Lichtman wrote a book on a subject called cybernetic transposition. This is the best book I’ve found on the topic of dream realisation/goal and intention setting. See Stuart Lichtman cybernetic transposition.

On a trial of 50,000 participants 81% achieved a seemingly impossible goal on their first attempt using this strategy. In short, you write your goal out multiple times over and over. This hardwires the goal/intention into the subconscious mind and it gets to work on it.

You also must listen to your intuition and re-write your goal so that it aligns with the principles:

You really, really want it
You 100% believe you can achieve it

If a goal brings up doubts, it needs re-writing so you fully believe it and really want it. If you don’t really want it, you’re not going to do the exercise and write it out hundreds of times!

Sharpening Your Axe

When you fill your mind with doubt, fear and scepticism, you create circumstances and situations of a like mind. But when you do the opposite, and focus on your intentions and goals, your subconscious mind delivers ideas and insights which can help bring about the results you want in life.

“Sharpening your axe” when it comes to building something like an online business refers to this principle. Without a clear intention, a roadmap for success, and a strong desire to realise the outcome you want, small, relatively insignificant problems are enough to derail your plans. Small problems become big problems. If you are harbouring negative ideas and inner demons and problems from long ago, they will surely surface when problems arise.

Sharpening your axe means uncovering your inner shadow and facing the inner pains which you may have pushed away and avoided. The grief from long ago will surface when faced with difficulties. By becoming aware of it, you loosen its grip on you. You become free from troubling emotions and can focus on your dreams and aspirations without fear, doubt or scepticism.

It is these negative emotions which are the biggest obstacle to overcome because they rear their head when something goes wrong which on the surface is superficial, but underneath causes a lot of emotional pain.

Mindset And Affiliate Marketing

Mindset and affiliate marketing go hand in hand. There’s no doubt, if you want success as an affiliate marketer, you must conquer your mindset. But why is mindset so important? Why can’t someone succeed by just following a step by step “formula”? As a beginner in affiliate marketing I was sceptical of all the “mindset” training, as it was called. Why bother, I thought? Why not just crack on, do the necessary and make a great income from affiliate marketing?

So I attempted to do just that – follow a step by step “formula” to make money in affiliate marketing. But there were obstacles. Your first advert might not work, for example, as many of mine didn’t at first. That first article you write, with keen anticipation, doesn’t get as many visitors as you had hoped. Attempts to build your email list are met with problems. I had so many problems as an affiliate in so many areas. If I wasn’t so stubborn, I would have quit years ago. But here’s why mindset is so important. 95% of affiliates will quit just like most businesses fail within their first 3 years.

It’s not the fault of the business, because people succeed in many businesses. It’s always the fault of the person doing the business.

Mindset And Affiliate Marketing

That might seem a little harsh, and there’s plenty of reasons why someone might fail with an online business. Most of all the reason is that they quit. Quitting guarantees failure. Those who succeed online are a small percentage of those who try and they meet with plenty of (short term) “failures” on their journey. Those with a good mindset, see these “failures” as stepping stones rather than absolutes. It is their mindset which determines whether they quit or whether they continue, and learn from their short term “failures” if they see them that way.

Mindset is so important because it determines how you see setbacks and how you approach your business in the first place. Without optimism, you wouldn’t even try to build an income online. A pessimistic outlook would stop you even taking action in the beginning. When met with difficulties or problems, most see this as a reason to give up, rather than alter course or change tact in some way.

As Henry Ford is quoted as saying “Whether a man believes he can or he can’t, he’s right”

Your mindset determines your outlook, and it is your outlook which determines your approach and reaction to the unfolding events as you move forwards. No one who even accomplished anything significant did it without experiencing setbacks.

Mindset & Affiliate Marketing – Working On Your Mindset – Beliefs

If you don’t believe you can achieve something you wouldn’t even try. Therefore action comes from belief. Belief can change too when met by numerous setbacks. But it is the die hard fanatics who overcome the difficulties and make things happen, not the sceptics and doubters. Take a look at the image below showing the belief cycle. Actions come from your beliefs which determine your experience and re-affirm your beliefs.

If you’re experiencing difficulty, in any endeavour, it is your beliefs which need work, not necessarily your actions. That’s because your actions are a result of your beliefs. If you keep the same beliefs, your actions will be the same and therefore the outcomes will be the same. This is why behaviour doesn’t change very often.

The famous Einstein quote is “The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result”.

To change beliefs we need to get “under the hood” of our core and most of our unconscious beliefs were “installed” before we were 10 years old. We accepted the “reality” presented by our parents through their behaviours and suggestions. They became our own and those suggestions are buried deep in our subconscious minds, often acting against our best interests because they’re so deeply engrained in our psyche.

Mindset & Affiliate Marketing – Observing Our “Core” Beliefs

A good first step is to observe our core beliefs when approaching change. When we can “see” our limiting beliefs, we become conscious of them. They become easier to change when we bring awareness to them. For example, we might have some deep seated beliefs around the subject of money:

Money is the root of all evil
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 18:25)
The rich are greedy/corrupt
I’m no good at /not good enough…..
I don’t deserve…..
It’s nobler to be poor than rich

There’s many beliefs you may hold in your subconscious which hold you from the life you desire. Only by changing them will you be successful. That’s because they are core beliefs from which your thoughts stem. So how could you achieve success, for example, if you think that it would make you corrupt, or if you think it would make you less noble?

When you have an inner conflict like this, you naturally sabotage yourself in order to resolve the conflict and find a resolution which exonerates you from (your own) judgement. Core beliefs often come from our parents, who we love deeply. So resolving to become rich if a parent disapproves can create a conflict between wanting to earn a good income, and receiving love from your parent. This controlling mechanism can last internally even after a parent is no longer around.

Creating Change & Resolving Conflict

The issue of money is a powerful one and you may have received very strong emotive suggestions around the topic as a child. As such, these emotions control how you see yourself and money even years later. To change them you can do a number of things:

Use affirmations to re-install more positive suggestions (e.g. mantras)
Use hypnosis to uncover the most controlling beliefs on the topic you struggle with
Avoid giving more energy to the old, limiting beliefs (become more mindful of your thoughts and words)

One of the most powerful ways to shift old, limiting beliefs is to create a new belief through repeating a mantra. So for example, if a parent used the mantra (unconsciously) “money doesn’t grow on trees”, you might have that particular belief “installed” in your subconscious mind. While it may be true, it’s also a limiting idea around the subject of money, which can cut you off from the ability to generate money abundantly. A mantra which might be more helpful could be “money comes easily and frequently”, or “I enjoy making money doing what I love”.

Summary

Your mindset is an intricate part of your affiliate marketing journey and an important piece of the jigsaw. If you haven’t had much success with affiliate marketing, it might be something worth working on, in addition to building your business through your marketing efforts and the daily steps you would normally take.

As a mentor of mine once said “the thinking you bring to your business is the limit of it“. So unless you’re actively working on improving your thinking, your business will always have a glass ceiling which it can’t grow beyond.

Access a step by step online business system and training program here to get started with your own affiliate business.