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!

Affiliate Marketing – A Numbers Game

It’s important to remember that affiliate marketing is a numbers game. The more people you can put your products in front of, the more will buy. You also need to attract the right audience and lead them to your product/s in the right way. Attract the wrong audience, and you’ll struggle to sell.

Try and sell the wrong audience the wrong product and you’ll struggle to sell too. However, with all this information it’s also important not to get too caught up in “learning mode”. As you acquire information to become a better affiliate, it’s easy to fall into the “learning mode” groove and still not take the right actions.

So, what are the “right” actions?

Well considering the title of this post, I’m going to suggest the right actions are scalable. Once you have everything in place with your affiliate business, it’s important to focus on acquiring customers.

Affiliate Marketing – A Numbers Game – The “Right” Actions

The right actions are those which mean something and move the “needle” on your affiliate income. You can easily spend years doing the wrong things and get nowhere as an affiliate. Such is the array of activities you can spend time on. So it’s important not to be a “busy fool” spending time on fruitless actions which don’t generate more sales.

Ideally, set up an affiliate funnel with a sales page and email autoresponder. You can get started here if you haven’t done this already. Once you have your automated sales system activated, it’s time to focus on those money producing activities. In some way, shape or form, this should involve some paid advertising. If it doesn’t, you don’t have a scalable method of marketing your products.

Now, you can make affiliate sales through blogging, uploading videos and other methods without paying for advertising. But it’s a whole lot more difficult and time consuming.

Plus, there’s no guarantees either! But one thing is true of affiliate marketing – the more people who see your products, the more will buy from you. If you bring a scarcity mindset to your affiliate business, you’ll lack traffic, leads and sales too. See my ebook on money mindset for more on this topic.

Affiliate Marketing – A Numbers Game: Testing A Paid Marketing Strategy

Whether you use Bing, Google Adwords, YouTube or wherever, paid advertising is the fastest way to build an affiliate business. This can be frustrating because you can expect to lose money while you’re finding an advert which works to produce sales.

Consider this an investment because once you find a winning advert, you can acquire customers automatically. This is the golden goose of affiliate marketing and the reason so many people gravitate towards it.

If you’re promoting products which carry subscriptions, you’re going to earn recurring commissions. With up-sells and high ticket products in your funnel, you stand to earn much more from each customer you acquire (over the lifetime of the customer).

The goal of your advertising campaign therefore should be to acquire a customer for less than you’ll earn from the lifetime value of that customer.

Start Small

Paying for advertising is the fastest way to grow your email list and sell your affiliate offers. Depending on your marketing budget, you can grow your email list very quickly and start turning a profit inside of a year.

But be aware that it’s also easy to blow your marketing budget and spend a lot of money quickly, even if something is broken! So it’s wise to start with a very small budget while you learn the ins and outs of the platform you’re going to use.

A small daily budget of $10 a day is a good place. Some marketers even start with $1 a day, although it’s more difficult to see any meaningful results from such a low amount.

Starting low gives you time to understand the data you’ll get from your marketing platform. Google Adwords, for example, gives you stats on your traffic and that information is valuable. Over time, you can become more discerning about who you’re targeting with your marketing budget, as you discover who is more likely to buy from you.

Get Started

If you’re ready to venture into affiliate marketing you can get started here.

How To Get Paid With Affiliate Marketing

So, how can you get paid with affiliate marketing? Simple, get people to your affiliate link, right? While that is true, there’s a little more to it that only that. One of the most important things I’ve learned is to put the value before the money! Most affiliates become so because they want to earn money. But if you’re too focused on the money, you forget the important ingredient of making money online and that is delivering value.

Value can be delivered in terms of information, products and services and through help and support. But it’s the affiliates who offer the most value who earn the most. As a beginner it’s important to understand that through the delivering of value you build trust. Once you build trust people are much more likely to buy from you.

How To Get Paid With Affiliate Marketing – Money Saving Expert

Here’s an example of a very successful affiliate website: moneysavingexpert.com. Founder of Moneysavingexpert.com Martin Lewis created the website to help people with their bills. It’s a hugely successful website because of the value it gives. It makes money through referrals – affiliate marketing.

When I started out as an affiliate I was too focused on the getting! I just wanted people to buy from my affiliate link. So I posted it everywhere I could online! I posted it on my social media platforms, even on my eBay account. But there were no sales in sight!

That’s because I wasn’t offering any value. I was just hoping someone would chance upon my link and buy something – giving me a commission. I was too focused on what I could get, not what I could give. So one of the best ways to generate a reliable income from affiliate marketing is to focus on what you can give, and align that value with a suitable product.

How To Get Paid With Affiliate Marketing – Finding Your Niche

Your “niche” is the sector of the marketplace where you place yourself. It’s the topic you choose to deliver value in. Ideally, find a niche which is “you”. There’s a saying “be yourself, everyone else is taken”. When you find a niche you love, you’ll enjoy delivering value in it. When you’re aligned with your passion and purpose, you’re much more likely to be successful.

As a beginner affiliate years ago, I didn’t understand this. I chose products I had zero interest in and just tried to sell them. No wonder it got me nowhere! I was in desperation mode – desperately trying to fill a sinking ship! My finances were a mess and I thought affiliate marketing could “save me”. Again, it was all about “me”, and no-one else!

The problem with this approach is that online consumers aren’t interested in “you”. They’re only interested in what you can do for them. (WIIFM – What’s In It For Me? – is the generally held online consumer slogan).

Your Ikigai – is your “reason for being” and is a Japanese term. It’s useful for affiliate marketing because when you figure it out, you’re in a better position for online success.

If Money Didn’t Matter

What if money didn’t matter? How would you choose to spend your time if money really didn’t matter? This is a useful question to ask yourself when it comes to building an online business. When you remove money from the equation, the only reason to work becomes passion and enthusiasm. When you find what you’re enthused by and passionate about, you can do it all day. There’s no limits.

If you choose a path which is solely about the money, once you have enough money, you’ll lose your motivation for it. This is why so many affiliates drop out. The money is the primary focus and when it doesn’t start rolling in immediately, they quit. But if you start with your interests and passions, you don’t run out of enthusiasm. When you lead with passion you can continue for much longer and overcome and endure more hardship along the way.

Summary

So, how do you get paid with affiliate marketing? In simple terms you only need get more people to your affiliate link. But you also need to get the right people to your affiliate link by attracting the right audience. If you’re aligned with your inner values, passions and genuine interests, it’s much easier to attract that audience because you’re being congruent. If someone is selling something they don’t care about, or just for their commission, you can tell.

When you walk into a shop and are hassled by a pushy sales person, you would rather leave than buy anything! The online space is a buyers marketplace. There’s no room for pushy sales people online because you can always walk away and shop elsewhere – and it’s much easier to do so online!

To get paid with affiliate marketing you place yourself between the customer and the product. When you find a niche you’re passionate about, it becomes easy to attract an audience because you’re creating value in a niche you’re passionate about!

Ready to start your own online business from scratch. Get help and support and an online “from scratch” business here.

Installing A New Habit

One of the most powerful things you can do for yourself in any aspect of life is installing a new habit. Whether it’s a habit for your business, your health or your relationships, habit installing is powerful stuff! So how can you install a new habit?

When you look at your life you’re a collection of habits. Some of them good ones, and some not so “good”! Some habits lead you to outcomes you want, such as a larger bank balance, or a healthier body, and some lead you to results you don’t want, such as being overweight and broke!

Start by owning these habits. Take some responsibility for them. After all, you created them, either by default (from allowing them to form), or by taking conscious action and forming them deliberately.

When you can observe that your outcomes in life are a direct result of your habit patterns, you can begin to take some positive action and adjust some of the things which aren’t working in your life.

Installing A New Habit – A Push Up

In Stephen Guise’s book Mini Habits, he uses the example of a “micro commitment” to install a new habits. One specific example is that of a push up, or press-up. If you want to get fitter, a push up can be used to “install” a new habit pattern. Now a push up isn’t a massive achievement, but it’s used to gain momentum in one area of your life.

By committing to a single push up each day, you cement the habit. You make it easy for yourself to do it. Can you do a single push up to improve your health? Do one now – go on!

The idea isn’t that a single push up will drastically alter your health. It won’t. No, the strategy is to begin by installing a tiny commitment which gets the wheels turning. Once you are in the push up position, you can easily do more than one push up. So you might even do 10 while you’re down there. But you only have to do 1. So on a bad day, you don’t have to give yourself a hard time for only doing one.

Installing A New Habit – What Area Of Your Life Would You Like To Improve?

Whether you want to earn more money, have better relationships, get fitter or build a larger social circle, there’s mini steps you can do in each area to get the ball rolling. Find a micro commitment you can do each day and commit to it. Over time, you can build on that commitment.

Another example is getting to the gym. If you struggle finding the time and commitment getting to the gym, find a small step which helps you do it. It could be just swiping your gym card and physically getting there. Once you have overcome the mental hurdle to achieve that, it’s much easier to actually do some exercise once you’re there. But you don’t have to, you can let yourself off if you’re having a bad day!

Here’s a few ideas of micro commitments in different areas of life:

Health – a single push up or swiping your gym card each day
Wealth – Take some action starting an online business, or learning about stocks/shares
Relationships – pick up the phone to an old friend or relative once a week.
Personal development – read 10 pages of a personal development book each day
Health – do a 5 minutes run each day
Health – cycle to work, rather than driving
Wealth – write a blog post to get more people to your affiliate link

Installing A New Habit – Brushing Your Teeth

Do you brush your teeth each day? How did you form the habit? It’s a pretty common habit brushing your teeth and most people do it without thinking. That’s because the habit was installed long ago. In fact, it feels weird NOT to brush your teeth once the habit is deeply engrained.

This will eventually be the same for your new installed habit that you choose. Pick a habit you would like to “install” and create a new behaviour to improve a specific area of your life.

Can you commit to it even on your worst days?

To build momentum, it’s important to start small, even if it seems slightly ridiculous. But have you ever started a habit with good intentions only to give up a few weeks/months later? Most people do this with the gym. They decide to join a gym and pay their yearly fees only to give up on month 3, usually in March after the “New Year, New You” phase has died down!

But if you choose a micro commitment, rather than a lofty goal you can’t sustain, you build momentum and it becomes a part of your habit pattern.

Add On

After you’ve kept up your mini-habit for a few weeks you can start adding to it, if you haven’t done this already. Just built it up slowly, but make sure you don’t over commit and put yourself backwards. The key is to maintain the minimum commitment as part of your daily routine.

Once you have established your mini commitment, you can add on. So, for example if you’re doing a single push up, and you’ve done 3 weeks of this habit, take it up to 3 push ups for example, or as much as feels comfortable.

Pretty soon, you’ll be adding more and more and doing 10 and above push ups each day without even thinking about it. Once you get past a few months of this it will feel wrong NOT doing it!

You can also use your newly established habit to “add on” another habit. Habit “stacking” allows you to establish a routine and add other parts to it. So for example with the push ups, you can add on star jumps (or crunches, or whatever) once you’ve done the push up.

Summary

Micro habits are powerful when you understand how to implement them for change in your life. Wherever you are at the moment, choose a mini commitment which suits you and which you can sustain over the longer term.

It’s no use picking something you’ll burn out from in 3 weeks. Choose something that’s ridiculously easy and which you’ll commit to. That way, it becomes part of your routine and eventually you won’t feel right skipping it! Once you have “hard-wired” it into your routine, you can build it up by adding.

This is a great strategy for your online business if you have one. It can feel overwhelming at first when you start but building supportive daily habits helps you stay focused on productive activities and avoid falling into procrastination and inactivity. You can get started with an online business from scratch here.

The Morning Routine

I’ve never been one for the morning routine but last year a mentor explained his routine and I decided to give it a go! A morning routine allows you to “install” a behaviour which will help you organise your mind/body for the day ahead. So, in the spirit of my last blog post which was about pulling yourself out of a rut, this post is in a similar vein.

So here’s the morning routine I was recommended. Feel free to add some or all of this to your daily schedule as you see fit! In part this is a reminder for me too, so I don’t forget it!

The Morning Routine

Get up and take a cold shower! Now here in the UK, it was winter last year when I was given this routine and I wasn’t down with it! My mentor was in Costa Rica – so that should tell you something! Anyway I reluctantly gave it a go and found it incredibly powerful.

A cold shower shocks your body and as it happened it was just the thing I needed. I had been suffering from a bit of depression and I definitely feel the cold shower in the morning helped get me out of my head, and into my body and being in the present moment, rather than rethinking the past (being stuck in my head).

Sit for 10 minutes completely still. Being still is a powerful practice. It calms you, centres you and focuses you on the moment. If you’re not familiar with the practice of being still, it’s definitely worth doing. You’ll probably fidget and look about the room, so it helps to close your eyes. Being in stillness reduces responses in the parasympathetic system – responsible for fight or flight. It also increases responses in the sympathetic system, responsible for rest and relaxation.

Read a book for 10 minutes. My mentor was using a self help book and I did the same. I was reading at the time The Slight Edge – by Jeff Olsen, which was definitely appropriate to the practice. Check it out it’s a great read! The slight edge is about how small things done repeatedly over and over can have a massive implication over time!

The Morning Routine – Intention Journalling

Once you’ve finished reading grab a pad and a pen. You’re going to write out your goal multiple times. If you don’t have a goal written down, or a tangible intention to aim for, you might want to read my post on sharpening your axe. In it, I explain the process called Cybernetic Transposition.

This is basically finding a suitable goal/intention that you want to achieve and writing it out multiple times to affect your subconscious mind. Doing it regularly implants an idea into the subconscious and it comes up with ideas and strategies for the goal’s achievement.

Start by writing your intention out 10 times, but you can do more if you wish. If you don’t have a suitable goal, it’s worth spending some time on this thrashing out a goal you’re inspired by and is not too difficult at first. That way, you’re enthused enough to do the work, and not put off by thinking it’s out of your grasp.

Gratitude

And finally in the morning routine write out 10 things you’re grateful for. I’ve just done this now and I can attest to its power. This is one of the most powerful things you can do and if you do nothing else, do this!

Writing out things you are grateful for shifts your energy/vibration and your mindset. As you practice this more and more, you will find your mind looking for more things to be grateful for over time. If you’re suffering from anxiety or depression, or just feel “stuck” in life, a gratitude journal is a powerful “go-to”.

Now this seems like a lot of work and of course you can take any part of it and organise it to suit you. In total this should take no longer than half an hour. You can also add some exercise before the shower as a lot of people like to start their morning with a run, or some form of exercise.

There’s a great book called the Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod if you’re interested in this topic. He also has a Facebook group sharing positive ideas for a morning routine. Check it out here.

Racap

So here’s a quick recap of the morning routine:

Cold shower – if you’re terrified start with a limb at a time and build up!
Sit still for 10 minutes – set a timer
Read 10 minutes of a self help/psychology book
Intention writing – write your goal/intention out 10 times minimum
Gratitude journalling – write out 10 things you’re grateful for

I find this useful if I’m feeling stuck with my affiliate business and often I get ideas come up during or after the practice. So pay attention and write down any insights which come to you – that’s your unconscious mind giving you insights to questions you have been asking.

In all this should take no longer than half an hour and it sets you up for the day! If you’ve enjoyed this post please share it!

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.