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!

Promote Link And Earn Money

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

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

Promote Link And Earn Money

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

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

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

Promote Link And Earn Money – Strategies

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

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

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

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

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

Common Problems For Affiliates

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

This sounds obvious but it’s a common mistake.

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

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

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

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

Making More Money From The Same Link

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

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

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

Using Paid Marketing To Promote Your Link Vs. Free Marketing

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

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

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

Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

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

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

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

Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

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

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

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

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

Is Affiliate Marketing A Solution?

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

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

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

Earning With Affiliate Marketing – Issues

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

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

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

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

Business Models

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

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

Is Affiliate Marketing Dead?

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

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

Learn more and access a free video series here.

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate

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

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

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Assumptions

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

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

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

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

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Newbies Expect An Easy Win

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

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

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Why New Affiliates Fail

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

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

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

The Catch 22 Of Marketing An Affiliate Product

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

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

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

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

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

Low Barriers To Entry

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

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

Affiliate Marketing Failure Rate – Entitlement

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

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

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

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

Employee Mindset Vs. Entrepreneurial Mindset

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

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

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

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

Training & Education

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

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

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

Business Models and Marketing Strategies

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

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

Trust & Direction

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

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

Fail, Fail, Fail Some More!

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

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

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

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

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

The Chinese Bamboo Tree

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

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

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

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

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

Another Analogy

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

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

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

Best Recurring Affiliate Programs

The best recurring affiliate programs are those which offer a lifetime value to the customer. These are often products such as software products and memberships. If you refer the right people you’ll earn an income for life from your sales. Of course some people will drop off over time and attrition is a natural by-product of doing business.

But if you choose products and services which offer lifetime value, and find customers who will value this, you can earn lifetime commissions from your efforts. That’s far more worthwhile than selling one-off items where you only get paid once!

Best Recurring Affiliate Programs

The best recurring affiliate programs I’ve found are ones which offer huge value to the user and are important for business growth. With a business, online or offline, if a software or membership product can help its growth, the owner will continue using that service; potentially for life!

Aweber – an email autoresponder service for online businesses. Aweber provides software for online and offline business owners wanting to build a list of email subscribers and automate messages to build relationships over the long term. Earn 30 percent commission throughout the life of every Aweber order made through your affiliate link.
The SFM/Mentors – A membership program for starting an online business from scratch. SFM also offers multiple earning strategies including high ticket commissions, multi-tier commissions, recurring membership commissions and has a built in sales funnel (and sales team) anyone can use. Earn up to 40% commissions on a range of high ticket products valued up to $20,000, plus recurring commissions on memberships.
Convertri – Convertri pays 30% commissions every month for membership subscriptions you have referred. Convertri offers super fast landing pages and split testing software for online business owners and marketers
Leadpages – Similar to Convertri, Leadpages offers landing page software and split testing software which is useful for online businesses. Earn up to 50% recurring commissions for as long as your referral remains a Leadpages customer.
SEMRush – Offers multiple software and features for businesses to help improve website traffic – from SEO, competitor analysis, rank tracking, social media management, content optimisation etc. You can also earn 40% recurring commissions promoting the SEMRush affiliate program.

Promoting Affiliate Programs – Training

So that is my list of best recurring affiliate programs. With any program though you still need to actually make the sale in order to make the recurring commissions. If you’re a new affiliate, I would suggest getting training and support in order to so do. If that’s the case, I recommend joining the SFM/Mentors program for a number of reasons:

You’ll get access to a high ticket digital sales funnel which has multiple products and earning strategies included in it. See SFM Digital Business System.
You can choose you own level of positioning and commission structure according to your budget and commitment level.
Benefit from high ticket commissions of up to 40% on items valued up to $20,000
Earn recurring commissions of $20 per month on any referred members
Offers a two tier commissions structure (according to your positioning) which allows you to earn from sales made by your members/referrals.
Earn 100% commission on Mentors All In sales – even at a basic level membership
Offers a variety of commission structures according to your membership level
You’ll be able to access mentors and coaches to help you build your affiliate (or other) business.
1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching is also available through SFM/Mentors.

The SFM Mentors is my pick of the best recurring affiliate programs because it offers much more than most of these other softwares and membership do. SFM Mentors is a coaching and training program which also offers recurring commissions on top of everything else.

Access a free video series to learn more about the SFM program.

Why Use Recurring Programs?

Since you’re here, you probably already know that recurring programs are the best ones to promote as an affiliate. With standard products, you only earn once per sale. Many such programs will benefit from your advertising for years to come – all without rewarding you properly!

In many such cases, a software or membership program will pay affiliates only $20 for customers who will bring in thousands in membership fees over the coming years. It’s far cheaper for these companies to have such an affiliate program than to advertise themselves!

Affiliates then get the raw deal in such cases. New affiliates particularly are susceptible to being taken advantage of. Just looking at Amazon, for example, affiliate commissions are slowly being ebbed away as the company becomes more powerful! See this article: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/14/amazon-slashes-commission-rates-for-affiliate-program.html

Amazon of course uses physical products not digital. But it’s wise to arm yourself with the knowledge of which companies pay well and for life, and those which take advantage of affiliates and don’t value their input. See affiliate marketing commission rates.

A good product/company will continue paying for the lifetime of the customer you have referred. With some companies, you also benefit from any other sales purchased from your referral throughout the lifetime of their custom. See SFM digital business system.

Recurring Commissions & Compounding

Recurring commissions compound over time and although $20 a month doesn’t sound like much, with 100 members it becomes $2000 a month. With 1000 members it becomes $20,000 a month. Although these figures are hard to believe when you start out as an affiliate marketer, they are attainable. In the first instance of being an affiliate, this seems like an impossible dream.

However hard you work, it can seem as though you are not getting anywhere! But if you stick with it, your work has a compounding effect too. At first, you struggle. Nothing seems to work. As you make the odd sale, you’re encouraged and persevere. Once sales start coming in more frequently, you focus on the work which generates the most effect (Pareto’s principle 80/20 rule).

When you get to this stage, small effort product larger results. Your income soars. But initially it seems like nothing is ever going to happen! In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, he mentions this and represents it in this graph.

We expect results to be linear but instead there’s a long time of not much happening. If we stick with it, results can take off exponentially as in the picture above.

Referral Marketing Automation

Referral marketing automation is one way to generate greater financial independence. Rather than cold calling or doing door to door sales, digital marketers use automation and online selling processes. Anyone can learn to do this too, even without any products of their own.

With referral marketing, you can sell other people’s products and services over the internet. This is also known as affiliate marketing. Affiliates align themselves with products and services they believe in. They create automated selling systems which bring customers to their products and services. When someone makes a purchase, the affiliate (or referrer), makes a commission on the sale.

There’s all kinds of products and services you can refer people to online. The processes are much the same, whatever product you decide to sell.

Referral Marketing Automation – Selling Systems

Online selling systems can take many forms. You can sell products online using many different strategies. See 22 ways to promote affiliate products. But to automate the process in the fastest possible time, it’s wise to use paid marketing platforms and large value products. Without the right products and services, and the best commissions, it’s much harder to use these platforms and still make a profit. See affiliate marketing business models.

You can still use referral marketing automation without using paid marketing platforms of course. This article is an example of content marketing. If someone reads this article and purchases a product from this website (or they click on an advert), I’ll make a commission. But once created, content can bring in sales for years to come. This is another form of automation – using content to automate sales over the internet.

One of the main strategies used by referral marketers is email marketing. The power of email marketing is pretty awesome for online marketers. They can reach tens or hundreds of thousands of people with a single email through using an autoresponder. An autoresponder is a tool used by marketers to collect subscribers information, build trust and offer value. When a marketer has built up a huge list of subscribers, and built trust through delivering value, a single email can encourage thousands of purchases through their affiliate link to a product or service.

With the right product/s that email could be worth tens of thousands of dollars/pounds worth of income.

Marketing Platforms

Marketing platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Adwords (to name just three) are hugely powerful too. With a marketing platform, you can reach a global audience. Referral marketers can sell almost any product globally, without even dealing with a customer or touching a product personally. So long as a product or service has an affiliate program, anyone can sell it for a commission based on the sale.

With marketing platforms like these, you can also target people very specifically based on what they are like, where they live, how old they are and a number of other demographics. This can be hugely powerful if you have a product to sell. By learning which audience is likely to buy your referral products, you can create a globally scalable business which can run completely on autopilot!

From a marketing platform, people are sent to a landing page where some information is exchanged for their name and email. Once they have entered their details, they are entered into a database of subscribers who are sent automated email messages. If the marketing is right, and the emails are valuable to the subscriber, they will be. likely to trust the marketer and purchase products and services which are recommended through automated email messages.

Referral Marketing Automation – Digital Products

Although there are many physical products you can refer as an affiliate, digital products offer one of the best opportunities. With digital products the costs are far lower than for physical products.

There’s no postage, handling or storage costs and manufacturing costs are considerably less than with physical products. Digital product owners therefore can afford to pay much larger commissions. Some digital products also offer memberships and software products which carry ongoing subscriptions.

This is great for the referrers of these products when they can earn ongoing, passive income from sales they have generated. Digital products too have less boundaries globally, unlike with drop shipping (physical products).

Some digital products offer high ticket commissions and ongoing recurring commissions (memberships and software products). Physical products can’t compete with this and commission structures are vastly different between the two. Physical product typically carry commissions of 1%-12%, while digital products can pay out from 30%-60% commissions on a sale. See affiliate marketing commission rates.

An Automated Sales Funnel

Referral marketing automation is done through an automated sales funnel; with a powerful marketing “engine” at one end, and valuable products and services at the other. Anyone can benefit from such as system without any prior skills or experience.

An automated sales funnel is effectively a system of products and software which generates income for the owner. It takes time to set up a system like this but ultimately it should run on autopilot once everything is set up and working properly.

Effectively, this can give you a money “system” which when you put in $100 at one end, you get $200 out the other end! The testing and measuring of this system is the basic process which any new affiliate marketer must master to make this a reality.

Learn how to market a referral marketing automation system: access here.

Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing

If only I had found the best way to do affiliate marketing 10 years ago! I wouldn’t have wasted so much time and effort! But of course surely the “best” way to do anything is purely subjective, right? There’s many ways to do affiliate marketing and if you’re doing it the wrong way, you should expect a long and difficult journey.

Some affiliate marketing strategies take months and others take years. You can also make a lot of mistakes on the journey. See 23 affiliate mistakes newbie affiliates should avoid. According to your own personal circumstances of course, one route may be more suitable than another. But if you’re stuck in a career you’re desperate to escape from, there’s a faster way to do things. Would you rather take months or years to escape your job?

Some people are more risk averse than others too and according to your ability to invest, take risk and learn new skills, you might prefer one route over another. In this article, I’m going to discuss some of the many routes you can take as an affiliate marketer. Of course there’s many I haven’t even tried and the very nature of affiliate marketing means it’s constantly evolving. But if you want to know the best way to do affiliate marketing, skip to the last section of this article.

Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing

I started learning about affiliate marketing back in the early 2000’s. I wanted to sell my own ebook and couldn’t get anyone to my website. So I put myself on one of those “earn money online” courses to learn. Instead of selling my own ebook I realised there was a better way to earn online – selling other people’s products.

With my ebook on sale for $10, I could make $10 for each sale. But with someone else’s video course selling for $100, I could make $40! So it was a no brainer to abandon my ebook idea and start selling other people’s products instead. If I was going to spend the same amount of time and effort on both, the affiliate marketing model was going to pay more – even though with my own product I earned 100% profit!

So I set about learning how to market products from a simple website. In the process I learned the worst ways to do affiliate marketing – those which don’t work! As a new affiliate marketer, you’re going to experience some set backs. Some of what you do simply won’t work. Actually MOST of what you don’t won’t work.

Pareto’s principle states that 80% of outcomes come from only 20% of the effects. This is worth bearing in mind as an affiliate. Throw some mud at a wall and some will fall off. Affiliates need to learn from the mud that sticks! Once some mud sticks (you make progress), you need to know which actions created those outcomes.

Slow Strategies Vs. Fast Strategies

A slow strategy such as blogging might take 12 months of work before you start to see some activity and progress. At first, you won’t see very much happening. But if you stick at it, and keep creating content, over time you’ll see some traffic – visitors on your website. Keep your attention on these small “wins” and keep doing those things which produce those results.

It’s easy to become demoralised if you pick a slow strategy. Small amounts of work won’t produce large results. Writing a blog post every week won’t give you a scalable income. More likely, you’ll get the odd visitor on your website who takes no action.

Only about 1% of visitors will sign up to your website. Then, only about 1% of your subscribers will purchase a product from you. So it’s a numbers game. With blogging, or organic marketing, it’s a long, slow process of continuing to create content. Within 6 months to a year of doing so, you should have a nice organic amount of traffic. Of course you can still make mistakes. You can create content which is miss-matched to your products. You can write content without promoting it. You can expect Google and other search engines to do your job for you (big mistake).

But with organic marketing you should expect to work, work, work without much to show for it in the first 6 months. If you do everything right, you should see a few sales here and there. Keep going and you’ll see a few more. This grows over time and is really quite exciting when it finally happens. But it’s a long barren desert before you see the oasis!

Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing

So organic traffic is a slow strategy and takes time. You can speed up your progress of course by using an email list, subscription products and high ticket products. But getting traffic will be slow if you go the long route of generating traffic organically.

Once you reach a certain level of success too, this isn’t scalable. And although you can rinse and repeat your best performing content (and of course share it more), you’re still stuck in a model which requires a lot of work for slow progress forwards. Over time however, your body of work which you’ve created acts as a resource to give you free traffic, leads and sale. So this compounds over time and you should see free sales coming in if you stick with it long enough.

Paid Marketing

But if you’re not prepared for all this work, and want your affiliate business to move more quickly to escape a job, for example, there’s a far better way. Taking that affiliate marketing is a numbers game, your fastest way to reach a large number of people is through using paid marketing.

Paid marketing, unlike content marketing is much faster and more scalable. It does however cost money. At first you’ll spend money learning how to run campaigns. This is the point where many affiliates quit. They run a few campaigns, lose money and quit. But those who stick it out are in a very good position indeed once they start gaining traction. They will have created a profitable business which is automated and scalable if they achieve that.

Paid marketing is out of the reach of many affiliates because they haven’t got products which cover the cost of learning how to run paid campaigns. So they burn their capital running campaigns which don’t work. Then they give up because they assume that it just doesn’t work.

The High Ticket Sales Funnel

A high ticket sales funnel consists of multiple high value digital products which pay the affiliate the largest possible commissions you’ll find online.

With such a funnel, you can expect to earn a much larger amount than you would from standard affiliate products. Amazon and eBay typically pay from 1-12% commissions to their affiliates. This is a narrow margin which doesn’t give you much scope for using paid marketing. But digital products typically pay much more (around 40%). Combined with high value products and you can make $1000+ on a single sale for some items.

When you make a $1000 commission (and above) on a sale, you can afford to test and measure paid marketing campaigns much more easily. When you only make $12 on a sale, it’s almost impossible to use paid marketing at all.

Paid marketing is the best way to do affiliate marketing because you can reach a much larger audience much more quickly. But you need to use the right business model. See affiliate marketing business models.

Best Way To Do Affiliate Marketing

Of course the “best” way to do affiliate marketing is entirely subjective. Many will want a cheap strategy they can implement over time without risking capital. But some can use an affiliate marketing business to replace their existing income very quickly. For those people, the best strategy is to use paid marketing and a high ticket business model – see SFM Digital Business System.

With recurring membership commissions, multi-tier commissions and high ticket product sales, you can build a profitable business online quite quickly using paid marketing. It will still take time of course and you’ll need to invest heavily in a sales funnel and of course your marketing.

With a low valued affiliate product, like you might find on Amazon, you can only make a small commission (12% maximum). But with high ticket digital products you can make 40% commissions on products valued at $2500 – $20,000. A single sale can give you a commission of $8000!

Once you’ve set up your sales funnel, start here, you should turn your attention to a paid marketing platform such as YouTube. (The platform you choose will depend on your commission structure). See affiliate marketing business models.

Test and measure your marketing until you find a campaign which gives you a profitable cost per lead. Then increase your budget and scale up. Compared with organic traffic this can be a far faster and more scalable route. However, the downside is that it requires a large investment to attain the top commission structure and you’ll need to spend a lot on advertising before you find a profitable campaign.

Summary

The best way to do affiliate marketing is entirely subjective however. For some this will be way out of their reach due to finances. If you’re time rich but don’t have the budget for this strategy, organic marketing might be a better route to take, depending your circumstances. If you’re in a corporate job and don’t have any time, you can use the automation of an online business to build an income using the above strategy and gain traction very quickly.

There is of course a middle ground too. You can use recurring commission products and high ticket products with organic strategies. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide which strategy suits you best, and which strategy you would be happy using according to your finances, patience, risk aversion and ability to create content and/or find a passion project you can monetise.

For a breakdown of the various online earning strategies you can access a free workshop video series here which explains a few different ideas.

Best Lifestyle Businesses

What are the best lifestyle businesses? Surely the best lifestyle businesses are those which can be run from anywhere. They can allow you to create any lifestyle you see fit? If you want to spend more time with family, a lifestyle business should be able to accommodate. If you’re a surfer, or a traveller, your lifestyle business should allow you to do it.

So what we’re talking about is a flexible business which lets you live your live in your way. If you’re financially independent without a job or a boss, you can do anything, with who you choose, any time you choose!

I was on a search for the best lifestyle business, although I didn’t know it! In my 20’s I met a stuntman and thought this was the best lifestyle business! I imagined travelling the world working on movies. But in my 30’s I wanted more control over my life and the work was making me miserable! I was waiting for the phone to ring and juggling other jobs to support myself. So I looked for something I could work at from my laptop!

Best Lifestyle Businesses – Forex Marketing

I tried Forex marketing and studied it for a couple of years. Even with automated software though, you need a large trading bank for Forex. You should only trade with 1-2% of your bank on any one given trade. Added to that, you’ll need to spend a considerable amount of time learning how to do it.

Some automated software can allow more flexibility with Forex, but I found myself tied to the computer, stressing over trades. You need to have a huge amount of patience too as a Forex trader. One trader I followed only traded on the monthly charts.

That meant months would pass without entering a trade. And even that trade could be a loser! I needed money now – not later and couldn’t afford to wait. Nor could I afford to spend more than a few hundred pounds on each trade. Despite the huge potential of trading on the markets, I found I didn’t have the capital required for it to work for me. So, I abandoned my trading and looked elsewhere, thinking I would return when I was better off!

For some though, learning how to day trade can be a great lifestyle business which lets them earn their own money from a laptop. You can travel and earn from anywhere! But it’s a skill to learn and this takes time. 2 years is the general consensus as the required learning time to become consistently profitable as a trader.

Best Lifestyle Businesses – eBay

I abandoned the Forex marketing and looked to eBay instead. With eBay, you can buy and sell items and make money on the difference. I found an ebook which explained the strategy I used for several months. It involved finding badly listed items and re-selling them again with a better listing.

For the strategy see eBay side hustle for more on this strategy. This wasn’t one of the best lifestyle businesses I found because it was a time heavy model. I was stuck on my laptop searching for items to buy. Then, I was dealing with customers and queuing at the post office waiting to weigh items to post off to customers. Eventually I realised I had found a “job that I owned”! It gave some spending money but for all the work I put it, it wasn’t paying nearly enough!

I abandoned the idea and looked for something more automated. I knew there had to be something better and I’d remembered purchasing an ebook from eBay which taught me the strategy. Perhaps, I thought, the ebook was a much better business model.

It offered a means to automate sales and delivery of a digital item. This “lightbulb” moment was to lead me eventually to a much better lifestyle business model. After several months of spending time creating my own ebooks, and failing at selling them, I put myself on one of those “earn money online courses”, hoping to learn how to get more traffic to my ebooks. Instead it led me to another business idea. One which was in the category of “best lifestyle businesses”.

Best Lifestyle Businesses – Affiliate Marketing

The course I bought taught affiliate marketing and I was able to make a sale fairly quickly. I promoted a course by a guy called Peter Lexis. The business model of affiliate marketing lets anyone promote other people’s products and services on the internet. When you make a sale through your unique affiliate link, you are credited with the sale and paid a commission.

There’s a variety of affiliate products you can promote online ranging from physical products from places like Amazon and eBay to digital products like you’d find on JVZoo and Clickbank.com.

The reason affiliate marketing makes for one of the best lifestyle businesses is its versatility. You can work on an affiliate business from anywhere and there’s many ways to do it. You can sell products globally without having to handle products yourself or even speak to (or deal with) any customers. The affiliate model is also massively scalable for this reason too.

Affiliate marketers promote products in many ways:

Through an autoresponder – see the power of email marketing
By creating content – written, video or graphics etc.
Using paid advertising – (Adwords, Facebook, Bing, YouTube etc.)
On social media channels
Through question and answer websites
Blogging & creating digital products of your own
etc.

Affiliate Marketing – Problems

There’s a few problems with affiliate marketing though and despite this looking good “on paper”, it’s not as easy as it sounds! I found that I came across a lot of problems while learning affiliate marketing and it certainly wasn’t giving me the “life of Riley”!

At first I struggled and jumped from course to course looking for the magic bullet! I saw lots of videos promising me an “easy ride”. Far from it, affiliate marketing was tough and I struggled even to make a sale, much less a passive income as I was promised!

But I saw the potential of affiliate marketing to be the best lifestyle business. I knew it I could make it work, eventually I’d be able to automate the whole process of selling other people’s products online.

There’s several different affiliate marketing business models which I didn’t know about when I started out. As a beginner, I spent time on slow marketing strategies which would take months and years to come to fruition. Of course, I didn’t know this so gave up because I didn’t see the results straight away! Instead of persevering, I jumped ship from one strategy, looking for a quicker “system”. This is known as “shiny object syndrome”.

Best Affiliate Marketing Lifestyle Model

After a couple of years of struggling trying to make affiliate marketing work, I eventually found an online business community. After joining I realised where I had been going wrong. I had been promoting low value products from Amazon for 3-12% commissions. The best lifestyle businesses used digital business systems and digital products which paid:

Larger commissions – 40% and upwards
Recurring commissions – on memberships and software products
High ticket products – valued from $2500 to $20,000, and which offered 40% commissions
Multi-tier commissions – paid you recurring commissions based on sales made by your referrals.

See SFM Digital Business System for more on this affiliate business model.

By using this business model, I was able to set up a paid marketing campaign and run an online business on complete autopilot. With recurring commissions and high ticket commissions, I was able to recoup advertising budget much more quickly (and scale up), than with other affiliate models.

This is though using the six figure sales funnel shown below.

the six figure business funnel — The six figure + digital business model – the best lifestyle business model I found online

Best Lifestyle Businesses – Summary

After trying various online business models, I eventually found the one described above which uses the affiliate marketing model in conjunction with several advantages over the basic affiliate product:

Recurring income – from membership commissions
High value digital products – pay much more per sale and allow the use of paid marketing much more easily
Multi-tier commissions – earn from sales made by your referrals
A scalable business system

With paid marketing, this system can be automated and scaled up to a global audience. With no postage costs or handling of products, it’s also one of the most environmentally friendly businesses around, not to mention the most scalable. The automation allows you to make sales from anywhere, and choose your own working hours and marketing strategy.

Access this digital business system and community here.

Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle

Are you looking for an affiliate marketing side hustle? Affiliate marketing makes the perfect side hustle for a number of reasons:

You can build it around existing work, working in a flexible way
It’s a scalable business model which can replace any income over time
You don’t need your own products or services
Anyone can start no matter their age or experience
You can work in a way which suits your own personal circumstances

Affiliate marketing isn’t a magic pill which will make you riches over night, of course, unlike many “guru’s” proclaim. But it can make you a sustainable income if you stick at it long enough and take the right steps. See how long does affiliate marketing take.

Depending on how you build your affiliate business, it can take between several months and several years to replace an existing income. But not everyone is looking to escape their corporate job. Some just want an “affiliate marketing side hustle“.

Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle – Marketing Strategies

Before delving into the different business models within affiliate marketing, it’s worth looking at some of the ways you can promote affiliate products. Not everyone has the time to create content on a daily basis. Likewise, not everyone will have the financial incentive to make tens of thousands every month either! But, there’s many people looking to make affiliate marketing their side hustle. This can be done in two main ways:

By creating content – content can be grown over time and can be seen as a “digital asset”. As your back catalogue of content grows, your ability to make money does too. Over time your income will compound as old content continues to generate traction in your affiliate business, and new content does the same.
By running paid advertising campaigns – if you’re looking for a faster way to build an affiliate business, paid marketing is it. But you’ll need a good business model to do it. See affiliate marketing business models. (more on this later).

Types Of Products To Consider

If you’re time rich, content marketing might be the way to go. If you can monetise your content with recurring commission affiliate programs and high ticket affiliate products, so much the better. Since content marketing is a pretty slow tactic, you’ll gain faster traction by using products which pay the most.

You don’t of course have to pay to promote affiliate products. Most affiliate programs are free to join. But it’s worth noting than many physical products only pay tiny commissions. Amazon, for example, pays from 3% to 12% commissions to its affiliates. Compare this to digital products which pay from 40% and above, and you can see there’s a big difference. See affiliate marketing commission rates.

Paid affiliate programs often pay larger amounts in commissions and you’ll struggle to earn high ticket commissions on digital products without investing in a program. See best affiliate commissions. So, if you’re considering investing in an affiliate marketing course anyway, it’s worth choosing one which offers high ticket commissions and recurring commission products. Access free videos here to learn more.

Affiliate Marketing Side Hustle – My Story

I started affiliate marketing around 2010 and only intended for it to support a career as a stuntman. At the time I was juggling multiple jobs and waiting for the stunt phone call. Then I was off down to Pinewood studios, or somewhere to work on a film or TV show. So I only really wanted an affiliate marketing side hustle – not a full time affiliate business.

At first I jumped from course to course looking for the quick way to make money online, which of course eluded me because I believed it! Only after finding a good course and spending considerable time and effort in one direction did things start to come together.

In 2020 of course there was the pandemic and the stunt industry pretty much closed down. I had a kung fu school too which also closed down. Fortunately I had been working on and off with the affiliate business too, which meant I had something to fall back on. Initially though, my affiliate business grew very slowly because I stuck mostly to content marketing. I blogged and created videos which I uploaded to YouTube.

I had an email list of subscribers numbering into the thousands which at the start of the pandemic I was able to use to generate income from through selling affiliate products. Anyone can do this and I highly recommend building an email list, whatever products or marketing strategies you decide to use. In fact, I would say that list building is key to creating a sustainable income from affiliate marketing. Combined with subscription products and high ticket products and it’s incredibly powerful.

Making Affiliate Marketing Your Side Hustle

Affiliate marketing does take time though. When I became an affiliate, I thought I would be suddenly making hundreds of sales almost immediately. This can happen but it’s more likely with paid marketing and a large marketing budget. With content marketing, you’ll need your content to go viral to see this kind of dramatic increase in sales.

No, at first it’s slow. But if you stick at it, you start to see sales coming in. If these are recurring income sales, you’ll be able to build a much more sustainable business more quickly. With low value products like physical products, you’ll need to work much harder for less.

If you’re serious about building an affiliate marketing side hustle, invest in your knowledge and it’ll pay off later. I didn’t do this and rushed in. I wasted a lot of time on the wrong activities and used the wrong products. When I made a sale, the commission was inconsequential! Only later did I get the right knowledge and make it count! If you’re going down this route and are determined to succeed, make it a priority to get the right knowledge and use the right marketing and products from the get-go!

Access a free video series and learn more about creating an affiliate marketing side hustle which works!

Affiliate Marketing Motivation

Looking for affiliate marketing motivation? After watching that Tony Robbins video, or attending a motivational seminar, have you noticed how things just go back to normal? Your motivation wanes, and you fall back to your previous state? So you watch another video and try and pick yourself up!

But motivation is finite. It’s a hard thing to maintain. Since motivation is finite, it’s a much better idea to use your motivation to create habits. Habits are what matter, because they are the things you do, even when you don’t feel like it. Motivation is fleeting. One day you’re up and the next day you’re down. If your actions are always based on your motivation levels, you’re in trouble when you’re not having a good day!

Instead of trying to be perpetually motivated, which is impossible, use your motivation to create mini habits which support your longer term goals.

Affiliate Marketing Motivation – Mini Habits

As an affiliate marketer, you often need to maintain consistent actions for a long period of time; even without reward. This can be very difficult, especially if you never know when or if your actions will even pay off! Blogging is a good example of this. You need to have a belief in what you’re doing which is strong enough to maintain long term activity.

Picking a strategy you enjoy, and believe in is a good way to maintain this kind of focus. If you absolutely hate what you’re doing, it’s very difficult to maintain it for any length of time! The time needed to make affiliate marketing work for you will vary from person to person, and depend on your strategy. (See how long does affiliate marketing take).

Your affiliate marketing motivation will depend on your outlook, which will change from day to day. One day you might be very motivated and the next you’re in a pit of despair. Using your motivation to create mini habits, which you can maintain over the longer term is a good strategy to employ. On a bad day, your mini habits carry you through. Mini habits are a great way to align your daily actions with your longer term goals.

In Stephen Guise’s book Mini Habits, he suggests using tiny micro habits which can grow over time. This is a great strategy. Rather than heaping a tonne of actions steps on your “to-do” list, and overwhelming yourself, (which often leads to inaction), Guise suggests forming micro habits which you can do even on a bad day.

On a bad day, your mini habit is so easy you can still do it. It should be ridiculously easy.

Why Mini Habits?

Mini habits work because you start by creating action steps towards your goals which are super small. Most people create a mountain (in their minds) and give up before they even get started. For example, you decide you’re going to get in shape, so you join a gym. All goes well and for the first month you’re turning up regularly, maybe even going 5 times a week.

You then hit a psychological wall, or get injured. A week goes by, and you’ve not been to the gym. I’ll go next week, you tell yourself. Before you know it, you’re paying your gym membership but your motivation somehow got lost! Months pass and eventually you cancel your membership. But it all could have been avoided if you only knew about mini habits.

With a mini habit, all you need to do is turn up to the gym and swipe your membership card. Once you’ve done it, you’re off the hook! But since the hardest thing to do is often getting in the car, and driving over there, you’ve already overcome that resistance; even if you only swipe your gym card. (Putting aside the irony of driving your car to run on the spot)!

Affiliate Motivation & Blogging

Another example for affiliate marketing motivation is blogging. When you start, you think you need thousands of visitors to your website in order to make any sales. Before you start, you’ve already overwhelmed yourself for having such a long journey to make!

But if you only gave yourself the simple task of writing 500 words, or even 50 words, or reading a blog, you’ve started the wheels turning. Once those wheels are spinning, it’s easier to maintain movement. A rolling stone gathers no moss!

If you only wrote a single blog post each day for a year, you’ll have 365 blog posts within that year. Once you have started, it’s easier to maintain a habit than to constantly need help with your motivation. The habit supports you and keeps you on track.

Mini Habits Grow

Mini habits grow into bigger and stronger actions over time. A single press up doesn’t seem worth bothering with. But once you’re in the press up position, you’ll probably do more than one. Once you’ve done a single press up every day for 10 days straight, it’s much more difficult not to do it!

This is the genius of mini habits because they become part of who you are. You start identifying yourself with your habits and this is really powerful. A good book on self image is Maxwell Maltz’s psycho cybernetics. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who realised many of his patients still had mental issues after facial surgery. By altering the way they saw themselves (identity), they no longer wanted or needed facial surgery.

Accountability

Finding other people who will hold you accountable is another massive key to maintaining focus in any given direction. Finding affiliate marketing motivation can be tough because so many affiliates are going it alone. Add to the mix some well meaning friends and relatives who are set against you and you’re in for a tough ride!

When your motivation wanes, and people around you are desperate for you to quit, it’s all the more difficult to keep going. But if you have others holding you accountable and helping and encouraging you, it’s far easier to keep going. Most successful people don’t go it alone. They have others who help them.

You can join an online community of affiliate marketers through this link. Learn more about The SFM community and starting your own online business from scratch here.

Your “why” List

Having a list of “why’s” is important for affiliates too. Your “why?” has to be bigger than the problems you’ll encounter on the affiliate journey. If your reason to become successful as an affiliate is just a little extra money, it may not be strong enough to overcome the difficulties you’ll encounter. Particularly if your life is generally ok otherwise.

But if you’re desperate to escape a corporate career, or free yourself from a very difficult circumstance in life, you’ll work incredibly hard to make it happen.
Write down your main “why’s” and remember them when things get tough. Being financially independent and not needing an employer, a job or having to commute were just a few of my reasons to become an affiliate. If you’re successful as an affiliate it can give you huge freedom and choice.

Affiliate Marketing Motivation – Summary

I hope this affiliate marketing motivation article has been helpful? Affiliate marketing is tough but it’s worth the effort for the outcome you want. Keep your “why’s” in your mind, use mini habits to maintain momentum and surround yourself with like minded people who can hold you accountable and encourage you to keep going.

Always keep a focus on the outcome you want to achieve and keep your belief alive by connecting with other people on the same journey. If you’ve enjoyed this article please share it!

If you’re looking for a few affiliate marketing strategies, check out my article on ways to promote affiliate products.

Online Business Mentorship

Looking for online business mentorship? In 2014 I stumbled upon an online business mentorship community. Before I found them, I was a struggling trying to make money online. I had tried Forex marketing, eBay – buying and selling, and even had a go at selling my own ebooks. Then I found a business model called affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing, you get paid for referring people to products and services over the internet. With the right kinds of products, you can even earn a passive, ongoing income; from sales you’ve already made.

With recurring commission affiliate products and services, you keep earning from your earlier sales. These are products such as memberships and software products. Think of the memberships you might have yourself already: Netflix, mobile phone connectivity, Wifi, Sky TV? There’s products like these which online business owners use to make an income online. When you refer someone to a membership product, their subscriptions come in month after month, and you get a percentage of it.

Online Business Mentorship

But before this can happen you’ll need to learn how to set up systems and generate interest in the products you want to refer people to. This can take some time and getting used to. With an online business mentorship program, I’ve learned how to do this. You can too.

Access a powerful online business system and membership here to meet two of my personal mentors Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek.

Online Business Mentorship – Access Training & Community

With Stuart and Jay’s community, you can access a digital business system which can allow you to earn commissions from existing products and services.

You’ll work your way through the basic modules and set up your online selling system – website, email autoresponder and email follow ups.

Once setup, you’ll have a system to sell digital products online and earn commissions.

You’ll then need to learn how to generate website traffic and drive targeted visitors towards your products and services. This is why an online business mentorship is so powerful. With a mentorship program, you can access trainings and webinars to help you with your marketing strategies, your mindset, and to overcome mental and technical barriers to online success.

learning from other members and coaches — Join a variety of online business owner and mentors. Start here.

Learn Online Marketing Techniques

With the SFM Digital Business system, you can earn commissions of up to 100% by promoting a range of products. Once set up, you’ll need to learn how to promote your landing pages and drive targeted traffic towards them. This can be done through paid marketing or content marketing. There’s various ways to promote affiliate products. You can either buy traffic or build content or do a combination of the two. Many online marketers also use social media platforms to build their online presence.

The affiliate model you invest in will determine your commission structure. With the SFM’s product range, you can earn up to 40% commissions on digital products valued from $99 to $20,000.

Why You Need Mentorship

Building an online business isn’t easy. It takes time to learn the strategies you need to become successful. One of the main marketing strategies for online business is email marketing. With a single email to the right audience, you can sell a number of digital products. When your email list is numbering into the thousands, even a small percentage of purchases can earn you thousands in commissions.

But this too takes time to learn. You’ll need to build your email list in the first place. Many affiliate marketers get frustrated and quit before they even reach 1000 email subscribers. Considering that top entrepreneurs in the online business space have lists numbering into the hundreds of thousands, you can see what is required to make an online business work. You need to be persistent and serious in your efforts.

There’s many psychological barriers to building an online business too. Traditional thinking and beliefs can stand in your way, rather than help you; especially if you have learned to trade time for money in an employment. Being an entrepreneur is very different.

See affiliate psychology for more details.

If you’re ready to dive into your online business journey, click here to get started.