Failing forwards in affiliate marketing is a concept I learned from the community of online affiliates I joined. You can access them through signing up to my email list on this website. It’s a simple idea. Unless you try something out with affiliate marketing you won’t know whether it works or not. Despite whatever training and coaching you have received, you won’t get anywhere with affiliate marketing without getting your “feet” wet. Much like the saying you can’t learn to swim without getting in the water, failing forwards means trying (and most likely failing) with some kind of marketing efforts.
For me, I had already failed many times with affiliate marketing when I found coaches and mentors to help guide me. I was well versed in “failing” at least! Just not succeeding! But the act of placing an advert, writing a blog post or uploading a video are all examples of how you can step out of your comfort zone and learn something.
One of the most difficult aspects of affiliate marketing is actually getting started with some kind of marketing strategy. But unless you fail, (usually many times), you’ll never learn to get good at any particular marketing tactic.
Failing Forwards In Affiliate Marketing – Blogging
For me it was blogging where my first online success landed. I made my first sale through a review blog post on a free blogging site (Hubpages.com). It was a short lived success, but a success none the less. It motivated me to keep going with affiliate marketing and the reason I’m still doing affiliate marketing today.
I figured that if I could make a single sale online, I could make many more. Before this happened I had written many posts and they all amounted to absolutely nothing (in terms of sales). But in reality, they had all helped me to overcome my reluctance to get started and actually take some “baby steps” towards building an income online.
I had failed forward so many times than one of my posts actually worked! This gave me faith and of course the data which proved not only that affiliate marketing did in fact work, but that I could make it work for me!
Without faith that affiliate marketing can work for you, you’re hardly likely to even try. But without falling and getting up many times, you likely won’t find a strategy you can run with.
Failing Forwards In Affiliate Marketing – Running Ads
I was at first very reluctant to run paid ads and in the early days of being an affiliate I had my Adwords account shut down by Google. Back in the day this was pretty bad and I couldn’t get it reinstated. But before I got shut down, I was running ads and making affiliate sales. I was about to start increasing my budget and bam – no more account! This made me switch to a purely organic method of marketing using video and blog posts to build authority from a website.
Organic marketing is tough and you need to work relentlessly (often without reward) in order to get free traffic and eventually make sales. Paid marketing on the other hand is different because ultimately you can have an advert which works consistently. Once you “arrive” here you can simply leave it running to make sales and profit.
You can easily scale up too, which is why many affiliates use this method. However, most people will experience a lot of ads which don’t work, before they find one which actually brings in the profit. Again this is where failing forwards matters. Unless you’re prepared to learn from these “failings” you can’t expect to win in the end.
Failing Forwards – Niche Websites
I’m a big fan of building niche websites of which this is one. But my success with niche websites was hard won. Before I had a website which actually worked, bringing in sales consistently, I built hundreds of the suckers! Most of them failed miserably! One of the first ones I built was called tedssheds.net and it actually ranked for the keyword from which it was built. I sold a Clickbank product from it – shed plans.
In all the time it was ranked on Google, I made one lonely sale – netting me a grand total of $40! But it was a win at the time. It showed me that organic marketing could work. I also built websites for many other Clickbank products in my early days as an affiliate – most of which, I might add, simply didn’t work at all!
I had followed some early course I found back in the early 2000’s which taught niche website building. After literally throwing up several websites (none of which ranked), I pretty much threw in the towel. It was only circumstances which kept me going ( I was struggling to make ends meet as a stunt performer).
Not Quitting
95% of affiliates will quit so the answer is to be one of the 5% who doesn’t! Not quitting might just be the winning formula for success in affiliate marketing. But not only not quitting, but also looking to your results as “feedback” (whether you deem them “good” or “bad”) is the sign of the thinking entrepreneur.
That feedback simply isn’t possible unless you attempt something which you haven’t yet tried. Failing forwards means to keep trying new things until you find something which works for you. As the saying goes “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” – Henry Ford
Failing forwards therefore, is a good strategy for life in general, and not just in affiliate marketing. If you’re serious about earning an income online, join an community of online entrepreneurs by signing up on this website for the free video series.
Summary
When a toddler first tries to walk, they stumble over and stand up again. They don’t think “ah well, I guess walking just isn’t for me”! They get up again and again until they are trotting around happily by themselves.
The same can be said for anything new which we attempt. Just like the toddler, as newbie affiliates we are learning a new skill. We can’t expect to be experts without falling over a few times and we can’t fall over unless we first try and stand up!
With affiliate marketing, standing up means getting help, joining a course, running an advert for the first time, building an email list, or writing a blog post. Take the first step and get help from a group of online mentors and coaches here.
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