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.