What are the pitfalls of affiliate marketing? It’s easy to see the up-sides of affiliate marketing. It’s a business model which can allow you to become financially independent and choose how and where you work! Earnings are potentially unlimited and you can work from anywhere in the world from a laptop!
However, with such huge benefits, it’s unsurprising that there’s many pitfalls of affiliate marketing as well. Affiliate marketing is after all a performance based business where you only get paid if you sell. Most new affiliates will struggle to sell anything within their first few efforts and this leads many to quit before they’ve given it a proper chance. There’s a 95% drop out rate in affiliate marketing which means only a tiny few will actually make it work for them to generate a reliable income.
The journey to making your first online sale is definitely a challenge and it’s much more difficult if you go it alone. So it’s worth getting help and support if you’re going to take it seriously and give yourself a proper chance.
Pitfalls Of Affiliate Marketing – Getting Off The Blocks
Getting started as an affiliate is easy. Simply join an affiliate program and learn how to promote your affiliate link. Sounds easy. But in reality there’s a lot to learn and implement, and most of the time it won’t result in a sale. As you try things out in your marketing efforts, you might expect things to work more easily than they do in reality, and this can be pretty tough and it’s where a lot of people drop out.
What you want to happen and what actually happens are very different. But if you can keep going for long enough it gets easier. Once you’ve made a single sale consider it a major break though. At this point you’ve proven to yourself that you can do it once. This can help you overcome a lot of mental baggage. If you’re full of doubt it’s much more difficult than if you’re full of self belief!
I’d say one of the major pitfalls of affiliate marketing is this beginning stage. You are likely to be sceptical and full of doubts and fears. Plus, you haven’t proved it to yourself yet or taken any action. So you’re not only encumbered by doubt but also inactivity. You need to take a lot of action to blast yourself through these barriers. This takes a lot of belief and conviction, which is part of the problem if you don’t have it! Not only do you need huge self belief but you also need to consistently take action amid the lack of tangible results.
Pitfalls Of Affiliate Marketing – The First Sale
The first sale is a major milestone and signifies a huge effort on your part, unless of course you had a lucky early win, which is possible of course. A “lucky” win might be a win without much effort. But this can also be a negative because if you believe every sale will come so easily, you’re going to be disappointed later when this success isn’t easily repeated.
Once you start proving it can be done to yourself, you’ve overcome a major barrier to success; your own scepticism and doubt. To scale this success up to larger success is now possible but this requires more effort, time and/or marketing budget. If your first sale is made through paying for advertising, you can easily scale up and repeat it. But if it’s organic, it can be more difficult to scale up.
Ideally you can make sales in your sleep with affiliate marketing and build a scalable income without having to deal with customers or handle products. But in reality this takes a lot of effort and/or a large marketing budget. If your traffic source is organic, it can take months before you see regular traffic, leads and sales. If you’re paying for traffic, it’s going to cost you!
Psycology
The psychology of affiliate marketing is quite interesting. It will definitely help you if you understand some of the psychological pitfalls before you start. Most people learning affiliate marketing haven’t come from a sales background and so their past employment can actually work against them. For example, if you have a technical role in a job, you get paid for turning up and doing the work. No matter how well a company does, the workforce gets the same pay packet each week. This can lead you to imagine the same is true of affiliate marketing. However, it doesn’t work like this as an affiliate. You only get paid when you sell something.
This means you need to focus on those actions which create this result. But most people aren’t programmed this way. Most people gravitate towards the activities which are comfortable and familiar!
Being a “busy fool” is therefore a thing to be avoided as an affiliate. A busy fool can spend all day on the superficial activities which although might be enjoyable, don’t move their business forwards.
When results aren’t forthcoming, it’s easy to blame your marketing strategy or product and therefore move on to another “system”. Again, this is human nature looking for an easier path. This is known as shiny object syndrome and before you make any ground or headway with a particular affiliate strategy, you’re off looking for the next “shiny object”. See also affiliate marketing psychology.
Summary
While affiliate marketing can allow anyone to earn from anywhere, there’s many pitfalls with the business model and most would-be affiliates don’t make it work for them. With a 95% drop out rate, you know it’s not going to be as easy as some make out.
Affiliate marketing is a performance based business model which means if you don’t make any sales you don’t get paid. It can take an enormous amount of effort just to get off the “blocks” with affiliate marketing and although it gets easier the longer you do it, most people think it’s going to be easier than it actually is.
If you have a long term view and are prepared to do the work it can be a great solution. The flip side though is that you can replace almost any income with affiliate marketing. There’s no limit on what you can earn from it. If you’re serious about learning affiliate marketing and making it work, get started here.