Are you an affiliate marketing ninja? Before becoming an affiliate marketer, I was a pretty dedicated martial artist. I even trained with a ninja who gained a 5th Dan ranking from Grandmaster Hatsumi himself!
In the 5th Dan grading there’s a test called the Godan test. Grandmaster Hatsumi would stand behind the student and strike with a practice sword. The student had to move at the right moment to avoid the hit. Too soon or too late and they would fail the test. Here’s a short video explaining the Godan test, also known as the Sakki test.
This test was originally done with a real sword. If you failed, you died! Here’s a bit more info on the Sakki test.
Affiliate Marketing Ninja
My instructor, Trevor Robinson explained the meaning of the Japanese Characters in the word Ninja. The kanji character 忍, (ninor shinobu) means “patience.” This character is made of two parts: The top is 刃, (yaiba) means “sword or knife.” The bottom is 心 (kokoro), which means “spiritual or physical heart”.
Trevor described this as meaning “even though you hold a knife to my heart, I shall prevail“.
I thought this was a fitting explanation of the character traits which an affiliate marketer needs!
Affiliates need to endure a long period of learning and development before they see the results from their actions. Particularly if they go down the route of organic marketing strategies such as blogging.
Affiliate Marketing Ninja – Blogging
Blogging is a strategy I used for years. I recently had a conversation about marketing strategy with another member of the affiliate community I’m a part of. Some affiliates say never to use paid marketing until you get traction with the organic strategy you use. But it can take years before you see any kind of traction from blogging, for example (depending on your niche and the effort you put in). So others recommend the use of paid marketing to enable you to move forwards more quickly. Especially if you can benefit from subscription products and high ticket products.
This member had been using paid marketing but struggling to build a list and get traction. This is typical in the affiliate marketing business and I had the same issues when I started out doing affiliate marketing. He asked me how I was able to carry on for so long with nothing to show! I had to think myself too. Why did I carry on when most would have quit?
The answer came to me when stoicism was later mentioned in the conversation. Here’s a video I found just recently of Tim Ferris explaining the stoic philosophy.
Affiliate Marketing Ninja
In his video, Tim Ferris explains how by focusing on what we can control, and not focusing on what we can’t control, we can become much more effective and efficient while not wasting emotional energy on those things which essentially don’t matter to our goal.
While this is a more specific strategy, I like the description of the term “ninja”, meaning patience.
The second character of this Japanese term means “person” or “a person who is like that”, (referring the the previous character). Mono (者) means “a person”, or a person who is patient.
If you’re an affiliate, you need to be patient. I wasn’t patient when I was a beginner. I couldn’t afford to be, I was in deep debt and struggling massively. But I still managed to move forwards very slowly because I never quit!
So if you’re struggling with your affiliate marketing business, remember the ninja! Remember, you’re an affiliate marketing ninja!
“Many Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that because “virtue is sufficient for happiness“, a sage would be emotionally resilient to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase “stoic calm”.” – From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism
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“I too one day some time ago was sitting in my teacher’s room, when he said “Please close your eyes and wait, and what whatever happens, make sure not to open them!” Then perceiving that my teacher went down the stairs, I let my guard down a little to the sign that he had disappeared. After several hours, some sort of heavy, pressing force approached diagonally from behind, and seeing an image as if of a body split in two, I went into sideways-rolling body movement. Then I had a feeling right from the side, of the head flying, and executed a forward breakfall. As I slowly sat down into a natural Fudoza posture, I heard my teachers voice, saying “Well done, you made it, you may open your eyes now”, and when I opened my eyes, there stood Sensei, lowering an unsheathed sword in his right hand.” – Soke Masaaki Hatsumi on his Sakki Test