Mastering affiliate marketing is no easy feat. Most affiliates will quit within their first year without having made any money at all. So despite the claims made around affiliate marketing, it isn’t at all easy. Which is why mastering affiliate marketing is the equivalent of mastering a martial art! It can take decades to master affiliate marketing and even then, there’s always more to learn.
The reasons so many affiliates quit is because they begin with no knowledge. As you persevere past your own doubts and scepticism, you’ll achieve your first sale online. This is a magical thing when it happens. Once you’ve made your first sale online, you’ll have a “formula” to make many more. The strategy you use to make your first sale, will have a say in your journey and the strategy you decide to use.
Mastering Affiliate Marketing
It’s far easier to master affiliate marketing with a lot of money! You can use that cash to run paid adverts until your get a sale. Once you do, use your tracking and data to determine the best way to make more sales by spending less than you earn. When you have consistent sales from a paid advert, you can potentially scale up or repeat the same advertising technique.
But for some affiliates this happens after they’ve spent a huge amount of money on advertising. If you have a high ticket sales funnel, and stacks of cash to burn through, you can collect data very quickly. But if you’re not so fortunate to be in this position, it can take much longer.
Slower marketing strategies, such as blogging or organic video marketing, take considerably longer in order to generate success online. With paid marketing and a high ticket product range, you can be up and running fairly quickly. But whichever strategy you implement, mastering affiliate marketing will take some time and effort.
Mastering Affiliate Marketing – My Journey
My affiliate journey began back in the early 2000’s and after failing to make consistent money doing Forex marketing I looked at eBay. I bought a couple of ebooks from eBay which taught me various strategies to use the site to make money. One of them I share in my article how to start a profitable ebay business. I became frustrated with this strategy and although I did make consistent, but small, profits with it, I knew there had to be a better way. There was! After looking for a marketing course to sell my own ebooks, I discovered affiliate marketing.
My first online sale came from an article review I wrote on a free blogging platform (Hubpages.com). I had bought a software for building websites called XSitepro and decided to review it. I made something like $40 through a sale through my article. Despite numerous other attempts at this same strategy, I failed miserably at it for quite some time. My account at Hubpages.com got shut down too, because their rules around affiliate links were fairly strict.
I eventually found an affiliate marketing mentorship program which helped me stay the course with affiliate marketing, but this was some time later, after I had started. Before getting to this point, I had joined many online courses and made many mistakes online.
Mastering Affiliate Marketing – Finding Your Ikigai
I was introduced to the concept of Ikigai by the SFM Mentors to help me find my online path. Ikigai is a Japanese term meaning “reason for being”.
Having met several affiliates through The SFM Mentors, it’s obvious that not everyone works in the same way. Nor should they. Some affiliates like to write content and others run adverts. Some like video as their creative outlet and others like writing, or creating images. And although it’s useful to break through your barriers to success by trying new things and not getting stuck in comfort zones, you’ll also naturally gravitate towards the things you like and enjoy.
For me, that’s writing. But perhaps this is because it’s also now become a habit for me to write. The flip side to this coin is of course being the “busy fool” – working on things which don’t produce income online. I’ve definitely fallen into this trap too and spent days working on nice designs and images or logos on websites which get zero traffic.
Finding your ikigai is an important part of mastering affiliate marketing. Why would anyone want a business which they hated to work on? They wouldn’t! And it wouldn’t be sustainable for very long if they built such a business either!
Work Your Passion and Let Your Passion Be Your Work
For years I worked jobs and careers which made me miserable! I thought I’d never find something which suited me. But eventually I was able to make affiliate marketing pay, and doing something I enjoyed – writing/creating! Before this happened though I struggled with numerous avenues, got accounts shut down, built hundreds of websites and wrote thousands of articles.
But ultimately what worked for me was the thing I enjoyed the most, simply because I did it for longer and sustained the work long enough to make it pay.
One example of working on something I didn’t love is worth a mention here. I was desperate to earn from the internet so I looked at a strategy which involved building niche websites and getting ranked on the search engines for free traffic.
One topic I found was around the harvesting of mushrooms! I knew nothing of this topic, but at the time I was passionate about creating a niche website which ranked at the top of Google.
I blogged on this site for several months, creating a resource information site around the domain name: whentoharvestgarlic.com. It did rank top of Google for this keyword but ultimately the site failed. I couldn’t monetise it very well and I was burned out within 6 months of writing about a topic which didn’t interest me! So I let the site fall from the top and eventually I ditched the domain altogether.
Lessons Learned
If you’re wanting to become an affiliate marketer, and you want to be successful, choose a path you have a passion for and interest in. Otherwise you’ll find yourself in a business you hate. Money can never recompense you for the lost time in your life, doing something you don’t enjoy!
My garlic harvesting website, although a monetary failure, taught me a valuable lesson. I had no interest in garlic, and no knowledge about it either! So for each article I wrote, I had to thoroughly research the topic. Each one took a huge amount of time and effort to do. But when you find a topic you love, your interest and passion will never become exhausted, and this means you’ll stick to it for much longer than you would a topic which you had no interest in.
Inevitable Downturns
With affiliate marketing, as with any business, there will be the inevitable times when you lose interest and momentum. One of the major benefits to affiliate marketing though is that in these times, your business can still generate sales. With a job, in which you lose passion, if you stop working, you don’t get paid! But once you’ve stuck to affiliate marketing for long enough (and do it right), you’ll see continued income from sales you made earlier (with subscription products) and ongoing traffic from marketing activities you already set up.
When you lose momentum it’s a good idea to remind yourself why you set out to become an affiliate in the first place. Write a list of things to look at when you’re facing the hard times. Here’s some of my reasons to be an affiliate marketer:
- Autonomy – I can work remotely for myself without a boss or a job
- I don’t have to travel to work (very useful in 2020!)
- Flexible working hours means I can build my business around my life, rather than the reverse as in a job or other career.
- I’m self motivated with an online business – I work better when rewards are based on efforts rather than just turning up in a job for the same income whatever you accomplish. (Affiliate earnings are effort related)
- Uncapped earnings and huge potential – I’m long term focussed and would rather struggle for what an online business gives me long term, than work a job potentially for years for a regular and limited income.
Summary
Not everyone is cut out for affiliate marketing. It takes a lot of work and effort to get the wheels turning from a standstill. However, once they are turning, it takes less and less effort to keep them going! In a job, you need to consistently turn up month after month, year after year. For some, this is fine. But for others this takes its toll on them, their relationships and their personal happiness levels.
Affiliate marketing is a great alternative for anyone who might feel more motivated for long term freedom than short term comfort. Mastering affiliate marketing is something which happens by sticking to it for years. Most new affiliates will quit. But if you know you’re right for it, commit for the long term and keep the beginners mind. The beginners mind keeps you learning and developing in your online business. It’s the surest way to mastery in any endeavour. When you think you know everything, you stop learning, and plateau.
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