What are the skills required for affiliate marketing? Affiliates have all kinds of skills and as you persevere with your affiliate business you can expect to add to your skill and knowledge base over time. In general, affiliates will need to be good learners. They should know what drives affiliate sales and how to target their audience. Good affiliates are good communicators and have learned how to drive website traffic in large numbers. This can be done is a variety of ways including paid marketing, blogging, content creation and social media marketing.
The main skill of an affiliate is marketing. Marketing can be said to be a little different from simply advertising. Advertising is putting up adverts. Marketing is communicating through advertising. A good affiliate is a good communicator who is able to reach a large audience through their marketing messages.
This can involve email marketing messages, blog posts, video marketing or any other form of advertising. You don’t have to be an expert in all these marketing strategies. It’s a good idea to focus on one area you can get really good at, at least initially.
Skills Required For Affiliate Marketing – Technical Knowledge?
Are you afraid of the technical skills you might need to set up websites, and run advertising campaigns? This fear is largely unfounded because software and technology has eliminated many of the technical aspects needed to build an online business. Twenty years ago this was a very different story; affiliates needed to be able to use code to build websites. Nowadays they can use drag and drop software and have a website built in a few clicks of their mouse!
There are some technical aspects to being an affiliate, of course. Affiliates need to run advertising campaigns, track their sales and use data to understand how to improve their marketing methods. But these things can be learned by joining a training program which walks you through the process step by step. Access a free video series here to learn more.
Skills Required For Affiliate Marketing – Self Reliance
As an affiliate you’re effectively a “solopreneur” – an entrepreneur who is working by themselves. As such, it’s useful if you have the skill of self reliance. Self reliant people can solve their own problems and find information off their own back. They are good at working by themselves and are self motivated. If you need a lot of constant support and reassurance, then affiliate marketing might not be right for you.
You can still find help and support, but your affiliate journey will be a lot slower if you need to ask someone for help every time you encounter a problem or have a setback. To move faster as an affiliate you should be good at doing your own research and solving your own problems.
Entrepreneurs are self motivated and since affiliate marketing is a performance based business, it will serve you to be highly motivated, self sufficient and self reliant.
Entrepreneurial
Affiliates are effectively entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial journey has many twists and turns and there are great risks and great rewards! Not everyone is right for entrepreneurial life though. As an affiliate you are effectively in business for yourself. If you don’t make any sales as an affiliate, you don’t earn any money! Affiliate marketing isn’t therefore for the faint of heart. If you’re used to a regular salary, going into business for yourself is quite different. There’s no guarantees in affiliate marketing.
This means you need to take 100% responsibility for your actions – both your successes and “failures” are learning experiences which can be used for growth or to justify quitting! A huge percentage of affiliate marketers drop out and the affiliate marketing failure rate is pretty high at around 95%.
To become successful as an affiliate then, you need to be in the small percentage of those who don’t quit. This portion of affiliates experiences the same as those who quit – a fair amount of struggle and adversity. They just look at those experiences differently and learn from them instead of giving up!
Having a strong desire to succeed, a long term vision and ability to learn from adversity will serve you well.
If you’re serious about becoming an affiliate, access a free video series here.
Failing Forwards
Most affiliates will learn from the things they do, not from what they know theoretically. The fastest way to learn the skills of affiliate marketing is by failing a lot! By “failing” I mean doing the things which affiliates do:
- Running adverts
- Blogging
- Uploading content
- Learning video marketing
- Using social media
- etc.
Only by doing can you get first hand knowledge of what actually works! There is of course a time period where you will be watching videos and learning some new things. Initially you’ll be spending 90% of your time learning: watching videos, attending webinars etc. Once you have learned some skills it’s vitally important not to get stuck in “learning mode”. You need to switch at this point to implementing those skills you have learned.
It’s easy to feel as though you’re progressing while watching videos and attending webinars. But most of your actual learning as an affiliate will come from your own trials and tribulations. Without getting your feet wet, you’ll likely fall into one of the many affiliate traps:
- Getting stuck in learning mode – watching endless videos
- Jumping from one course to another – looking for the easy option (aka shiny object syndrome)
- Wasting time on fruitless activities – being a busy fool
Time Management
Time management is also a useful skill for affiliate marketers. You can’t really control time, only the actions you take in any given day. So making a priority of spending your time on the most important activities is pretty vital for your success. One way to help you do this is to create a daily to do list and prioritise your actions according to importance.
It’s easy to gravitate towards those activities which you find more pleasing and enjoyable. But the chances are strong that those actions are the least important ones! The difficult tasks are often the ones you will avoid or put off. Holding yourself accountable to those tasks you need to do, and not those you like to do is important if you are to move forwards.
Solution Oriented
A good affiliate is solution oriented. Unless you’re solution oriented, you will likely find problems will phase you. You might even let a technical issue stop you in your tracks. To succeed as an affiliate you will need to overcome problems. This means personal growth is pretty important to your success online.
Many affiliates will quit when they run into a small problem because they aren’t prepared to find answers for themselves. It’s easier to quit than to be resourceful and find your own answers. This is one reason so many affiliates quit – 95% in fact! They allow small problems to become big problems and they see them as insurmountable. When you’re solution oriented, no problem will stop you from achieving your longer terms goal of affiliate success.
An interest in personal development can help you to stay focused and grow into the person you need to be in order to succeed. If you don’t grow alongside your business, chances are good than a small technical issue will throw you into a bad mood, which can ultimately destroy your best intentions! It spirals out of control and before you know it you’ve completely given up on your business and your dreams!
Summary
Anyone can learn the skills required to become successful as an affiliate. It’s not easy though and you should expect to work at it for some time before you start making regular sales. Being consistent and finding a strategy you can work on over the longer term will help you immensely.
If you are thinking of just “giving it a go” affiliate marketing might not be for you. It takes a lot more than most people think to become successful as an affiliate marketer.
For more information access a free video training series here.