I’m just re-reading Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge and it’s reminded me what a perfect accompaniment it is for affiliates. As a beginner in affiliate marketing many years ago, I struggled with procrastination. I wanted some “magic” solution to making money online which somehow meant I didn’t have to work very hard! I find myself back there, even now after years of blogging, creating content and running advertising campaigns.
I’ve had some success with affiliate marketing. But there’s always the next level of success, wherever you are at. But at some point, I stopped and as a result my sales dropped off. If only I had carried on with such vigour as I had initially. This brings me back to Jeff Olson’s book The Slight Edge. IN it, he describes this phenomenom with very precise insight.
Here’s a picture he uses in his book which describes what most people do. They work like hell to escape “failure” but once they are out of the danger zone of financial struggle, they become less motivated, and stop doing those things! Little by little, success falls away until you’re back on the line of failure. Only then do you pull out the stops and start working again!
If only we would continue doing what has worked, we would continue upwards towards greater success and achievement. The problem is, our motivation changes as we move away from struggle and poverty; especially if we have a strong “away from” motivation. An “away from” motivation is the opposite of a “towards” motivation.
The Slight Edge Away Vs. Towards Motivation
I’ve always had a strong “away from” motivation. I’m motivated away from poverty, lack and scarcity. But once I’m no longer in poverty, and have moved towards mediocrity, for example, I tend to slow down and work less!
With affiliate marketing you are your own motivator! So if you lack the motivation, you are much less likely to succeed. For example, those who tend to do well with affiliate marketing are generally strongly motivated; either towards financial freedom or away from a job which makes them miserable. For me, it was away from a miserable job. But once I was earning enough from affiliate marketing to quit my job, I was no longer motivated by it – I had quit!
Once you recognise your motivation for doing whatever it is you are doing, it can be really useful; especially if you fall into the success/failure curve represented above. If you stop going when things get easier, you’ll need to identify another form of motivation to keep you going! Otherwise you’ll keep falling back into the failure/survival curve and never break through towards the upwards curve of success.
The Slight Edge – Keep Going
In the beginning of my affiliate marketing journey it was quite difficult. I struggled to make any sales for some time. But as time worn on and I had built more and more content, I found sales dropping in organically, from the work I had done previously. This motivated me to keep going, building more and more content; because I knew it was working!
Getting to the stage of knowing what’s working is a massive achievement in affiliate marketing. It’s worth pursuing this stage with a “whatever it takes” mentality because once you get there, you’ve done 90% of the work. After that things get easier. See also my post what if affiliate marketing was a martial art.
In the image above is a graph from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear – another recommended book for affiliates. In this graph you can see what’s described as the “valley of disappointment”. This can easily represent the disappointing reality of the lack of results from your efforts in the early stages of affiliate marketing. You expect your efforts and results to correlate in a linear fashion. Sadly this is far from normal and you’ll likely need to work much harder than you expect for just mediocre results at first.
However, once you have some results, you can focus on those small actions which produce those results, since you should now be able to identify the 20% of causes which brought about your good outcomes/sales. See also the pareto principle. ]
Summary
It’s easy to dismiss affiliate marketing in the early stages, especially when you’re not getting the results you desire quickly. But stick with it and over time, if you persevere beyond what most people will do, you should start to see sales dropping in. When this happens you can track those sales back to specific actions which you took. Now you’re in a position where you can focus solely on those specific actions which brought about the sales. This gives you more leverage and depending on your marketing strategy you may even be able to automate this process and scale up.
At the point of success it’s easy to slow down and pat yourself on the back! Beware the survival/failure curve here where you can fall back and lose your momentum which has taken so long to build.
