What To Do When Your Affiliate Business Isn’t Working

When your affiliate business isn’t working, it’s easy to throw in the towel. In fact around 95% of affiliate marketers do this. But there’s two ways to look at things when your affiliate business isn’t working. You can either throw up your hands and say “affiliate marketing just doesn’t work“. Or you can ask yourself whether you’re the problem!

“Am I the problem?” is the best way to look at it because it is empowering. If you’re the problem, you can do something to fix it! But if ‘affiliate marketing’ is the problem, you can’t fix that – because that’s the business model you’re using!

Taking 100% responsibility for your online business is the best way to make change possible. There’s a number of subtle ways in which your own mind can deceive you here. You can blame your lack of funds, your lack of training and understanding and so on. But ultimately, blame is of no use. It’s only disempowering, and it only serves to defer responsibility away from yourself. Affiliate marketing is a performance based business model in which you only get paid when you sell something online through your affiliate link.

If you don’t do that, you don’t get paid. So your job as an affiliate is to figure out how to make those sales, whatever that means, and however you do it.

What To Do When Your Affiliate Business Isn’t Working – Fixing “You”

So the first thing you should do if you’re struggling to make money with affiliate marketing is look at “you”. Sometimes this means going back to the drawing board and getting more help and support. But sometimes it means re-evaluating your priorities and goals. If you’re carrying disempowering beliefs and ideas around, such as a victim mindset, entitlement attitude or you’re looking for excuses, that’s a good place to start. Those ideas need to change to more empowering mindsets, or you’ll keep running into the same problems again and again.

In yesterday’s post I talked about intention setting and goals and I think this is a crucial part of success with affiliate marketing. Without a target to aim for, how are you going to “hit” it? You might have some vague idea about what success means to you in your affiliate business, but if it’s vague you won’t know when you’ve arrived. You need a tangible goal and to communicate this idea to your subconscious mind on a regular basis.

This is done through using mantras, visualising and communicating the ideas of your intention to your subconscious mind. You are in effect training your mind to focus on the outcome you want. When you do this well, you’ll come up with ideas and insights you never before thought of.

Your intention must be strong to survive the battlefield of difficulties within the affiliate marketing space. There’s no room for uncertainty and doubt. The smallest problem is enough to kill your dreams if you’re full of scepticism and doubt. But if you fill your mind with positivity and create a strong, powerful intention, those same problems will only seem like molehills, not mountains.

See my post on focus and inspiration and watch the video in it, too.

When Your Affiliate Business Isn’t Working – Something Different

If you’ve been doing the same things over and over, and expecting a different result, perhaps it’s time to do something different.

Einstein is often cited as having said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

With affiliate marketing there may be an element of repetition which is necessary, especially if you’re a content creator, for example. But if you’ve been doing the same things for months, or even years, perhaps it’s worth trying something new. There’s many ways to promote affiliate products and sometimes it’s worth shaking things up a bit if you feel like you’re getting nowhere!

I switched to using paid marketing a few years back and had some amazing results with YouTube, for example. Up till then, I was expecting too much from my blogging which only brought in sporadic affiliate sales.

Where’s Your Focus

For a long time, I was focusing on those who were far ahead of me in terms of earnings. While this can be inspirational and helpful (if they’re a mentor, for example), it can also lead you to doubt yourself and your particular “place” on the affiliate journey.

I would look at (and follow) affiliates who were earning tens of thousands a month, and then by comparison, feel doubtful at my modest successes. Focusing on the mountain peak ahead of you, and fuelling your mind with doubt and scepticism is not going to help you.

It’s useful to zoom in and zoom out of timeframes – looking at both your long term goals and the short term productive steps you can take. Use your long term goals as inspiration (spiritual fuel) and the short term steps as your daily routine. Unless you get both these on track, it’s easy to fail before you start because you have fuelled your mind with doubt and feelings of not being good enough. Hence, you fall back into scepticism and inaction, where nothing happens.

Summary

So, what to do when your affiliate business isn’t working? First, take stock of where you are at. How high is your belief in your ability to earn with affiliate marketing? Mark yourself between 1 and 10, where 1 is you have no belief and 10 means you’re absolutely buzzing with excitement at the thought!

If you don’t score a 10, you should spend some time fixing “you”. Your beliefs, intentions and goals are the “spiritual fuel” of your affiliate journey. Without fuel “it” won’t go anywhere because you’re the driver!

You also need a plan and some physical action steps. All motivation and inspiration won’t take you anywhere without action. If you’ve been trying something for some time and still aren’t getting anywhere, try something else. Reinvest in yourself and get some more training. Start again at the beginning if you need to. Take 100% responsibility for your results and accept that you are in charge.

Look at your counter intentions, the negative ideas and the mental roadblocks you are carrying. What stops you moving forwards, and who are you looking to blame? Are you carrying a victim mindset, or are your expectations simply too high? Do the work on yourself first, and then “in” your business.

Be brutally honest with yourself. The results are never promised with affiliate marketing, you only get paid when you sell something. Focus on that objective as your primary goal in the first place. Once you have made your first sale, you can make many more!

You can get help, support and training here.