If you’re wondering “why is affiliate marketing so hard?”, you’re probably struggling right now to make any sales! I know your pain, and struggled for years trying to make a living from affiliate marketing. You must remember that with affiliate marketing, most of what you do simply won’t work! While this is incredibly frustrating in the beginning, it’s worth the struggle when you finally do break through and start making regular sales.
Pareto’s principle states that 80% of the outcomes are attributed to 20% of the causes. With affiliate marketing this is very true. In the beginning, you’ll spend time on many strategies and activities; most of which won’t work. Only after you’ve tried and failed many times will you start to see sales dropping in to your inbox – unless you’re very lucky! Once this happens you can focus on those activities which brought in the sales. But until this point, you’ll be wondering why affiliate marketing does not work!
Why Is Affiliate Marketing So Hard?
So why is affiliate marketing so hard anyway? Shouldn’t it be easy?! Well, no. If it was easy everyone would be doing it and nobody would have a regular job anymore! But remember what you’re doing as an affiliate – selling other people’s products. At first your lack of skill and experience will make everything difficult and challenging. Remember that the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried!
This can also lead to the idea that affiliate marketing simply doesn’t work. It’s easier to believe it’s a scam, and quit, than to persevere among the difficulties.
If your belief becomes very low you’ll quit. It’s much harder to persevere in something you don’t believe in. So you need to keep your spirits high and keep climbing!
Affiliate Marketing – My Journey
When I started learning affiliate marketing I thought I would be able to throw up a website and get instant traffic. I believed the courses which told me how easy it was – I’d be rich in no time I thought to myself! But nothing could have been further from the truth.
I struggled for years building websites and writing content. I jumped from course to course, looking for the “magic bullet”. In many ways I made the journey harder because I thought it should be easy. So I was always looking for the easy path, rather than learning the skills and raising my game.
After all how difficult is affiliate marketing anyway? Surely you can build a funnel, send traffic and make money? How hard can it be? Affiliate marketing gets easier as you arm yourself with the right knowledge and gain experience. Once you prioritise your education, over making of money, things do start getting easier. For a long time I was focused on slow marketing strategies and I promoted products which paid peanuts. I didn’t have the best knowledge so of course I was going to struggle.
Affiliate marketing is a skilful activity and should be thought of as something which is worth training for. A pilot wouldn’t jump onboard a commercial jet and try and fly it would years of training and experience in smaller aircraft. A surgeon wouldn’t undertake a dangerous operation without prior knowledge. But with affiliate marketing, anyone can join a partner program and “give it a go”. It’s no wonder that they find it difficult, given this attitude.
Making Affiliate Marketing Easier
To make affiliate marketing easier, you should definitely invest in your education. Knowing a few key things can make all the difference. Getting help and support can make affiliate marketing easier too. Here’s a few things to focus on to make affiliate marketing a whole lot easier:
- Don’t think it’s easy! Get support and focus on training and development. Don’t focus on the results, just on learning and growing.
- Use products which pay recurring commissions. With recurring commission programs you can earn ongoing income from each sale. Once you break through and start generating sales, each one will be worth much more than single products which only pay once.
- Choose high ticket products to promote too. With high ticket products you can use scalable paid marketing strategies. Smaller value physical products only pay a pittance and so you are left with free marketing strategies to make it viable.
- Make daily habits which move your business forwards.
- Learn to control your mental state and look after your health. If you start getting demoralised, your affiliate business will be affected. You need to keep yourself buoyant and positive to keep going when things get tough.
- Choose a strategy which suits you and your own personal circumstances, and your product range. For some paid marketing is the best, for others it’s blogging or creating videos.
- Focus on the activity not the results. At first you won’t have any results so it’s important to keep your spirits up and focus on what you can do every day, not on what hasn’t happened yet! Keep a daily diary of your activities which move your business forwards.
A Marathon Not A Sprint
Remember that affiliate marketing is a marathon not a sprint. Most people will quit before they even make a sale online. They don’t see the long term benefits of keeping moving and staying in the game. Keep your eye focused on what affiliate marketing can eventually do for you – complete financial and time freedom and complete geographical freedom. Not many business models can offer what affiliate marketing can. Surely this is worth some struggle and difficulty?
Have a look at the picture above. It’s shows a diagram from James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits. This diagram could easily show the journey of an affiliate marketer, too.
As a beginner affiliate, your expectations are very high. A little too high! You think it should be easy. So ultimately you’re going to reach the “valley of disappointment”, where your expectations don’t meet with reality. This is a tough time for an affiliate and they will either choose to carry on or quit at this point.
How Affiliates Should View Failure
But as an affiliate you need to be tough! Each failure should be seen as a stepping stone to success. If you try everything, you will eventually succeed. After all, there’s plenty of affiliates who have succeeded and built six and seven (even eight) figure businesses.
But initially, you’ll be trying things you haven’t done before. Many strategies won’t work to make you a sale. But everything you do will give you some feedback, even if that feedback is to not do it again, or do it slightly differently.
So as an affiliate you should look to learn something from every thing you do. You can only fail if you quit, everything else is feedback! Look at affiliate marketing this way and you’ll never quit. Each piece of feedback is a clue to the next step which will eventually lead you to success.
You can save a heap of time as an affiliate by joining an online community and learning from others who have already succeeded online. Access a free video series to learn more about an online training community.
