Lost, frustrated, confused, angry.
These are only some of the feelings experienced when trying to break into affiliate marketing (or take it to the next level).
There’s always so much to learn and do, and between juggling a full-time job and other commitments in life, it can quickly become overwhelming and stressful.
So, how do you break out of this and actually start reaching your goals?
In this guide, I reveal 13 mistakes affiliate marketers make and the core 4 areas to actually focus your time and efforts on to experience positive progress.
What You Need To Know
Affiliate marketing today does not work the same way it used to.
By focusing on the 4 main components that go into making a profitable income online today, you avoid the distractions and can accomplish your goals, grow and maintain a successful online business.
There is no such thing as “plug & play”, one size fits all or push-button “solutions” in today’s economy.
What’s Wrong
It’s no secret that an overwhelming majority who get into affiliate marketing fail to get any significant results, even though affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to start an online business.
Why is this?
You’re about to discover the growing trend that keeps people stuck in today’s economy.
But before that…
A Warning…
This guide is full of insightful information, but only YOUR actions can create the change you want for your business and your life.
You can choose to go dive into this with the intention to get as much as out of it as possible, OR you can choose to just glance through, file it away and do nothing… and nothing will change!
NOTE: If you haven’t yet gotten your FREE copy of The Iceberg Effect book, I’d strongly recommend you check it out right now:
The Iceberg Effect: The Untold Secret of Affiliate Marketing Success
In it, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of the success system mentioned in this article.
If you want better results from Affiliate Marketing – this is a must-read!
It’s important to note that this guide has 2 important parts:
- What you should avoid doing.
- The success formula to focus on and take your business to the next level.
You’ll get MUCH more out of this by following through on what you’ve identified as the “ah-ha” and doing something about it.
Ok. Let’s get started!
Why Most People Fail
Affiliate marketing is known to be one of the simplest online business models – you promote other business’s products and services, and get a commission for each sale.
No product creation. No contacting suppliers or negotiating with them. No credit card processing, shipping and delivery, customer support or need for high-tech and complex processes or sales pipelines.
And yet, a lot of people who get into affiliate marketing FAIL to create any significant results, or worse, end up losing a lot of money and give up after struggling but feeling lost, frustrated and confused with what they’re doing.
Why is that?
The #1 reason is this: THINGS HAVE CHANGED. Where the old “go fishing” hacks and strategies of previous years used to work, they simply don’t anymore.
Is any ONE of these 13 reasons why your affiliate marketing business isn’t profitable?
1. Relying Exclusively on Low Priced Products
Offering only low priced products is no longer a viable option, especially with the rising cost of advertising. Without having premium products in your promotions strategy that provide significant returns, it will be very hard to remain profitable.
Put it this way…
Would you go on a diet that promises you’ll lose 2lbs of fat after following a strict routine of going to the gym 6 days a week for 8 weeks, whilst having zero carbs in your meals?
ONLY 2lbs after all that?!?! Yet, that’s what most affiliate marketers do – putting huge amounts of efforts into promoting offers with very little return.
2. Promoting Just One Product
You’re relying on one product to make all the money for you.
Regardless of how good a product is, there are only so many ways you can go about promoting one product continuously.
Give people options and diversify your offers. As long as it’s a solution that is relevant to them and fits their needs, they’ll love it.
3. Zero to No Customer Research
The trick to “great marketing” is saying the right thing, at the right time, to the right person. When you’re guessing, you’re like everyone else.
If you’re not aware of your audience, their pains, desires, and stages in the buyer’s journey, your marketing will be hard and it’s a guarantee your message will fall on deaf ears.
Customers are the lifeblood to every business… Which means you should know your customers inside and out.
4. Selling, Rather Than Helping
Day 1- “Buy this product”
Day 2- “Buy this product”
Day 3- “Buy this product”
Day 4- “Buy this….” (You get the point)
There’s nothing wrong with selling, and even though people like to buy, no one likes getting sold to.
Whether it’s on your email, website content or social media, your focus should be bringing value to people first. Selling becomes easier when you do.
5. Copying and Hacking Bits & Pieces Together
You hear about this successful affiliate marketer who has generated 6-figures by promoting XYZ product. You take up the generous offer to copy some of what they’ve done and proceed to hacking it into your own business.
Except this doesn’t work. Why?
What you’ve just copied is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s a bigger picture and overall user journey behind the scenes that a hacked together approach cannot account for.
Getting inspiration is a very good thing, but just copying or hacking in a piece of the puzzle without seeing the bigger picture is a recipe for failure.
6. Promoting Low-Value Offers
Be honest. Are you focusing solely on the commissions instead of the important things like:
- Does this solve a problem?
- Are people buying this?
- Or better, would I actually buy this?? (Wait, you do at least know about the details around the product you’re promoting, right?)
- Does this look scammy?
Because no matter how good and well-crafted your blog, video review, landing pages, emails, or copy is, it’s all pointless if your offer sucks (or worse, you don’t believe in it).
7. No Knowledge of The Product
This. Is. Huge. And many affiliate marketers are guilty of this.
When you don’t take the time or effort to really understand and know the products you’re promoting and want to earn commissions from, your messaging will be disconnected, shallow and just… well, suck.
The more you know about the product(s) you’re promoting, the higher your sales conversions (and trust).
8. Not Treating It As a Business
The lack of understanding it is a business, which requires a business like minded approach. Very few people new to online have business experience, or the managerial skills necessary to run a business.
You have to understand you are the one who has to make it work. Affiliate marketing it is not a click and forget as it mostly advertised.
9. Cutting Corners
A big reason you’re not seeing any real success is that you migth be over confident! You feel you can cut corners and do things better “your own way”, only to find out several years later after learning the hard way that if you don’t stick to the rules and play the game, success will not follow!
People fail in affiliate marketing because they don’t have enough experience and they don’t want to get advice when they need it (especially through the first couple of years in your internet marketing journey).
When you’re just getting started, you should have a very good picture of the steps you’re taking and know what to do next.
10. Ignoring Optimization
For some reason, many people think once you hit “launch”, that’s it. Far from it; it’s only the beginning of a learning and improvement process.
A major advantage of internet marketing is that in most cases you get quick results from the strategies you execute.
Optimization may not be something you focus on in the beginning, but as your business grows you can’t push this aside if you really want to grow and maintain success.
11. Not Working On Your Marketing Skills
Affiliate “Marketing” – you can’t just decide that only one part of that job title is relevant.
90% of what you’re doing is essentially marketing, so why not put some focus to improving that skill set? It’ll not only personally benefit you, but you will start seeing business growth and opportunities where you couldn’t before.
12. Ignoring Competition
Are you a big fish in a small pond … or a small fish in a big pond?
Competitors are like a compass in business. You discover and gain deeper insight into your target market, the trends, and are able to solidify your positioning and marketing strategy.
13. Distraction and Procrastination
If you made it this far without a notification from your phone going off, or something else pulling your attention away, then you’re doing something right.
How easily do you get caught up in social media? Or looking at your stats? Or checking out a new tool, or trying out the “holy-grail” strategy?
Yes, it probably started with reasonable intentions, but before you know, you’re chasing butterflies and not actually doing the things you’re meant to that actually move your business forward.
Procrastination and distraction will leave you running in the hamster wheel.
You have to focus on the important things and prioritize if you want to have any chance at success.
The Success System
The ultimate result is to accomplish your goals and make an incredible full-time living from the comfort of your home, or wherever you want to be, by generating an income so you can create a financially free lifestyle for you and your family.
So how you do this?
You start by focusing on the 4 main components that go into making a profitable income online today.
1. Traffic
Earlier, I mentioned “Customers are the lifeblood of all business”.
I’ll repeat that in a different way:
Traffic is the lifeblood of all online businesses, and there’s no practical way to make income online without it.
Where most affiliate marketers fail is that they don’t have a proven, reliable way of generating this traffic, either through “free” or paid methods.
So-called “free” traffic is a major misleading term, as ALL free traffic methods you can use requires a TIME investment i.e. it costs time. And not just once, but consistently for a long term.
Examples of free traffic methods include: social media marketing, blogging, video marketing, forum marketing, podcasting, etc.
A realistic expectation with free traffic is that you will likely not see results immediately. In fact, it can take a good amount of time before anything comes into fruition.
Paid traffic/advertising on the other hand has a monetary investment. But what most people don’t understand is when you can pay for visitors, you are in a lot more control of your business.
Paid traffic is the most sustainable way to acquire traffic, as you can grow and scale your business with it.
The wrong mindset with paid advertising is this:
“I’m paying for it, so it’s guaranteed to work.”
This is why a lot of people who try paid advertising fail, and believe it doesn’t work, when in reality they had the wrong expectations and approach.
You will have winning campaigns and losing campaigns with paid traffic (just like you will have winning and losing free traffic content). The key differences are time, control, and the potential to quickly grow your income!
This makes point #1 in WHY MOST FAIL above even more important.
2. Capture
You’re not in love with traffic just to watch it go by. Your goal is to build your audience, so you have people you can communicate along the way.
This is the #1 intent behind driving traffic to your business.
Especially with paid traffic, your goal will be to generate a ROI on your ad spend, and the first key performance indicator (KPI) is the number of LEADS you generate from your advertising campaign.
The same goal applies to free traffic strategies. The more people you are able to communicate with, the more money you are able to generate.
3. Follow-Up
This is it. At the core of every successful affiliate marketing is the follow-up. It’s the money-maker of your business.
So it’s worth repeating:
“The more people you are able to communicate with, the more money you are able to generate“
But be warned…
For people to tune-in to what you’re saying and offering, they must Know, Like, and Trust you.
Without actually communicating to your audience in a valuable, trustworthy way, long-term success will always be a pipe-dream.
Recall #4 in WHY MOST FAIL?
No one wants a sales person who is only interested in pitching and selling; no one likes getting sold to.
4. Sales System
Not all offers are made equal.
For you to make any significant profit, you must be sending people to a very particular type of sales system behind what you’re promoting.
Not focusing on this will leave any affiliate marketer desperately fighting over small, tiny scraps of commissions.
It’s great when you make a sale, but it’s a loss if you’re not profitable. The specific sales system you need to be promoting is one that will allow you make commissions into the 4-figures.
Connecting The Dots
You may have identified 1 or several reasons from the 13 for why affiliate marketers are failing. Don’t be disheartened, it’s the beginning of progress.
I also laid out the 4 core components that you should focus on if you want to be profitable in today’s economy:
- Traffic.
- Capture.
- Follow-up.
- Sales-system.
This may have left you wondering how you piece all this together…
The great news is all those problems have been solved and the entire process shared inside a new book: “The Iceberg Effect“.
It’s specifically written for anyone wanting to start, grow and maintain an affiliate marketing business in today’s economy.
This is how you connect the dots.
Click here to learn more of The Iceberg Effect (Foreword By Russell Brunson)