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Why Most Affiliates Fail… and What to Do About It

Sunday, September 4, 2011

It’s no secret that out of the hundreds of thousands of new people who decide to try affiliate marketing every year, only a small percentage ever make enough to quit their day job or significantly change their lifestyle. Is it because affiliate marketing is too competitive, too hard for non-techie people, or just not all it’s cracked up to be?
Having met many successful people in the affiliate marketing world, and knowing what I know from working at ClickBank, I don’t believe that any of those are the reasons why most people don’t make it as affiliate marketers.
In my opinion, success as an affiliate marketer comes down to two factors: dedication and perseverance.

 

Dedication and Desire


If you were seriously thinking about taking up a new craft or skill, something you’d never really done before, and wanted to get good enough at it to make a living, think about how dedicated you’d need to be.
Let’s take golf as an example—if you wanted to make a living playing golf, do you think you could just go out and hit 100 golf balls a few times a week and expect to be on the pro tour any time soon?
No way! Pro golfers hit literally thousands of shots a day, every single day, whether they want to or not—because that’s what it takes to be great.  They study the game, they try to identify their faults and fix them, and most importantly, they develop or find a training system and stick to it—for months or years on end. Because that’s what it takes to be great.
According to author Malcolm Gladwell, who studied exceptionally talented and successful people in his book Outliers, found that being in the top tier of almost any endeavor, whether sports, business, or the arts, requires incredible dedication and work. He found that people at the absolute pinnacle of their craft have all put in at least 10,000 hours of work over the years.
Hopefully it won’t take you anywhere near 10,000 hours to become a successful affiliate marketer, but you need to approach your efforts as if it will. Many people buy an Internet Marketing training system, read it and get really excited, then either don’t actually follow the system to the letter, or do it for a week or two and give up if they don’t see results.
People that follow marketing systems to the letter, day in and day out, are very rare. But they are often the people who really succeed, and sometimes even develop their own system that works even better.

 

Pick a System and Follow It


Over the years, I’ve seen many affiliate marketing training systems, and with a few exceptions, their advice is usually very good. However, the techniques they teach can be tedious, repetitive, and usually take weeks, if not months, to start showing results. Just like golf training, or learning a musical instrument, or anything else that requires dedicated effort and perseverance.
I’ve talked to quite a few affiliates over the years that tell me, “I’ve been doing this for months and haven’t made any money! I’m ready to give up.” Sometimes they’ll even tell me they’re using a training system I’m familiar with, and are disappointed in its results.
Whenever I talk to someone like this, I’ll ask questions like:
  • How many articles have you written and posted?
  • How many niche websites have you built?
  • How many hours did you spend researching a niche and keywords before choosing it?
  • How many backlinks do you actively try to build each week?
Typically, the answer is “Not many” or “I’ve never really done backlinking” or “I picked a niche in a few minutes.” Having seen many of the top training programs out there, I can guarantee that they don’t promise success if you don’t regularly write articles, do serious niche and keyword research, and consistently build backlinks!
It would be like a golf instructor telling you to hit 300 chip shots every day, but instead you only do 10 shots 3 times a week. Can you blame him that you’re not getting any closer to your goal? Or is it a matter of dedication and desire?

Making the Time


At this point, you might be saying, “That’s easy for you to say. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.” For a very small number of people that might be true, but according to the Nielsen Company, the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV every single day. Imagine how much you could accomplish in your Internet Marketing efforts if you used 1 or 2 of those hours each day to focus on the kinds of tasks I mentioned above!
Remember the 10,000-hour rule? Think about how much quicker you’ll get to that level of success if you dedicate your time and focus to becoming great at affiliate marketing, rather than trying it for an hour or two here and there without a real system or plan.
Fortunately for you, with a high level of dedication and perseverance, it’s not going to take a decade of practice to become great, like it does for athletes or musicians. It can be much quicker (though not overnight or in a few weeks). Depending on the amount of time you spend, it could be anywhere from a few months to a couple of years. In the grand scheme of things, to reach your goals and change your life for the better, isn’t it worth skipping some TV every day?
If you’re really serious about becoming an affiliate marketing success, maybe it’s time to ask yourself, “Have I been doing everything I can to make the dream a reality?” If not, there’s no time like the present to start!

The Power of Networking

Here are my top tips for networking and building a strong foundation before a launch:


1. Know your product or service. To start, you should write down a one-line sentence describing your product that would be easily understandable by any person you meet. For example, “A coaching programme for people who want to start a business.”
It’s also important to project product sales so you can work toward that goal. Many people write down a figure that represents the amount they want to earn in a tax year – $50,000, $100,000, $250,000 – and the number of paying customers they need to obtain to reach that figure. For instance if your product is $50 you’ll need 1,000 customers to hit your target of $50,000 in a year (plus there will be expenses on that figure to account for).


2. Build your credibility online. Find five websites in the same niche as yours. Slowly get more involved with those sites, become a regular reader and commenter and offer to write a guest post for their site. This will generate a link back to your site and help build your credibility online.


3. Determine social network targets. I’ve set a target for myself to achieve 10,000 connections on the three major social sites:
* 10,000 Twitter Followers
* 10,000 Facebook Likes
* 10,000 YouTube Friends
Your figure could be lower but it’s something to aim for before you launch your product or service. As a rule, if you plan to promote your product through social networking channels, you’ll need to get your social figures high since most people are so distracted online that only a small percentage will read and click on your links.


4. Email the experts. Make sure you have an email process in place to do so. You’ll need a plan for writing to the well-known bloggers and site owners. Keep these emails to a few lines, show enthusiasm and be as helpful as possible. You’ll be amazed by what help, advice and opportunities you might get back from the “Internet celebs.”


5. Attend industry events. Determine which relevant events are taking place over the next 12 months and make a point of going to five events. Spreading these dates out will ensure that you have a constant flow of emails to and from new contacts and opportunities from a variety of sources. Additionally, the contacts you make in “real life” can be more powerful than online.


Networking is a continual process and is a huge part of business. Scheduling networking time into your calendar is just as important as scheduling time for product or service creation, if not more!