You know, every day I get a bunch of emails from people asking me to look at their websites and tell them where they’re doing wrong.
But let’s face it.
Most people who start affiliate marketing fail.
And you know you what? They usually fail pretty quickly, because as harsh as it might sound, they’re not willing to put in the level of work and commitment that’s required to get the results they want.
If this thing was easy, everybody would be doing it.
So every single day, I see these websites from people who start off with the best intentions, but just go about things in completely the wrong way.
But the thing is, most of these folks are decent, hardworking, and honest people that just want to improve their lives for themselves and for their families. And that’s an admirable thing to do. It’s such a great thing to pursue.
So where are they going wrong?
Table of Contents:
The Biggest Affiliate Marketing Mistake
Here’s why so many people screwed up.
A lot of newbie affiliate marketers will focus on making the money first. They’ll try to get traffic and try to build an audience with ‘zombie content’.
Zombie content is lifeless. It doesn’t provide much value, and you’ve probably waded thousands of examples already. It’s when you immediately know the article was written by someone who doesn’t really want to help you solve your problem.
They’re thinly disguised adverts, at best. And barely readable junk that’s been written by an article spinner, at worst.
The one thing above all else that they fail to do, is genuinely focus on the needs of the reader and provide help.
A lot of the time newbie affiliate marketers enter a niche that looks lucrative niche. Even if they don’t know anything about it, and only think there’s some money to be made.
Sometimes they’ll steal other people’s content… or they’ll buy PLR, and months down the road wonder why they aren’t getting anywhere.
There’s no real passion or pride, or even a desire to help people solve their problems. And that’s why people are failing. They don’t have a commitment to help.
So you could say, the affiliate marketer’s priorities are a little bit askew.
How To Succeed With Affiliate Marketing
The way to remedy this, and start succeeding, is to get your priorities straight.
So first of all, you have to start creating content that you can feel proud of. If you don’t have that pride, you’re not going to do a good job.
If you don’t put your best foot forward, your readers are gonna realise that.
And they’re not going to support it. They’ll bail and go to your competitors. That’s why you have to feel pride for what you do. And you have to really believe in helping your readers.
That means you have to care about your readers, their problem and their need to solve it. Every day I speak to people who don’t understand why this is important.
Affiliate marketing is about more than promoting offers, it’s about solving problems and improving lives.
If you can think of your “niche” as a ‘need’… your readers have a very specific need.
And that’s where you step in.
So if you are focused on helping them solve that problem, and you can help them fix in the best way that you know how, they’re going to connect with that.
Not only will they connect with it, and be grateful for your help, but they’ll also go out and they’ll tell other people about you.
But it doesn’t happen overnight.
Setting Realistic Goals
If you have your priorities set right, and you are consistent, you’re going to see results faster than someone who’s only focused on making money.
But it’s gonna take a long time to build this thing.
It’s not going to happen in two weeks. It’s not even going to happen in two months.
Sure, there are occasional exception to the rule… but for most affiliate marketers it’s going to take a couple of years to get to a position where they might be able to replace their full-time job, or they might be able to start hiring people.
And if you’re not prepared for that then affiliate marketing probably isn’t for you.
But think about.
You know that time is just going to pass anyway. So you can either sit on the couch, watching Netflix, wasting time, flicking through TV channel after TV channel…
Or you can be productive, get motivated and start working on your business because that time is guaranteed to pass and it might as well have already passed. And you can decide now, how you want to spend it
And when you get really clear on where you want to be this time next year, two years from now, five years down the road, it all starts with catering to your customer need. It starts with fixing their problem.
That’s the priority.
How Authenticity Sells
Nobody is going to buy something just because you told them to.
Ask yourself how many times you’ve bought from a stranger on the Internet, because they told you to.
It rarely happens.
But your customers will trust you because you’re a real person. That’s who they want to do business with.
They want to be able to buy from someone that they trust and that they can relate to. And you don’t have to be perfect, right?
All that zombie content tries to be perfect and just ends up looking impersonal and inauthentic.
But because you’re a real person, filled with flaws, you instantly become relatable. So share your failures, just as much as your successes. Don’t hide your mistakes, because mistakes make you authentic.
And authentic sells.
So produce the absolute best thing that you can create for them. That genuinely helps them. And then do that consistently.
If you’re consistent you’re going to get amazing results, in time.
So what’s stopping you?