Amazon is the largest marketplace in the world, so it is only natural that people start asking how to become an affiliate marketer for Amazon. We have racked our brains and have come up with 5 easy steps to getting started and want to share those with you… We will also through in 5 tips to making sure you are successful including some great training and tools that we have used to build up our affiliate marketing business and you can learn how to get started too.
affiliate marketing
Why Affiliate Marketing is So Appealing? Because it is Awesome!
Affiliate Marketing is so appealing these days, especially as more and more people are searching online for ways to make money from home and naturally land on a page all about affiliate marketing, but why is affiliate marketing so appealing?
The simple fact is that Affiliate Marketing is Awesome, but there are many questions around it and a few reasons why people fail…
We aim to answer all of your questions, show you why affiliate marketing is so appealing and also, what the watch-outs are too before showing you how you can get started with your very own affiliate marketing business for free.
Let’s start by clarifying exactly what affiliate marketing is…
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Before I go into detail about what true affiliate marketing is, you need to know there are plenty of training platforms that are
actually scams pretending to be affiliate marketing. We have reviewed a number of them, and some have actually been closed down by the FTC because they couldn’t live up to all of their promises. If you ever find something that states you can earn money on auto-pilot or with little effort, then that is exactly what I am on about. That is why we wanted to clarify your understanding on what is affiliate marketing.
It is very likely you have already experienced affiliate marketing is some way, especially if you have every purchased a product off of Amazon.
Affiliate Marketing is a beneficial way of marketing products for both affiliates and companies themselves, as the act saves them a fortune on their marketing campaigns. It is as simple as promoting products and receiving a commission if someone chooses to buy said product through your affiliate link.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
An Affiliate Marketer signs up with an affiliate program, for the example I will discuss Amazon Associates. This gains you access to all of their products to promote via blog or on social media.
You create a blog or website on any subject you want to cover and promote products or services on it. If someone lands on your website and decides to follow your recommendation and goes to the Amazon website via your affiliate link, if they buy the product you receive a percentage of the sale price as a reward for introducing a buyer.
There are thousands of affiliate programs, and affiliate networks that house thousands of affiliate programs meaning that you can create a blog in any subject you can think of.
That kind of adds to the appeal.
Why Affiliate Marketing is so Appealing?
Affiliate Marketing is so appealing for a number of ways, let’s go through a few:
Start an Affiliate Marketing Website About Anything
The best thing about Affiliate Marketing is the fact that you can start an online business in any interest or passion you have.
Interested in golf, then you can use that. Interested in getting fit and helping others to get fit, then you can use that.
Literally, you can start a business today in anything you are really interested in and you could find an affiliate program that will fit perfectly with it.
Gem runs and maintains a wedding stationary business, and affiliate marketing runs well with that.
Why start a business about something you don’t enjoy or know anything about when you could get started with a business you know loads about and enjoy immersing yourself within that subject.
It’s a Work from Anywhere Job
Another appealing feature of Affiliate Marketing is the fact you can do it from anywhere, the only restriction is internet coverage.
Affiliate Marketing tends to go really well with travel blogging because that is one of the main benefits of an online business using affiliate marketing, you can blog about your travels and help others get started on their own travelling plans.
This is because it is classed as a passive income stream, meaning you do not need to monitor the sales. Create great content and move on, you do not need to there for someone to decide to buy something you are promoting.
You Do Not Need Your Own Products or Services
Another great thing about affiliate marketing is the fact you do not need your own products or services, because you are promoting other people’s products.
No expensive warehouse, no need for a Point of Sale system. This is often the reason why people do not think they can start their own business, because they have nothing to offer.
But, with affiliate marketing you have something that you can offer which isn’t a physical thing. You can offer help and advice about a subject you know about, that is what you need to get started with affiliate marketing.
There are three great reasons as to why Affiliate Marketing is so appealing, but what stops Affiliate Marketers from succeeding?
What Stops Affiliate Marketers Succeeding?
There are a number of reasons why affiliate marketers do not succeed, we have picked out the top three that we feel is why they do not succeed:
Think it is a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme
We mentioned earlier in the post that there are loads of programs claiming to be affiliate marketing and they all have 
something in common. They make you believe that success can be achieve overnight.
I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is anything but a get-rich-quick scheme. In fact, there is no such program that can make you loads of money overnight. It is was a thing, plenty of people would be reaping the benefits.
Affiliate Marketing is a great business to get started in, it can be any subject you love but if you think that in a month’s time you can sit back and watch the money come in that is not going to be a reality.
It is going to take a lot of hard work to realise your goals. I will be honest with you, I didn’t earn anything for 6 months when I first started with affiliate marketing and it will be a long road to actually achieving a way of replacing my full-time job.
The more hours you put in, the more effort you put in the better, as realising your dreams will take hard work.
An honest affiliate marketer will tell you that you still need to put the hours in, even after you have established yourself in your chosen niche.
There are examples of where someone has got to the point where they are earning good money, they have even been able to leave their day job. So, they decide my website is making good money now, I will go on a month-long holiday. They do nothing with their website for a month, and then realise that their traffic levels drop a little because they haven’t worked on their website.
Hard work will pay off, but many do not give this any thought and the best way to describe it is they “play at it”. They do not invest the time and effort to realise it and then they decide to give up…
They Give Up Too Soon
People give up before their hard work pays off. This is normally because people think of it like an hourly-paid job. I have done an hour of work, so I therefore deserve an hour’s worth of pay.
An online business does not work out like that. Affiliate Marketing is a truly passive income, but it will not earn you money
straightaway. The harder you work in the early stages, the more likely you are going to enjoy the benefits down the road.
You could write an awesome quality post and it doesn’t make you money for 6 months, but then it starts earning you recurring income on a regular basis and could do so for years to come.
But many affiliate marketers give up after a couple of months and say affiliate marketing doesn’t work. That is why the search engines does not really trust a new website until it is about 6 months old, because a website owner still engaged in their website after 6 months is the real deal and will keep on working and understands the long-term plan of an affiliate marketing business model.
A normal bricks and mortar business will typically not plan to turn a profit in year one, and yet online we seem to think we can be turning profit immediately.
Whilst the costs are nowhere near a typical business, the main investment you need to put in with an online business is your time and effort.
If you can commit to putting at least an hour a day into learning and acting within your business, you have what it takes but you need to keep at it until all your hard work pays off!
Lack of Quality Training & Support
You will find loads of contradicting strategies online, or you are being drawn in by affiliate marketing training that is outdated or clearly not affiliate marketing.
But there are training programs out there that do help their members, and will give a easy to follow step-by-step plan to success.
The support is the key, I think anyone who cares enough will follow a structured guide, but it is the help aspect that people lack, and they feel like they are doing this all alone and that can be one of the hardest things to get over.
I am part of a community of affiliate marketers and we all engage together to help each other. If we did not have that, I would have felt like I was swimming upstream. In other words, it would have been extremely hard to keep going until the money started coming in.
We can help you get the help and support, with some awesome training to. But I think it is one of the factors as to why many affiliate marketers are struggling, and that is wrong or outdated training with a real lack of support.
What Do You Need to Succeed?
Let’s just summarise so far, Affiliate Marketing is an awesome way of building an online business in a subject you really love and enjoy. You can literally work from anywhere and enjoy the freedom that a work from home job can bring.
You also do not need any of your own products or services as you can promote other peoples and not have all the hassle that would normally bring.
But it does take long hours and hard work to become successful and people tend to give up too easily because they think it isn’t going to work – this is often because they do not get shown a proven method to follow and have a lack of support.
What I want to share with you is the fact I know how you might be feeling at this point; Do I take the plunge??
If you are just trying to piece together bits of information from Google and keep looking for those (fake) proven methods, you will look back in six months time and realise you haven’t achieved anything and you are no closer to having financial freedom.
Or you could read on, learn about how I now make money online and get all the help you need to succeed.
I was there at that point and thought there were no genuine ways of making money online until I read a review about a training platform called Wealthy Affiliate.
Things That You Need to Succeed?
I have broken down what you need to get started on the right track, and they are all things that Wealthy Affiliate will offer you in abundance.
Step-by-Step Training
Up-to-date training that all users can understand and follow. I have found and reviewed many pieces of training around affiliate marketing, and typically they are outdated and that is why they are being offered for free.
The search engines are constantly changing, the way people navigate searches is changing and you need to keep up.
That is why we highly recommend the step-by-step training available at Wealthy Affiliate. Kyle and Carson (the WA Co-Owners) do not try and confuse you or get you to do strategies until you are ready.
By the end of the first ten lessons, you will fully understand what Affiliate Marketing is, help to choose the right niche, how you are going to monetise your website and actually have your own free website up and running ready for your all-important content.
Learn from their experience and gain personal access to them to help you along your affiliate business.
Websites & Website Tools
The second thing you need for your affiliate marketing business is a website. You will find many free ones online, but when you actually start to scale your online business you find the prices start to rise rapidly. With Wealthy Affiliate, a free starter membership gains you 2 free websites with no limit on the number of users.
A premium membership adds a different level with up to 50 domains available to you, with no limit and free SSL certificates.
You will also experience some fantastic website engagement tools including a keyword research tool.
You can Learn More about the Different Membership Levels in our Wealthy Affiliate Review.
Expert Help & Support
I have already expressed the importance of the right support network. You will find no better support that from the community at Wealthy Affiliate.
If you ever feel like you are stuck, or just need a comforting word to keep you on the right track you will find it in abundance within Wealthy Affiliate. You will find experience affiliate marketers and newbies alike all engaging in the training, asking and answering questions and encouraging everyone to achieve their goals.
Are You Ready to Get Started?
Affiliate Marketing is so appealing because of the fact it can be about anything in the world. Whether you are interested in starting a business in a hobby you love, want to help people in a subject you consider yourself an expert in, or want to document your fitness plan to help other people learn from you it all leads to the same thing.
A profitable online business that you actually enjoy working on. Gem and I chose helping people and I have a background in learning and development. We love helping people, and we also understand what good training is and that is why we recommend Wealthy Affiliate.
If you think you are ready to work hard and build a business that will allow you to enjoy it and work when you want and not be dictated to by a work schedule then I highly suggest you click the button below and start a free starter membership with Wealthy Affiliate.
It is totally free, with no credit card required. You will have access to the first ten lessons of their Online Entrepreneur Certification Course and 2 free websites that are yours to keep. There will be no pressure to upgrade until you are ready. But trust me, even those ten lessons will transform what you know about affiliate marketing and you will truly understand the potential behind it.
If you still have any questions about Affiliate Marketing or Wealthy Affiliate, I would be happy to answer all your questions. Just write your questions in the comments below and we will respond.
Why Affiliate Marketing Does Not Work & What to Do About It
If you are here, you might be considering whether affiliate marketing really works? There are plenty of reasons why affiliate marketing might not be working for you and you are looking for help to turn the corner and make it work. But let me answer that first question – does affiliate marketing work? Yes, totally but there are some factors to consider when thinking about why it might not be working for you.
First off, there is no big secret as to how it works and a lot of it comes down to one factor – Patience.
The Biggest Factor to Achieving with Affiliate Marketing is Patience
One of the biggest mindsets you need to get out of when starting any online business, including affiliate marketing is that
you will not immediately earn a return for the time you invest. People sink a lot of time and effort into an affiliate marketing business and will see no return after 3 or even 6 months and walk away from it stating “Affiliate Marketing Does Not Work”, when really 6 months is the point where your website is starting to earn the traction it needs with the search engines to turn your articles into a money-pot.
The main thing I see with struggling affiliate marketers is they are drawn into these training platforms that are not telling you the truth about the need for patience.
Think about it, unless you find a genuine training platform like Wealthy Affiliate that is honest and realistic about the timescales needed to make this successful – Most affiliate marketing (or programs advertising themselves as affiliate marketing) state that you can be earning money really soon after starting…
Whether it is an e-book, a training course or learning from a guru they all lull you in with false promises of a passive income stream that can happen overnight.
In reality, the biggest thing you need to get over is that this is not a reality. I did not earn anything from affiliate marketing for 6 months and if I had stopped at the 6-month mark I might have been in the same place you are and questioning whether Affiliate Marketing works.
That 6-month point is really important in your affiliate marketing business. The market is being flooded with people wanting to do affiliate marketing, but as most give up on the 3 or 6-month Google consider this when deciding on where to rank your content. If a website is still alive after 6-months and is offering high-quality content, that is a great sign for your rankings and will mean that you will start to get good traffic. Traffic is what you need to make money with affiliate marketing.
Another key reason as to why affiliate marketing does not work for some is because they do not know how to do it properly.
Affiliate Marketing Does Not Work Because People Do Not Know How to Do It the Right Way
Another big reason as to why affiliate marketing does not work for most marketers is because they are learning from scammers. There are thousands of products out there claiming to be the best affiliate marketing training, but in reality, have been put there by fraudsters to get your money or personal information and leaves those that fall for the trap believing affiliate marketing does not work.
They give away enough information to get you to buy the product, but not enough information for you to find any success with their tactics.
There are many factors to consider making sure affiliate marketing works for you, but you also need a training platform that is honest, can be trusted and ensures you are put on the right track from this point onwards. We highly recommend the training and tools available at Wealthy Affiliate. They are the training platform we used when we first started out with Affiliate Marketing and without the support from the team, I might not have stayed the course and saw that first sale after 6 months.
With clear training on choosing a niche, creating a website, writing content that converts and SEO and other marketing methods they are a highly recommended and up-to-date training. Learn more about what they offer and their success stories within my Wealthy Affiliate Review.
Many Affiliate Marketers are using Outdated Tactics
Another factor as to why affiliate marketing does not work is people using outdated techniques. One Example is using duplicate content. Some products out there claim that their system will generate you content for your website without you needing to do any work? How? They steal another person’s work and display it on your website.
But the search engines are actively looking for duplicate content and using duplicate content will lead only one way – your website and content not getting ranked at all.
What the search engines and people searching via those search engines are looking for is high-quality content that provides value and helps people with their query.
In days gone by, some affiliate marketers used tactics including just writing a 20-page website, and sending unnatural links to it by spamming blogs, comment sections, etc. This would benefit the website for about 3 months, before Google found out and would penalise the site. This technique stopped being effective since a change in Google’s algorithms in 2011. But I have still seen training material showing affiliate marketers this tactic, even though it will not work at all.
If you can provide high-quality content that helps people and provides value, you have the key ingredient to making affiliate marketing work. You just need to remain consistent posting this high-quality content regularly to see it turn into a successful affiliate marketing business.
Affiliate Marketers Not Treating It Like a Business
It is possible for anyone to launch a website and start affiliate marketing nowadays. You can get a free website really easily and little or no financial barrier to getting started. This brings with it the idea of testing the water with affiliate marketing, with little commitment needed.
This leads some to not get into the right tracks that this is a business model. It also means they do not have a business plan for their affiliate marketing business.
Think about your current goals, if they are just to make money – then this could be a factor into why it is not working. Even if you start with small goals, like I am going to write 3-4 articles a week that is a better goal to start with.
We all have a financial goal, and that is normally the main reason why we have chosen affiliate marketing as a way to 
achieve that. But a normal bricks and mortar business will not expect to turn a profit in its first year. Now, an online business doesn’t have the outlay a normal business does, but why does that mean you can immediately expect it to turn a profit straightaway.
Set yourself daily, weekly and monthly goals that are not about earning money. It could be creating articles, spending an hour doing proper keyword research, researching your niche and engaging with others in your niche, learning how to get started in video marketing.
There are tons of things that you can set yourself up with, and the beauty is if you are constantly working on your business and creating excellent value – guess what you will start converting this into sales.
Not Getting into the Mindset of an Entrepreneur!
One of the things that I notice about people who say affiliate marketing does not work, they think it works in the same way as working in your day job!
Think about a job that pays by the hour for a moment, you do an hour’s work and you get paid an hourly rate.
Affiliate Marketing does not work in the same way. A true entrepreneur plays the long game. I know affiliate marketers who are earning money from articles they wrote years ago, and they are still converting. The article might need a little update every now and then as things do change, but in essence it is the true way a passive income works through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Marketing is in definition about playing the long game. Write a high-quality article that helps, is based on a low-hanging fruit keyword and offers value to the person who reads it. Once you have posted it to your website and shared it on social media. You start researching into your next article. Don’t get hung up on Google Analytics, it can work against you as you will not see a great deal of traffic and that can be demotivating.
Just focus on writing articles, regularly and keep that going for 6 months, then plan for your next 6 months.
I know it is hard to hear, but with effective training and support, it doesn’t need to a journey you travel on your own.
Get the Right Training & Support You Need to Succeed!
One of the things about those early stages of an affiliate marketing business is it can feel kind of lonely. If no one is interacting with your website, it can seem like you are writing content for no one and it can be something that leads you to believe that affiliate marketing does not work. But that is why I love the guys at Wealthy Affiliate.
You do not need to do this alone, you can join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who can help in ways you may not fully understand at this point.
First off, you will gain access to high-quality training that will ensure you are following the right path for your affiliate marketing business. this includes:
- Picking the Right Niche – some people start too broad, and end up not being competitive enough and failing
- Doing Effective Keyword Research – without keyword research you have no chance of ranking your content
- Writing Quality Content – It is the key ingredient Google is looking for, they want to offer value to their users in the same way you need to with your content
- Social Media Marketing – this is essential for your business, but you will be surprised how many do not know how to utilise this effectively.
One of the key things that Wealthy Affiliate offer that I have heavily used in my time with them is the ability to learn from some of the Super Affiliate’s that are on their platform. To be able to learn from them and to ask them questions at any point was really motivating in those early stages before I started earning money from Affiliate Marketing. With a free starter membership, you can truly experience the platform with no commitments and see how it differs to any training you have experienced in the past and also see the opportunities that lie within. It is really empowering to live chat with some of these affiliate marketers and learn new techniques that work, with proof. Read some success stories and try to incorporate it into your online business and learn from some techniques that haven’t worked too.
Conclusion
Let’s just clarify the key points of this post.
- You need to have a lot of patience with affiliate marketing. This is not an overnight success route. If you can only post once a week, it will take a lot longer to get the search engines trust and the rankings that this means to get traffic.
- If you feel you have not had the best training, you need to go back to basics and learn it from the best training platform out there – Wealthy Affiliate.
- The only tactic you need to concentrate on is doing the right keyword research and posting high-quality content that provides value and helps the reader
- This is an online business model – if you are currently playing at it, what will it take for you to commit?
- Think like an entrepreneur! Don’t work to get paid, work to build a future for yourself and your family.
- Get the Right Training and Support – Read my Wealthy Affiliate Review and see how this amazing platform can help your affiliate marketing business
I know you might be currently thinking that Affiliate Marketing does not work and you might be thinking that it will never work. But I want to assure you, it can and does work! I would not be where I am today without it and I love the fact I found Wealthy Affiliate when I did. I had been caught out by an online scam and could have given up on my desire to make money online. At one point, I did not think it was possible. That was the point I saw a review for Wealthy Affiliate and found out about affiliate marketing.
It is a proven route to make money online, but it is so easy to fall for a fake affiliate marketing training out there. I want to
guarantee anyone who reads my Wealthy Affiliate review, they are totally genuine and are a really supportive platform. They are all about you making up your own mind about them and offer the free starter membership as a way for you to make your own decisions. A truly great bunch of guys.
If you ever feel like you are struggling, just reach out. We have all been there and thought the same. But that does not mean affiliate marketing doesn’t work, we just need to keep believing and learning.
Thanks for reading this, if you have any questions or want to add any experiences with affiliate marketing, I would love to hear from you. I will respond as soon as I can. thanks
What is the Best Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners?
Are you looking to learn Affiliate Marketing? Getting Started in Affiliate Marketing is an aspiration of many who are looking for a way of earning money online and finally giving up the day job.
Affiliate Marketing is in a massive growth stage at the moment and to be successful you need to understand what Affiliate Marketing is, and what there is to learn to be successful in Affiliate Marketing. But more importantly, you are here to find out what is the best Affiliate Marketing Course for Beginners!
What is Affiliate Marketing?
If you are unsure what Affiliate Marketing is, I have written a post describing it in full – “What is Affiliate Marketing Really About”.
But in short, Affiliate Marketing has 3 parties. You (the affiliate), the Product/Service Owner & the Buyer. By signing up with an affiliate program you get rewarded by introducing a buyer to a product or service with a commission. This is typically a percentage of the product price.
Check out this graphic, which shows you process…
Whilst the premise is simple, there is much more to learn than just understanding how Affiliate Marketing works.
What Else Is There to Learn in Affiliate Marketing?
There is actually a lot that you need to learn effectively to become successful at Affiliate Marketing – the first thing I will discuss is the need to treat this like a business model.
Thinking about it as a business will have so many benefits to your chances of earning money from affiliate marketing.
When I first started out, I came across an article of Affiliate Marketing and I started looking at a number of opportunities to get started and I came across an online certification course to getting started with Affiliate Marketing – it is an amazing course and covers all aspects of an online business, but before I share with you the course it also highlighted what you need to learn to become successful, but whilst it looks complicated it really isn’t.
But by going through the course I learned what other things I needed to know to get the most out of Affiliate Marketing:
- Picking a Niche for your Affiliate Marketing Business
- Building a Website & Optimising it for the Search Engines
- Creating Content for your website and getting it ranked on the search engines
- Social Media Marketing & Getting Social Engagement
It might seem like there is a lot to learn, but that is why I spent my time researching and finding the best course to learn it all. There are plenty of courses out there, but they do not necessarily offer the best courses – mainly due to their training being a little out of date or expect you to pay up front without giving you the chance to see if that course is the best for you. They also offer only training and not any tools towards achieving it.
The course I want to share with you is the platform that I myself has been using for over two years. Their training is geared towards people who have no clue to an online business, step-by-step guides and videos to help you get started. They also offer you the tools included (such as a WordPress website builder and keyword research tool) as part of the membership. I have exclusively used Wealthy Affiliate for my online business, before I started with them I had no clue on how to get a website ranked in Google or even build a website.
Why Wealthy Affiliate Offers the Best Affiliate Marketing Course?
Wealthy Affiliate’s platform offers 3 elements that sets it apart from other Affiliate Marketing training platforms:
- Education – All aspects of an online business and affiliate marketing are covered in step-by-step guides, videos, classrooms.
- Awesome Tools – WordPress Website Builder, Website Hosting, Keyword Research Tool, Social Engagement Tools, etc.
- Expert Help & Support – Get Help & Support from a community of Internet Entrepreneurs all with the same aims. You will also get Expert Support from Me.
The key training that I want to share with you is the Online Certification Course. It is ideal for beginners and by the end of the first course, you will have picked a niche, have a website up and running and actually be ready to start on your affiliate marketing journey.
Online Certification Course
This course is set out into 5 sets of 10 lessons and is all geared to getting you started with your own online business. See details of the first 10 lessons below and what the course objective is:
One of the things I love about the training at Wealthy Affiliate is that it is written for those that haven’t got a clue, the videos will talk you through all the tasks that are set, and you can actually tick the tasks as you complete. This makes it much easier to see where you are up to. When you log back on and click back on training, it will take you straight back to where you were you up to.
Their use of pictures is also really helpful. Again, this shows you the steps that are being set out in the training.
Getting Help When You Really Need It
But I think the biggest benefit of the training at Wealthy Affiliate is the community. Everyone gets stuck sometimes, but by asking the question in the community will give you an answer. You will also find that, unlike other platforms, you get help and support from the owners of Wealthy Affiliate – Kyle & Carson.
When I first started out with my first niche website, I wasn’t too sure what niche to target so I asked the community and it was actually Kyle who answered it and advised me I was being too broad.
The training is great and is constantly kept up to date, and there is plenty of training that has been created by the community on a number of subjects and will benefit anyone in their online business, but I think the help and support you get is just as useful as the training.
How to Get Started with Wealthy Affiliate – With My Support
I always recommend anyone to research a product before trying it, and I will still give you that advice – if you want to learn more about Wealthy Affiliate, here is the link to my Wealthy Affiliate Review.
But unlike other training platforms, you will not need to pay to experience Wealthy Affiliate with their free Starter Membership account. Kyle & Carson (WA Owners) are determined that you are fully happy with their platform and the only way you can see if the training course and the tools are for you is by checking it out.
I have seen many training courses where you have to pay just to try it and when you actually find it is no good, it is difficult to get a refund.
To get started with a Free Starter Membership at Wealthy Affiliate, Click Here. If you do decide to try it out, make sure you get in touch. I would love to help you out.
In my opinion, Wealthy Affiliate offers the best affiliate marketing course for beginners.
If you have any questions about Affiliate Marketing, Wealthy Affiliate or if you want to share your experiences with Wealthy Affiliate, please leave a comment and I will get back to you.
4 Beginner Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Have you ever asked, why isn’t it working? Why am I not converting any sales? It can be often frustrating when our Affiliate Marketing business isn’t achieving the goals we have set out. In this post we will explore common beginner affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid. Many of these are down to our mindset, but that doesn’t mean we cannot rescue the situation. Affiliate Marketing is awesome business model for a work from home job, done correctly and avoiding these mistakes.
AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE – One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links. If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated! Learn more here.
Let’s get into the Mistakes to Avoid…
Irrelevant & Confusing Content
Staying highly relevant to your audience is paramount to succeeding in Affiliate Marketing. It is also easy to be too broad
when choosing a niche. The narrower you can choose a niche the more likely you will start to see better traffic and conversions. But many when starting out think they have chosen a ‘Niche” when actually they have chosen a category. For example, they choose home appliances and create loads of content about too many different types of home appliances – kitchen, lounge, smart tech, lighting, etc. When someone clicks on their website and sees a lot of content that has a loose connection, it can show that the website owner is just clutching at anything. The reader gets confused about the message and decides to look elsewhere. So, a key element is narrowing the niche down as much as possible:
- Home Appliances
- Kitchen
- Food Preparation
- Microwaves
- Oven
- Oven Cleaners
- Oven Gloves
- Food Preparation
- Kitchen
The narrower you can start, the better you will find becoming an authority site on that niche.
Also, consider the fact that when someone clicks on a link about a given subject, that is what they will find. I find it very frustrating when you click on a link about something, and the web page just has a load of ads and nothing to do with what I was looking for. You need to ensure you put your reader first in all decisions.
Selling Instead of Helping
I have never liked going into a showroom and having a sales advisor selling a product to me. I would rather check out everything and then if I had any questions, I would ask a sales advisor. It is the same online, people are looking for help online. Whether it be a problem they have (which you have the answer to) or help understanding a product. Readers want to know what the product is, what benefits there are to that product, your opinion on that product before they can make up their own mind.
If you constantly sell to their readers without answering these questions you will find you fail. Help them with these questions and conversions will happen.
Ineffective Introductions & Conclusions
Let’s be honest, not many people will read every paragraph in your post. You have 2 opportunities to grab their attention and inspire them to read the rest. If the first paragraph (introduction) does not grab them, then you have no chance. You have about 30 seconds to get them to want to read the rest and respect your opinion. That is your Featured Image (needs to be highly relevant to what they are looking for) and a couple of sentences that make them believe they will get the answers they want.
If you grab this attention, you need to ensure the conclusion to the post is a succinct review of the post with a clear message.
I notice I do it with Video Game reviews, I read the intro and check out the final verdict. Then I decide whether I will dig into more of the article. We cannot help it, our attention spans are not designed to sit there and read a massive volume of text, unless it grabs our attention. This is key to ensuring you avoid these mistakes.
Not Doing Keyword Research
I recently wrote a great post on the importance of doing keyword research, check it out for more detailed information. But if you are not doing effective keyword research for your posts, how will you get any traffic.
Writing Content is only part of the process, without any traffic you will find it very hard to succeed at Affiliate Marketing. Ensure you complete keyword research and choose keywords that will help you get traffic, I like the low-hanging-fruit technique, check out more here.
Take this post, if I used the keyword ‘Affiliate Marketing Mistakes’ I could only hope to get a chunk of what is only 40 searches a month, with 200 competing posts for the same keyword. By choosing a better keyword “beginner affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid” that changes the dynamic completely, over 100 monthly searches with 13 competing posts.
Being Impatient & Cutting Corners
Success in Affiliate Marketing is about the long game, it will not become a success overnight. It takes time and effort, but where newbies get it wrong is they get impatient and start cutting corners. Watch out for these as they can end up destroying your chances of becoming successful.
Using a Low-Quality Website with Duplicate Content
It can be easy to buy into these ideas where they sell you the idea of a website where you do not need to create any content. It is all done for you, and you just need to sit there and watch the money come in… Yeah, I wish.
These will not make you any money. The search engines (like Google) have ways to identify duplicate content and will penalise the website with it on. Meaning you will not appear in the search results = meaning no conversions.
Your website needs to part of your brand, so it needs to be high quality with content that is unique and created by you on your given niche helping people – that is how you succeed at Affiliate Marketing.
Buying ‘Fake’ Traffic
If you search online, there are opportunities to buy traffic. They promise it is real traffic with real people. I have tried it in the past. 
Your Google Analytics lights up with loads of traffic, and it might help with rankings (a little). But what I found was, there was no cut through with this traffic and it had more of a detrimental effect once you have stopped buying the traffic as your traffic drastically drops. And, none of this traffic actually is real – as they didn’t interact with the posts or join the email list, etc.
So, I would focus more on getting natural rankings and interactions, this will help your conversions much better.
Following the Herd (Shiny Object Syndrome)
What I mean by this, and I have been guilty of it in the past, is trying something too early because everyone is doing it. I’ll give you an example, as part of my Wealthy Affiliate membership there is weekly webinars and the last couple of weeks has been about Managing Website Design through CSS.
This is great training, don’t get me wrong, But I could go away and spend ages on messing with the design of my websites – but at the end of the day, it is the content that is important in the early days. So what I am saying is focus on creating relevant content, don’t add an email list until you are getting plenty of traffic (it is another feature you need to keep checking on, that gets in the way of creating content). Video is great, but if you are not sure how to do it and you are not getting a lot of traffic, then focus on written content.
There are plenty of examples where an experienced Affiliate Marketer will be doing something, and you think it would be great to do in your business (shiny object – it is working for them, so I will do it). But most of these things are for when you are scaling your business. That is key, when you start converting sales, that is when you can start exploring these different aspects.
Our Own Expectations
There are a few bits with Affiliate Marketing, where we need to hard on ourselves when it comes to our expectations:
- Passive Income – yes, but only when it has started converting sales
- Timelines – the time it takes to start converting
- Effort – the effort required to turn it into a scalable business
Most people looking for ways to earn money online comes down to the dislike of their day job. So, it is understandable that they want to build this business as quickly as possible to leave their day job. The problem comes from the fact that searching online you can find so many promises of a system that can turn you into a millionaire overnight. Whilst these are typically scamming people, it doesn’t stop people believing them and falling into the traps.
Affiliate Marketing is a very legitimate way of earning money – but it is a business and not a past-time.
We also need to consider our expectations with how much we can earn. I recently read a great post about how a fellow affiliate marketer’s first goal was to earn $33 a day. It doesn’t sound much, but that is $990/month.
If one of your goals is paying off debt towards being able to work from home, that is a massive step forward. But when you think $33, it doesn’t seem much.
Most brick businesses will not turn a profit within 12 months, I know the overheads are lower with an online business, but I didn’t earn anything online for 6 months.
You need to stay motivated that the conversions will come. Set yourself your first financial target (keep it realistic), then once you achieve it you can target a higher target.
Ultimately Not Treating It Like a Business!
Affiliate Marketing is a business model and not something you can play at! To avoid these mistakes, that is the number one piece of advice I can give you.
Highly relevant Quality Content on a Quality Website that Helps People will always win out against the rest.
It is a great way of earning money online, but requires time, effort and focus to reap the benefits of it. If you would like an awesome step-by-step guide that takes you through the correct steps for starting an online affiliate marketing business, I recommend you read my Wealthy Affiliate review.
If you are struggling with affiliate marketing, it might be down to a number of the reasons we have gone through in this post, there may be others. But I am hoping you have a better understanding of the main reasons, and that is down to our mindset with it.
Starting a business takes a lot out of us and losing patience with it is easily done. But remain focused on the reason why you want to succeed at Affiliate Marketing – My reasons are it will allow me more time to spend with my family.
I am sure you will have your own reasons, share them with me in the comments below.
If you need any help or advice to do with affiliate marketing or you need help getting out of the rut of your current business – drop me a note below in the comments and I will try to help in any way I can.
How to Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing for Beginners
Hey everyone,
We will be exploring a common subject for those starting out online and that is how to monetise your blog with (mainly) Affiliate Marketing. If you are going to invest your time and effort into creating an online presence, you might as well be able to make some money at it.
I mention blogging, as there are some that state you do not need a website to do affiliate marketing, but I will disagree a little. Social Media is very important to your online business, but advertising on only one does restrict your reach and not all social media types are great depending on your niche.
Whilst I explore how to make money online with affiliate marketing for beginners, there are a couple of other routes you could take to monetise your blog.
How do you Make Money Blogging?
Blogging allows you to express your opinions, help your audience and grow your audience. Then you can start earning
money by:
- Joining Ad Networks (for example, AdSense). By offering up space on your website, you can earn revenue through interaction from your audience.
- Sell Physical or Digital Products.
- Consult & Hold Events
But the most popular is Affiliate Marketing. One of the key benefits of affiliate marketing is you control what you promote.
You can never really control what adverts are shown on your website. AdSense tries to make it relevant to the user based on their google interactions, but I refuse to use most of them as they could put my audience off.
If you have your own products, then great you could definitely follow this route, but I would typically say most are turning towards Affiliate Marketing.
But What is Affiliate Marketing?
There are 3 parties involved in Affiliate Marketing. You (the affiliate), the Company (Has the Product) and the Customer (Buyer).
Let’s use Amazon as an example – they have an affiliate program called Amazon Associates. You sign up for a free account and choose a product that is very relevant to your blog.
Let’s say you have a blog on the home.
You write a well-written review on that product (a toaster). You include your affiliate link in that review which when the reader clicks on that link, they are sent to Amazon and Amazon knows you were the one who sent them to that product.
They buy that toaster for $100. You will have earned 6% commission, earning $6.
Let’s break that down into a simple graphic:
That figure might not seem much but imagine if you had 100 people read your review and buy a toaster through your affiliate link, that is $600 through what is a passive income type.
If you would like to know more about Affiliate Marketing, check out my post “How Does Affiliate Marketing Really Work?”.
How Do I Find Products or Services in Your Niche?
This will depend on the niche you have set your blog up on. To help find products there are 2 ways you could find the right products or services in your niche.
Affiliate Networks
Affiliate Networks have multiple products and services available giving you access to plenty of options with just one account. I would suggest you be careful with what you pick (depending on your niche) In the Make Money Online niche, there are also a few undesirable products in them, but if you do your research correctly, you can also use the product as a “watch-out” post.
Some of the top Affiliate Networks are:
- Awin.com
- Shareasale
- CJ Affiliates (formerly Commission Junction)
- Rakuten (formerly LinkShare)
- Click Bank
Awin is the largest in the world and gives you access to a lot of products and services. It also helps give you ideas for content and reviews too.
Affiliate Programs
An alternative way is to sign up with individual companies via affiliate program. Just type in Google “Product + Affiliate Program” and you will see if they have one and the website details. You will be surprised how many companies are joining the affiliate program format.
But when searching for products or services, you do need to make sure it is a natural fit for your audience.
On average, 42% of Affiliate Marketers promote between one and 10 products.
Natural Fit to Your Audience
Commission rates differ massively across the affiliate marketing field, but that doesn’t mean we can just go for something that doesn’t fit with your website. Take this site, it is about affiliate marketing and affiliate marketing tools, imagine if there were banners and posts about stuff that was nothing to do with it, i.e. a toaster. Do you think I would get any traction from that?? It might actually put readers off, as it looks like I am not taking them seriously.
I’ll go back to the amazon example, it might only be 6% but if the website is right, content is right, I help that person with their questions and then they buy it and I am helping more and more people all the time, then you will earn the same as a 60% commission product where it is only bought once or twice a year?
Keep it Relevant.
How Much Will I Get Paid?
Commission rates vary depending on the type of product and service.
Physical products have a lower commission rate due to the cost of producing it and shipping it, Digital products or services tend to have higher commission rates.
The average would tend to sit around 30-50%. Amazon has a wide variety of products to use, however their commission rate sits around 6-10%
Will I Always Be Accepted to the Affiliate Programs?
This again depends on the program or network.
A small number will want to see proof of traffic to your blog and others will need you to earn a number of referrals to stay in the program.
I found this with Amazon if you do not earn a referral in 6 months, they do take you out of the program, but you can instantly reapply.
Others will let you join without much hassle, for example Click Bank aren’t particular about who can join their affiliate program.
Top Niches Ideas for Affiliate Marketing
If you are a little stuck on a niche to use, below are the topics people are seeking help in:
- Health/Fitness Related Niches
- Losing Weight
- Health & Beauty
- Reduce Stress
- Technology/Gaming
- Smart Devices (is huge at the moment)
- Lifestyle/Home/Garden
- Fashion
- High-End Luxury
- Travel
- Sports & Outdoors
- Online Jobs/Make Money Online
- Business
- Finance & Insurance Advice
Creating Awesome Content to Drive Sales
Creating content is the key to any blog, let alone with affiliate marketing. There are plenty of opportunities for creating content that will help you monetise your website:
- Genuine Product Reviews
- Blog Posts that:
- Solve Problems in the given Niche
- Answer Questions
- In text Content Links
- Email Promotions
- Social Media Promotions
- Create added value for those using your affiliate links
- Free eBooks
- An exclusive Facebook groups
- Supplementing resources to support with any product you promote
Can I Compete with Established Affiliate Marketers?
Of course, you can! Affiliate Marketing is a major growth area at the moment – with revenue going from $3billion in 2016 to 
$6billion in 2018 and yet there it is still growing.
Many companies are realising how expensive it is to have massive marketing campaigns, but if they use the affiliate marketing route – they will get more exposure and pay a lot less in commissions.
Some niches are more competitive than others, but again if you target the right keywords with awesome content you can easily benefit from Affiliate Marketing.
Keeping Everything Legit
There are obviously some things to consider when it comes to the legal side of affiliate marketing.
Honesty & Transparency
This is also key to building up a trust with the reader, if they trust you they will consider buying off of you. Be honest with them about the use of affiliate links. Add a disclaimer – see mine below:
AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE
“One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools and offer free courses to my audience is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links – in fact in some cases you will even receive a discount. If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated! Learn more here”.
By placing a disclaimer in your website, it helps with your honesty, it also helps with the legal side of affiliate marketing. There are stringent laws in place. You will need to add an affiliate disclosure page to your website.
Conclusion
There you go, how to make money with affiliate marketing for beginners. I would be lying it was as simple as that. I would not have been successful with affiliate marketing if it hadn’t been for the help and support of Wealthy Affiliate.
I joined about 2 years ago and have not looked back. If you do want to start the right way in Affiliate Marketing, I do advise you to read my Wealthy Affiliate Review and make your own decision on whether their platform will help you.
If you have any questions about Affiliate Marketing, getting started or you are struggling with Affiliate Marketing in general – please get in touch, leave me a comment below and I promise to get back to you as soon as. I am here to help anyone I can.
Thanks for reading
John
Essential Affiliate Marketing Tools for Beginners
Affiliate Marketing is a great way of earning income online. Getting started can seem a bit daunting without the right help and support, but I want to offer you that right now with this post.
There will be many posts out there trying to sell you a load of tools that promise success by handing over a load of money, then you realise that you still need to invest a load of time and effort and you would have been better off just doing it properly in the first place…
I want to share with you my essential affiliate marketing tools for beginners, many are free and aid me in my affiliate marketing business. There are a couple of paid ones, but I will be clear and upfront – I will also tell you why I paid for them and the benefits they gave me.
Depending on where you are with your affiliate marketing adventure, the most important ingredient is a website.
AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE
One of the ways I try to cover the costs of maintaining Best Affiliate Marketing Tools and offer help and advice to my audience is via a small number of affiliate partnerships (with tools I genuinely use) where I get a small percentage commission on sales made via referral. You don’t pay any more for purchasing via my affiliate links – in fact in some cases you will even receive a discount. If you click one of my affiliate links, your support is really appreciated! Learn more here.
Website & Hosting – Get the Right One!
Search the internet and you will stumble on many free website builders, this is an option but not necessarily the right option. Let me explain why.
One of the key factors you are trying to build with a reader is TRUST. But many of these free website builders give you a minimal website with their branding all over it – and when you actually want to start adding features to it, you need to pay. I have found that WordPress is a great option for affiliate marketing, it is really easy to use and is customisable through plugins to get the look and feel for your website.
My personal recommendation for hosting is SiteRubix. The guys behind Wealthy Affiliate (I’ll get onto this in a moment) have built SiteRubix into a great hosting option for WordPress website owners. I host all of my websites on their hosting, as it comes with some great benefits.
Full Domain Websites hosted on Wealthy Affiliate’s SiteRubix benefit from:
- Free SSL Certificates (usually $100 per website)
- Site Speed – Their hosting allows websites to be 20x the speed of usual websites
- Site Protect – Instead of using a plugin to stop spam, they do it at the server, meaning it doesn’t slow your website down
- Site Security – Suite of website security features to stop hacking, malware and bot-nets.
- They always run 2 versions of your site to ensure it doesn’t go down.
Now I do pay for Wealthy Affiliate as a Premium Member and I get these benefits on up to 25 full domains and 25 subdomains. So, I could have 25 full domain websites with SSL (which could cost $2500 a year) for $49/month or $359/year. All I pay on top is the domain name, which is usual anywhere.
Now, I know you might be thinking “I am just starting out, that is expensive”. I do appreciate that, but there is much more to Wealthy Affiliate and I am not expecting you to spend a dime. Their Starter Membership is designed to let you make your own decision about their platform but let me share with you what else they offer:
- Step-by-Step Guides on all elements of Affiliate Marketing, Online Business, Search Engines, Social Engagement & Media, Website Building & Design, Getting Free Traffic, Creating Content, Google Analytics & Webmaster, Bing Webmaster, Email Marketing, Video Marketing and much more
- WordPress Website Builder with Hosting included
- Keyword Research Tool
- Website Engagement Tools
- Expert Help & Support
It is a community of internet entrepreneurs all with a similar vision of building an online business within affiliate marketing. Networking is really key online, and we offer our help and support at all times. The training is great for beginners to ensure they achieve their goals without paying some of the silly prices out there on “Push Button Systems”.
Their free starter membership is great for you to see if you would benefit yourself.
Jaaxy Keyword Research Tool
Keyword research is so important nowadays. Just writing content will not do the trick, you need to know that you can rank for a given keyword. If you are unsure what a keyword is, I will explain. When you typed something into google today “Affiliate Marketing Tools” that is the keyword. It doesn’t have to be one word, it can be a phrase. When you create content for your website you want to target a low competition keyword as you are just starting out. If you pick a keyword with too much competition, it will be impossible for you to achieve the first page on the search engines. There is no point if you cannot get on the first page, as people will not typically see your website (post).
The keyword research tool I use is Jaaxy. It has some great features and was built by the people behind Wealthy Affiliate. As well as keyword research, it also includes tools to do:
- Track your website rankings for keywords
- Search Analysis – analyse your competition and SEO trends
- Alphabet Soup – Uncover millions of niches and keywords
- Brainstorm HQ – find trending, popular and lucrative ideas
- Affiliate Programs – search and find relevant affiliate programs in your niche
Jaaxy is actually included in a premium Wealthy Affiliate membership, give me full access to this great research tool.
If you would like to try Jaaxy and see if it is right for you, they offer a free version which will allow you to do 30 searches. They would prefer you make your own decision about their platform before spending any money.
Start your free searches here
I benefit every day from Wealthy Affiliate and Jaaxy, but there are also some other Tools I find really useful and integral to my business. They are free tools, but are great to use.
Google Suite
Google have a suite of useful free tools to help you monitor your website and its traffic. To use these tools, you will require a google account. Once signed up you can use this for a number of different features:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great tool all around how the visitors to your website behave. Do they engage with your website, do they stay on your posts or leave straightaway? You can monitor:
- Demographics and Age ranges of your visitors
- Content Engagement
- New Users vs recurring users
- Real Time Users
I’ll be doing a more detailed post on google analytics shortly, but it is a powerful tool that you need to use to understand how your website is going.
Google Webmaster Tools (Search Console)
Google is great at finding new content, but this allows you to connect your site (via a sitemap) to google to ensure they know when you have created content and get it ranked. It also allows you to explore where your content is ranking, how many impressions (people have seen it but not clicked on it) you have. It is another great feature Google offer.
Google Alerts
Keep up to date with the latest news in your niche straight to your inbox. It is impossible to find everything related to your niche without a little help.
Canva – Logos, Graphics, Infographics
Canva is a great online tool for graphics. We are not all graphic designers, but this website gives you a lot of functionality even on the free version. I used it for my logo, each of my featured images is designed on it. Infographics are easy to design on it. It is an essential tool for your website.
Lumen5 – Video Creator
Not everyone is great in front of the camera, and yet video is so important these days. Youtube has become the second biggest search engine after Google (who own Youtube). Lumen5 is a great little tool that creates videos from your content, example of this post is below.
The free version does have limitations, but I have not come into a situation where I wasn’t happy with the results.
Conclusion
There are many tools, don’t get it wrong there are many paid tools out there that do seem to be a real benefit, but without a foundation (website) and traffic (readers) there is no point investing money in them yet. There is no “push button system’ where you will instantly earn money. Many that promise it are scams, the others seem unreliable. The only system I do recommend is Wealthy Affiliate due to the benefits I have gained from them.
The starter membership allows people to make their own decision and many starter members earn from it and then upgrade later on. But with a great website builder, great hosting, awesome training on all aspects of an online business, Jaaxy keyword tool – they help people get online the right way.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post, if you have any questions about affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing tools or Wealthy Affiliate – please leave me a comment below and I promise to get back to you.
5 Qualities for Success with Affiliate Marketing – Avoid The Most Common Mistakes!
Affiliate Marketing is a great choice for an online business, but many people wrongly assume it is an easy option to earning money online. The premise is very simple, but the execution of the business will determine how successful you are.
In this post I am going to go through 5 Qualities for Success in Affiliate Marketing that I have found very useful to building my online business up. Let’s start with what is Affiliate Marketing first…
What is Affiliate Marketing?
If you would like a full explanation of what affiliate marketing, then read my post “How Does Affiliate Marketing Really Work“.
But in short, with affiliate marketing you have 3 parties. You (the affiliate), a product/service (company selling it) and the potential buyer (consumer).
Signing up with an affiliate program allows you to promote a product or service on your blog or through social media and if the buyer purchases it, you get a commission. The affiliate program gives you a unique link that tells them it was you who introduced them and then you get paid.
The actual process for Affiliate Marketing is simple, someone clicks your link and you benefit from a percentage of the sale. But, people think this will happen really quickly, as in a couple of days or weeks and that is simply not the case.
It would be great if it could, but the truth about it is the time needed to build up trust with the search engines and the readers who will be visiting your blog.
These 5 qualities we will be discussing are all aimed at both being successful but also understanding what is required and the time needed to see it through.
Let’s get on with the 5 Qualities for Success in Affiliate Marketing.
A Willingness to Invest Time & Effort
Let’s be honest, any true affiliate marketer will tell you that it will take a lot of time and effort to build a business up to a
point where you are earning a living from it. The key word there is Business.
Any business owner will tell you that you need to build a strategy, a business plan and invest in the time and effort in the beginning to get it started and out there in the public domain.
Affiliate Marketing is a passive income stream, but that doesn’t mean you sit back and do nothing.
The statement that it is passive, gives many an impression that you can sit back and watch the money come in. But the only reason it is passive, is you do not need to present to oversee the sale.
Without traffic to your website, you will not see any of these sales and that is where you need to invest time in research, creating content, connecting with others in your niche, monitoring traffic and which strategies work and which don’t.
Creating quality content requires time and effort, constantly reviewing it to see whether your readers like it or not, does it help them, does it answer a question?
Do not expect Affiliate Marketing to be a quick win or an easy route to earning money at the start. Don’t get me wrong, when you do nail a strategy and it starts earning money it could continue to earn you money for years to come, with minimal tweaking – but you consistently need to find ways of keeping your business fresh and up-to-date with the competition.
A Constant Desire to Learn
This one came from an Affiliate Marketing expert who has 15 years’ experience, never stop learning!
Think about how quick technology changes, any given business industry is constantly improving things, and this means there are new things to learn.
New techniques, new strategies, new systems. Google gave just updated their webmaster tools, so this meant I needed to get my head around it to get the best out of the platform and the data it represents.
There is also the fact that there are other elements that you will need to learn to be successful:
- Website Design
- Content Creation
- Online Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- SEO & PPC Marketing
There are many factors to an online business and it is key that you keep learning to become an authority in your niche.
I found a platform that has a step-by-step guide to building an online business with affiliate marketing and I have found them integral to my online business.
Wealthy Affiliate is a training platform with awesome tools to help build a business with a community of experts in affiliate marketing.
But whilst they will give you the tools, you need to utilise the 5 qualities to make it a success!
Self-Determination
Are you determined to become successful? Can you keep determined that the content you provide will be useful to the reader and help them with a problem or help them decide to make a purchase (with your affiliate link).
Consumers are very wary when it comes to things online and want to feel that there is a real person behind the website. If 
you write poor content but loads of it – you will have a lot of content, but it doesn’t help you grow your business as the readers switch.
You need to make sure the content you write is the best you can do with helpful information that helps the reader.
It is also worth noting that when you are writing, you should be writing for one person. Write it as though you were talking to one person, that is the art of blogging and helping people. They want to feel like they have wrote it for you!
But it can also be easy to just sell – writing content that says “buy this”.
This doesn’t help them, they are searching online because they want to know whether it is the right product to buy for their circumstances, is there a better alternative. If they knew they were going to buy something, they would have already bought it.
Be determined that your business will offer the best advice, the best support and the best products to buy. Strive to help people, first and foremost and the sales will follow. Never go and try and do it the other way around
Self-Discipline
The single most important fact about Affiliate Marketing is: If you play at it, you will never be successful!
The only way that you will turn it into a full-time earning career is to run it like a business. If you are going to start it as a side gig for now, then you need to be strict about how much time you set aside each week to achieve your goals.
Many Affiliate Marketers started their business on the side of a full-time job, including myself.
The only way you can do it is to have a schedule – time to complete training, time to do keyword research, time to write an article, time to market on social media, etc.
It will be tough at first, but one you achieve your goals you will get a lot more time to spend on your business and enjoy a better work life balance and see the family more.
The other side to consider with self-discipline is self-control with distractions.
Think about how many times yourself or someone you know spends on their phone or social media.
Social Media is a fantastic tool to growing your business, but it is also one of the biggest distractions taking you away from doing tasks on your business, like creating that article you were going to write or that video you were going to record promoting your latest product review, instead you spend an hour going through Pinterest or going on Facebook.
It might be a good idea to write down a list of distractions, those that you can avoid and those you cannot avoid. For example, your day job and your family (I have a 6-year-old) would be classed as distractions that you cannot avoid. It’s called life.
But social media, catching up on a tv show could be called avoidable distractions.
Some Optimism
The last quality, Optimism is perhaps the most important and the most difficult to keep in mind.
A lot of people are searching online for ways to earn money from home and they can get carried away with the many ways of doing it (at first glance). There are many ‘Get Rich Quick” schemes out there that are predominantly scams and can really affect the confidence people have of finding a way to earn money online.
Then many find something called Affiliate Marketing – It is a great way of earning money online and is billed as a ‘Passive Income’ method.
But the reason you need optimism with any online business is you will not see the rewards straightaway. With one of my online businesses I did not see a return for 6 months, what if I had given up after 3 months as I hadn’t earned anything in that time. It is key that you believe in yourself and your business.
Think of why you want to earn money online, not just to earn money. I am talking about the lifestyle that this income can bring – I wanted to spend more time with my family, as well as get rid of the money worries I had.
In Summary
Done right, Affiliate Marketing is a very sound business model and can be very rewarding.
Helping others learn Affiliate Marketing and get started in affiliate marketing and all about the right tools in affiliate marketing is awesome and something I am very passionate about.
Harnessing these 5 qualities for Affiliate Marketing Online has been key to building up a profitable business and that is why I recommend them to anyone wanting to get started or struggling with their online business regardless of whether it is an affiliate marketing business or not.
Are you struggling to find a rhythm with your affiliate marketing business? Do you want to ensure you start on the right foot? I can help and I offer it willingly, if you want to get the best training out there for affiliate marketing with expert help and support. Then I highly recommend you read my Wealthy Affiliate Review – See what fantastic tools and training they offer.
If you have any questions about affiliate marketing or need any help or support, just let me know. Drop me a comment below and I’ll get you an answer.
