Affiliate marketing is a popular online business model in which affiliates get paid for product recommendations online. Not everyone succeeds with affiliate marketing and there’s a massive drop out rate. But it doesn’t have to be like this and anyone can learn affiliate marketing if they are prepared to do the work, keep going and commit to the process.
Unfortunately affiliate marketing is tough, especially in the beginning. Most new affiliates will quit long before they even reach 1000 subscribers (on their email list). If you know that this is the case, you’re forewarned to this problem. Being forewarned is to be forearmed!
The affiliates who eventually surpass their employment income from affiliate marketing are the ones who see this bigger picture. They have learned to suspend the need for instant gratification and to maintain consistency over a longer period of time, before judging the business model.
For many, working for months before seeing any results is simply too much. But if you can see the long term benefits of building an affiliate business, it will keep you going. For instance, affiliate marketing can give you a passive income. You can scale up an affiliate business if you use the right model, creating an income which can grow quickly once you’ve put the hard work in upfront.
In a traditional employment, this simply isn’t possible. That’s because in traditional work you trade your time for money. With affiliate marketing, you are learning how to use systems and products to generate income without trading your time. Eventually, these systems can work for you, even long after you’ve stopped working!
Affiliate marketing is a performance based business model. This means that there’s no income cap, as in traditional employment. It also means there’s a lot of work to do initially, in order to learn how to generate sales online. But once you have put this time in, this knowledge can set you free from employment, potentially forever!
It is the affiliates who see this larger picture, and have a strong enough reason to put in the required work who succeed at affiliate marketing. Many people who come to affiliate marketing are completely fed up in their jobs, working in meaningless careers or for an ungrateful boss. This is often the reason someone needs to be motivated enough to put in the required amount of work and passion.
Unless you have a big enough “why”, you’re likely to join the 95% of affiliates who quit!
An affiliate marketing mentor is a definite advantage when it comes to affiliate marketing. I struggled for years trying to make money with affiliate programs. After joining a mentorship program in 2014, things started changing for me. It wasn’t a sudden overnight switch in income, but it definitely brought about a switch in my thinking, which made all the difference.
Instead of thinking only about what I wanted, I switched my thinking to providing value to help others. Instead of selling low value products on Amazon, I was able to sell high ticket and recurring commission products which paid much more when I made the sales.
By following others who were further ahead of me on their affiliate journey, I was able to better understand what I had to do to succeed. Much of my struggle with affiliate marketing was simply in my thinking. I was living in my small comfort zone, doing only those activities which I was comfortable with. I stuck to things I knew and expected a different outcome.
By aligning with coaches and mentors, I was able to see and understand what I needed to do for the outcome I really wanted. I had lowered my dreams to fit my comfort zones! I expect this is a common problem.
But unless you change your awareness of the cause and effect relationship of your actions, you’ll keep perpetuating the same outcomes in life and blame it on the weather – or some other arbitrary circumstance out of your control!
This is the real hard work of learning some new skill or building an affiliate business if you have no business experience. Your thinking will always be the glass ceiling of the results in your life, not just in an affiliate business. By following a coach, or mentor, you can see what kind of thinking is needed to generate the results you want in the form of an online income.
Mentors can show you how your business is limited because your thinking is limited, and how to change it. They can point you to the resources which helped them. All you need is to bring an open mind and a commitment to the journey!
Since finding a community of like-minded entrepreneurs online in 2014, my internet business has boomed. It’s given me the freedom to choose work according to what is aligned with meaning and purpose for me, rather than because I needed the money, as I so frequently did before.
If you’re looking at affiliate marketing as a means to change career, or find more purposeful work, I highly recommend it. But get help and get a mentor who you can connect with. Don’t go it alone, it’s far too hard!
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