Since leaving my job as an electrician & discovering affiliate marketing, not only have I gone on to build several highly-profitable niche websites – but I’ve also gone on to become officially recognised as a Super Affiliate, too.
To the right, that’s me pictured with both Kyle & Carson, the founders of Wealthy Affiliate at the annual Super Affiliate Conference held in Las Vegas.
Now, you might wonder – why am I telling you this?
Well, the reason is simple. You see, the harsh reality is that most people who get started with affiliate marketing do not actually end up seeing any sort of success… But quite clearly, I am not one of them.
Instead of failing, I managed to “beat the odds” & become ultra-successful in a relatively short period of time, even though I had absolutely no prior experience whatsoever.
And so, I decided to put together this guide to outline the exact “secrets” that enabled me to flip the table & find great success in an area in which most others fail with the idea that you too can implement them & generate the same kinds of success for yourself.
Therefore, if you wish to be successful, I suggest you pay very close attention to the tips that I share throughout this guide, as they could turn out to be worth a lot of money to you.
So let’s dive in & get started…
1. Understanding The Reason People Fail
In order to succeed in affiliate marketing, you must first understand why people fail.
If you can understand why people fail, you can avoid it, and by avoiding failure you can guarantee your success. Yes, that’s right – you can literally guarantee your success.
So why exactly do so many people fail with affiliate marketing?
Well, in short, there are actually only 2 reasons people fail which are:
- They follow bad advice
- Or they give up too early
That is it – those are literally the only 2 reasons a person could fail with affiliate marketing, and since you have access to the proven training & advice at Wealthy Affiliate, that leaves only 1 potential reason as to why you could find yourself failing at affiliate marketing.
The good news is that this means YOU are in full control of your success.
And that brings me onto point #2:
2. Making a Commitment
Did you know that the true cost of opening a coffee shop is around $80,000 to $250,000?
So, I think you’d agree that if you spent that kind of cash on starting a business, you are likely going to commit yourself to do as much as you can to “make it work”, right?
After all, that’s a lot of money on the line… You are not going to give up easily. No way.
But then when it comes to affiliate marketing, the cost of entry is clearly VERY low in comparison & this brings to light a problem in that many people are simply not committed.
Instead of committing to their success, they decide to “dabble” in their success.
They dip their toes, if you like.
Now, I am not saying that you need to throw insane amounts of money at your business – but what you do need to do is make a commitment to it. A commitment to “making it work”.
For example, rather than saying to yourself “I will try this, and if it works I will continue”, you should say to yourself “I will work at this for at least the next 6 or 12 months and then make a decision after that period of time as to whether or not I wish to continue”.
Then, when that time-frame rolls around – you will likely find yourself pleasantly surprised at your achievements & also potentially pleasantly surprised at your income, too.
To highlight that, be sure to take a look at Jerry’s income chart below:
Jerry kept a track of his income month-by-month after joining Wealthy Affiliate.
Initially, in his first 3 months it may have felt as if he was working for nothing & there’s no doubt about it, it would have been very easy for him to have given up (as many people do).
But he didn’t – instead, he continued pushing forward & by month 4 his income began to grow like a snowball, reaching a total of over $6,000 per month by month 10.
Now there’s no denying that he worked extremely hard, but he acts as solid-proof of what is indeed possible if you’re willing to fully commit yourself to the process.
So making a commitment to yourself to follow the training & put in the work for a set time-frame of at least 6 months (but ideally a minimum of 12) is vitally important if you want to see success. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
3. Realizing That You Are Building an Asset
Whenever a person gets started with affiliate marketing, they tend to put a primary focus on earning commissions. After all, that’s why they got started – to build an income.
But by putting their focus onto the commissions, they often cause themselves a problem.
You see, if a person’s primary focus is on earning commissions (which, realistically, may not happen for some weeks or months), then it can become very easy to get frustrated.
More importantly, it can become easy for them to feel like they’re working for nothing.
But what they forget is that they are building an asset – and a valuable asset at that.
Every single piece of content they publish to their website increases its value, and every additional month that their website is kept online also increases its value as well.
And to highlight that, let me share an example:
The website shown in the screenshot above is a simple niche website that I found for sale on the marketplace Flippa. It’s the exact same type of website you’re shown how to build inside of Wealthy Affiliate & at the time of the sale, it had only just turned 1 year old.
So, did the owner do something amazing to make it worth $10,500?
The answer is no – they didn’t.
The website had a mere 78 posts on it, which is just a total of 2x posts published per week since it’s inception & each post was only around ~1,200 words long on average.
That means the creator probably spent around 3-4 hours working on the site each week.
And so if you broke that down into an hourly wage, then the creator of that website would have technically earned around $67 for every hour that they worked on their website.
That’s amazing, don’t you think?
So even if you are not necessarily earning commissions from your website, you should never fall into the mindset of feeling like you are “working for nothing”, because the reality is that you are building an asset which could prove to become very valuable over time.
4. Your Biggest Success CAN (And Likely Will) Happen Overnight
Yes, it’s true that your success compounds as an affiliate, meaning that providing you keep on creating content it will grow over-time, almost like a snowball rolling down a hill.
But often, your biggest success will happen overnight – as it did with me personally back with one of the first-ever niche websites that I created several years ago.
My business literally went from earning nothing, to earning thousands overnight.
You see, search engines regularly update their algorithms & when this happens, it often causes a big shift in the results which leads to some websites shooting right up to the top.
So if you begin to think that “nothing’s happening” even though you’re putting in work & producing quality content, know that success may not necessarily always look like this:
And that instead, it may actually often look like this:
So if you’re confident that you’re putting out quality content, you should never give up hope. One day your success will come, and that day could literally be tomorrow.
5. Focus on ONE Website
As a newcomer, it can be easy to assume that the more websites you create, the more money you will be able to make & the more quickly you will be able to make it.
But that’s not necessarily true.
You see, you only have a limited amount of time in each day so it’s much easier & faster to find success if you put 100% of your effort into one website, rather than dividing your efforts between multiple websites & trying to juggle them all at the same time.
And a great way to think about this is as if you are watering sunflowers.
If you only had one teaspoon of water a day, you could not successfully grow & maintain 10 sunflowers. They would all die because the divided amount of water is not enough.
But if you focus on watering only one, it will grow tall & healthy.
6. Choose a Niche You’re Passionate About
There will, without a doubt, be points in your affiliate marketing journey where you find yourself feeling frustrated or stressed – just as you would in any other business.
But if you choose a niche area related to something that you’re passionate about then you will enjoy working your website & you will be much more likely to overcome any obstacles.
You will also be much more likely to keep pushing forward during the initial phase of your business (when it is not generating revenue) due to the fact that the process will be enjoyable. Creating content won’t feel like a chore, and you’ll potentially even find yourself getting excited about publishing new content to your website.
So don’t get distracted by thinking that there may be more money in other niche areas because the reality is that you will always find the most money in the one that you are most passionate about. Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.
7. Keep It Simple & Stay In Your Own Lane
One of the most common mistakes I see is people overcomplicating things & attempting to compare their progress or website to that of others which simply causes frustration.
And this one really hits home with me because I too made these exact mistakes myself.
When I first started out I felt that my website had to look fantastic in order to see success & I was constantly comparing it to other websites & spending time adjusting or adding things.
Social buttons, sidebars, widgets, you name it… I was adding it.
But then I later realized that the key to huge success is simplicity.
Not only does keeping your website simple make it load faster, make it easier to read & make it better for the visitors… But it also enables you to focus your time on content creation as opposed to continually making silly tweaks & changes.
As I always say, imperfect action always beats perfect inaction.
So when you start a new website, don’t waste too much of your time playing around with its appearance. Instead, simply pick a basic theme & get to work on creating your content.
It’s the content that will generate you profits, not the appearance of your website.
8. You Must Give Value, To Get Money
As an affiliate marketer, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that your job is to promote things to people – but the truth is, that’s not really the right way to go about it.
And you’ll often find that the more you promote, the less you actually earn.
Instead, what you need to realize is that in order to successfully earn money as an affiliate, you must put a focus onto helping people, rather than promoting to them.
So focus on producing content that helps somebody solve a problem, then recommends a product or service that acts as a solution, rather than writing solely to promote.
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar
9. Even If You Cannot Work on Your Website, Always Keep It Online
One of the most disappointing things I see is when people throw away their work, without realizing how much potential their website could have had if they had just kept it online.
They assume that because their website is not successful “now”, it means that it will never be successful in the future… But that’s absolutely not the case.
The truth is that search engines actually work on trust & trust is built over a period of time.
This means that even if you are not necessarily working your website but it is still active, then its trust rating will continue to increase & the website will mature in the background.
Here is an example:
The graph above shows the traffic (visitors) over time for one of my own websites.
It’s a website that I created, published 13 posts on & then essentially “forgot about” after getting distracted with something else.
But you can clearly see that despite having not even worked on it for over a period of around 1 year, it still began to grow as search engines begun to trust it more & rank it higher up within their results.
Now, I could quite easily go back to that website, add more content & get it ranked pretty high in the results with ease, enabling me to get even more traffic to the site & make money.
But can you imagine if I’d have just “shut it down”?
What a waste that would have been.
You see, I totally understand – sometimes life just does indeed get in the way & you may find yourself not being able to work on your site for some time, but you should always do your absolute best to make sure that at very least, you keep your website online.
Here is another example:
So always try to at least keep your website online no matter what because in life, time is one thing that you will never be able to get back (or speed up). Don’t waste it.
The Bottom Line
Despite the statistically reported failure-rate being high, the reality is that finding success with affiliate marketing is actually pretty straight-forward & the only thing that separates those who do succeed from those that don’t is simply persistence.
Providing you persist, you WILL succeed – it’s only a matter of time.
And the biggest secret of all is that there isn’t really any secret. Finding success with affiliate marketing simply requires hard work – and you have the choice as to whether you put in that work & land yourself in the 5%, or give up and join the 95%.
The question you have to ask yourself is, how badly do you want it?
What would it mean to you to be able to choose your own hours, earn an income from anywhere in the world & generate a living by simply talking about something that you’re passionate about? Hopefully, that will be enough of a driving force to put you into the 5%.
But the ball is in your court. You’re in full control of your success.
Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right. – Henry Ford
