You Don’t Need Anymore Information To Succeed

This post is part of the Why You Suck At Affiliate Marketing series.

The title of this post is brutally honest. It’s clear, simple, and it’s true. You do not need any more information.

As we already established, you suck at affiliate marketing. But it’s not because you don’t know enough about it. Listen, you’ve been at this awhile now, so you already know what you need to make a profit online.

Think about it: you make money by putting your affiliate links out there and convincing people to click on them and make purchases. This isn’t rocket science. You put your affiliate links out there by having a blog or a landing page, advertising through PPC, posting to niche forums, publishing articles to authority sites, etc.

What makes you think another $97 eBook, or another $49/month training portal, is going to change any of that?

Sure… obviously you don’t know everything. There’s still learning to be done and experience to be gained. But you’re not making any profits, so you can’t afford to spend any more money on training resources that just delay the inevitable.

You need to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

You need to implement the stuff you already know before you take the time or spend the money to learn more.

Keep in mind that the people who can succeed in a job or industry are the ones out there doing it. The ones who can’t become college professors.

Do you want to be Professor Affiliate Marketer? Or do you want to make a huge pile of cash, pay off all your bills, and tell your boss to shove it?

I know which option is my choice.

If you’ve been working at affiliate marketing for less than a month or so, then okay, you probably still need to invest the time and money to learn the basics. But once you know the basics, continued learning is just a diversion from that activities it really takes to earn money.

Sure, your learning never stops, and you should always strive to know as much as you can. But it comes within reason, and it comes over time and with experience. It’s time to leave school and start earning some cash.

So get to it… now!

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Why You Suck at Affiliate Marketing

See what’s in that empty box? It’s your affiliate marketing income.

You’re not making any money. Or at least nothing even remotely close to what you were hoping for. And you’ve been at this for how long? One month… Two months… Six months… An entire year or more?

Dude… face it… you suck at affiliate marketing.

It looks like you need some help, so let me clue you in to a few things. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bombard you will false promises and charge you $97 for them. But I’m not going to pull any punches here either.

Let’s just get brutally honest for a moment, and face some hard cruel facts:

• You don’t need any more information to succeed.
• You don’t need any more software, utilities, tools, resources, or memberships.
• You need to stop looking for shortcuts.
• You need to get to work.
• You need to get real about successes and failures.
• You need to stop being scared of winning.

All you need to do is take what you already know, stop looking for shortcuts, stop being lazy, stop making excuses, and get to work.

Easy right? Well guess what, it’s not as hard as you’re making it.

Over the next few days I’m going to cover each of the points in that list above in greater detail. So if you’re not making money in affiliate marketing, you need to check back each day for the next installment. Unless you don’t want success, in which case I can’t help you.

Your choice…

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Three Reasons Why I’m An Affiliate Marketer

An endeavor without a clear mission and objective is bound to fail. If you don’t have a mission or an objective driving your affiliate marketing efforts, then you’re more likely to spin in circles and never accomplish anything great. A mission statement is crucial to your online success!

Do you have a mission statement? Do you clearly know “why” you’re an affiliate marketer?

Once you know why you’re doing what you’re doing, it is easier to make all of those critical decisions such as:

• What task should I work on next?
• Will I benefit from that software, or that training resource?
• Which affiliate programs should I promote?

Those are just some examples, but I hope you can see how those questions cannot be effectively answered without a clear mission statement driving your efforts.

Your Mission Statement Is Not A Goal

Please note that a mission statement is not a goal. Your goals are based on your mission statement, and are different and separate. Here’s an example:

• Your mission statement might state that you want to earn a full time living from affiliate marketing.
• A goal based on that mission statement might be to earn $4,000 per month from affiliate marketing.

Can you see the difference?  You can even change your goal without changing the mission statement.

Now I understand that the term “mission statement” sounds like something a non-profit organization should have. It seems a bit overkill for the single affiliate marketer… especially if you’re working at this part-time. However trust me when I say it’s still important to have this defined.

So let me explain a way you can easily create your own mission statement. The way to do it is to list out the “reasons” why you are an affiliate marketer. As I just mentioned, don’t list out goals (like “I want to earn this much per month”), but instead list out the reasons why you would need that money. Perhaps it’s financial freedom, or to pay off bills, or to travel to Europe… whatever the “reason” is that you’re an affiliate marketer is your mission statement.

My Personal Reasons

Here are three reasons why I’m an affiliate marketer:

• Earn enough money to eliminate debt. This one seems obvious, but it needs to be listed. Notice that I don’t want to be rich, or have a lot of toys. I just want to get out of debt and stay out of debt. If I can accomplish that in my life, I’ll truly have wealth and I will have financial freedom.
• Have a productive hobby. This might sound corny, but we all need to have distractions from the stresses of life. We all need hobbies. Well affiliate marketing is my hobby, and it definitely is a stress reliever for me. The gravy is that I can earn a handsome profit from it too!
• Help others. One of my overall missions in life in general is to be helpful to others. Affiliate marketing can be a way to do that.

So how do my personal “reasons” for being an affiliate marketer help to guide me, keeping me on track and make critical decisions?

Here Are Some Examples

• Since one of my “reasons” is to get out of debt, I can easily calculate how much debt I have, and in how many months or years I want it to be at zero. Then I can figure out how much affiliate income I’ll need to make each month, and set goals accordingly. Also when I’m thinking about investing money for new software tools or training resources, I can weigh the potential benefits of those tools or resources against my ultimate mission of eliminating debt.
• Another “reason” is to have a relaxing hobby. Therefore, if I’m working on a campaign or project that is stressing me out, it is easier for me to let it go. A personal example of this is when I gave up my directory submission service. While it was a big money maker for me, it caused a lot of stress due to the deadlines it imposed on me. I don’t want my affiliate marketing efforts to take away from family time, but directory submissions were doing just that, so I stopped doing it.
• The third “reason” I listed was helping others. So when I am evaluating an affiliate product or program, I can evaluate if the product is really worthwhile. Will people really benefit and be helped by the product? I can also find common problems that people have, and target my affiliate campaigns in a way that provides these people with solutions to them. That way the customers are being helped, and I’m rewarded for helping them with affiliate commissions. If a program seems shady or sub-par, it’s easy for me to justify passing on it, because it doesn’t align with the reason I do this.

Conclusion

I could probably write a book full of examples of how having a mission statement (”reasons”) is key to success, but the examples listed here will have to do.

So what are the reasons you are an affiliate marketer? Please share them in the comments section below!

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3 Key Steps for Success on the eBay Partner Network

Ever since the eBay Partner Network (ePN) fired a bunch of affiliates, there’s been a lot of discussion on whether or not affiliates can trust the ePN going forward. What you need to realize is that it doesn’t matter if you can trust the ePN. What matters is that you position yourself for success.

“It is not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.” –John Wooden

Step One - Understand Your Surroundings

It’s nearly impossible to succeed at anything in life unless you have a working knowledge of the subject. For example, if you wanted to build a house, you’d need to understand community regulations and zoning laws, drafting and design, construction materials and equipment, framing, concrete work, dirt work, and so on and so forth. There’s a lot of information a person needs to understand if they want to successfully build a house… especially one that won’t blow over during the first storm.

The same holds true for affiliate marketing. If you want to succeed, you need to understand as much as you can about it. That means reading blogs like this one, purchasing training materials like Wealthy Affiliate, understanding how to build and maintain web sites, marketing strategies and techniques, and on and on. There’s a lot that a person needs to know to be successful.

Specific to the eBay Partner Network, you need to understand what eBay expects from affiliates. You need to know how to “play the game” so that eBay’s happy, your visitors are happy, and most importantly, so that you’re happy and earning commissions.

Now I can hear what some of you are thinking, because people are posting this same thought on the various forums and blogs: “how the blank can I know what they want when they don’t tell us?”

Well they did tell us, but people seem uninterested in trying to understand what they said. Unfortunately that’s not an excuse. As with everything in life, if you don’t understand an aspect of something, then you have to figure it out if you want continued success. If eBay didn’t give us detailed specifics, then we all need to analyze the situation. Read between the lines. Put yourself in their shoes and try to determine what they really mean.

Step One’s Action Item: Make the effort to figure things out going forward. Excuses and complaints won’t help you. Learn as much as you can and adapt to changes as they occur.

Step Two - Focus on Your Site’s Visitors Instead of eBay

This should be a no-brainer, but it isn’t. Here’s what happens… someone wants to get started in affiliate marketing. They find out that the eBay Partner Network is a good program to join, so they get signed up. They want to make money, so their focus is on setting up web sites for the ePN so they can start earning commissions as soon as possible.

Trust me when I say that you won’t send “engaged” traffic to eBay with that approach.

Think about it, if your main focus is on making money with any specific affiliate program, you’re not going to come across as someone who’s site really values the people who read it. You just won’t.

They always say that if you want to sound pleasant over the phone, you should be smiling, even though the person on the other end of the line can’t see you. The same is true for your affiliate web sites. If your focus is on making money, trust me, your visitors will figure that out.

So what can you do to change things? Simple… you build web sites that provide value to your visitors even if you removed each and every affiliate link or eBay product listing. The more engaged you are in your niche and with your visitors, the more engaged your visitors will be when you send them over to eBay.

Step Two’s Action Item: Make sure your site provides value to your visitors. This requires adding content, more content, and even more content. Focus on making your site the best it can be for the people who visit it.

Step Three - Get Real and Face the Facts

This last step deals more with your perspective and attitude more than anything else. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are few guarantees in life, and that includes affiliate marketing. The sooner you come to grips with that, the better off you’ll be.

Instead of worrying about the ePN, you should focus your energy on the things you can control. What are those things? Well for starters, you decide which niche to focus on. You control the content that gets published on your site. You get to choose which affiliate products that you feel will benefit your readers the most.

If you take charge of the aspects of your business that you can control and come to grips with the aspects that you can’t control, then you’ll be a step ahead of the average affiliate marketer. People who’ve had the most business success tend to be the ones who are fluid. They’re able to adapt to the changing landscape around them… even reinventing themselves and their businesses when necessary.

Step Three’s Action Item: Focus on the aspects of your business that you can control, and change your expectations regarding the aspects that you can’t control. Understand that things change, and that keeping a positive attitude and rolling with the punches will give you the best chance for long term success.

Conclusion

It’s my sincere hope that the three steps outlined above will help you understand how to succeed not only with the eBay Partner Network moving forward, but also with affiliate marketing in general.

Personally, my plan is to continue focusing my sites on the visitors, even on the sites that promote or feature eBay product listings. And if the ePN ever decides to fire me, then that’s okay, because I will continue to focus on my niches and my readers first. If I do that, then monetization, commissions and earnings will come.

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