You will fail at affiliate marketing… that’s a given. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m speaking from experience – and the only difference between failure and success is that successful marketers will learn from their failures.
So let’s dive into the 7 reasons you’re going to fail at Affiliate Marketing:
1. Not Having A Clear Niche:
Trying to be everything to everyone is a common mistake made by affiliate marketers. Focusing on a specific niche helps build expertise and authority, which is required to succeed.
For example, here at CheapAffiliateMarketing.com – I’m talking about the ‘Make Money Online’ niche, but you’ll never hear me telling you how to make money with a Youtube channel… that’s outside my specific niche – which is building an affiliate website. There’s all sorts of ways to make money online – but you won’t see them listed here.
I’m sure that if you’re interested in making money with Fiverr.com offering SEO services – you’ll find a website that will be far more valuable to you. You won’t find it here.
Zero in on a specific niche – and become an expert in that one narrow field, and you’ll have a much better shot at success.
You see, Google isn’t dumb… they know you can’t possibly be an expert in dozens of different fields, but you might well be an expert in one narrowly defined field.
2. Weak Mindset:
Having a strong mindset is crucial for success in affiliate marketing. You will fail at affiliate marketing if you aren’t persistent. Persistence is key, and setbacks are common. Those who give up easily are likely to fail. Understanding that you simply aren’t going to have enough traffic to make money with for the first 8-12 months will stop most people, and force them to quit.
If you can’t repeatedly crank out 1,000-3,000 word posts weekly for months on end with no apparent benefit, and no money coming in – you’re going to fail. Give up now, and save yourself months of needless work.
Society has trained you to work for no more than two weeks, then get a huge check for your work. Affiliate marketing doesn’t work like that. It can take up to a year for a post to rank high enough in Google for people to be clicking on it. If you can’t deal with not having immediate rewards for your work, you’re going to fail.
3. Lack Of Hard Work:
Affiliate marketing requires time and effort. Those who are not willing to put in the work are unlikely to succeed. Yes, it’s true that once you have an Affiliate Marketing website pumping out monthly revenue, you can take a break from time to time.
But taking a break is what you do AFTER you’re successful – not before. This is critical – you’ll fail without doing the hard work that is necessary to have traffic coming to your site.
If you can’t dedicate at least 8 hours a week to your new venture – you’re going to fail. You need to write, research, write, write, and write some more. You need to fall asleep dreaming of new topic ideas and keywords to research.
You need to DO THE WORK NEEDED.
A lack of patience is the most common reason that you will fail at affiliate marketing. Your inability to pump out dozens upon dozens of 1,000 to 3,000-word posts… even the occasional 4 or 5,000-word posts. Is it hard work? Some people think so… but ask anyone who pumps sewers for a living what their opinion on the matter might be.
Working on an Affiliate Website is easy work – it really is – but you have to actually do it, not think about it. No one’s going to pay you for your dreams, only for your actual content.
4. Promoting The Wrong Products:
Promoting products that are not relevant to the audience or that are of low quality can lead to failure. It is important to choose products that align with the audience’s interests and needs. Were I to start pointing my audience here to a product on making Youtube videos, it might vaguely resonate with a few people – but my audience consists of people who’d like to create an Affiliate Website.
Only products related to Affiliate Website creation are going to earn me any money – because those are the only products that will help *YOU* reach your goal.
If you’re looking for information on how to increase your Etsy store traffic – you came to the wrong place. I have little to no information on selling products on Etsy, and I have no desire to learn. I’d fail, miserably, if I tried to direct you to such info products.
More importantly, it would quickly become apparent to you that I really don’t know Etsy – especially if you’ve dealt with Etsy at all – and nothing can ruin a website’s rankings faster than Google realizing that you have no authority on the topic.
Now, if you create an Affiliate Marketing website around selling items on Etsy, Ebay, and other such markets – you go right ahead and promote those products – you could be a success at it.
But I would fail.
I will stick with what I know, and what I’m interested in researching. What about you?
5. No Focus:
Lack of focus is another common reason why people fail at affiliate marketing. Trying to promote too many products or niches can lead to a lack of direction and poor results.
I’m going to give you an example I recently ran across: disposalxt.com – if you want to buy a garbage disposal for your kitchen sink, you might well end up here. A very well-designed site, but it will give you an overload of information.
This is an example of a lack of focus… If I’m going to buy a disposal, I only want one or two choices, perhaps in one or two price ranges… then I’m going to buy.
This website has a single focus, even though you’ll see articles on mindset, niches, products, website building, SEO, posting, etc… they all funnel to the same thing – building an Affiliate Marketing website where you can earn extra money for your retirement.
If I had built that site – I would have made it a “Kitchen Appliance” site – then offered just a few specific recommendations for a good sink disposal. My site would help those who want to remodel their kitchen and purchase the very best cooking appliances for their renewed kitchen.
Rather than “no focus” – perhaps the example I gave is more of an issue with too detailed a focus. You will fail at affiliate marketing if your focus is either too narrow or too wide.
Regardless of which niche you select, you should do the same – focus on a specific problem, and give just ONE answer to that problem. The question that I’m answering is how to earn extra money to supplement your Social Security in retirement. And while there are many possible ways to do this, I’m focusing on only ONE answer.
6. Not Converting Traffic Into Sales:
Converting traffic into sales is a crucial aspect of affiliate marketing. Those who are not able to do so are unlikely to succeed. The most profitable websites will be those that have multiple streams of revenue… perhaps ad revenue, a Clickbank product, and a personal product that the website is selling, maybe a membership coaching forum.
If you have traffic coming to your site, it’s holy writ that you should convert about 2-4% of that traffic into a buyer of something. You should be funneling some of that traffic into your email list.
The major stumbling block of websites is to get that rush of traffic, if you’ve gotten past that hurdle, but aren’t making very much money, it’s time to get some expert help. Join Project 24, or find some other place where you can educate yourself.
Affiliate Marketing is a non-stop changing world, where you need to use some of the money you make and roll it into continuing education.
7. Choosing The Wrong Niche:
Choosing the wrong niche can also lead to failure. It is important to choose a niche that is profitable and has a large audience. I constantly harp on only two – the finance niche, and the health niche. Both are extremely competitive.
They are competitive for a very good reason – they are definitely financially profitable. Have number one keywords in either niche, and you’re practically guaranteed a website that’s a true cash cow.
It’s difficult to say just what the wrong niche is – sometimes, you can run across a website that really shouldn’t be working at all. My favorite example is a site that deals with succulents… you know, cactus. I live in Southern California, and although we’re not quite desert, there are cactus all around… and I just can’t imagine trying to make money in such a niche. But one lady has turned a website about succulents into a $300,000-a-year business.
So if you’re passionate enough about a niche – you can probably make it work.
Did you know that there are collectors who collect “Condom Tins?” Condoms used to come in small tin cans, much like Altoids – but amusingly enough, I can’t find a single website dedicated to this hobby. This is probably due to the fact that your audience, if should you start a website on this topic, would be the other 37 collectors in the U.S.
Morale of the story? Pick a niche where there’s lots of buying and selling going on.
Both finance and health niches fit this criterion quite well.
Summary
There are many pitfalls for the unwary – but when you take a look at what successful Affiliate Marketers tell you – they learned from their mistakes – or in some cases, used education to avoid those mistakes in the first place.
What will carry you across the goal line is persistence. You must be CONVINCED BEYOND ANY DOUBT that you will succeed if you just keep posting relevant and long posts in your niche.
Then, and only then… will you succeed.
