Written by Matt Zavadil
Updated October 12, 2024
Click Here for the Affiliate’s Digital Marketing Skills Training Series I mentioned in above video
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OK, let’s get to it…
1. First Interesting Thing About Affiliate Marketing: You Must Treat This Like It’s Your Own Business
When do most affiliate marketers fail to earn consistent incomes? It’s always when they treat this like a fly-by-night operation, and that’s usually because some GURU boy tricks them into believing they can throw some affiliate links around and get rich.
I’d like to make sure you don’t fail like this by giving you five specific aspects of running your affiliate marketing business, well, like a business.
1. Develop a Business Owner Mindset, Not Just a “Side Hustle” Mentality
Many people approach affiliate marketing as a passive or part-time activity, but just because you’re selling someone else’s product or service doesn’t mean you can think of it lightly. If you don’t have effective business skills, or marketing skills yet, then you need to commit to learning them.
I didn’t see sustained success as an affiliate marketer until I selected one main product to focus all of my marketing efforts and messaging around.
I set business goals around selling that product and mentally thought about it like my own business. I created a strategic marketing plan that included doing a deep dive into understanding the pain points and desires of the people most likely to buy the product.
You can sell an affiliate offer once in a while using luck and a haphazard approach, but if you want to build a solid monthly income from your affiliate marketing business, then make sure to run it like an actual business
Invest time in developing your sales and marketing strategy, measure your results, get good at understanding the numbers in terms of organic or paid traffic and how to convert that traffic into leads and sales.
2. Focus on Long-Term Sustainability Over Quick Wins
If you expect to build something that generates consistent, long-term revenue, then think long-term instead of chasing quick commissions.
Learn everything you can about marketing tactics like content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and running paid ads.
Nurture your audience over time instead of relying solely on short-term tactics like one-off sales promotions.
3. Invest in Tools, Education, and Marketing
True business owners understand the value of investing in tools that make their business run more efficiently. You’ll need to learn how to use marketing tools that help with your keyword research, SEO, email marketing, and sales conversion.
4. Create a Professional Brand and Build Trust
As an affiliate marketer thinking like a business owner, you’ll realize you’re building a brand, not pushing any old product or service.
Focus on building a professional image. Use a well-designed website, consistent branding, and high-quality content to earn trust and position yourself as an authority in your chosen niche, or industry.
Act like a business owner by thinking through your customer’s journey and experience with your brand. How will you interact with your audience through content, emails, or social media in a way that makes them feel comfortable buying through your affiliate links?
5. Understand Your Role as a Problem-Solver, Not Just a Marketer
Treating affiliate marketing like a business means recognizing that your role is to help your audience solve problems—not just throw affiliate links in their face as a sleazy operator.
Don’t talk initially about what you’re selling. Instead, talk about the problems your research told you that your audience is experiencing. Help them FEEL that you understand their pain points, goals, and needs.
Point out how the product or service you’re promoting solves their problems and gets them the positive things they’re looking for.
Always think: Value first, sell second.
By the way, do these concepts sound amazing but you’re not sure how to learn these advanced affiliate marketing and business skills? I’ve put a link to our Affiliate’s Digital Marketing Skills Training Series. It teaches you how to uplevel your digital marketing skills whether you’re a beginner or more advanced affiliate marketer so you can attract new customers every week.
Now, let’s move into the Second Interesting Thing About Affiliate Marketing, which is
2. Second Interesting Thing About Affiliate Marketing is that Content Marketing is Key to Success
So as you think of yourself as the owner of your affiliate marketing endeavor, you’ll find that using content marketing can take you all the way to the promised land of income that you’re seeking.
What’s content marketing?
It’s using content like blog posts, social media posts, videos where you’re offering tips and helpful ideas to your target audience.
Focus initially on what we call organic content, which just means you’re posting on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, and other social media without paying for ads.
Get good at converting people from seeing your organic content posts into leads and sales before you start paying for ads.
If you can’t make affiliate money from organic content marketing, you’ll end up throwing your paid ad money into the toilet.
The point here is you must learn how to become an expert at using content to generate interest in the brand you’re building, and then the product or service you’re promoting as an affiliate.
3. Third Interesting Thing About Affiliate Marketing Is How Building an Email List = High Profits
The best thing I did in my early years of affiliate marketing was focusing on driving my content marketing efforts into building an email list.
Most beginner affiliate marketers overlook this vital piece of the puzzle. They start learning how to generate interest through content, and then drive all their prospects straight to the sales page your vendor that you’re selling for gives you.
Big, big mistake!
Only a small percentage of people who find you will buy right away. Most people need more than exposure to you before making a buying decision.
If you drive all traffic to a sales page, you’ll lose those who don’t buy forever.
If you capture your prospects onto an email list first, and THEN show them the sales page after they optin, you can now send email messages over time to those people who don’t buy immediately.
You’ll see your profits rise as you make sales on the backend days, weeks, months, and even years after people join your email list.
That is why I again encourage you to think like a business owner, not a fly-by-night affiliate marketer…think long-term…don’t worry about where your business will be in 2 months…worry about and plan for where it’ll be in five to 10 years.
4. Fourth Interesting Thing About Affiliate Marketing is How It and Network Marketing Complement Each Other
The amazing thing about branding yourself is that you can add other offers into the mix once you really get your affiliate marketing business humming along.
For example, let’s say you’re selling an amazing supplement as an affiliate, and you’re building your brand in the health and wellness niche.
Know that you’ll never get 100% of all your leads to buy that supplement. Not even close…
Instead of beating your prospects over the head with the same offer forever and ever, you can eventually position a different offer inside your email marketing sequence.
You might join a network marketing company with a similar supplement and offer that eventually. Now, you’re building a different type of business on the backend where you start overriding the sales of people in your downline inside your chosen MLM company.
By the way, if you’re already a network marketer, you can use all the tips I’ve given you so far to brand yourself, and then sell affiliate offers on the backend to those people who never take you up on your network marketing product or service, or business opportunity.
That’s what I mean about how affiliate marketing and network marketing complement one another well.
Use both models to diversify your income streams over time.
I’m studying the book of Joshua right now, and everything I’ve given you here reminds of a lesson from Joshua 19 where we learn about the 12 Tribes getting their land divvied up in the Promised Land.
Only after everyone else laid claim to their territory did Joshua claim his. And his settled territory was hill country, a touch assignment. But it was called “abundant portion” because, as pastor Jon Courson said, it’s the hard stuff that brings abundance. It’s when you have to roll up your sleeves and put your hand to the plow, it’s when you get involved and engaged that you find the abundant life.
The abundant life is found in walking in the Spirit, seeking first the kingdom, taking on the territory you’ve been assigned, and not giving up.
Roll up your sleeves with your affiliate marketing business. Don’t cut corners by slamming random affiliate links in the face of your prospects. Get involved and engaged in understanding your target audience’s needs and pain points, give them helpful tips first, and then give them the ultimate solution in the form of whatever product or service you’re promoting.
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And check out the link to our Affiliate’s Digital Marketing Skills Training Series. It teaches you how to uplevel your digital marketing skills whether you’re a beginner or more advanced affiliate marketer so you can attract new customers every week.
Are you already a network marketer needing to uplevel your online marketing skills? Go through the DIgital Recruiting Bootcamp Series I’ve put in the pinned comment and description to get the ENTIRE picture of how to get leads for your network marketing business through social media.
That’s it for now, Signing off and look out for the fourth installment of this series soon, which will hit on Four Interesting Things About High Ticket Coaching…another fascinating way to diversify and increase your income….