You’ve all read it over, and over, and over again in sales letters. Promises of instant riches with affiliate marketing, beyond your dreams, and all on autopilot. You’ll be in Maui sipping out of a coconut while $1000s a month are direct deposited into your bank account.
Bullshit!
This is the myth of the lazy affiliate, that once you get the wheels turning, you’re on your way to an early retirement. Sadly enough a lot of affiliate marketers still believe this.
Just like any other business, an affiliate marketing business takes a lot of WORK to get it going. I know that’s a 4-letter word to some affiliates! Honestly, it’s a lot of blood, sweet, and tears in the beginning. The learning curve to ppc affiliate marketing is steep, most people don’t stick it out long enough to reach the tipping point. Kind of sad since many of these people are SO close to reaching it.
Let’s face it, as markets on Google Adwords become more and more competitive over time, with the cost per click rising every year, the idea that you can “set it and forget it ” and make piles of money on autopilot with ppc is ridiculous. The day of throwing a bunch of keywords into a campaign, setting your CPC at 0.05 and instantly making 100% ROI are long gone.
Sounds pretty gloomy, huh? There’s hope for the affiliates that are willing to take their thinking (and their affiliate business) to the next level…
When I was a newbie affiliate, like many other affiliates, I was super-excited once I got a campaign running and profitable. I had finally got to the point I was consistently finding a winner! However, after a few months my profitable campaigns would keep dieing out. I had this happen to me in at least 5 different profitable markets.
I knew there was a piece of the puzzle that I was missing. If you read my last post you know that my mistake was rushing to launch new campaigns, and not building up & solidify my profitable campaigns, and here why I did this…
I was thinking like a “lazy affiliate,” I was totally focused on quickly getting as many profitable campaigns up as possible so I could make some quick money. I may as well have been selling wrist watches off the street corner here in Boston, because I was NOT treating my affiliate marketing efforts as a REAL business.
I said to myself: “Okay, I know there’s a way to make this work, there’s other super-affiliates that are making a fortune who’ve been doing this for years. What are they doing that I’m not doing, or what am I doing that they are not doing??”
When it finally dawned on me that I was not treating my affiliates efforts as a real viable long-term business, here what I changed about the way I think about, and conduct my affiliate business that totally transformed my business and my life:
- I totally changed my focus to building campaigns that generate long-term sustainable profits. That’s when I decided to build up and dominate one market before I move into another. I wanted to lock in the profits for one campaign before I moved into another market.
- I started writing out income goals for my business, what I wanted to make in 3 months, 6 months, a year. I put them up in the wall, somewhere I could see them everyday. Do you have goals for your affiliate business?
- I decided to stop wasting money on ebooks that did not help me improve my ppc affiliate marketing efforts. I decide to focus on ONE thing and get REALLY good at it. In business they call this a core competency.
- I hired a writer, and a web designer to design my sites and write the content. Once I had a good team in place my business profits skyrocketed to 7-figures. I will talk about this extensively in a future post.
- I got a separate credit card for my business expenses, opened up a separate business account with my bank, incorporated my business as an LLC. If you have not done this, I would suggest doing it right away, even if you’re just starting.
- Here’s a big one: I got an appointment calender, setup a daily & weekly to-do list, that I strictly adhere to. You’ve got to treat this business like a part-time job (or a full time job if you’re doing it full time). If you were working for a company (as an affiliate let’s just say), would your boss give you a big raise and promotion based on how much effort you put into your affiliate marketing business everyday, or would he fire you??
So ask yourself if your treating your business like a wrist watch salesman on the street corner or like the CEO of a multi-million dollar internet business?
PS On the upside, once you’ve worked hard over a period of a few years & have several solid campaigns going, that are setup PROPERLY for long-term profitability, you can choose to go into maintenance mode and cut back your workload and start a blog about affiliate marketing. 
Hey Amit, excellent post. I think a lot of newbies got sold on the idea of barely working and collecting fat paychecks by “gurus” trying to sell them products. It happened to me, and I certainly fell victim to many such “flash in the pan” things like making MFA template-sites, etc.
It wasn’t until I got serious and FOCUSED my efforts that I started to have any success online.
Keep up the good work.
Amit,
Good post and tips! I have couple of questions. What are examples of campaigns that generate long-term sustainable profits?
You said you started to focus on ONE thing and get REALLY good at it. Are you talking about not doing affiliate marketing and at the same time build MFA sites or other stuff online to make money? Or are you talking about running a successful campaigns for that SPECIFIC industry?
Thanks and keep posting good posts!
Hi Jimmy,
You want to get really good at one method of internet marketing and get REALLY good at it to the point you can quit you day job and do the business full time. That could be ppc affiliate marketing, SEO, blogging, list building, etc etc.
You may experiment with a bunch of things in the very beginning to see what really interests you and you have the most success with, but once you’ve know what that is, stick with it, and get good at it.
Becoming an expert at one thing is really your best chance at making a lot of money online. Once you’re full-timer you can branch off and try different things.
As for an example of a campaign that generate long-term profits, I’ll leave that for a future blog post. So stay tuned.
you are so right. you must treat your business like a business. hard work is not what people want to hear but… there is no way to get around it. however, once your efforts start to pay off you can take a break and work a little less and much smarter.
I just found your blog and you’ve got some great content on here. I added it to my daily reading list.
I totally agree that that there is no substitute for hard work when it comes to affiliate marketing. I am just getting started with some of my own projects. I have to say it is definitely a ton of work to build your first site completely from the ground up and to make sure it has everything it needs to be successful. The amount of work first starting out can be intimidating, but I know if I continually work hard I will see the long-term benefits down the road.
Amit:
What an excellent blog! It is refreshing to hear the truth. Thank you for the show of respect. I have read several of your posts in the last few minutes and have either learned alot or concur with your conclusions.
My partner, Greg Meares, and I are very committed to succeeding as internet marketers. We are on the road where, at times, it seems dark and lonely. Thank you for your encouragement.
Please come to our site when you get a chance.
Sincerely, Jerry
Great post.
You’re right you certainly need to treat this game like any other business.
I’ll freely admit I’m lazy, I accept I could work more and earn more… but then time is much more valuable to me than money, I don’t want or need a 7 or even 6 figure salary.
Subscribed to your blog, will read more.
Take it easy,
Si.
Thats a great post,
Its hard work I have been doing this for three years and had loads of rollar coaster rides, ie I started with adsense, how happy I was when I was earning a dollar a day WOW, then out of the blue I was on $100 dollars a day and I was on cloud nine.
It went to over $300 a day couple of years ago and I thought YES i HAVE MADE IT, then it like a rollar coaster something changed and now I earn less than $1 a day.
Affiliate marketing the same I earnt less than $10 a month for 2 years then in feb 07 I thought I would jig things up a little, to my surprise I earned $30,000 in two months, again I thought I had arrived, then again nothing since, apart from grey hair.
I have now go to start again re motivate myself to carry on, I am lucky because I thought No way I would ever earn $1000 a month to earning $30,0000 in two months, so I know it can be done.
To all newbies carry on, do different things as you could lose that income steam within a couple of days, I was riding high on google adsense and then something chnaged at google sites dropped, revenue was like a lead balloon.
Again with affiliate marketing did something different then no fault of my own something changed an income dissappereared.
Anyway I hope that helps, its a rollarcoaster ride, enjoy the ups and tough it out on the downs.
Opened a new site today http://www.money-saving-newsletter.com, to try re motivate myself, have to think what I am going to do with it and of course how to make money from it and of course design it, which I am not very good at.(any suggestions, ie basic html site or some sort of blog)
Keep smiling,
Kevin
admin@money-saving-newsletter.co.uk
Great advice,
I too am in the same position as you and am ready to find a good source to build a niche page for me. Whom do (or have) you used?
Thnaks,
Sincerely,
Scott Douglas
Imagine that, money not flying magically into our pockets.
what a let down, lol.
Great Post