Affiliate Marketing Success – You Must Love the Process

In my previous post, I talked about the 3 Phases of Affiliate Marketing success. In this post, I’m going to talk more about …

Phase 2, Understand exactly how an online business can attract people (traffic) and convert those people into paying customers, repeatedly and predictably.

And specifically how to consistently attract potential customers and convert them into paying customers.

You don’t create the traffic, you find it. Where are the people who may be interested in your product already spending their time? This could be Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Quora, etc. 

Pick One Platform – This will be your primary source of traffic. 

I came into affiliate marketing with Dean Holland planning to use solo ads as my primary source of traffic. For a variety of reasons I never got that going, and only used it as a secondary source of traffic.

With the changes in email marketing, I think it would be a while before I could make solo ads a primary source without getting banned as a source of spam. 

In the past, I focused on Facebook ads. I was consistently able to get traffic to my offers with Facebook ads, but couldn’t get sales. So, since I never was able to get that off the ground, I’ve decided to make a change to TikTok.

I like making videos. I like making YouTube videos, but YouTube is a difficult place to get started – if you don’t already have subscribers, it’s a lot more difficult to get your videos in front of people. Facebook and Instagram are much easier to get views. But from what I’ve been hearing, TikTok is the most friendly to new users and getting your videos in front of new people. 

Once you have a platform you have to work consistently at that platform. 

You probably won’t instantly get sales from your first efforts on a new platform. It will probably take some time to figure out what content gets people’s attention, and what content interests people in what you’re selling. There’s a difference. 

When I first started on Facebook, I could easily get thousands of views on a video, but nobody who wanted to watch those videos cared about what I was trying to sell, so almost none of those views got a click on the link I was promoting, and ZERO people bought what I was selling. 

It takes time to learn how to create content that gets attention AND, get’s people interested in your offers. 

Focus on mastering your chosen platform. 

Wait, so why don’t I keep working at Facebook? I worked at it for over a year, and it was expensive. I want to focus on a platform where I can get more organic traffic. Much of what I learned from Facebook can be transferred to TikTok. And I haven’t done anything focused on Facebook for over a year. So I’m taking this chance to reset and focus on something I think I’ll enjoy more. 

I was recently listening to an interview of Jimmy Carr on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast Working it Out. Carr was talking about the need to love the process more than the result. It doesn’t really matter if we want the success – whatever end result that is for you. If we don’t want to do what it takes to get the result, we won’t ever get to it.

It doesn’t matter if you want to be a movie star, a pro athlete, or in Carr’s case a stand-up comedian; if you don’t want to do the work, which in all those cases – believe it or not with all the fame and fortune they bring can sometimes be miserable – you won’t make it.

If you want to succeed in affiliate marketing but aren’t willing to do the work to learn how to consistently and predictably get the attention of new people and convert them into paying customers, you won’t succeed.

And to do that you, and I, need to pick something in which we enjoy the process of learning, doing, and continuing to learn. Otherwise, we will not have long-term success – even if we achieve some little bits of success here and there.

If we love the process we will keep on working at it no matter the immediate result – and if we keep working at it, we will get results sooner or later.

So pick a platform you like, and a type of content creation you enjoy the process of doing. Then take the time to master attracting and converting customers consistently and predictably – it will probably take more time than you expect. But if you don’t give up you can succeed, and if you give up … well obviously you won’t.