What if you could completely remove failure as an option in your affiliate marketing? What if there was a way to set goals that would guarantee your success as an affiliate? Well, there is. By following the three principles outlined in today’s post you can ensure your success — whether it is your first affiliate promotion or your 100th.
This is a guest post by Anthony Metivier. Anthony is a retired Film Studies professor and creator of the Magnetic Memory Method. He has written a dozen best-selling books on the subject of memory and language learning. He has also been a top affiliate for multiple programs, including Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days To Your Best Year Ever launch. You can join Anthony’s invite-only affiliate program by filling out an application here.
Let’s be honest:
It hurts when you join a launch as an affiliate and don’t make a dime.
You might even feel embarrassed because you made your attempt in public with hundreds of social media posts and emails, but didn’t make it big…
Or even make a single sale.
Best case scenario: You dust off your pants, analyze your results and then get back on the horse.
Worst-case scenario: The failure discourages you and you never try affiliate marketing again.
Well, let me ask you something …
What if you didn’t have to fail?
What if there was a way to set hyper-specific goals that would guarantee your success?
Read on, because you can and will succeed with affiliate marketing if you follow just a few principles.
Principle #1: Play The Long Game
Sounds kind of vague, doesn’t it?
Not very specific either.
But actually … it is.
In fact, when you decide that you’re going to have to add affiliate marketing revenue to your business, deciding to play the long game is as specific as it gets.
It’s also an easy decision for your brain to understand. You’ve heard the timeless phrases:
Be all in …
Do or do not …
There is no try …
They’re timeless because they’re true.
And because so much of life is a numbers game, they’re true only for those who are actually in the game.
And so when I decided I was going to add affiliate revenue into my business, I went all in.
To get started, I practiced what my SuperLearner friend Jonathan Levi calls “brute force learning.”
But to do that, I first needed to make the decision.
And to decide to do or be something is as hyper-focused as it gets.
I mentioned that Anthony promoted Michael Hyatt’s 5 Days To Your Best Year Ever <<== Click that link to learn more about the course.
Principle #2: Find And Focus On Your Playing Field
When deciding to add affiliate marketing to your business, it can be tempting to run after any old product to promote.
You can also be dazzled by shiny conversion rates and the promise of amazing prizes you can win.
But as great as all those perks are …
Can you really create hyper-focused goals when it’s just any old thing you’re promoting?
Case in point: When I started learning about affiliate marketing, I tried a few things I thought would be cool.
But they really didn’t connect to the long game I’m playing in my core niche. Yes, it’s great for research to know that all that other stuff is out there …
And yes, sometimes you’ve got to take a few risks in order to feel out the field …
But every time I failed to produce, it was due to one fact:
It’s impossible to create and stick to hyper-focused goals for promoting products that don’t hyper-connect with my niche.
And I know from my experience in the memory improvement niche one simple truth:
Just because I can teach people how to remember ingredients, doesn’t mean they’ll be interested in buying a cookbook, no matter how highly I might recommend it. The only difference would be if it was a cookbook filled with recipes based on memory-friendly foods. (I might have to write that cookbook!)
The point is this:
You need to really know and understand your own niche and how exactly it bridges with other niches.
To find these bridges, you can set hyper-specific discovery goals. For example, I realized that memory improvement more or less belongs to self-improvement. I hadn’t originally thought of it that way, but understanding this opened me up to a tremendous world of opportunity.
To better understand self-improvement, I first did an analysis of what I already knew. A brain-dump of books, programs, and concepts came tumbling out onto a mind map and several pages of notes.
Not sure what to promote? Click Here to download my free checklist to determine what to promote.
Then, I asked myself: Is there a book about the self-help niche itself?
Turns out there is.
AWAI, for example, offers a great product about writing for this niche called Secrets of Writing For The Self-Help Market.
And their training connects with a classic book I first heard mentioned by Perry Belcher called The First Hundred Million: The Inside Secrets of the American Book-Buying Public. (Tip: If you’re looking for riches in niches, you need to read this book.)
I made it a hyper-focused goal to read these books so I could market my Free Memory Improvement Training Kit better. Thanks to setting these ultra-specific and achievable goals, I soon knew more about my own micro-niche of memory and the world to which it belongs.
Principle #3: Focus on Relationships
People are busy and resources are thin, except in one special place:
A thriving affiliate network community.
The best kind?
The one you build for yourself.
But to get started building, you first need to belong.
And when you do, there are five amazing outcomes.
5 Amazing Outcomes Of Focusing On Affiliate Marketing With A Community
When Matt and his team managed Michael Hyatt’s Best Year Ever affiliate launch, they really demonstrated the power of pulling together to make great things happen in people’s lives.
Because if there’s one thing that affiliate marketing satisfies in a way that marketing your own stuff alone never can, it’s belonging to a community and contributing to a higher purpose.
Sounds like feel-good woo-woo, right? Like maybe I’ve been reading too many self-improvement books?
Far from it!
By making it my goal to hyper-focus on belonging to a community and contributing to something great, I managed to accomplish a number of cool things all at once.
When you hyper-focus on community, you:
- Create extra revenue for your business.
- Create a tighter bond with your existing buyers.
- Create customers from your non-buyers who come to know, like and trust you because you’ve given them a great experience with another product.
- Make relationships with other affiliates who share similar interests.
- Get ideas for creating your own community of affiliates, some of whom might even make it their hyper-focused goal to promote you.
Which leads us back to playing the long game.
Never sucker yourself into believing that you’ve failed in the past.
You’re always learning and there are gems to be mined from every experience.
And you now have some thinking and goal-setting tools for taking your affiliate income stream activities to the next level.
So make some hyper-focused goals and make the next product you promote an amazing experience that fits into the long game, educates you about your core niches and builds your community.
And above all …
Have fun!
Ready to take your affiliate marketing to the next level? Learn more about how to succeed with affiliate marketing with this upcoming free training.
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