Affiliate Marketing – 5 Reasons Why Most Fail

Affiliate Marketing is a great and fun way to make money, so why do so many just give up or fail at it.  Do they not have what it takes?  Is it just too hard?  The truth of the matter is we all have what it takes.  I am going to outline 5 reasons that people fail.

1.  Commitment:  The first thing it takes is commitment.    Nothing really works without it in our lives.  If you can’t commit to the process, that will be your first breakdown.  If you don’t commit to affiliate marketing, it’s not going to work.  This means sticking with it through setbacks and discouraging times.

I can’t count my setbacks.  There have been many.  Not giving up is the key.  The times I felt like quitting, were always the times when a break through was just around the corner.

2.  Opinion of Others:  There are going to be those who will accuse you of following a pipe dream.  Understand that these people in your lives just don’t know what they don’t know.  This can make us doubt ourselves.

I can still remember my best friend sitting me down at her kitchen table and having a talk with me about my grasp on reality.  It was shortly after this that I had my first thousand dollar day.  Don’t worry about what others think.  Forgive them, they know not what they do.

3.  Sidetracked:  Oh it’s so easy to get side tracked in affiliate marketing.  My friend Pamela in our affiliate marketing group refers to this as the next shiny new thing.  We see these hyped up adds promising the moon.  These adds or shiny new gadgets trigger your emotions.  You buy, you try and then there is another.  Find on program, master it, and then move on.  Focus on the task at hand.

4.  Thinking there is only one way:  Oh this one had me for a long long time.  I was on a work at home forum and I read all these people talk about the only way to make money online.  They preached building a list, backlinking and so forth and so on.  This was stuck in my head for the longest time.

The fact is there is no one way to make it in affiliate marketing.  I have a list now, but have yet to really use it.  I don’t worry so much about backlinks. I was also told you couldn’t make money on Squidoo alone, not enough to survive.  If this is so, how do you explain my 10K months on just Squidoo and the affiliate links I have there alone?  Be open to more than one way, for there are many.

5.  Your beliefs!  This is by far the biggest reason why people don’t make it in affiliate marketing.  Beliefs like it’s too good to be true.  You have to work hard for money.  There is too much competition or just the simple belief that you can’t do this because of things like technical knowledge.  If you don’t believe in your core that you can do this, well then you can’t.

We live in a society of instant gratification.  The fact of affiliate marketing it that it is more about long term satisfaction.  What you create today will pay off in 4 months, 6 months or a year.

Example of this.  If you were to start promoting Pajama Affiliates today.  Perhaps write a few blog posts on it or create a Squidoo lens.  It may not reap great rewards in the near future, but the potential for the future pay offs is great.  As this grows and gets out there, it will become more known.  People will search it and if you are already in place on the search engines, your payout will come and in fact grow.

Affiliate Marketing is like planting seeds.  Seeds don’t just turn into tress.  They need time to grow.  Add a little water and sunlight, and ta da, one day soon you get to harvest time.  Plant more than one seed, and you can have lots of trees.  Just keep planting.