Top 18 Reasons why people fail with Affiliate Marketing – Overcome these and success is just around the corner

Welcome to the Top 18 reasons why people fail with Affiliate Marketing

There’s a big misconception that affiliate marketing is easy and anybody can be successful without putting in the effort.

If you have been trying to work it all out then I’m sure you will have come across many of those so-called “gurus” that are out there claiming that their product is the best, well, since their last one, and can make you a ton of money just by pressing a few buttons.

This is what gives affiliate marketing a bad name, and once you have been hit by a few of these, then you automatically think everything is the same.

Yes; affiliate marketing is a simple business model that anybody can learn, but what they conveniently leave out is the amount of work that is involved and the amount of time you have to dedicate, not to mention the amount of patience that is required too.

In this guide, we aim to show you why people fail in the affiliate marketing industry and what you can do about it.

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[Affiliate Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links which means I may earn a small commission if you purchase anything through one of the links. However, this will not affect what you pay!]

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Internal Summary and Navigation

1. What is Affiliate Marketing – A brief overview
2. Why people fail at Affiliate Marketing
   1. Coming across scams that leave a bad taste
   2. Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme
   3. Not aware of just how much work is involved
   4. Expect far too much too quickly and leave too soon
   5. Choosing the wrong niche or interest
   6. Make it one niche one website
   7. Trying to develop more than one niche at the same time
   8. Always help and provide useful information and do not sell
   9. Promoting the wrong products
   10. Know the products that you are promoting
   11. Use the right keywords
   12. Create quality content
   13. Don’t add value
   14. Should focus on creating a great looking website
   15. Always engage with your customers and readers
   16. Not enough patience
   17. Procrastination – Just get it done!
   18. The right mindset
3. Finding some real training that works is what helped me 
4. Feedback, Follow and Subscribe

What is Affiliate Marketing – A brief overview

Affiliate marketing, not to be confused with a multi-level-marketing business is a simple concept, where the affiliate marketer promotes products and services through a unique affiliate link.

When the customer finds the affiliate link which is normally promoted through an affiliates website and clicks on the link, this triggers an event where the customer is connected with the vendor.

As far as the affiliate marketer is concerned the order management and delivery process is now taken care of by the vendor.

Providing the goods are despatched and received by the customer then the affiliate is paid a commission.

Here’s an article I published recently which will give you more details of just what is involved, which you can read about here.

Why do people fail at Affiliate Marketing?

People fail at affiliate marketing for

all sorts of reasons, in fact, it is well documented that only around 4% have any real success when it comes to making money online.

Which leaves 96% that will fail which is some figure.

There are many ways of doing affiliate marketing, but if you are serious then you have to make a big commitment.

Joining an affiliate program, grabbing a unique affiliate link and posting it everywhere is easy, but if you want longevity and want to give value to your audience then you have to adopt a different approach.

There are 2 main ways of doing affiliate marketing, either using the paid method or using SEO or search engine optimization.

The paid method comes with experience and can be very costly whilst adopting the SEO approach takes longer but the rewards can be greater and besides it is free.

We have listed what we think are the main issues but don’t shy away from affiliate marketing just because of the number in this list, a few of them can be eradicated fairly quickly.

Coming across scams that leave a bad taste

How you start your journey is important because what you do in the past can have a big influence on how you move forward.

If you were like me when I first started looking for ways of how to make money online, I didn’t know anything and would believe pretty much anything that anybody would tell me.

We all start off looking for a quick and easy solution to making money online, and maybe that is a factor.

We even start messing around with those crappy survey, cashback and clicking on adds sites…

Eventually, we might get a little adventurous and join a multi-level-marketing company or try one of those done-for-you-systems.

All to no avail and annoyed for being so naive.

Sub-consciously we take all these failures on board and think whatever we try will become a failure.

Somehow you need to start as if it was just the beginning without the failures.

What I did was seek out a trustworthy training platform and it helped no end.

Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme

Exactly what is says in the title, affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, in fact, I’m not sure there is such a thing except for winning the lottery, and we all know what the chances of that happening are.

We hear it all the time that affiliate marketing is easy and that very quickly you can be earning big money.

It must be right because these gurus tell us so.

You see this all over the internet, but the reality of it all is that it isn’t easy and it takes time.

You need the right attitude and not applying pressure on yourself by ridiculous timescales but be brave and give yourself at least 12 months possibly more.

It helps no end to reinforce that success is only around the corner when you are working amongst people who are having lots of success and prepared to share it amongst you.

Not aware of just how much work is involved

Most people are just not prepared for the amount of work that is required to become successful at affiliate marketing.

You can listen to Pat Flynn, a very successful affiliate marketer now, but it wasn’t always the case for him.

When I first started, I was like you, not knowing just what was involved and how much work was involved, but I very quickly realized that in order for this to work there was a lot of stuff that I didn’t know and had to learn if I was going to stand a chance of any success.

Of course, you are going to get it wrong, probably time and time again but it’s all about learning from those mistakes and pushing forward.

The beauty of affiliate marketing is that there are so many more additional things you can learn to give you additional income streams.

Once you start to see some success then that will give you the confidence to work harder and learn new things.

Expect far too much too quickly and leave too soon

People are still looking for an easy solution to making money and really there isn’t one.

Creating any business will take time and affiliate marketing is no different, but you need to be prepared for very little success happening in the short term.

I see so many who start off with the right intentions, don’t see things happening quick enough and then they decide to call it a day.

The thing about this type of business is that you have no idea just when the business is going to start moving in the right direction.

Success could just be around the corner.

A few months is definitely not long enough and you should be looking at least 6 months but really 12+ months for things to really start happening.

Choosing the wrong niche or interest

You need to start your affiliate marketing business with the right foundation and that starts with a niche and remember there is no such thing as the perfect niche.

To give you some sort of an idea of how many niche ideas there is potentially.

Over 7.3 billion keywords are keyed into the Google search engine on a daily basis and they all have the potential to become a niche.

However, people still struggle choosing the right niche and often end up choosing a niche that is too popular which means too much competition.

Start at the top level and work your way down until you find a niche where there is potential profit.

Research what is out there and use a keyword research tool, something like Jaaxy.

Google trending is a useful tool for coming up with niche ideas.

Ideally, you are looking for a niche that you are going to enjoy getting up in the morning and working with.

Something that is not going to be a chore and something you will learn to love that’s if you don’t already.

Make it one niche one website

If you are serious about doing affiliate marketing the right way, then choose one niche to the one website.

Having a website with several niches is a little like a “Jack of all trades, master of none”.

It becomes a little confusing to the audience when all they are looking for is information about a specific subject.

The idea is to become an authority in your chosen niche and trying to do that with several niches is going to spread yourself a little too thin.

Trying to develop more than one niche at the same time

Many people start off with the right intention.

They choose their niche, create their website, then start building their site with content, but whilst they are building out their first website even though they aren’t seeing success, they decide to start other niches.

They lose interest and move onto another niche, just like moving onto the next shiny object.

Your main focus should be to get your first website up and running and see success first before you even consider looking at additional niche sites.

The end goal is to have multiple niche/websites but that takes time and patience.

Always help and provide useful information and do not sell

One of the biggest mistakes with affiliate marketing is that people focus on selling products or services instead of providing useful information that your audience is looking for.

OK, you are going to pick up a few sales here and there but this will not be consistent.

Providing great information about what people are searching for on Google should be your goal.

You are trying to build a bond with your readers and that takes time.

Trying to sell all the time doesn’t work because people switch off.

Help people and the money side will take care of itself.

Promoting the wrong products

A big mistake that people make is promoting a product that doesn’t fit the requirements of the audience, and this is normally dictated when someone takes a money approach rather than a helpful approach.

Put yourself in your reader’s shoes and ask the question, “would you purchase this service or product?”.

You need to be promoting products that you can trust and have faith in.

Like my brand is all about helping people to make money online, and therefore what you will find here are opportunities that I recommend as well as informational articles like the one you are reading here.

Know the products that you are promoting

Finding a great product that you can trust is all very well when promoting to your audience but people will be asking questions and need to know answers.

Remember, you are an authority in your niche and therefore you need to learn about the product or service at hand.

Use the right keywords

Keyword research is a very important aspect of all marketing.

It shows you what your potential customers are searching for and how easy or difficult it will be to rank for those keywords.

Keywords are what connect your content with the audience and ultimately drive more sales.

Take this website here, which is about “How to make money online”.

This is a very popular keyword and would not be a good keyword to write your content about.

Create quality content

When I started affiliate marketing and found out that most of my time would be spent on research and writing, especially writing, I nearly didn’t continue because I am no writer.

Most people aren’t but hey if you don’t try you will never find out.

Your writing might be terrible at the beginning, I known mine was, but I’d like to think I am getting better.

Unless you are a natural writer then becoming good at anything, not just writing will take time.

Plenty of research and reading, especially other blogs and how other more successful people are doing it pays off.

Don’t add value

Your job as a copywriter doesn’t necessarily mean that you are to copy other peoples work word for word.

Getting new ideas comes from reading other marketing blog posts.

If you have found a great keyword, type it into the Google search tab and see who is ranking on the first page of Google and look at how they are doing it.

To be good at something means learning from people who are better than yourself.

When people are searching for information, they are picking up bits of information here and there and therefore think about giving more value.

What I come across time and time again are websites with almost identical posts with the odd word changed, like they have put the content through some rewriter software.

Don’t do it and ensure the information is correct.

Your goal is to have your own unique style that people will remember.

Should focus on creating a great looking website

Creating a solid foundation also means creating a great looking website and one that your readers are going to come back to again and again.

There is nothing worse than clicking on a website and seeing that it doesn’t flow and it is full of grammar and spelling mistakes.

Look at what you are trying to achieve and if you need help which we all do, then look at other websites from successful marketers and get a better understanding of how they stand out.

I personally like the simple approach that doesn’t go over the top, because that can have an adverse effect.

Always engage with your customers and readers

This is something that is neglected a lot.

I have forgotten the number of times that I have gone onto a website for research and I often end up going to the comments section in the post, only to find that none of the reader’s comments was ever answered.

It can show you that the person may not care or maybe they are a little too busy.

If the reason is the latter then you need to manage the workload better.

What often happens is the money side takes over, or maybe the money aspect was there all along.

Whatever the reason, remember, you are trying to build a relationship with your audience and not replying to comments is not going to do that.

Comments are very important and add to the overall word count which Google looks at when ranking your content.

If someone has the decency to read and comment on a piece of your work you should at least have the courtesy to reply.

Not enough patience

In general, you will find most people are impatient.

As an affiliate marketer, patience is key to your success especially in the early days when things aren’t happening quick enough.

Procrastination – Just get it done! 

I guess this is something we all suffer with.

Tomorrow never comes in a lot of cases.

This is all about man-management and very often I fall into this trap like I will start a piece of content and allocate maybe 3 hours because that is the cutoff so I can do something else.

For me, that rarely happens but I am getting around to doing something about it.

Working for someone else is sort of managed for you but when you are working for yourself you tend to through that out of the window.

Write things down and try and stick to a plan.

The right mindset

Left this to the end not because I thought it wasn’t important but quite the opposite.

The right mindset is a combination of all the above in various forms.

The right mindset is so important in life but becoming an affiliate marketer is where having the right mindset is definitely required.

Finding some real training that works is what helped me

Why people fail with affiliate marketing is a combination of many things which we have addressed but these aren’t major issues if you are aware of them.

The ones I have listed are what I believe are the most important because these are what I have encountered on my journey but even now I have to work on a few of them.

My decision to find a training platform and one I could trust is what helped me to eradicate most of them and for me, it was a confidence thing, especially as things weren’t happening quick enough.

Wealthy affiliate gave me the confidence to see that success would eventually come if I followed the training that was provided.

It’s free to check out with no credit card details.

Feedback, Follow and Subscribe

Hope this guide gave you an insight into why people fail with affiliate marketing but treat it like you would a real job and you’d be on the right path.

If you have questions at all please add them to the comments section below and I will get back to you at my earliest convenience.

Until next time, and stay safe!