Intro.

The challenges of affiliate marketing can be vast and varied, and I don’t want you to fall into the trap of struggling to get there. I’ve been in that situation and it can become very distressing and disturbing when you think you’re doing everything correctly. I wish I knew some of these affiliate marketing techniques for beginners when I started out.

I know the troubles you may be going through, it took me 14 websites until I finally had a breakthrough. I created a travel website, a health website, 2 sports websites, the list goes on. But there’s a few common things that, in hindsight, kept me from achieving success.

So lets see if these 5 affiliate marketing techniques sound familiar to your situation, and what you can do about it.

• Patience Will Pay Off
• Website Content Writing Ideas
• The Need for Website Page Links
• Don’t Waste Money on Marketing
• Don’t Forget an Email list

Patience Will Pay Off

Challenge #1

If you pushed me for an answer on the biggest challenge I had with succeeding as an affiliate marketer, patience would be the #1 factor.

As I mentioned above, I had so many websites because I wouldn’t give them enough time. I’d think that each one failed after giving them 4-6 months, sometimes even less. This is just not long enough to start a passive long term online business.

So, how long will it take to have a successful website? Well, how long’s a piece of string! This all depends on different factors. You may start off like a house on fire in a niche that’s hard to crack into, posting 4-6 articles per week, or even 1 per day. Although this is great to begin with, you may get burnt out and by month 4, you’re struggling with enthusiasm.

Does this sound familiar? Is this your biggest challenge and do you feel like you’ve learned a lot but can’t progress? I believe it’s the number #1 issue new affiliate marketers face. Keeping a vigorous approach to your online business is critical to your long term success, so let’s find a solution for you.

Solution #1

The 4-5 month mark is the hump you need to pass to progress on a smooth journey. We need to look at consistency to advance in the right direction. Here’s what I did.

I created a spreadsheet to outline when and what I was going to write about. Anyone with a free Google account can create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets This is exactly what I did, and still use it to this day.

You can have multiple tabs, so create one for a day to day Posting/Publishing Schedule and another for a longer term scenario. In the posting schedule you can add your title and date published. Also add any draft articles that are pending. I add a different colored background for Published v Pending posts, and another color for the article that is in progress.

The longer term tab will show the months of the year in a column. Add the year above the months column or next to each month. After December, start another year below this and add the months again.

You need a 2 year plan (although I’d expect you to be making money between 6-12 months). You may think this is a long time but hey, you do want long term success don’t you! And what else are you going to do in this time, give up and go back to your day job!. That’s up to you.

So, now add a second column with how many posts you intend to publish for that month. For me, I started posting every 3 or 4 days. This way I wasn’t going to get burnt out, and my wife didn’t get too pissed off with me spending all my time on the PC! This worked out to about 9 posts per month.

Now, as you progress and publish more articles, add a background color to the month you’ve completed. This way you can see your progress and know that in time, the likelihood of success is that much closer.

Website Content Writing Ideas

Challenge #2

I’m sure you’ve heard of writers block and this can be an issue for many. It’s not just isolated to writers block either, other content issues arise such as thinking of what to write, how to write it or enthusiasm to write.

We all know the term that ‘Content is King’ and it couldn’t be further from the truth. When I first entered the blogging landscape, articles would rank if they were 300-500 words long. The chances of the same article getting ranked these days is fairly slim.

Google and other search engines now prefer your content to be over 1000 words, preferably 1500 words or more. That’s why sitting down to write content can be so difficult to keep up for a long period of time, and hence why I only write 1-2 articles per week now. That is unless I outsource an article via somewhere like Fiverr.

So, is there a solution to keeping up your ideas and enthusiasm for the long term? There sure is but you still require a ‘never give up’ mindset.

#2 Solution

Firstly, in terms of content ideas I look at what other bloggers in my space are writing. Obviously, it goes without saying that you don’t copy other people’s content, but you can get ideas from them. I then create a list of ideas by category.

You can add this to your spreadsheet. Start another tab called ‘Content Ideas’ or something similar. Then create categories at the top of each column. For instance, you could start a camping blog and need ideas for lots of content. Use categories such as Tenting, Hiking, Caravan Parks, Cooking etc. Then come up with subcategories.

Any of these categories can include product reviews, maybe not Caravan parks, but you never know. See what others in the same niche are writing about and list the idea under each category. Do this for 2 hours and I’m sure you’ll come up with 50-70 ideas you can write about for the next 4-5 months. Maybe even longer.

Knowing what you’re going to write about is half the battle of consistent content. But I find creating a template for yourself makes things even easier. Especially if you writing product reviews.

This is where you can add the basic product information followed by an image. Then add ‘Pro’s and Con’s’ of the product with a description. Not just a description copied from the sales page, YOUR version of the description. Read any reviews and Q& A’s about the product to give a readers perspective. Amazon always have reviews where you can read about people’s experiences.

If writing an article, think about the message you want to get across to your readers and write 5 captivating headline titles. This will be the basis for your content segments. Once you know what these segments are going to be about, write 300-400 words on each topic. It’s all about writing long articles in small segmented sections.

The Need for Website Page Links

Challenge #3

In years gone past, I didn’t realise how important internal and external links were. As for backlinks, they are not as important as they once were unless the backlink is from a website of authority.

So, what do links do for your website? Internal links are important to tell search engines that your articles are connected with each other. Google loves internal links and the more you have on your website the better. They tell Googlebot to crawl the pages and posts that each article is linked to internally.

This also keeps visitors on your website longer as they can engage with these linked posts. The longer visitors stay on your website, the better this is for SEO.

In a similar way, external links are important, but you don’t want to link to poorly ranked websites. Another SEO factor is external links, but in the past, bloggers would just link to other websites of their own or friends websites, websites with little content and no authority. So they basically became spamming links.

Today, Google likes external links to authoritative sites which are ranked well and have high engagement.

Backlinks, are links back to your site from other websites. These can be from Social media such as Facebook or Google+. It’s going to be very difficult to have Amazon or Wikipedia link back to your site, so Social sites are your best choice for backlinks.

Solution #3

Adding 5 or more internal links to each post on your website is going to keep Google happy so make sure you remember to do this before you hit the Publish button. Include 2-3 external links and once you’ve published, submit your post on Google+ and any other social channels.

Whilst I’m at it, which Social media type do you think would be best to link your articles to? Most would suggest Facebook or Twitter but Google+ is my preferred option. Don’t you think Google would put more emphasis on posts to their own social channel!

The same goes for YouTube as Google owns them. So creating videos, uploading them to YouTube and linking them on your posts are great for SEO. As mentioned before, the longer a visitor stays on your site the better this is for SEO. So getting them to watch a video will do just that.

The only links you don’t want to add too many of, is affiliate links. It’s fine to place a few here or there but if you’re intention is to sell a particular product, link your posts to the sales page with internal links rather than spammy affiliate links everywhere. This is where Google may penalize your site.

Don’t Waste Money on Marketing

Challenge #4

Another mistake I made was trying to push too hard for traffic by creating some Facebook adverts. I did try to learn how to do this and found some great techniques, but the money quickly accumulates whilst waiting for the adverts to mature.

Facebook advertising can be a great platform if you know what you’re doing and have some cash to get started. The targeting that Facebook can zone in on, is amazing but you still need to think outside the square when setting up these ads.

The other thing with advertising is that the adverts take time to understand who your target market is. This can take 3-5 days or longer and requires you to setup a Facebook pixel on your website.

Solution #4

Stick to the basics until you earn enough money to advertise. When I say the basics, I mean organic traffic through SEO techniques, and make sure you’re using the best SEO plugin on your website. Don’t get ahead of yourself and don’t try to force the issue. All good things take time and a successful blog is no different.

Many people attempt to fast-track their progress by paying for different aspects such as traffic sources. It may work for a small amount of people but I would advise against it. Making money from a website is not a quick get rich gimmick, although some will make you believe this is possible.

You want this to change your life, your career and be enjoyable for the long term. This is going to free up your time in the long term. Put in the hard yards for the first 6-12 months and you’ll soon see the growth that your online business is building.

Don’t Forget an Email list

Challenge #5

This is an affiliate marketing tactic you won’t need to implement until you are gaining a good amount of visitors each month. Just don’t neglect an email list because you’ll be leaving money behind.

An email list can future proof your online business to an extent. It can be used to send out promotional offers or great information to your readers. You can read more about this, and why you need an email autoresponder here.

Solution #5

Once your website is gaining traction and you’re getting about 2K – 3K visitors per month, it’s time to implement a list building strategy. I wouldn’t leave it until 10K per month, by this time you’ll have missed many potential sign-ups.

You’ll find there’s loads of autoresponder services and although you can start free with some of them, just be careful what you can and can’t do with each. I’ll give you an example. I joined up to MailChimp, a very common autoresponer service where I could begin for free.

I set up a ‘follow-up’ sequence of emails which promoted an affiliate marketing service. MailChimp didn’t like this and blocked my account. As I was a free member, there was no support that I could speak to about this, so my account sat dormant for 6 months before they eventually closed my account.

I now have a favourite autoresponder which does allow promotion of affiliate marketing services. You’ll have to pay for this email autoresponder service, which is why I say to wait until you have a substantial amount of visitors per month before signing up. Here’s where you can read about my favourite autoresponder.

Wrapping Up

It goes without saying that you’ll always come across challenges in your affiliate marketing journey. But you’ll come across challenges when in pursuit of anything of significance, so why not try it and enjoy the ride.

If you’re reading this in contemplation of starting an affiliate marketing blog, I’d suggest you delve in with enjoyment in mind. You’ll be starting a new skill which allows you to get your story out there for all to see.

It’s actually a load of fun creating a new website and learning how to manipulate it to be seen the way you want it to. It’s even more fun when you start earning money from the content you’ve created.

With so many companies offering affiliate commissions to marketers like me (or you), there’s no chance this type of opportunity is going away any time soon.