Today, I am going to share a case study of how I was able to overcome the 4 fatal mistakes and earn $3,328 in only 17 weeks – through Affiliate Marketing & corporate training.
How did I overcome the mistakes and improve?
The ShuHaRi Technique!
And, in this case study, I will share exactly how I did it, step by step.
How The ShuHaRi Technique Helped Me Improve?
Before I came across the ShuHaRi Technique, I was struggling to create helpful and valuable content for my affiliate products.
Well, after trying the technique for a few weeks:
- I was able to create content that helped my audience and solved their problems.
- The Organic traffic on my website increased.
- I could create content faster than before.
Now, it’s time to see the mistakes I made and break down the ancient Japanese technique that I used.
The Mistakes That I Made…
Before I share the technique that helped me, I would like to share the mistakes that:
- Made me desperate for content
- Gave me sleepless nights
- Made me doubt myself as an Affiliate Marketer
Mistake 1: I Prioritized Selling Over Helping
When I started Affiliate Marketing, I wanted to generate as many commissions as possible. Unfortunately, this mindset resulted in ordinary content and a handful of visits to my website.
And, not only myself, many beginners – 99% of them, to be exact – put commissions over providing value.
After failing many times, I realised unless you create helpful content for your target audience, they are not going to pay you.
Therefore, I joined training to learn content creation and started putting in effort and time to create something helpful and valuable for my audience.
I also learned that when creating content for affiliate products, you should focus on sharing their benefits instead of features.
Your content should answer people’s question: “What Is In It For Me?”
And this advice is only for those affiliates who are serious to put in the effort, work hard, and make an impact. If you are looking to make commissions overnight, Affiliate Marketing won’t help you.
Think about Affiliate Marketing as a service. As an affiliate, you should help people, provide value, and solve their problems.
Mistake 2: I Published Low-Quality Content
The first mistake I made – prioritizing money – led to mediocre content and that, in turn, led to no visits and clicks.
Many Affiliate Marketers, initially, struggle with creating quality content. But believe it or not, your content will convince people to click and buy. Your content is your pitch, hence, it is crucial to create content that is valuable and helpful.
You will get more visits and clicks only when you have content that helps your audience.
The mistake that I made with regard to content creation is that I created and published a dozen blog posts and expected one of them to perform well. However, the reality is, none of them attracted even 10 visitors!
Another mistake I made was that the content I created was not meant for a particular audience. I created general content and hoped somebody would visit, click, and buy.
I will not dive deep into this mistake, but let’s call it a grand disaster! Not only was I dejected when I did not get attracted, but I was also doubting myself from continuing Affiliate Marketing.
After many sleepless nights and tears, I realised that to avoid such mistakes, I’d have to pull up my socks and learn to create content that helps my audience.
High-quality content is key to success in Affiliate Marketing.
If you are not sure how to create high-quality content, make sure you put forth a solution For example, if you promote a health-related product, put yourself in your audience’s shoes, find all the benefits of it, and present it in a conversational way, i.e., write as if you are talking to them.
If you want to learn more about creating high-quality content, you’d find this guide helpful.
Mistake 3: I Promoted Products I Knew Nothing About
When I started Affiliate Marketing, I promoted products with high commission rates without having much knowledge about them.
This is one of the most common mistakes that beginners make, as well. Before promoting products, they do not invest the time to gather information about them. They write something only for the sake of writing.
Here’s the thing: Your audience/readers are clever!
If you promote products without providing proper information, they will catch you red-handed and you will lose traffic from your website.
How did I overcome this?
I subscribed to Affiliate Marketers who were at the top, went through their most popular content, and noted down ideas.
I also joined forums, researched industry-leading blogs, rummaged Quora, and invested a lot of time in Answer Socrates.
This helped me find content and/or products that people were looking for in my niche, equipped me with the necessary knowledge that helped me earn my audience’s trust and, thus, increased my website traffic.
Another way to gather information about product(s) is to use them yourself and note down all the benefits, drawbacks, and insights. When you create content after using the product, your content will be extremely juicy and accurate.
However, if you cannot buy the product, you can go on the aforementioned platforms, and try to find details about it.
Mistake 4: I Desperately Wanted Organic Traffic
I read somewhere that if I could generate traffic from Google, nobody could stop me from getting clicks and earning commissions. Although the Organic channel is one of the major traffic sources, if you rely only on it, you are going to miss out on something huge!
Generating traffic organically is great, but, what I did not understand is that it takes a long time to kick in. There is no magic potion that will help you generate organic traffic right from the word go.
As I advanced and improved, I started running ads and got more eyeballs on my website. The best part about running ads is that I could attract traffic only from my target audience.
I will also add that paid traffic will never replace organic traffic, but it is a great way of generating traffic fast!
If you’d like to discover paid sources of traffic other than Facebook and Google ads, you will love this post.
Another powerful source of traffic is social media.
A couple of years ago, I was reluctant to promote content on social media. But when I started to post on social media, my referral traffic rose and I could see leads from Facebook.
Seeing this as an opportunity, I joined groups related to my niche and posted content in them.
The result?
I generated 139 leads in 7 days!
If you’d like to know how I did it, you can watch this video I posted on my YouTube channel. (I’d also appreciate a subscription if you get some value!)
The ShuHaRi Technique
When I could not generate traffic and commissions, I desperately wanted to learn the methods and techniques that will help me grow.
That’s when I came across this ancient Japanese technique that helped me master the required skills quickly.
The ancient Japanese technique is called ShuHaRi or Shu-Ha-Ri.
It is a proven technique that leads anybody to mastery. It was first presented by Fuhaku Kawakami as Jo-ha-kyū in Tao of Tea. After some time, Zeami Motokiyo, the master of Noh, extended this concept to his dance as Shuhari, which then became a part of the philosophy of Aikido.
According to this technique, there are three phases of mastery:
- Shu: Learn from a mentor or master
- Ha: Put the learnings to practice and continue to learn
- Ri: You are on your own and you create your methods, approaches, and strategies.
I have published a detailed post on ShuHaRi the other day and if you’d like to learn more about it, you can click this link.
After putting the ShuHaRi technique to use, my content quality improved, and I started to generate more traffic and reached people that were waiting for me.
The high-quality content built trust among my target audience and that helped me land a high-paying corporate client a few months ago.
And, in the last 17 weeks, I have been able to earn $3,328 in affiliate commissions and corporate training.
Conclusion
In this blog post, I shared a case study containing the 4 biggest mistakes I made during my early days in Affiliate Marketing and how I overcame them with the help of a simple 3-phase Japanese technique.
The result?
I earned $3,328 in only 17 weeks in affiliate commissions and corporate training.
As a bonus, I would love to give you my premium Affiliate Marketing course worth ₹4,999 for absolutely FREE!
Click the below button and enrol on the free course, now!
