Almost every successful online businessman started their journey with Affiliate Marketing. Although Affiliate Marketing is an easy way of making money online, about 70% of the Affiliate Marketers earn nothing!
So, if you are thinking about what makes Affiliate Marketers Super Affiliate Marketers, this post is for you. In this post, I am going to share 12 qualities that differentiate Super Affiliate Marketers and average Affiliate Marketers.
Affiliate Marketers can help multiply your revenue and if you are a company looking to hire Affiliate Marketers to increase your cash inflow, this post could give you a few interview questions for them.
So, let’s dive in and find out the 12 qualities of a successful Affiliate Marketer.
(1) Willingness to Learn and Grow
- Super Affiliates learn constantly. Mark Twain said, “Never let schooling interfere with your education.” That means, everyone regardless of their qualification and position must continually learn since education in school is only a small amount of what we know about this wonderful universe.
- Many beginners think Super Affiliate Marketers are naturally gifted. I want to tell you, “they are not!” Every Super Affiliate has put in relentless hard work to reach where they are. They have a “Growth Mindset” meaning, they always strive to become better and learn skills they are not good at. Once you develop a “Fixed Mindset”, i.e., once you start to think that successful people are blessed and you cannot become like them, you will start to fall. No one is born blessed! Through our lives what we achieve is due to hard work, dedication, and persistence. And, the master has failed more than the student has ever tried.
- Super Affiliates also learn by experimenting. They run ads, try different banners, tweak their ad copies, and after a number of failures, they hit the bull’s eye!
- Super Affiliates also, and mostly, learn through self-education. When I began Affiliate Marketing, I had no idea about how I will go about it. I started researching on search platforms, social media, forums, and communities and learned things. It took time but, eventually, results started to appear and things fell into place.
- Along with self-education, learning from a coach also helps. When I was depressed and frustrated due to lack of results and no income, I met Mr. Siddharth Rajsekar, India’s no. 1 Digital Coach, who streamlined things for me. He was already where I wanted to be. Learning from people better than us will reduce our learning curve. He shared the steps he took when he started and I followed them to the T and, gradually, I started to see results. So, along with self-education, successful Affiliates learn from a coach. They are coachable.
(2) Staying Organized
- Successful Affiliate Marketers have a clear plan. They know exactly where they want to be after a week, a month, and a year. They set goals to achieve their weekly, monthly, and yearly goals.
- Secondly, they are super clear of their niche. They choose a niche based on their passion or area of interest and solve people’s problems. They create content in the form of blog posts, videos, and podcasts to help their audience.
- The Super Affiliates keep track of how they spend their time and how much time each task takes. So, for example, if they work for 5 hours daily, they split their 5 hours to allocate time to important tasks. They take up the most important tasks first and keep the lesser important tasks for later.
- They are able to determine their income, income sources, and expenses by keeping track of ad campaigns, conversions, personal expenses, leads, etc.
(3) They Choose One Niche and Stick To It
- Super Affiliate Marketers choose one niche and focus on it. In the Affiliate Marketing business, being as specific as possible is the key to success. By choosing one niche, you can better understand the pain of your target market and better focus on their requirements.
- You can explore and find out what their pain is, what challenges they face, gain knowledge and provide them solutions in a way that is easy to implement and that can make their lives better
- Choosing one niche helps to narrow down on product selection and promotion. By focusing and narrowing down, you will be able to choose products that solve a specific problem and help people overcome them. Super Affiliates understand the importance of a particular niche and promote products only of that niche.
(4) Consistency
- Successful Affiliate Marketers are consistent with their efforts. They post blogs, upload videos/podcasts on a regular basis. Most of the highest-ranking websites/Affiliates stack up content after content that provides value to people. So, if you are looking to set up a successful Affiliate Marketing business, ensure that you post regularly on your platform. This, in turn, will strengthen your authority on the web.
- Consistency is key and successful Affiliate Marketers post content regularly by focusing on the long term. So, if you want to be successful in the long run, do not chase short-term quick success. Do not be a victim of the “shiny object syndrome.”
(5) Interact With People
- Affiliate Marketing is a lonely journey. We usually work alone. But, I would recommend you to network and interact whenever you can. Many Affiliate Marketers organize webinars that are packed with value and are worthy of attending. Successful Affiliate Marketers attend webinars, seminars, and meet-ups with their community and share ideas that help them to succeed.
- Networking enables you to interact and share ideas with like-minded people which adds value to your lives. You can gain ideas, knowledge, newer ways to do business, helpful tools to use, and so on. Successful Affiliates add value to your lives and I would request you to add value to people’s lives that you interact with.
- In addition to attending webinars, and meet-ups, you can join Affiliate Marketing forums and engage with people. You can answer their questions, and provide value and solutions. A few of the forums that I am a part of are listed below:
- When you network with people, you learn new things that you can implement in your business. I remember how unwilling and reluctant I was to start email marketing in 2019. I came across a course by Chuck Ngyuen and learned the importance and impact of email marketing for running a successful business. I implemented it and, until today, I am reaping the benefits of using email marketing for my business.
- Another way of networking with people is to create a community of your own. Connect with them on a weekly or a monthly basis and provide value. When you share information that helps people, you will form strong relations with them.
(6) They Leverage Creativity
- Affiliate Marketers are entrepreneurs and it is imperative to get creative to stand out. Running a business does not mean creating content and running ads that sound like a robot. The people you target are human beings and they love to be treated like human beings.
- Successful Affiliate Marketers have mastered the art of talking in a way that people feel listening to them. They get creative with their landing page copy, sales page copy, content, banners, and so on. Along with getting creative, Successful Affiliate Marketers have mastered persuasive copywriting that helps them get more leads and conversions.
- If you have visited the website of successful Affiliate Marketers, you would have noticed that their website is full of attractive and catchy visuals. They create visuals to catch your attention snd complete the action they intend you to take.
- Along with visuals, they write content that matches their target audience. For example, the content of a health affiliate will be different than that of a business affiliate. So, write in a way that matches your audience’s taste.
- Successful Affiliate Marketers are masters of understanding their audience’s psychology. They know the triggers that encourage people to buy. They are experts in using words that convince people to enter their credit card information and buy. In a nutshell, Successful Affiliate Marketers are not only masters of content but are also masters of understanding human behavior and psychology.
(7) They Adapt To Changes
- Super Affiliates adapt to changes in technology and the environment. They make changes to their promotion strategies based on the market trends, weather (if they promote physical products), and so on.
- Let’s address the elephant in the room – the elephant in the world, if I may rephrase! Many businesses were swept out by this deadly virus and it was so severe in some countries that many successful businessmen were seen selling vegetables to make ends meet. In many countries, travel, tourism, hardware, furniture, and other industries took a severe hit to the extent that it became difficult to recover. Many of the people that I know are from the tourism industry and I have observed how tough things have been for them. Many companies had to “hand out” the pink slip to many of their employees only to stay in business, let alone earn profits. Successful Affiliate Marketers adapt to such changes and challenges and improvise their campaigns and offers.
- They also understand that there are ups and downs in the market, people buy during some seasons and for the rest of the year, there is a lull! Would you buy sweaters during summer? Definitely not! There is a perfect time and place to sell products and Successful Affiliate Marketers know from their experience and insights from past campaigns the correct time to sell.
(8) Patience
- Affiliate Marketing, like any other business, takes time to take off so, if you are starting out, please be patient. Not to demoralize you, but desirable results take months. On the brighter side, there are many who achieved results much quicker.
- As a beginner, I would request you not to chase profits in the short term. Successful Affiliate Marketers stick to their niches and promote products that they truly align with.
- Many, almost all beginners, fall prey to the “shiny objects syndrome” and promote products with high commissions. In many cases, they promote products that they are not passionate about and end up not getting results and quitting.
- Successful Affiliate Marketers also understand that they need to invest time and money and they accept that there is nothing called “setting up a business for free.”
- So, if you are thinking of starting your Affiliate Marketing business, please be patient and do not quit if you don’t see results in a short amount of time.
- Successful Affiliate Marketers learn from campaigns that they run and implement their learnings in the next one.
(9) Successful Affiliate Marketers are Analytical
- If you are an Affiliate Marketer, you would want to get insights into your performance, isn’t it? Successful Affiliate Marketers keep track of everything – from ad campaigns, conversions, drop-offs, to other crucial metrics. They analyze how their campaigns perform in terms of generating sales, commissions, and how each ad is performing.
- Successful Affiliate Marketers also track the performance of their landing pages, lead forms, etc. in addition to ads. If an ad does not return the results they expect, they stop running those ads and increase the spending on ads that perform well.
- They always follow the try-analyze-continue and try-analyze-stop principles They run an ad, analyze its performance and if it performs as they desire, they continue running it. On the contrary, if an ad does not perform as expected, they stop running it.
- To draw insights from ad campaigns, using the right tools that suit business needs is crucial. Every successful Affiliate Marketer uses tools that answer every question that might have:
- Which source/medium brings the most traffic?
- Which device generates more leads – desktop or mobile?
- Which platform drives more sales – Android or iOS?
(10) Problem Solving
- One of the top qualities for succeeding as an Affiliate Marketer is to recommend products by keeping people’s problems in mind. Super Affiliates make it a point to solve people’s problems first. They will never recommend to you buy a product until they are convinced and confident in its ability to help people and solve their problems.
- Most (I think, all) successful Affiliate Marketers become problem solvers first and then go on to become successful! They understand people’s pains, create content addressing their pain, and provide value and solutions.
- So, if you wish to become an elite Affiliate Marketer, understand the pain of your audience and solve the problems.
- As an Affiliate Marketer, I would recommend you to recommend solutions, not products. People want solutions, not products. If you feel a particular product could solve people’s problems, only then should you recommend them to people.
(11) Managing Money
- As an Affiliate Marketer – or any businessman – you must track how your money is being spent. Managing money is also a crucial skill for running a business. Keep track of where you are spending money. Along with the expenses, determine your top sources of income, and how much those sources add to your bank balance.
- It is also important to record how much you invest in tools, training, payment of taxes, how many of your customers ask for refunds, and so on.
- My mentor suggested a strategy that I implemented in my business. I set up the crucial systems with whatever money I had and when income started to flow, I invested a major part of it back into my business. Although it is a simple strategy, it has blessed me to multiply my income and increase my income sources. So, the strategy is, when you earn, invest a part of it back into the business and grow your money. For example, if you make ₹1,00,000/- per month, I would recommend investing ₹20,000/- to ₹30,000/- and multiplying your revenue and profit.
(12) Productivity
- When I started Affiliate Marketing, I was mentored by Mr. Siddharth Rajsekar who shared a life-changing lesson. I was going through his webinar during which he said, “It’s not about how much time you spend, it’s about how focused you are.”
- If I were to reflect on how I used to do things, I would admit that what he said is 100% true. All of us – or at least most of us – work with our minds in social media, the latest web series, an ongoing sporting event, and so on.
- When I was a student, I used to study for 3-4 hours, but, a single social media notification would take minutes from my studies. If you are a student, I would request you to observe your studying habit. Do you study with your smartphones? Does one notification take minutes or maybe hours of your time? How does this “multitasking” help you accomplish your task? How long do you take to complete 1 task through multitasking?
- Multitasking – chatting and working or studying – only takes our time and the task that should take 1-2 hours takes up to 3-4 hours or maybe more.
- The same goes for Affiliate Marketers. If you are a distracted Affiliate Marketer, you will end up wasting time and achieving less. Your focus is inversely proportional to the number of tasks that you can complete and the amount of time it takes. If you are distracted, you will take more time to complete a task and if you are focused, you will take less time to complete it.
- A successful Affiliate Marketer is one who manages his/her time well and avoids distractions.
- Another attribute linked to more focus and not wasting time is focusing on one task at a time. Successful Affiliate Marketers focus on one task at a time and take up another task only after finishing what they are doing.
- One thing that I observed about successful Affiliate Marketers is that they create a schedule and stick to it. One of my mentors advised me to follow the 50-10 rule, i.e., 50 minutes of work followed by 10 minutes of break. I have been following this advice and it has worked wonders! My productivity has doubled and, before what I used to finish in 5-6 hours, I complete in a couple of hours.
- Hence, productivity will help you achieve more in 4 hours than people achieve in 10.
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Conclusion
- Almost every successful online businessman started their journey with Affiliate Marketing. Although Affiliate Marketing is an easy way of making money online, about 70% of the Affiliate Marketers earn nothing!
- In this post, I shared the 12 qualities that differentiate average Super Affiliate Marketers and average Affiliate Marketers. They are as follows:
- Willingness to learn and grow
- Staying organized
- They choose one niche and stick to it
- Consistency
- Interact with people
- They leverage creativity
- They adapt to changes
- Patience
- Successful Affiliate Marketers are Analytical
- Problem Solving
- Managing Money
- Productivity
- If you are a company looking to hire Affiliate Marketers to scale your business, which of the 12 qualities do you look for the most?
- If you are an Affiliate Marketer, which of the 12 qualities do you think you are missing?
