Affiliate Marketing is a $12-billion industry and it’s expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 10% per year. With the growing popularity of Affiliate Marketing, as many as 81% of the brands utilise the power of Affiliate Marketing to scale their sales.
Many Affiliate Marketers like Pat Flynn have successfully made millions promoting products they love. However, 95% of Affiliate Marketers give up and never return. 95%?! Why?
What is it about this $12-billion industry that only 5% make it? To help you give a clear idea of why many Affiliate Marketers give up easily, I have made a list of the top 10 reasons. Read on to find out.
(1) Affiliate Marketing Requires Hard Work
People give up Affiliate Marketing for the same reason they give up a sport, a hobby, or a musical instrument. There is a lot of hard work and who loves to work hard?
Dancing is cool, but if you want to become the best in the world, you’d need to dance regularly.
Similarly, if you want to become the best Affiliate Marketer, you would need to create content, market content, generate leads, and interact with your audience – REGULARLY!
No Affiliate Marketer got results by publishing only one blog post. It takes continuous hard work and persistence to get results. When people do not get results in one week, they give up! There is no instant gratification here.
(2) No Willingness To Learn
I have been an Affiliate Marketer for 4 years and whenever I meet a newbie, I see that they are passionate about making money, and want the steps, but when I ask them about their content creation strategy, they are blank!
Every Affiliate Marketer wants to make money, but they do not want to learn the skills that will help them to make money. In a recent inner circle call with my community, one of my students said, “Shubhamjeet, I want to make money, but I do not want to create content. It is too much effort and I do not have time.”
I understand people do not have time, but the same people have 3-4 hours to spend on Netflix.
We live in a world where everything is at our fingertips. We can easily find resources that will help us improve our skills. We just need to dedicate some time and effort.
The reality is, that anybody can learn and master the skills, but their apathy to learn is a big block.
(3) Information Overload
According to a study, due to the pandemic, 114 million people lost their jobs in 2020 in the United States alone. If these people formed a country, its population would be the 13th highest in the world!
After losing jobs, many started to look for ways to make money online. Although a few launched unicorn start-ups, a large number of people are still struggling.
It’s not because they lack knowledge, it’s because they have not understood the game of Affiliate Marketing. According to my research, 7 out of 10 Affiliate Marketers earn nothing! Additionally, 95% of the Affiliate Marketers give up within the first 12 months.
They do not lack knowledge! They are faced with information overload that confuses them and they have no idea about where to start and what to do.
Let me explain. You can go to YouTube and search Affiliate Marketing. You will get a long list of videos containing information. You can try the same on Google.
Go to Google and type “Affiliate Marketing.” You will get 2,24,00,00,000 (2.24 billion) results in a matter of milliseconds.
You can watch video after video, and you can read blog after blog. But do you know what will happen?
After watching numerous videos and reading several blogs, you will get even more confused. So, the biggest problem that people are facing is information overload. People can get information from millions of resources but, such diverse information exists on the web for one topic that they get more confused.
So, what people desperately want is direction! They want a precise, direct, and clear system and guidance that can help them to get results. You do not lack knowledge, you lack direction.
(4) Publish & Forget
Many Affiliate Marketers, especially beginners, write a post, publish, and forget. They expect people will come to their website and consume their content. But what happens leaves them in tatters. They see no traffic and, consequently, no sales and commissions.
When they do not put in the effort to market their content, they do not generate traffic. The result? No traffic, no sales. No sales, no commissions. No commissions, give up!
(5) They Thought Affiliate Marketing Is A Get-Rich-Quick Scheme
The reason why 95% of Affiliate Marketers fail and give up is that they assume Affiliate Marketing to be a get-rich-quick scheme. But, when they realise it isn’t, they give up and spread rumours.
Affiliate Marketing IS NOT, NEVER WAS, and WILL NEVER BE a get-rich-quick business.
To succeed in Affiliate Marketing, you must be focused and committed. It is difficult to build authority, create valuable content, and generate traffic, and it takes a lot of time to build trust with your audience.
Affiliate Marketers who give up think only about money. They do not care about providing value or creating content, they prioritise commissions even if the product is bootless. They follow the “tricks” shared by their “wealthy guru” and want sales and commissions in 30 seconds. They lack patience and when they do not see piles of commissions in 2 days – sarcasm intended – they give up.
(6) Lack Of Patience
As I shared in the previous point, many Affiliate Marketers give up because they want instant results. They cannot wait even for a week. They lack patience.
The most successful Affiliate Marketers have high levels of patience. They aim to build trust with their audience and provide value. Once you build trust, your audience will buy from you, as people buy from those who they trust.
I will share a truth bomb with you: If you want to make money without putting in the effort, Affiliate Marketing is NOT FOR YOU.
Successful Affiliate Marketers spend months or even years before they see any real results, they put in a lot of hard work, and then they succeed. They work hard for achieving success.
(7) Fear Of Failure
Successful Affiliate Marketers spend months learning things and implementing the strategies. They learn, experiment, analyse, and identify what works and what doesn’t.
After identifying what works, they eliminate the things that do not work and make changes to improve their performance.
Experimenting with different ideas would mean that you’d need to fail – many times! Affiliate Marketers give up because they want results in the first campaign and give up if it does not work. They do not try again. They give up! They do not experiment, because they are afraid to fail.
Super Affiliates are Super Affiliates because they experiment, fail, improve, experiment again, fail again, and improve. Failure is a part of their journey. They are not scared of failure, they embrace it! Failure is great! It teaches you what not to do. So when you are aware of the things that do no work, you will only do things that work, isn’t it?
(8) Negative Mindset
In my 4 years as an Affiliate Marketer, I have seen many who self-sabotage, even before beginning! The most common misconceptions I have heard from them are:
- Affiliate Marketing is a scam
- Affiliate Marketing does not work
- Affiliate Marketing is for people who have time
- Affiliate Marketing will not make you rich
- Affiliate Marketing is a pyramid scheme
I agree that not everyone succeeds in Affiliate Marketing, but saying the above statements without even giving it a shot is extremely impairing.
If you are constantly telling yourself things like, “Affiliate Marketing does not work.”, what do you think you will do when you face an obstacle? You will give up, right?
When you already rejected Affiliate Marketing in your mind, do you think you will:
- Put in time and effort?
- Ask for help or learn about Affiliate Marketing?
- Create high-quality content?
- Provide value to your audience?
The answer to every question above is NO!
If you want to succeed in Affiliate Marketing, your mindset is going to play a major role.
(9) Lack Of Focus
Many Affiliate Marketers give up easily because they are not focused on their goals. Instead, they are attracted to things like:
- Dancing videos on Facebook
- Social media celebs showing off their cars
- Their crush’s message
- The “viral” videos
- The new social media trend
- Influencers roasting each other
- Global news
There are too many distractions and many Affiliate Marketers get engrossed in them, instead of avoiding them and taking action.
No Affiliate Marketer will earn commissions if they are distracted by someone dancing on social media. So, avoid distractions, keep your smartphone in a cupboard or another room and get to work.
(10) Not Taking The Right Action
If you want to become a successful Affiliate Marketer, you should put your head down, eliminate distractions, and start working. In simple words, you should TAKE ACTION.
By taking action, I don’t mean looking busy. By taking action, I mean taking actions that generate results. You should understand that there is a big difference between taking actions that generate results and taking actions that make you look busy.
Suppose, you want to increase your earnings by $100 per month. Here are some actions that you should ideally take:
- Interact with your audience on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
- Learn regularly.
- Research the product(s) you want to promote.
- Build trust by solving your audience’s problems.
- Answering your audience’s questions.
- Creating content that provides value.
- Hosting webinars.
- Publishing videos on YouTube.
- Run targetted ads.
- Etc.
If you reread all the above points, you will realise they all are related to generating sales. They are the right kinds of actions that you must take regularly and you will achieve your target.
Conclusion
Affiliate Marketing is a $12-billion industry and it’s expected to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 10% per year. With the growing popularity of Affiliate Marketing, as many as 81% of the brands utilise the power of Affiliate Marketing to scale their sales.
Many Affiliate Marketers like Pat Flynn have successfully made millions promoting products they love. However, 95% of Affiliate Marketers give up and never return. 95%?! Why?
What is it about this $12-billion industry that only 5% make it? To help you give a clear idea of why many Affiliate Marketers give up easily, I have made a list of the top 10 reasons. Read on to find out.
- Affiliate Marketing requires hard work
- No willingness to learn
- Information overload
- Publish & forget
- They thought Affiliate Marketing is a get-rich-quick scheme
- Lack of patience
- Fear of failure
- Negative mindset
- Lack of focus
- Not taking the right action
