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6 Months in Affiliate Marketing

Honeybadger

Well-Known Member
AffKit Ninja
I started affiliate marketing journey in summer (Q3 2020), now it's end of Q4, I made alot of success and failures along the way

List of 10 things I learned


1. Set targets
2. Make a plan
3. Keep thing simple
4. Study your competitor
5. Record everything
6. Automate anything
7. Learn new skills
8. Give best answer
9. Listen to advice
10. Enjoy life

Some notes about this list

1. Set targets
"A goal without a date is just a dream" (Milton H. Erickson)
  • Choose an amount of money and date
  • Be realistic about your targets, make them difficult but not impossibly difficult
  • Tell people in your group about your target
2. Make a plan
"If the plan doesn't work, change the plan, not the goal" (unknown)
  • Take some quiet time in the morning, before hustle and bustle, to make list of 3 things you get done today
  • Write your plan down or type it up, can be basic or detail
  • Plan your whole year in advance & be flexible when challenge come
  • When you make a plan don't give up until you finish it, why so many people quit early is reason new affiliate marketers have so much opportunities
3. Keep thing simple
"Own less, do more" (unknown)
  • Remove anything thats distracting you from focus
  • Operate from tidy workspace
  • Discipline, repetition & improvement
4. Study your competitor
"Nothing focuses the mind better than the constant sight of a competitor who wants to wipe you off the map" (Wayne Calloway)
  • I found many profitable niche products, normally there's 2-3 competitors, some you will beat, some will beat you, learn what make you win and lose
  • Competitor is good, keeps you alert, also good for customer
  • Become a customer of your competitor to see what they are doing (subscribe to newsletter, order a product, ask for refund, make complaint, use tool to tracking their keywords, understand what technology they using)
5. Record everything
"The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen" (Lee Iacocca)
  • Write out your ideas to get them out your head, later look your notes & you find little nugget of information
  • Make note or you will forget, human brain is for thinking not for storing alot of data, use the cloud storage or your notebook
  • If you have many notes scan, shred & recycle
6. Automate anything
"Focus on being productive instead of being busy" (Tim Ferris)
  • Time is most important, save time in every way you can, delegate task, outsource boring work, there are many people ready to take your workload for less money than you might think
  • Use a time management software & see how much your time is really productive? Productive is "time during which useful work is performed in an operation or process" (from industrial engineering dictionary)
  • When you record your activity it shows many options you have to automate task and save time for more important task or enjoy your life more
7. Learn new skills
"The expert in anything was once a beginner" (Helen Hayes)
  • There are many 10 minute videos on You Tube you learn new skills & it will change your life in small way or big way
  • Some websites have course with certificate & it takes just 1 hour, certificate is good motivation for personal & also it you ever need job interview
  • Learn skills you actually use to make better life, I think it better to learn expert course about something specific that's why I never took a general course in affiliate marketing
  • Be careful where you learn, I always go direct to source/company learning center, or some place it's respected in industry (when you not sure ask the forum)
8. Give best answer
"Search starts with a question, and ends with an answer" (Euron Greyjoy)
  • I made this simple quite because too many time it can be confused and you are looking for tricks and magic formulas to rank content, just answer the question first
  • Power-tip for giving best answer (very hard to beat) is you take top 10 results, list everything competitor is doing, compound it together and create the master answer, someone will have to work very hard to beat this (but you also have to work very hard to do it !!)
  • Don't mess around with fancy design & clever animation but first make black text on white background with blue links & most important plain text that answers the customer question, after this make it all format, then add some multimedia, perform SEO checklist & check all link is working, then publish
9. Listen to advice
"The quieter you become the more you can hear" (Ram Dass)
  • Ask question if you need help, not always someone can help but often I found other people had similar experience & found a solution you can try
  • I have read some very clever and wise post on Affiliate Fix, also I have read some very obvious spammer, but you can learn something every time
  • Affiliate Fix everyone have different life experience & some special skills so everyone can say something worth listening to
10. Enjoy your ride
"Enjoy life today yesterday is gone and tomorrow may never come" (Alan Coren)
  • Every day when I eat breakfast & watch silly videos on You Tube, it makes me more relax for work
  • Try to laugh really hard in the middle of the day, it release endorphins and make stress goes away, sound stupid but promise it works
  • Do things that make you feel peace, listen to your music, watch the nature, make parties & laugh about silly things
 
Last edited:
I started affiliate marketing journey in summer (Q3 2020), now it's end of Q4, I made alot of success and failures along the way

3. Keep thing simple

"Own less, do more" (unknown)
  • Remove anything thats distracting you from focus
  • Operate from tidy workspace
  • Discipline, repetition & improvement

Thanks for sharing your insights. I must admit i easily get distracted with many projects on the fly and decided to refocus on 1 project only for the first half of 2021. It's all about finding the one thing that will make all the difference.
We are always 1 project away from making a breakthrough.
 
I must admit i easily get distracted with many projects on the fly and decided to refocus on 1 project only for the first half of 2021.
You are never alone
Everyone can get distracted
I recommend this --> DRI 'Discipline, Repetition, Improvement'
  • Discipline its making your plan & following plan
  • Repetition when you do it every day to become consistent
  • Improvement for me its get 1% better at something, because compound 100 X 1% and you perfect
It's all about finding the one thing that will make all the difference.

Many times I think a product will fly off shelf and but customer doesn't like it
Some other product I think it's just shelf filler but customer love it
Best its when celebrity wears it then can go viral

We are always 1 project away from making a breakthrough.

Be specific about success
What is breakthrough for you?
2020 breakthrough its paying all my bills (tick)
2021 breakthrough for my affiliate marketing business its 10 sites make $100/day = $1,000/day total, but not from January 1, more like August 1 this can happen, and maybe I will have to fail on 9 sites in 2021 and make big success in 2022?
Why is target reasonable?
Because I had 1 site in 2020 it's commission $100 day consistent for 3 months
If I was staring affiliate marketing today my first target -->
  • Reduce all my bills to minimum
  • Pay all bills from affiliate marketing
Freedom is when you own your time, nobody control you
 
What did you automate @tyoussef?

oh, a lot of things, for example, I was running a cash-on-delivery business in my country automatically, still improving the automation, till now. because I paused that business because of stupid covid, am preparing to get it up and running again nowadays.

I built the whole system since I have experience with PHP, and I have a newbie developer, that's helping me with some usual PHP coding
am tracking everything, including calls, ads expenses, inventory, .... ETC.
it's strange to see people still using Microsoft Excel to manage their businesses.
 
Rendering dynamic (and updated) content is "automation" --in the context of content SEO oriented websites.
Discus Forum or WordPress comments is moderated dynamic content.
Further defined: Things that are repetitive (actions) that can be done with programmed logic.
 
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