Affiliate Marketing: What I've Learned So Far

There are two main points I wanted to talk about in relation to what I’ve learned so far as a beginner Affiliate Marketer.

(1) The Affiliate Marketer Mindset

As with anything in life, I believe that your mindset and attitude towards Affiliate Marketing has a huge impact on your results.  Affiliate Marketing is a tough business model to crack mentally.  What I mean by that is that it is not easy to be able to get your head wrapped around affiliate marketing from the point of view of understanding what it is and how it works, and most importantly how it provides value in the world.

It’s really easy to look at affiliate marketers and think that they aren’t really doing anything in terms of providing value to customers since they don’t actually make the products they promote, they don’t support the products (in most cases) and all they really do is just collect a paycheck for referring some business.

To the person who lives his life based on the principles of always looking for ways to provide more and more value to the world, it’s not easy to pursue a business model that seemingly pays you for doing “nothing”.

As I learn Affiliate Marketing, I can’t count how many times I’ve asked myself the question of “Yeah, but how does this provide value?”.  There are hundreds if not thousands of different ways that affiliates have found to make money by promoting products and services online, and their methods range from very heavily value driven approaches to practices that I would personally consider “borderline-unethical”.

Practices where you “trick” people into doing things just to make a commission don’t sit very well with me.  Even if it doesn’t cost the user anything more than some wasted time, I don’t think it’s a sound business practice to make money by deceiving people.  As such, there are some affiliate marketing strategies which I won’t touch.

However, outside of that… which I’ve actually found to be in the minority of practices that are being used, the main thing I’ve realized is that in order to have a successful Affiliate Marketing Mindset, one must realize that Affiliate Marketers are people that the world needs, no different than sales people.

Anyone who thinks that Affiliate Marketers don’t provide any value to the world in exchange for the huge money you hear them making out there needs to try it for themselves.  This “profession” if you can call it that, is an art form.  I have been involved in a lot of different types of businesses out there and I can honestly say that Affiliate Marketing is a skill that rivals the dedication required to become a doctor, lawyer, or a CEO of a major corporation.

With maybe a few isolated exceptions, if someone is making $100,000 / month in Affiliate Marketing, it’s because they deserve to be making that much and yes, they are providing a lot more in use value to the world than they are asking for in return.  I have no doubt in my mind of that anymore.

(2) Using What Works

Once I overcame this hurdle of understanding just how valuable affiliate marketers are in the world, the next step was to look at ways that I could be an affiliate marketer that brings a lot of value to the world.  By being valuable, you ensure that you always have financial abundance and you help to make the world a better place in the process.

However, before getting to that point a fundamental skillset is required to be learned in order to be able to operate as an affiliate.  Beginner affiliates, such as myself, should strive to develop these skills in the beginning without worrying too much how those skills will be applied to bring value to the world in the long run.

For example, I learned an Affiliate Marketing strategy this week which teaches you a “sneaky” but not unethical way of making comissions.  At first glance I didn’t really like the strategy because it doesn’t really produce a lot of value out there.  It’s just a quick little way to make some sales, and it’s really just meant as a quick beginner strategy you can use to test some things out.

When I first learned this, I wasn’t really too keen in trying it out.  Also, to be honest it sounded way too simple to work.   However, I decided to try it anyways.  What’s funny is that I made a sale really quickly with this method.

Now, even though I don’t really like this method the way it is setup now as a long term strategy because of the “sneakyness” factor in it, I have learned a few things from running this method which I already had ideas on how I can apply it to bring value out there.

So, my point is that the first step a beginner should take is to just learn what works.  Forget value for now.  Figure out how to make money affiliate marketing.  If you can generate sales without building a lot of extra value for the user besides the value already included in the product or service they are buying, that’s ok for now.  Just learn what works.

THEN, after you’ve got this toolset of strategies that work and you know how to utilize them, you can start thinking larger and building a solid business strategy that makes money AND provides a lot of value to the world.

Summary

Affiliate Marketing starts with your mindset.  If you don’t get that straight first, you’re doomed to fail.  You need to get past any limiting beliefs you may have about Affiliate Marketing not being something that provides value to the world.  Get that straight in your head first.

Secondly, start learning what works.  The only way to do that is to just try things and measure your results.  Once you test out all different kinds of methods and strategies, you can always piece together a bigger picture strategy which builds massive value in the world to ensure long term financial success.

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