Why is Affiliate Marketing So Hard? 5 Things you’re doing wrong

Wondering why is affiliate marketing so hard? You just might be doing it wrong. If you are you feeling frustrated and about ready to throw in the towel, don’t give up on affiliate marketing just yet.

In this post I’ll share with you what you just might be doing wrong, so you can get back on track and start making money online. Cool?

Okay so you want to make money online and you’ve chosen to do that via affiliate marketing. You’ve found yourself, the best affiliate marketing training opportunity, but even so, it’s taking you a while to get that first long for sale. I’m I right?

So because you haven’t had that sale, you’ve convinced yourself that affiliate marketing is so darn hard. Now you’re wondering if affiliate marketing is a scam, does it really work, whether it’s for you or not, and you’re ready to chuck it all in and call it a day.

Well, you can do that. But before you make your final decision to chuck all your hard work down the drain, first I want you to think about why you got started in affiliate marketing in the first place?

Most likely you saw the potential for financial and geographic freedom. Right? You saw the possibilities of a side hustle allowing you to make money from home or even turning your passion into a profit. So why is affiliate marketing so hard?

Listen to me for a minute.

This is not about me trying to convince you that you should stick with affiliate marketing. Who knows, you might be more inclined to having your own online store. But if you think that affiliate marketing is hard, then having your own online store may not work for you either. Because the same principles apply.

Why is Affiliate Marketing So Hard?

It’s not really. But if you are struggling to make it work, you just might be doing the wrong thing. Here are five (5) things that you just might be doing, that might be causing you to ask yourself that question.

#1. Build it and they will come

If you’re only using SEO to make money with affiliate marketing, then you’re going to have to work a little harder and wait a little longer, for the money to start rolling in. Most people who make money online quickly enough, will tell you that waiting for people to arrive at their site, just doesn’t work, if you want to make money online relatively quick. I can relate to that.

Here’s a little bit of my personal experience. When I started promoting one of my websites, the money started rolling in quicker and I didn’t write as much articles. In addition to which, I didn’t even do keyword research for the article I was promoting. What? Yep.

Now, you could keep focusing on SEO if that’s what you want to do. But to me, having to write article after article to facilitate SEO ranking, is a recipe for burnout and making your online business feel like a regular job. Know what I mean?

#2. Right opportunity, wrong mindset

So you found the right opportunity and you’ve built one of the best looking websites out there. But if you have the expectation that the success will just start rolling in because you have a website that’s up and running, then you’ve got another think coming.

MORE for You: Is Having an Online Business Really worth It?

The fact that there are billions of people online, does not necessarily mean that your target audience will automatically find and start interacting with your website right away. So for you to think that the success of your affiliate website would be automatic, is the wrong mindset to have. You’re simply regressing to the build it and they will come mindset.

#3. Running a business?

Think about that for a minute. How do you run a business? What you need to do is think of getting into affiliate marketing as a business. That being said, you need to promote your business.

Ever notice that people who are in business, even brick-and-mortar, actually promote their business? That’s why you see the ads on television, or social media or where have you. They want people to know and remember that they are out there.

Likewise, you have to let people know that your website is out there, so that they can start interacting with it. I’m not suggesting that you d television ads or anything like that (lol), but you need to promote your website if you want to make money with affiliate marketing.

Still wondering why is affiliate marketing so hard, or are you seeing the possibilities? There are just two more important aspects we need to look at here; promotion and target audience.

#4. What’s your promotion efforts like?

Are you promoting your website? If so, how are you doing that? Free methods only? Now there is nothing wrong with using free methods to promote your website, but this too will take some time before you reap the fruits of your affiliate marketing efforts. It could also be time consuming, depending on the platforms you’re using.

On the other hand, paying for targeted traffic allows you to make money quicker with affiliate marketing. I know you’re thinking paid ads cost money. Well, yes, but it’s not as expensive as you might think. For example, I ran a paid campaign for one post (article) and I paid $.01 per engagement. I am serious!

So here’s the thing.

When you are spending money on advertising, you can determine the amount you want to spend, so you can work with your budget. This takes us back to the idea of thinking of affiliate marketing as a business. Businesses have expenditure budgets. You might want to think about having an advertising budget for your affiliate marketing business.

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#5. You’re Targeting the wrong audience

So check this out. You join a couple of groups online and you start sharing your posts/articles. But are you sharing your stuff with the right target audience? You have to think about who your target audience is and join those groups. Make sense, doesn’t it? It’s the same way if you’re doing paid ads.

For example, here’s what some people do wrong when they advertise on Facebook. They do a $10 ad campaign and instead of targeting a specific audience they target everyone on Facebook.

Newsflash! As much as you might like them to be, everyone on Facebook is not your target audience. So if you do your Facebook promotion to people who are not in your target audience, what kind of results can you expect? I’ll let you answer that question for yourself.

But the funny thing about this is that when people do this and they don’t get the results they are after, they complain that advertising on Facebook doesn’t work. They do the wrong thing then they complain that it didn’t work right. Well, I’ll just leave that alone. But I think you get where I’m going with this.

What I will say is that, you’ll definitely get a better result from a more targeted audience that’s for sure. Once you find what works, you simply rinse and repeat.

So Why is Affiliate Marketing So Hard for You?

You most likely have not been focusing on these five (5) aspects that can make all the difference to your affiliate marketing business. Neglecting these aspects could very well be the reason why you’re not succeeding with affiliate marketing.

It’s not everything we’ll be successful at right off the bat and affiliate marketing is one of those things. My thing is, you saw the potential in the opportunity, so you need to have the patience to make it work for you. Sometimes it’s a process of trial and error to find what works. But like I said, once you find what works for you, all you need to do is rinse and repeat.

So that’s it from me. I hope that the 5 points I’ve shared with you will help you see affiliate marketing in a different light and that you’re no longer wondering  why is affiliate marketing so hard. Hey, if the rest of us can make money with affiliate marketing, so can you.

If you want to learn all about affiliate marketing the right way? Then join us at Wealthy Affiliate and get started absolutely free!

Of course, feel free to share your experience and insight with us. We look forward to hearing from you.

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