How To Have Better Affiliate Marketing Skills

Hi Ravi,

I’m glad you agree that creating your own product is tough for beginners. My sales never even recovered the cost of the coaching, which was disappointing to say the least. I still promote the product, gently, but somehow it took so much out of me that I lost heart with that particular product.

Especially when I realised just how many excellent affiliate products there were on the same topic 🙁

Well, you live and learn…. but from painful experience my advice to new online marketers is to learn to drive traffic to an affiliate product before you decide to create your own product. Online promotion skills are what you need first of all.

Thanks for your visit.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Amar,

Thanks for your additional ideas on affiliate marketing, and I hadn’t even thought to mention CPA networks, which are another similar approach.

I suppose it’s hard to strike a balance between fully monetizing your blog and not making it too salesy. I once had a blog that was just covered with sales banners and it looked awful. Needless to say I didn’t make any sales from it. Difficult balance to achieve.

I appreciate your extra suggestions.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Mandy,

I’m sure you’re right, there’s an awful lot of lies and hype out there by people just wishing they’d made money online. Fake it till you make it.

I had a very big success in a network marketing program about six years ago when I was making a four figure sum each month – which was wonderful until the company shut down, literally overnight. Which was NOT wonderful.

I stayed well away from it all for several years after that. Since my return I have had some success with Premier Cashback and affiliate marketing, but never replicated the success of those early years.

Thanks for your honesty. Like you, I enjoy blogging and I’m sure that with your integrity you will be successful – but it’s certainly not the walk in the park that everyone makes out.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Robin,

Glad you found the post helpful.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Chery,

LOL – I think we’ve both “been round the block a bit online-business-wise”.

I wish I knew when I first started what I know now – but life is ever thus and at least I learned from those mistakes instead of quitting. Affiliate marketing isn’t easy, but there are ways to ease the pain.

PPC advertising – grrrr. Reminds of a story about a friend’s off-line business. Nothing to do with the Internet other than that she was getting a nice lot of bookings from her Google adverts. Then suddenly the bookings stopped and she started maxing out her budget. Turned out her competitors were just clicking on her ads. Yes, it’s fraud, but who’s going to spend the time and money to get it stopped?

Anyway – you and I have much better strategies than PPC now.

Thanks for dropping by.

Have a good weekend. I’m excited because my grand-daughters are coming to visit 🙂

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Peter,

Great to see you here again.

Well, brutal honesty is in my genes as a Yorkshire lass 🙂
For too long I felt a failure because I was sure I was the only online marketer not coining it in on a regular basis, but it’s now becoming clear to me that most average marketers aren’t even covering their costs. The example you describe is classic.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have been taken in on more than one occasion by what can only be described as lies, because I was too “honest / naive” to imagine that others would ever lie to me. Hah 🙂 However, I’m narrowing my focus down to those who I know I can trust, and learning some questions to cut through the “you know what” 🙂

At the end of the day having a clear conscience is more important to me than making a sale. Just today I was “chatting” with someone who clearly thought I could give him a job (probably because of my offline business). I guess some would have conned him out of his last $xxx with some pipe-dream. Instead I told him I had no jobs, just businesses with start-up costs. I’ll probably never be rich, but least I will sleep soundly 🙂

Yes, I am feeling at home with the perseverance network. Those of us who are working at it will get the benefits in the end.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi David,

Welcome back 🙂

Yes, I’m pleased I am getting a better direction than I have had before.

Because I only work my online business part-time it’s very difficult to try and do everything by myself – so it’s saving me a lot of time to have found a team where I can work with like-minded people, towards the same goal, yet we all contribute different skills.

I agree there are other ways, such as coaching and blogging networks. The problem I have found with blogging networks is that they need a lot of time to participate and the bloggers are probably working towards completely different goals. However, coaching can be a great solution to get accountability and encouragement.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Rajkumar,

Yes, using Adsense and affiliate marketing are very different skills.

As soon as it dawned on me that I was doing all that blog writing and promoting, to attract a reader to my blog and have them click AWAY from my content, earning me a pittance, that was the end of Adsense for me.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Edward,

Haha – well, I know I do tend to go at 100 miles an hour, but each step is a lesson learned that takes me further along the same path. I think it was you who once commented that we both like to do things THW (The Hard Way).

Once I saw that whole list of jobs that didn’t exist 30 years ago, and realised I was trying to do them all as a solopreneur it was a small step to deciding that wasn’t a route I wanted to pursue.

Life is too short to be struggling to learn all those new skills at once, when there are others on the same “path” as me who are already good at them. So we can share the load and I hope I am able to support them with my blogging skills.

I have had good and bad steps along the way – but having spent years thinking I was the only one not making thousands a month online, I feel I owe it to others to share the truth that there’s no easy way to get rich online.

Thanks for your kind words 🙂

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Mary,

It’s a shame people won’t do their part – but at least in the group people who don’t contribute will not get added to the rotator.

Apparently there are two types of motivation: extrinsic where you are being controlled by external factors such as paycheck; and intrinsic where you are doing things because you enjoy them, and they lead to fulfilment – such as pursuing a course of study. I guess entrepreneurs are intrinsically motivated.

But loss of self-discipline is another very important factor too.

Yes, to our success!

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Sue,

Yes, so many skills to master that it’s no wonder that apparently 97% of affiliate marketers fail.

I do a little on safelists and TEs, because I figure that many newbies start there, but I can’t claim much success in converting leads to sales – yet. Hopefully as I follow-up with my auto-responder some may see the light!

The beauty of the team is that we can each play to our own skills, without having being “forced” to do things we’re weak in. I suspect that the most successful marketers are those who actually talk to people, although I’m not a great talker myself. I do offer subscribers a one-to-one chat to see what’s the best route for them, but very few take up the offer.

So mostly I write, because that’s what I’m best at. I do my blogging, and some text posts on Facebook or other similar social networking sites. I use Twitter etc and I like/comment/share posts of other people in the team. I do emails to my own lists (not every one promotional, obviously) and I have a variety of standard emails that go out to safelists – that’s pretty automated so doesn’t take long.

We save time overall because there was a time when I was trying to create my own images, to stand out from the crowd. It could take me an hour to come up with a rubbish image, whereas now professional looking images “just appear” in the group faster than I can use them.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi Donna,

Affiliate marketing combined with blogging is the most enjoyable way for me to build a business online, because I enjoy the writing. The marketing I see rather as a necessary evil, but hey-ho, I’m getting better at that.

Time is certainly my biggest “shortage”, followed closely by my inability to create attractive images. So, Matt creating images for the team solves two problems at once.

I know that one of the functions of coaching is to keep people accountable. On that score there are certainly a few in our group who could do with a good dose of coaching! I will try and point them in that direction.

Thanks for your continued encouragement.

Joy – Blogging After Dark

Hi DeeDee,

Yes, you pointed out a good reason why I didn’t continue with PPC / Clickbank – not list-building. In fact, quite the opposite because I was passing sales to the product provider, I was building THEIR lists, and they got any high value backend sales. I think most people are wise to this now.

My poor daughter-in-law was totally gutted when she found out what her competitors were doing. She’s one of the most honest people I know and it’s a dirty trick they played on her. But that’s what some people are like unfortunately.

Glad you found it interesting.

Joy – Blogging After Dark