Shit Happens!
Even with the best of planning stuff goes wrong.
Let’s not pretend your journey from zero to hero is always going to run smoothly.
So when’s a good time to plan for the bumps in the road?
Right now.
Lets quickly recap…
Post 1 in this series about GUARANTEEING affiliate profits is here.
Post 2 covers taking action and getting stuff done – here.
And this post is about keeping us on target and correcting problems…
In post 1 I mentioned we’ll be taking self correcting actions.
When we take an ACTION we always get a RESULT from taking that action.
Results obviously vary.
SUCCESS happens when you take actions, review results modify the actions if needed and repeat.
Through these action / result feedback loops we learn stuff and improve our performance over time.
This is how humans learn.
To make money as an affiliate marketer the fastest way to succeed is to follow a proven step by step plan with the support of a mentor and or people that have already achieved success following the SAME plan.
As you take the action steps specified by the plan you will get both good and bad results. Your job is to monitor results and change actions if results are not what you want. This is what I mean by ‘self correcting’ actions.
It is also your responsibility to ask for HELP if you need it.
If you’ve chosen a good affiliate program your mentor will be delighted to help you.
So How Are The Actions We Take Going To Be SELF CORRECTING
Affiliate marketing is about testing, modifying, and moving forward.
As affiliates we have lots of free tools that can help us test and improve our performance.
Depending on the affiliate marketing strategy you decide to follow the training will include a section on testing and continuous improvement, though it will probably be called something about conversion, tracking, or analytics.
For example Wealthy Affiliate trained me how to improve conversions on this site using the excellent and FREE Google Analytics application…
So by taking actions (creating content) reviewing the results from those actions using free tools (Google analytics in my case) testing variations to the content and reviewing again, I can CONTINUOUSLY improve performance.
Only warning… when you start out it can be tempting to spend way too much time watching stats.
Correcting Poor Conversion – How To Guarantee You Make Commissions
If your doing affiliate marketing and not earning commissions there are ONLY a few things that could be broken.
- Are you getting traffic to your content (real people not the electronic spiders that constantly crawl the web).
- Are your visitors the ones you want… in terms of geography, keyword search etc.
- Is the content relevent to what your visitors are looking for.
Let’s dig a little deeper…
The affiliate process flows like this…
VISITOR / TRAFFIC SOURCE (search engine, social media, advert etc) >>> YOUR CONTENT (website, blog, video, Facebook page etc) >>> YOUR AFFILIATE LINK >>> STORE / OFFER
Basically a chain, and if one link breaks down so will your commissions.
So if your not earning money you want to systematically work your way through checking each link in the chain is RELEVANT to the last.
Relevance is CRITICAL to your success as an affiliate.
- Are you getting visitors / traffic?
- Are they RELEVANT to what you’re promoting?
- Are they CLICKING your links
- Are you making SALES (earning affiliate commission)
If you are not getting visitors.
a. Review the traffic training your strategy suggests and try again, or ask for help.
b. If you’re following a SEO strategy. Creating content to rank in search engines for keyword phrases is a time proven winning traffic strategy… the downside? It takes time.
Creating one piece of content and expecting immediate results is not the way. Be patient TRUST in the system your following, but don’t stop or give up.
c. Worst case. Change traffic strategy. There are literally hundreds of ways to get traffic TEST a different one that fits with the program you are following.
If your getting visitors and they’re NOT clicking your links…
a. Make sure your links are working (I know sounds too simple, but we’ve all done it). That your content is helpful and would compel the click for more information.
b. Check your Google analytics program to confirm you are getting ‘relevant’ visitors. Analytic programs give you a lot of information about your traffic, make sure you’re traffic is RELEVANT / TARGETED to your content AND the offer / product.
c. Split-test content that gets traffic but isn’t converting. Split testing is a technique that allows us to continually improve our conversions over time. This is a much bigger subject than this post but the link below takes you to a video training webinar from WA on how to split test successfully…
If your getting visitors that ARE clicking your affiliate links but still not getting sales…
a. Double check the affiliate links are working properly (people make this mistake a lot!)
b. Have you allowed for enough clicks? A 1% conversion rate is considered average. You really want to allow for a couple of hundred clicks before worrying that the offer doesn’t convert.
If you know the product sells just be patient… statistics sometimes throw us some curve balls.
c. If your still not getting sales… is the offer really relevant to your traffic? test another product / offer?
If you’re happy that the product is good, and your links are set up correctly, the problem lies with your content. Ask yourself how you can help your visitor more, see what other affiliates are doing… copy and improve on techniques you like.
d. Ask your mentor for HELP!
e. Never give up your’re really close at this point!
Wealthy Affiliate mini pitch…
If you’ve read this far you aught to give this affiliate marketing thing a go…
Dip your toe in the water…
See if you like it.
Here’s how, join me in the FREE for as long as you want it WA membership. Test out the PROVEN Plan, review the MENTORING, enjoy the COMMUNITY… No Hype, no pressure…
Click here To TEST making money as a WEALTHY AFFILIATE for FREE…
Thank you for reading this short series on “How To Guarantee” your affiliate profits… I hope you enjoyed it?
I strongly believe anyone can at least earn a nice side income from affiliate marketing.
Consistent effort, focus, and some perseverance combined with a proven technique really is all you need.
Good luck on your journey…
If you’d like more from me please sign up to my newsletter (Wealthy Affiliate Challenge), I will simply be sharing stuff I think will help you…
No affiliate links to distractions and stuff you don’t need…
Just stuff that is working for me and my friends (in WA).
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