Affiliate Marketing - How Negative Thinking Creates Failure
Surfing the web you come across a great new method for promoting an affiliate offer. You follow them step-by-step but in the end see very little results for all your hard work. Sound familiar? If you're like most new affiliate marketers (myself included) the problem could be that negativity is interfering with your work and throwing off all the results.
Once you've found a method or tactic you want to use you need to schedule it into your routine. Many people use online calendars but I prefer another method. Using MindMaps I assign each type of task to a different day of the week. Under the types I put a node for each specific thing that needs to be done. If a task is large then you can break it into smaller nodes. For example if the task is writing an eBook to give away to build your list then you can break it up by chapters and go from there. The software I use for this is called FreeMind it is open sourced, java based and absolutely free.
Another common problem is that during the promotion a step will inevitably come up that either requires sophisticated software or technical know how. Trying to learn everything yourself can eat up your time and leave you with a sub-par results. Buying software tools for every job can get rather expensive and you still must take the time to learn all the ins and outs of each. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is hire someone else who has already learned how to do what you need done quickly and pay them to do it. Fiverr.com is great place to find people to do design work, landing pages, photos and videos.
Whatever you do don't get a stuck in a cycle of negative thinking and poorly executed affiliate campaigns. Break free with a well researched plan that you're confident in, expect there to obstacles and push through them until the plan is completed.
How Negativity Affects Your Work
The problem with negative thinking is that it will eventually infiltrate everything that you do online. Many times it arises at the very beginning of the process as you are deciding on a method or tactic for promoting an advertiser. You may have done plenty of research on the method and seen others using it with good success. You want to try it yet there is still a voice in the back of your head saying "Maybe this won't work for me" or "I've never really been good at that type of promotion". As soon as these thoughts take over you will most likely fail even if you take action. Why? Because those actions will not be taken with confidence. Each action taken will be half-hearted because people don't put 100% into something that they don't really think will work. Invariably you will start thinking "I'll make it perfect once it starts showing that it will earn me some money". That's the wrong way to think about things, in affiliate marketing one detail being off or not looking professional can obliterate your chance of making sales.How To Correct Your Thinking
The way to change your thinking and your results is to build confidence in your plan. First only focus on plans that apply to your level of expertise. If a plan relies on email marketing for example and you don't have list or have a very small one, you will have zero chance of success. Also, try to look for something that you know is already working in your niche. Search for the most popular sites in your niche try to discover what strategies they are using to promote offers.If it's working for them then it should similarly work for you as well. You also need to have a realistic view of the method you have chosen. SEO for example is a long term strategy that builds on itself over time. PPC on the other hand should start bringing more immediate results (when executed properly). In almost every plan there will be some unexpected obstacle that pops up. It may be a software glitch, a PPC ad that gets rejected, SEO links that don't seem to be building traffic. Try to learn to expect there to be obstacles to your success and push through them.Once you've found a method or tactic you want to use you need to schedule it into your routine. Many people use online calendars but I prefer another method. Using MindMaps I assign each type of task to a different day of the week. Under the types I put a node for each specific thing that needs to be done. If a task is large then you can break it into smaller nodes. For example if the task is writing an eBook to give away to build your list then you can break it up by chapters and go from there. The software I use for this is called FreeMind it is open sourced, java based and absolutely free.
Another common problem is that during the promotion a step will inevitably come up that either requires sophisticated software or technical know how. Trying to learn everything yourself can eat up your time and leave you with a sub-par results. Buying software tools for every job can get rather expensive and you still must take the time to learn all the ins and outs of each. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is hire someone else who has already learned how to do what you need done quickly and pay them to do it. Fiverr.com is great place to find people to do design work, landing pages, photos and videos.
Whatever you do don't get a stuck in a cycle of negative thinking and poorly executed affiliate campaigns. Break free with a well researched plan that you're confident in, expect there to obstacles and push through them until the plan is completed.
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