4 Reasons People Are Failing Affiliate Marketing

Introduction: Failing Affiliate Marketing

My friend Adam Payne posted a rant in his Beers With Adam Facebook Group all about why people are failing affiliate marketing.

A little about Adam – he is a former school teacher who has carved out a niche in Internet Marketing in Video Marketing. He runs a video marketing membership and promotes a range of products in Internet Marketing and a few other niches always using video. I met him quite a few years back at an Internet Marketing Summit in Japan. What I like is he calls a SPADE a SPADE. His English humour works for me too.

His rant resonated strongly with me as it highlighted so many of the things I have struggled with. So I asked him if I could share his post as a guest blog post. Now I have made a few edits – the swearing has been left in as it serves a powerful purpose.

Adam Payne’s Why People Fail Rant

Sit up and take notice before you get smacked with that SPADE. Anything added in is in square brackets and his rant is indented. If you hate bad language, exit now = no hard feelings

I am going to go on a rant here but the target is YOU! Well, maybe you and maybe not you.
Depends who YOU are.
– If you are already succeeding and making money [online] then this is not for, nor aimed at you.
– If you are brand spanking new, then this is not for YOU either, but be warned. You may become ‘this’ person.

Now, if you are STILL struggling despite ‘trying for a long time’ then it is for YOU.

If this post angers you, makes you want to lash out at me. Good!
Hopefully It might wake you the fuck up and light a fire under your arse.

And if you still want to blame everyone else, then this whole game might not be for you.
Not everyone is cut out for it. There’s no shame in that. Some people feel more comfortable working and providing a service for money as opposed to being an entrepreneur. And that is a good thing.

But it seems everyone wants the good stuff, without doing what’s needed.

So…
What has prompted this? I’m tired of seeing a lack of focus, a lack of discipline, a lack of seeing things through long term from so many people in my ‘social media world’. I see it everywhere. I see folk in here, who are in a gazillion other groups all commenting on posts, all wanting the ‘info’ all liking posts and dabbling in stuff but never ‘doing’ anything.

Nice, good folk for the most part. All wanting to make money but not prepared to do what it really takes. Many of these people Email me privately or PM me on FB asking for advice of various kinds. I do not mind this and am happy to help and I do 99% of the time. Yet ‘almost’ no-one acts on what is given. That requires too much effort I guess. My advice is not what they want to hear. I do not provide the elusive hack or loophole they think exists. Not that secret traffic source or software that claims it’ll make you filthy rich.

People like to ask but hate to commit to ‘doing’. And I mean really commit. Like the one guy who, after a year still has not chosen a fucking niche. Or the other person who has ignored every bit of advice I have ever given and is now desperate and still wants my time. Or the person who has joined VMI [Video Marketing Insider] 4 times, yet I have never even seen a damn video and still see him asking for info on every fucker’s clickbait shite.

Some of these folk have been booted from here already. Some other fucker can have them.

Why do people act like this? Why do seemingly good folk, not want to commit to anything? People make so many excuses
+ I’m too old (Never too old)
+ I do not have the money (enjoying cable TV though)
+ I do not have the time (lazy fucker)
+ Lack of tech skills (outsource that shit)
+ Add something else here….

You know…
I had zero tech skills or business experience. I worked full time 6 days a week. I got home at 10 PM and then struggled to make head or tail of training I had invested in. I had no savings to invest in higher-ticket stuff (but I was resourceful enough to get it and find a way). I’m no-one special and many folk are much more successful than me. (What equates to success is open to debate).

But I put in the work (made shit loads of mistakes) and once I got rid of the excuses, gradually made some $$.There are ways around ALL the above excuses.

But…
It ultimately comes down to a few things.
Let’s look at them:
+ Lack of hunger
I do not care what you tell yourself, many of you do not have the desire to make this work. And hunger cannot be taught. Even when I was struggling I knew I would make this work. But I also knew it would not happen if I kept making the same mistakes.
+ Unrealistic expectations
You cannot expect to do things for a week, a month, heck even a year and suddenly be great.
If someone who could not read music nor play a single chord picked up a guitar and practised 4-5 times a week for a year, they would prob[ably] still be pretty basic. But they would be much better than a year ago. Still not gonna get in a band or be able to play to a high level though (unless you are some rare gifted phenomenon).

Same online. So, you took a course and still are not rich after 6 months. Guess what! That’s fucking normal. Especially if you were brand spanking new when you began. Seriously, what do you expect?

ANY new skill takes time, focus and discipline to get good at. But no, you expect results after 6 months and when they do not come, you join a new program, or worse yet, try 20 new things all while trying to get good at the first thing. It’s nonsensical.

+ The main one: Lack of focus/discipline

You need to focus like the Kingfisher in the image. There’s lots to learn in becoming a digital marketer or someone who can make a living online. And it’s not helped when you jump from cock to cock [shiny object to shiny object]. And this is what many of you are like. Cock jumpers who have zero game plan but are happy to buy an Instagram course, then apply it for 3 seconds before you buy a new plugin to put on your site that test zero visitors and makes the Elephant man look like a Victoria’s Secret’s model.

Look…
We all wanna make money. But ask yourself how!! And I do not mean in the tech sense. I mean what do YOU have, that can help a group of people. If you can help a specific group of folk move forward, then you can set stuff up to make money. Look at your skillset, your interests and then see if you can identify a pocket of people that you can help. Not finding some crap WarriorPlus offer and trying to flog it out of desperation.

Or joining a program that teaches you how to sell that program. Things like MOBE got shut down for a reason. If you are good or experienced in something, then why not set up a newsletter that you charge $4.95 PM (for example) that targets one group of folk. Maybe it’s parents of toddlers as an example. This is a group of folk that will never disappear. If your stuff is good, even when the toddlers get older, the parents will buy stuff for kids, teenagers etc.…
That’s one random example.

But everyone wants to join Internet Marketing. And teach folk how to make money when they have made none themselves???? If you MUST go that route, get good at one aspect. Tracking, copywriting, WordPress, FB ads…whatever. Practise what you preach and sell your courses or tools on it. BRAND YOU as the expert, not another person.

The other option is to choose ONE business model. Years ago, I chose video as my ‘thing’ and still do it today. No fucking about trying to dabble in PLR or E-com or Kindle publishing. For the record, PLR and E-com or Kindle publishing are all great models but you cannot be good at it all. So, I chose ONE thing.  Let’s say you resonate more with the E-com model. Then go for that.

Invest in something from someone who is doing well and stick to it. But fucking commit to it. And do not complain when, after 3-6 months, you’ve made no money. There is a lot to learn. Especially if you are starting from scratch. And you have to have self-discipline and focus.

I know nothing about E-com, but I do know that I’d need to research and validate a niche, find stuff to sell, set up a store, automate things, learn traffic, tracking, invest in ads…. ALL of these are skills. It would take TIME, SELF-DISCIPLINE, TRIAL AND ERROR, INVESTMENT & FOCUS!!!

If you suddenly open your emails and see someone promoting a new IM offer and you go the sales page, then use your brain. Learn to say NO. If it truly can help you move forward then BUY it but only if it can help you.

SO… If you chose to follow the e-com model and you think my VMI course (as an example) can help you get more exposure to your store then get it. But use it! If you are unwilling to make videos, or have too much on your plate then do not.

S I M P L E
Speaking of my VMI course I see these issues there too. Some people join, knuckle down, learn and implement. Not everyone posts or tells the world about it but this is what some do. Several of these folk are not in here nor the VMI FB group but we speak via email. Well done to those people. Others do fuck all, leave, then amazingly, come back, then do fuck all again, then leave, then come back. WTF?

F O C U S

Rant over, not because I finished all I want to say, but because my hands are tired of typing
Cheers for reading
PS…I do want EVERYONE to succeed. But it’s plain to me at least that only a few will. No naming names or any of that. Make sure that you are part of the ‘few’.

My Take on Failing Affiliate Marketing

Wow that was something. Adam made a blog post to which he added a video. In that video he highlighted 4 reasons people are failing affiliate marketing (based on a survey of his group members)

• Focus: Build the discipline to focus on one thing and get good at it.
• Overwhelm: Say no to things that might distract you or you might not complete.
• Mentorship: Find someone who is ahead of you to guide you.
• Laziness: Do the work.

I would add back to the list: unreasonable expectations. There are no silver bullets, shortcuts, secret hacks. So many of those shiny object salesmen are using selling techniques to bullshit you – to relieve you of your hard won cash. All there is, is hard work with a clear strategic framework and following a detailed and crisp process

Now I also made a video looking at Adam’s 4 points and telling my story against those 4 points. Am I failing affiliate marketing? I was for a long time for the reasons Adam mentions. Check the video

 

How do I stand on this score? I have been active in Internet Marketing since 2012. I have been guilty of many of the things that Adam laid out. Too many niches. Flip flopping from new software to new software. Looking for quick wins – SEO for example, PBN’s, auto social media posting, push button website in my niches, scraped content, etc. My story is a wreckers yard of partly completed projects or projects not fully followed through.

The Importance of Focus

They all come down to the first point above. Focus. I know that I have some strong capabilities. I really thought I could get traction on each of those projects that I started and that I could keep them all moving along. Truth is I would inch something along until it got traction and then shift focus to one of the other niche areas and start to inch it along. Then a new shiny object that promised a new level of automation and I would add that project and go back to inching it along alongside the others. I can not really say I nailed any one.

Now there is one area which Adam did not touch on but it was highlighted by one of my Internet Profits Partners. Peter Codrington talked about the interplay between automation and engagement. I am a technology geek and have been for a very long time (40 years in 2021 is a very very long time). I am a big believer in automation. I have built a complicated web of automated systems that find content, add my branding to it and post it back out. It all works (until the platforms change the rules and the technical interfaces) but it fails the test of engagement – I need to do more to add a layer of engagement especially with people who interact with the automatically posted stuff.

Mentorship is an interesting topic for me. In my whole career as a university student, as a management consultant and now as an Internet Marketer, this is something I have not leveraged at all well. I have always had a strong belief in my own capability and have pushed hard to keep learning new stuff, to stay at the forefront of new developments. Internet Marketing has been a little better – I have gone through some stages of leaning on different people who were pushing the edges in ways I liked. But I have not used it as well as I could – not enough phone calls or email exchanges.

It is more than 18 months since I did narrow down the focus of my Internet Marketing effort as an Internet Profits Partner. As Adam says, it would have been really easy to give up after the first 6 months of not making sales and more. My partner, Dean Holland also suggests we focus on one traffic source (two really – one paid and one free). I have done that too – I have built a sizeable list from one traffic source. The source, solo ads, has its challenges. The leads come off someone else’s lists and I do not know how they were cultivated and nurtured. Some do respond to the Internet Profits stuff . That said I have stayed focused on this type of traffic and keep adding from the same source. The art is to find their hot buttons, promote a wider range of things. In time I will have to dump the non-responders. I am steadily working through that in a focused way. People do sign up for a reason – just got to find what it is.

Being Strategic: Failing Affiliate Marketing

I like to step one step further back to highlight what is behind Adam’s 4 reasons. It is also in my video

1. No strategic framework – nobody teaches this stuff or uses one
2. Shiny object salesmen using NLP techniques to get you to buy – they create the unreasonable expectations and you fall for it (me too)
3. Shoddy products that do not work or do not keep up. They result in failing motivation and the reach for yet another shiny object.
4. Lack of clear process steps

Check out the video to see what I mean by that and come back for the lesson

Get a strategic framework that works for you and deploy only the things you need when you need them – i.e., when your process steps tell you it is time.

Resources

Beers With Adam – check out his blog post to watch his video and join his Facebook Group. Be warned this is a no links and no bullshit group. If you do not like direct way of talking then stay away.

Affiliate Oracle: Adam has a great training program for Affiliate Marketing. He very carefully walks through the things you need and tells you when you need them. He will get you on the right path. Get access here