The numbers are pretty sobering but undeniable: most affiliates never gain any real traction and never make any decent money.
A lot of people will tout the 80/20 rule as being just as valid in affiliate marketing as in other life endeavors.
In this context, it would simply mean that 20% of the affiliates drive 80% of the sales.
But after working closely with and speaking with several affiliate managers over the years, I think the real numbers are even worse – there’s a closer to 90% to 95% failure rate in affiliate marketing! What this effectively means, of course, is that according to affiliate managers who have opened up to me, 5% to 10% of their affiliates will grab the lion’s share of all the sales made.
Your host here, Allan Gardyne, in his insightful article 12 mistakes affiliates make – and how to fix them, written back in 2004, stated this truth succinctly: “In most programs, 5% of the affiliates generate the vast majority of the sales. If you’re not in that 5% and want to be, you’ll have to change what you’re doing.”
The real question, at least in my mind, is this: are those 5% to 10% of “super affiliates” just smarter and more talented than you?
In my opinion, the answer is no.
I think the majority of people have the intelligence and desire to succeed at affiliate marketing and make consistent sales, but they lack the right connections and skill-sets and, as such, have the odds stacked against them from the outset.
I want to share some personal things that I hope will resonate with you. I want to share these things because I believe that I was (and in many ways still am) just like you, even if you’re not close to being a super affiliate yet.
Can you Build Great Looking Web Sites?
Many years ago, when I got started in affiliate marketing I used to worry a lot about the fact that I was not tech savvy. I didn’t know how to code (and I still don’t!). I know almost zero HTML to this day.
I really don’t know how to build web sites. If you asked me to build you a hand-coded site from scratch, I wouldn’t know the first thing to do.
Do you look at the exceptional site designs of super affiliates, and think to yourself: “I get how important this is, but I simply don’t know how to do it!”
Frustrating, isn’t it?
Can You Run Important Marketing Tests?
You know how all those big marketers are always telling you to test, test, test? Well, we all know it’s important but I didn’t have the technical capability to run elaborate split A/B tests, much less multivariate tests (where you test several variables at once.) If I asked you to run one today on your marketing could you set it up? If not, you’re frankly at a big disadvantage.
Can You Produce High Quality Videos?
Do you look at the sites of super affiliates with their fancy flash videos and think: “There’s just no way I can produce this stuff on my own.”
In John Reese’s latest Traffic Secrets 2.0 course he talks about how the Internet is evolving: ugly web sites no longer make the cut even though 10 years ago they did just fine; how video quality really does matter: the more professional it looks, the better the results tend to be.
In short, the bar is being raised and good design and eye appeal are becoming ever more important if you expect to compete as an affiliate marketer – and particularly if you want to become one of the rare, elite affiliates who consistently pull down sales day after day.
I am just like you.
If you feel like you are being held back by all of the aforementioned things that you simply cannot do or don’t have the time or money to learn how to do, don’t despair.
I, too, felt the same way.
Here’s the good news: you don’t have to learn all of these things for yourself. The simple answer to your problems is you need to leverage off the ability of other people who can do all of these things for you.
I’m not talking about going to elance or rent-a-coder and finding these people. That’s certainly an option, but let’s be blunt: there’s still a lot of work involved if you want to set about hiring a bunch of different people. And it’s often prohibitively expensive as well.
That’s why when I set up my training service, AffiliateArticleWriters.com, one of my core goals was to collect the best of the best people – true tech savvy people who could do all the things the big gurus always talk about doing – and combine it with my years of affiliate marketing experience and business thinking.
My ultimate goal was to create something that would allow the typical struggling affiliate who is smart and driven to leverage off all of this talent I’ve assembled in one place.
In short, our members succeed because they gain access to our hyper focused training and our creations. The result? They drive consistent affiliate sales in the most lucrative lifetime income opportunities.
What could you accomplish if technological and marketing hurdles no longer held you back?
An Example
In our most recent launch, we are targeting a lifetime income opportunity in the hair loss niche.
Our students get to leverage off our latest creation. You can see an example of here.
Could you produce a video and overall presell of this quality and compete with us if you were in this niche?
As you know by now, I couldn’t either – if I were by myself. Thankfully I’m not. It’s truly amazing what experienced and specialized team members can do once assembled, and then presented with an overarching vision.
As far as I know, AffiliateArticleWriters.com is the only affiliate training service out there that doesn’t just tell you what to do – go learn how to build and design sites, go learn how to shoot video, go learn how to do keyword research, pick money making niches, and so forth – but actually does all of this for you, so you are left to focus on your one and only responsibility: creating content for lifetime, recurring income via article marketing.
Make no mistake about it, creating that content is real work. It takes a disciplined and driven person.
But I’m guessing you might be one of them.