Affiliate Marketing

How to Be Successful in Affiliate Marketing (10 Pro Tips)

Last updated on May 7, 2018 by KJ Rocker

Table of Contents

Introduction

Everyone wants to be successful in affiliate marketing.

However, not everyone has got the street cred and respect that KJ Rocker has been able to get throughout a super successful career!

Meaning?

That it’s time for you to sit down, pay attention and learn how to become successful in affiliate marketing with one of the game’s true pros!

How to Be Successful in Affiliate Marketing

I have been in the affiliate marketing industry for over 7 years now.

During these 7 years, not only was I able to be a successful affiliate marketer, but I have also been fortunate enough to help out many others, like me, to become successful.

Some of my students became top affiliates of affiliate networks.

Some made decent money, while there were also those who couldn’t achieve success at all…

Thinking about all these successes and failures, I always ask myself an important question:

What does it take to become a successful affiliate?

It’s always hard for me to come up with an answer.

However, I always try to come up with some sort of plan for an answer.

So here are 10 steps to become successful in affiliate marketing!

1. Love What You Are Doing

I always keep this as number one.

If you don’t love what you do, you can never become successful.

If you are just doing it for money, then there is no difference between you and a marketing company employee who is bored as hell at his job and hates it.

Yet he keeps on doing it as it’s paying his bills.

In affiliate marketing, it’s essential to love what you are doing.

Otherwise, you won’t be able to come up with new ideas and marketing angles, which are essential to success as an affiliate marketer.

2. You Will Have to Learn to Take Baby Steps

Want a $5000 profit on your very first month?

Back up!

There is no click button formula, or magic money making software that you keep seeing on business opportunity offer sales pages.

To make $5000, first of all you will have to make $1, and that’s the hardest part.

Then you need to turn that $1 into $10 and so on…

It’s a complete learning process, and it takes time.

You cannot expect money to fall in through the roof within a few days of starting affiliate marketing.

It’s a science:

You will have to understand the psychology of your customers, understand their behaviors and practice a lot.

So it may take anything from a few weeks, to months, depending on how quickly you pick up things and learn.

3. Learn from Others

This is another important step.

Learn from people who know their stuff, stalk your seniors, see what they write about, where they write, how they do things.

There are so many ways to do so:

You can either pay your senior affiliates to teach you skills, or join affiliate marketing related forums, Facebook groups, Skype groups, etc.

The best bet would be to hire someone to teach you.

By doing this, you will be able to get their proper attention.

This could be a bit costly, though.

Normally, a private mentor will cost you anything from $1000- $10000 for their private coaching.

However, if you can’t afford that, your best option would be to gather 5-10 other affiliates and raise some money for group classes, or even ask your affiliate network to hire your favorite coach to teach their affiliates.

Yes, that is possible.

Many affiliate networks hire coaches to train their affiliates and all the expenses are borne by the networks at no cost to affiliates.

If you attend affiliate marketing events, here is a pro tip:

A drunk super affiliate is your best friend.

4. Learn About the Product You’re Promoting

Never promote a product you have no idea about.

Always do research, see what the product is about, what are its advantages and disadvantages, and so on.

Also, it is important to know why this particular product is better than its competition.

Learn about the market.

By this, I mean what product features are available, which are not available in competitor products, how is your product better, and why customers should buy it over the competition.

5. Be Consistent

Never let failures get you down or hinder your path to success.

Failures are what makes you successful.

So instead of giving up, get up again and try figuring out where you went wrong and correct yourself.

Personally, for all my students, this is the most important phase.

After teaching them about everything, I leave them on their own to see if they can find out their mistakes and correct them.

Those that try and be consistent finally come up with a solution and those who can’t be consistent get left behind and lose track of their path.

This can link back to if you love what you are doing, you will definitely come up with some sort of solution and fix your problem.

Instead of just giving up.

6. Make a Plan

Having a plan is always important.

When you start promoting an offer, think about it from the point of view of a product owner.

If you owned that offer, what you would do?

Since I was 15 years old, I loved to write down business plans, what business I want to run, how I want to run it, what I want that business to have in it, what products I want in it, and how I am going to market it.

All those plans used to go straight into the bin, but that gave me enough skills to plan my campaigns properly.

It gave me the right mindset to look at all the aspects beforehand.

Right from choosing the offer, to promoting it, and what to do if my campaign fails, and so on.

Learn More: Media Buying Strategy: The Beginner’s Guide

These plans have helped me big time in my affiliate marketing career.

A quick re-cap!

Use the 5 Ws:

What, Who, Where, When, and Why.

7. Build a Strong Reputation in Your Niche

Affiliate marketing is not as simple as it used to be a few years ago.

Nowadays, it’s more sophisticated, advanced and profitable.

What I always suggest to my students is the following:

Instead of just building a one-page campaign, work on building assets, funnels and things which have value.

Stick to one niche and master it.

I have been following this rule for years, but it’s more important now, as it not only helps you to earn your visitor’s trust, but also work with exclusive advertisers which no one else has access to.

8. It’s Never Too Late to Start

“Affiliate Marketing is dead.”

I have been hearing this since I started affiliate marketing.

It can never be dead, but merely peaking as technology rises.

I started with promoting CPS offers on 7search, a PPC network.

At the time, everyone was complaining 7search was a dead traffic source, but it worked out pretty well for me.

Yes, Affiliate Marketing is dead for those who were using shortcuts, as the shortcut approach never lasts long.

Affiliate marketing is more profitable than ever before.

The only thing you need to understand is how to adopt new techniques and technology.

Play with new advertising platforms, new ways to target your audience, attract their attention and trial new marketing angles.

The affiliate marketing industry keeps on evolving and you have to be able to adopt the changes fast.

9. Build Your Team

Day by day, one-man operations are becoming harder and harder, and affiliate marketers are converting from one-man operations to small businesses.

There are many reasons for that, but one of the major reasons is that – by having your own team – you can get free time to enjoy your life.

Also, instead of one person, you can have 3-4 people working on a campaign, which brings in more ideas, improvement and more variety in your campaigns.

Which results in better results.

10. Stay Active

I will be honest:

This one is the biggest challenge you will ever face.

Even so, to become successful, it is very important to be active and, for that, you will have to keep your mind fresh.

Practice exercise regularly, rest properly, keep a healthy lifestyle in terms of relations, diet, and your general outlook on life.

Many of you may perceive affiliate marketers as sloth-like individuals, but this isn’t healthy for your work, nor your social life.

It is very important to stay active because affiliate marketing demands creativity and you can never be creative when you are feeling lazy or tired.

To be quite honest, I still encounter such hurdles.

However, I have noticed, even if I work for as little as 2, 3 hours with an active and fresh mind, work is always more productive and the outcomes are better than if I’m working for a week in laziness or tiredness.

So, the lesson here is simple:

It’s always recommended to start working when you have a fresh mind, when you are motivated, and energetic to get your shit done.