3 Skills You NEED To Succeed As An Affiliate...

[Joseph Ratliff]

Ahhh, so much information.

If you look hard enough, you can literally put together an entire course on affiliate marketing right here at this forum.

There is literally a treasure trove of tips, tricks, and strategies right here at 5-Star.

But wait, something seems to be lacking? There is a foundation to be built before you can build the "house" that will be your affiliate business.

And that foundation starts with 3 core skills you need to develop before you start talking about tactics, tricks, strategy or anything else. These skills are SO important in fact, that without them, all of the tricks in the world will be totally useless.

Here they are, in random order:

1) You need to develop direct marketing skills.

The ability to discover a market's problems, promote your affiliate offers (the correct ones), make a promise to your market, SEO/content marketing, driving traffic, testing offers, tweaking offers, and most importantly understand the marketing process (and it's differentiation from selling) are critical to your success as an affiliate.

2) You need to develop selling skills.

The ability to sell, convert traffic into commissions, persuade, write advertising copy, develop strong calls-to-action, create systems to automate the selling process (along with understanding it's differentiation from marketing) are very critical to your success as an affiliate.

3) You need to develop strong business-management skills.

Affiliate marketing is NOT a hobby. It's also not just a way to make some money IMO... it's a business. And you need to learn how to operate it like one. This means work at your business, make intelligent business decisions, scale and outsource as you feel necessary, and building a business.

Affiliate marketing is not easy. It's promoted as an "easy money-maker" because of its deceptive simplicity. It's in fact one of the most challenging and rewarding ways to build a business.

So that's what you need to learn how to do, learn how to build a business. There are no shortcuts, no magic tricks, no free rides, and here's a big one:

There is NO such thing as free advertising or marketing, unless of course you don't place any value on your time!​

All part of a business-building mindset.

So there you have it... 3 core skills you must start developing now to run a profitable affiliate business. I recommend you start by going down to your local library and looking in section 658 for some resources to get started.

 

[WebReviews]

Thanks Joseph for a great post. I think a lot of people initially feel that if they are not making money within a week or two with their online business, that the wole thing is a scam. However, I think you said it right; its just like anything else in life, and starts with a solid foundation. A concept which is unfortunately overlooked by most new internet marketers and been honest I was guilty of that too!

 

[Ron Killian]

Great post, thank you Joesph

I think another big thing is they need to be totally movitated and believe beyond a doubt, that they can do it. Just see so many doubt themslves or what they are doing and they give up.

 

[duplication]

The first thing you need to know is how to build web pages.

The second thing would be learn where to advertise your affiliate links.

The third thing is to learn how to write a good subject line. To catch the eye of your prospects.

 

[yanamk]

Affiliate marketing being an online business relies a lot of visual representation and illustrations of the product you promote. Your site needs to be professionally looking, the message you sent to your visitors must be clear (click here, sign up now, top, best - the shinny buttons help a lot).

I agree that affiliate business is not a hobby. And if you threat it as a hobby, it is likely not to bring much income to you. There is a lot of work and motivation involved. It is hard but fun at the same time

 

[Tempo]

True. The quality of the content is what matters the most. Getting the people to your website but keeping them interested enough to stay.