SEASON 1 EPISODE 1
Welcome to The Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast

Episode Overview: Laying the Foundation for Affiliate Marketing Success

In this inaugural episode of the Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast, Paul introduces listeners to the world of affiliate marketing and shares invaluable insights to kickstart their journey. Discover the importance of mindset, the dangers of chasing shiny objects, and essential tips for building a successful affiliate marketing business.

 Benefits for Listeners:

• Gain a clear understanding of the affiliate marketing mindset.
• Learn how to set realistic goals and create a solid foundation for success.
• Discover practical tips to avoid common pitfalls.
• Receive actionable advice to help you start your affiliate marketing journey.

Tune in to the Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast for more in-depth information and expert guidance.

 Key Takeaways:

• Develop a strong “why”: Understand your motivations for pursuing affiliate marketing beyond financial gain.
• Create powerful affirmations: Build belief in your abilities through positive self-talk.
• Avoid shiny object syndrome: Focus on building a sustainable business rather than chasing quick wins.
• Take consistent action: Learn, implement, and iterate to achieve results.
• Prioritize help and service: Build trust with your audience by providing value.
• Invest in yourself: Maintain physical and mental well-being for optimal performance.
• Choose a niche and focus: Avoid spreading yourself too thinly.
• Utilize essential tools: Leverage technology to streamline your workflow.

Best Moments:
00:02:22  Mindset Tips from Successful Affiliate Marketers. Establishing the big reasons “why” you want to become a successful affiliate marketer
00:04:39  How to avoid “Shiny Object Syndrome”.  This is one of the biggest barriers to success. Learn what it is and how to avoid/overcome it.
00:06:02  Don’t be afraid of failure, it’s only temporary – Just keep moving towards success
00:07:13  Why you should keep yourself in the best possible condition.  In order to help others, first you have to help yourself! Get into the best possible condition (mindset included) to be able to help others.
00:08:00  Staying Focused. Don’t go off at tangents, keep working towards your affiliate marketing goals in a focused, sequential manner.
00:09:01  Setting Yourself up for Affiliate Success. Knowing all of the steps and carrying them out in order will help you to succeed in the Affiliate Marketing industry.

The Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Paul Scoplin, a veteran UK Affiliate Marketer with over 15 years in the industry and a huge desire to help others succeed.

• Download your Free Checklist to go with the Episodes Click Here for Your FREE Step-By-Step Checklist to Success
• Fantastic Free Book on Affiliate Marketing Click Here for FREE “Evergreen Passive Income” Book
• Resources and Tools mentioned in the Podcast can be found here: Resources and Tools

Complete Transcript – Episode 1

Hello and Welcome to the Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast!
My name is Paul Scoplin, and in this first episode, I’m going to let you know what you will gain by tuning into this podcast, let you know what content you can expect in forthcoming episodes, I’m going to give you an introduction to the affiliate marketing mindset and an overview of what you need to do to set yourself up for affiliate marketing success.

Firstly, a brief overview of myself and my goal with this podcast.
So, I’ve been Internet marketing since around 2006. I’ve had lots of failures, but also many successes. I’ve done search engine optimisation, local business marketing, YouTube marketing, affiliate marketing article, marketing, blog, posting WordPress websites and much more. But I now concentrate on affiliate marketing because it’s my preferred business model.

So I’m going to help you by giving you the information I wish I had when I started out. I’m here to help you potentially save thousands of dollars and many months or even years of your time spinning your wheels trying to figure this out.
I’m going to help you stop chasing shiny objects that only set you up for failure – and put you on the right path to your own version of success, whatever that may be.
Also, in future episodes, we’ll be doing deep dives into each area of affiliate marketing.

• Episodes 1 to 10 will lay the foundations for your affiliate marketing success.
• Episodes 11 to 26 will build upon that base, helping you generate those life changing commissions.
• Episodes 27 onwards will further build on the knowledge giving greater detail and the finer workings of affiliate marketing.
  So if any of these topics appeal to you, “Follow” or “Subscribe” to the Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast.

First of all, we’re going to look at the mindset required to become successful.
The first step on this journey is to establish your big reason why. So what is the reason or the big reasons “why” you want to become a successful affiliate marketer?
Now, I want you to dig deeper than just the money side of this.
Yes, you want to make money, but why do you want that money?
Is it for time freedom? Do you have specific goals that you want to achieve and affiliate marketing can get you to those goals? Don’t think just about the money.

Your “why” needs to be the reason you need the money. So feel free to pause the episode and take a while to write down your big reasons “Why”.

Now that you’ve established your reason or reasons why, the next step is to create some affirmations for your success. Now these are going to be very personal to you, but I’ll make a suggestion of one affirmation… Could be “I am a successful Internet marketer”. Now that is an affirmation you can use daily as often as you like and you use “I am” because that is present tense. And you don’t want to have the affirmation that I “will be” a successful Internet marketer because you’re keeping it in the future at all times, so you want it to be the present time. So the affirmation would be “I am a successful Internet marketer”. You may want to do your own variation on that, create your own affirmations, and you may also want to include your big reason why into your affirmations and again these can be used on a daily basis.
And I highly recommend that as it keeps you on track, keeps you focused. So the next step after finding your big reason why and creating your affirmations is to “follow” this podcast and go through the episodes in chronological sequence. I’ve deliberately laid these out in a step by step fashion so that you can achieve success in affiliate marketing.

The next step is to stop chasing shiny objects. The “Get rich quick overnight with this secret software” usually turns out to be a scam.
It wastes your time. It wastes your money. It keeps you spinning your wheels. It sets you up for failure. And it’s the downfall of most people who come into Internet marketing or affiliate marketing.
They buy these products, which simply do not work.
They’re setting themselves up for failure, and that’s the way it goes.
So be very careful who you listen to or follow and question their intentions. You can do that by looking at their actions – Now, are they out to help you, or are they just trying to sell to you?
That’s the way you determine if you should follow somebody, in my opinion – are they trying to help you or just sell you?

The next step is to take consistent action. Now you may need to do some learning for your next step. That’s fine. Most learning can be done online. Just Google or YouTube it. Learn what you need to do and implement. You can always change direction if you need to.
If you make a mistake, you can probably undo it. It’s only temporary.
If you make a video that’s Duff. You can take it down again.
If you do a bad blog post, you can change it so you have to move aside or get rid of any fear of failure you have.
Don’t be afraid of failure. It’s part of moving towards success. If nobody ever failed, the world would be perfect, and, it would be some kind of utopia. But we all know it isn’t so don’t be afraid of failure. It’s only temporary, and it keeps you moving towards success.

The next tip is when you get inspiration or a great idea, write it down.
Write it down straight away or record it into your phone. Otherwise you’re potentially going to forget it. Believe me, I know this from experience. I’ve had multiple ideas that I failed to write down thinking “OK, I don’t have a pen and paper handy, but I’ll remember this” – only to go ahead and forget!

And my next tip is: No matter what niche you go into, make sure you help others – serve your people well. You have to be of good service to your people because this is all part of building the “know, like and trust” element of your success. So serve others well. Help them to the best of your ability at all times.

The next tip for affiliate marketing success is to keep yourself in the best possible condition you can, so that you can help others, keep your energy levels high and have a good mindset.
So to keep yourself in the best possible condition, you need to keep your relevant skills up to date. But don’t overcook it and more on that in later episodes.
You need to look after your health so that you have more energy, especially if you have a full time job as well as doing this as a side hustle.
You’ll also need to invest in yourself in terms of self improvement, updating skill sets, learning from experts, etc. Now, none of that necessarily has to cost money. The investment could be in time. Most of what you need will be available free online and finally remain focused. Although we aspire to multiple streams of online income, it’s best to focus on one income stream to begin with and then keep adding to it. Otherwise, you’ll spread yourself too thinly.
And as they say, if you chase too many rabbits, you won’t catch any.

And the last tip is, keep on keeping on and never give up! Like most things in life that are worth achieving, it won’t be an easy ride all the time. So when things do get rough, remind yourself of your goals and your big reasons why and just keep on keeping on.
We’ll be taking a much deeper dive into mindset in Episode four. You can go straight to that one afterwards if you wish, but please don’t miss out on episodes two and three.

If you’re finding this material useful, there’s lots more to come, so please follow or subscribe to the Smart affiliate marketing podcast using the button on your screen.

Now the final topic for this episode is setting yourself up for affiliate success. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is finding a niche this will be covered in depth in Episode six. You can jump straight there if you wish, but make sure you come back to the other episodes and work through each episode in order for the best experience.

Next – Tools. Depending on your chosen niche and strategy, you may need software for images, photos, videos, content, creation and so on. I’ll be going into this in greater detail in Episode 10. But for now, my main tools are:
Canva – For all of my images, photo editing and much more.
I use audacity for audio content.
I use Snag it for screen sharing videos.
I use wondershare for editing videos
and for AI tools, I use Google Gemini for online research and Chat GPT for most everything else and for search engine optimisation purposes, I use “keywords everywhere” as well as plugins with WordPress, which again we’ll go through in a later episode (if you’re going to use a WordPress platform).

OK, I hope you’ve found this useful. If you have, make sure you never miss an episode by following or subscribing to this podcast. We’ve got lots more great content coming, so make sure you tune in and I’ll see you in the next episode of the Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast.
Goodbye for now.

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