Complete Transcript – Episode 3

Is Affiliate Marketing Right for You?
Assessing Your Suitability for Affiliate Marketing.

Hi and welcome to the Smart Affiliate Marketing Podcast.

My name’s Paul – and in this episode, I’ll be helping you decide if affiliate marketing is the right business model for you.

All right, first up, let’s talk about the personality traits that you’ll need to become a successful affiliate marketer.

The first one is motivation and self discipline.

You’ll need to be highly motivated to stay on the affiliate marketing path because there will be times when things get difficult and you’ll feel like giving up because you’re making no income and you’re putting work in – Nothing seems to be happening.

You’ll need to have your goals, your affirmations. You’ll need to be determined to succeed so that you don’t give up – so you can use the affirmations that you developed during Episode one.

 And your goals – Keep those at the forefront of your mind to stop you from ever giving up.

The next personality trait is being able to learn new skills.

You need a certain flexibility and agility in learning.

OK, so most of what you need to learn is freely available online, you just need to search for it.

You don’t need to buy an expensive course to learn every single step of affiliate marketing. You just learn each skill as and when you need it, and this is hopefully something inherent in you already, or you wouldn’t have got this far, quite probably.

If it’s not, it’s something you may need to develop.  

Again, You could Google how to develop my learning skills.

The next personality trait you’ll need is the ability to create content.

Now, AI can help you a great deal in this respect. So in terms of being a writer, it’s not as important as it was, say, five years ago, because you have AI tools that can help you write content.

My own view is that I wouldn’t have a I write an article and just post it as it is. I believe it requires a human touch. It will require some editing to make it more human like and remember that online people buy from people, and if they feel they’re reading something that’s written by an AI bot or a robot, they won’t warm to you.

And warming to you is part of the selling process, so make sure that your content is not straight out of AI – make sure it has that human touch and make sure it can connect with people.

So your content creation skills will need to be honed so that you become personable, friendly and people will like what you write.

Another trait you’re going to need is the ability to think analytically, to look at problems and situations and find solutions.

If you’re already good at problem solving, that’s great. That is an attribute that you’re going to need. If you’re not so good at analytical thinking, maybe you could develop that skill in your spare time.

The ability to communicate.

Now, again this often comes back to content creation. But if you are going to be creating videos, for example, then you will need good communication skills. Again, these can be learned, and I’m not going to delve too deeply into those in this episode.

Your interpersonal skills.

Your ability and your desire to help other people because this desire will actually shine through. And when people think that you are helping them, they’re going to warm to you, They’re going to appreciate you and they’ll want to reciprocate.

The next trait that you are going to need is resilience and persistence.

Now this is for a number of reasons, but primarily because it can be so easy to give up. Giving up is the easy option, but you have to remember your goals. And if you give up affiliate marketing, you’re basically giving up on your goals and you’re letting yourself down.

Now, you need to be your own best friend and make sure you are persistent in working towards your goals. Affiliate marketing is the route. It’s the A to B, from where you are now to where you want to be, and giving up should not be an option for you.

Honesty and transparency are also attributes you are going to need.

So many people believe that you should blag people, you should trick people, you should be a confidence trickster if you want to make sales. Personally, I do not subscribe to any of that. I subscribe to honesty and transparency. I don’t believe in tricking people. I don’t believe in lying to people or doing anything dishonest because, quite frankly, once you’re found out, your name is mud, your reputation is ruined and people will no longer know, like or trust you.

My advice then is, to be honest in all of your online dealings.

And the final trait I’m going to suggest you need is patience, particularly when waiting for that first income, the first income to land into your account and patience when waiting for your results to be forthcoming.

It can be that you have to work hard for a number of days, weeks or even months before you see any results whatsoever. Now this does depend on the methods you use, which we’ll come on to in later episodes.

But patience is going to be critical, and you cannot expect to do some work and for money to flood into your account overnight. It simply does not happen.

Depending on the business models you’re going to use within affiliate marketing and the traffic sources you’re going to go for. You’re going to need skills such as content creation, marketing skills, search engine optimisation and understanding of analytics. All of these skills can be learned.

Now, don’t feel that you have to learn all of these at the outset before you can get going. Basically follow this programme through – follow my podcasts, one by one, you will understand each step and you can delve deeper as and when you need to learn something new. You don’t have to learn everything at the outset to become successful. In fact, if you do that, by the time you get through all of that learning, new things would have come out and you will have forgotten what you learned initially.

So it’s best to learn as you’re going and implement right away, because without some sort of doingness, you’re going to quickly forget what you’ve learned.

Don’t make this a massive learning exercise. Basically, instead of learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, it should be learn, implement, learn, implement, learn, implement. And that’s the way to succeed.

Time commitment.

You’re going to need to expend a certain amount of time in this.

It can be a side hustle at first, but it is going to require a large amount of effort on your part, particularly if you’re new to this and you’re learning new skills as you go.

If you’re more experienced, then it will take less time because there is less of a learning curve to go through.

But you must be prepared to commit and invest some time into this.

In terms of financial investment, it doesn’t have to be a massive investment. The basic costs you’re going to need are perhaps website hosting and domain registration, perhaps some marketing tools that you’re going to need. But again, these are not necessarily going to be expensive.

There are premium products you can buy, but to get started, I don’t recommend you buy the premium products. You can start on lower plans, even free plans with some software providers just to get you going.

And then, as you ramp up your efforts and you become more successful, you can always increase those plans to take you to the next level.

So my advice on this is not to be too frivolous. And don’t feel like you need every bit of software going at the outset. It’s better to be frugal to keep your costs down as much as you can at the outset. And then as your income increases, you can look to increase your software, your tools and so on, which will help take you to the next level.

But again, compared to a traditional business, the financial investment required is absolute peanuts. You don’t need thousands and thousands of pounds or dollars to get started. You can get started for nothing, but ideally, you will spend a little bit on website hosting, domains and so on.

My best recommendation for somebody starting out is a platform called SystemE.IO, and there will be a link in the podcast episode notes, which you can find on your device.

The final tip related to your personality is your passion and your niche. The importance of choosing a niche you’re passionate about cannot be overemphasised, because the passion you have for your niche will fuel your content creation and help you connect with your audience.

If you’re passionate about it, your energy will filter through to the audience, and it will show that you are an expert in that niche and somebody that is worth listening to.

If you choose a niche that you’re not passionate about, you’re soon going to lose interest in it, especially if you see no financial results.

So that’s pretty much the personality traits wrapped up.

Some additional points are you may decide affiliate market isn’t for you, so there are alternative online income options, such as selling and creating your own digital or physical products or you could become freelancer to sell your own products or services online.

There are many free resources online that you can use to take advantage of whilst you’re getting started.

Again, I recommend system E dot IO, and there is a link in the podcast notes.

Another free resource, for example, is this podcast.

So make sure you’ve liked, followed or subscribed so that you don’t miss an episode.

You can also find me on YouTube, the smart affiliate podcast vlog

and that just about wraps up the additional points I wanted to cover.
So the burning question is, Is affiliate marketing right for you?

We’ve gone over the skills and the qualities that you require for success.
You’ll need persistence and ability to learn new skills.
You’ll need flexibility, and to a degree, you need to be tech savvy.
 But there’s nothing too onerous. You don’t need to be a tech whiz kid. You just need to be a little bit savvy.

You also need to consider your own goals, your interests and the resources available to you.

Again, the resources you’ll need will not cost you very much.

My opinion is this is an ideal side hustle (if you have a 9 to 5 job) that you can develop in your spare time and build it up to the level you require – And then you can say goodbye to your job, if you so wish.

OK, I hope you’ve found this episode helpful.

Again, feel free to follow or subscribe.

In the next episode, I’ll be teaching super useful information about having the right affiliate marketing mindset.

This will be a deep dive into the affiliate marketing mindset that you’re going to need to really help you build a long term, sustainable affiliate marketing business.

OK, we’ll see you in the next episode. Goodbye for now