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While last in the list of reasons you fail at affiliate marketing from this week, it is the most common plague I see new affiliates suffer from. When you’re building a new affiliate website, you’re usually filled with motivation.
From design, to content, to strategy, to promotional avenues, you’re filled with ideas and excitement. You talk about the site incessantly to friends, business partners or your significant other.
You pull more than one “all nighter”, staying up until 3 a.m. finishing up a section. You scroll up and down the page simply admiring the product of your work. This site is going to be big.
You take off that robots.txt and anxiously wait for Google to spider it. You watch and make sure the pages get indexed and start seeing where your base rankings are. You might even launch an initial social piece to help start getting it some visibility.
And then it happens. The “development and launch phase” is over. The site is complete enough for the moment. It now needs you to market it. You’ll need to do boring directory submissions. You’ll need to start reaching out to other folks in the industry and pound the pavement to develop links. It all seems so mundane. Where is the excitement you felt a few weeks ago? It’s gone and your desire to work on the site wanes.
You procrastinate. You look for other things to do, possibly things on the site to fix to try and recoup some of the spark you had when you initially worked on it. But it doesn’t work.
But then, you get another idea for a new site. You’re feeling excited and rush out to buy a domain. You look up at the clock after what you thought was ten minutes and realize it is 4 a.m. And you watch history repeat itself.
Most affiliates who have failed to be successful financially with affiliate marketing, if they look at themselves honestly, can usually open a proverbial shoe box of these abandoned sites. Hell, even those of us that are successful have a few of these sites laying around.
I refer to this as “thrill of the chase” syndrome because it reminds me of the guy or girl who likes dating and wooing someone to be “theirs”, but soon gets bored of the relationship once the honeymoon phase is over and it starts requiring real effort to maintain and develop into something much more meaningful.
If you want success with affiliate marketing then you need to work through The Dip.
“It’s human nature to quit when it hurts. But it’s that reflex that creates scarcity. The challenge is simple: Quitting when you hit the Dip is a bad idea. If the journey you started was worth doing, then quitting when you hit the Dip just wastes the time you’ve already invested. Quit in the Dip often enough and you’ll find yourself becoming a serial quitter, starting many things but accomplishing little. Simple: If you can’t make it through the Dip, don’t start.” - Seth Godin
I’m sorry if you were expecting secrets this week, but in reality, it is the obvious things that seperate success from failure in affiliate marketing.
- Work hard and reward/motivate themselves by playing hard
- Stay focused on what matters
- Don’t look for the easy way out
- Never stand still
- Work through the dip
All you have to do is decide if you want to succeed or fail in affiliate marketing and act accordingly.
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I can relate to this big time! I have TONS of projects that I have abandoned as a result of quitting during the dip. The only way i can think of combatting this is to stretch out the development process and really take your time getting others thought and advice before launch. This way you are making that transition from the thrill to the grunt work longer, and hopefully minimizing the Dip.
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< raises hand. I’m definitely guilty of this one on some level. While I’ve definitely seen a lot of projects through, I also have a grip load of half baked websites lying around just waiting to be finished. I partially chalk it up to lack of interest in the particular project or subject though.
I’d also add that if you find yourself continually in these situations you need to find a way to make it work for you. For some people, this is just how their personalities work and it’s not a bad thing, unless you make it a bad thing. Consider bringing on a partner or hiring someone that is strong in the areas you’re not, otherwise you may never complete a project.
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It’s almost like I knew this post was coming…and I knew it was going to wag a giant finger RIGHT AT ME. As usual, Rae…you couldn’t be more right. I currently have two affiliate sites, one of which I actually started working on this morning after months of woeful neglect. The irony is that I started working on it long before reading this post just now. Like I said, it’s like I knew this was coming.
Thanks for the kick in the ass. I think I needed you to call me out, albeit indirectly, for being a lazy quitter in order to realize that I’ve got no one to blame but myself for the fact that I depend on a paycheck instead of working for myself.
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I suffer from this problem like most drug addicts. I have an addictive personality, and a very short attention span. (side effect of being a Gen-Y child) I find it difficult to stay with one thing for very long, thankfully I have encouragement behind the scenes and I am able to stick with what is important. If not for having support, I would definately bounce around like Rae talks about in the article!
I think this is where partnering comes in if you can’t exercise the discipline to avoid doing this.
Find a balance and work hard on a system that works and if you’re successful with it you may actually be able to do what you do best - create concepts and execute on them - letting someone else be responsible for certain aspects beyond that.
um, yeah. It’s called sticktoitiveness, the lack of which has been the bane of my entire existence - but I’m starting something now that’s gonna be freakin’ hawt! ;-)
In all seriousness though, the proliferation of such behavior is in part due to the marketers (and I use that term loosely) whose entire business model is built on selling dreams rather than teaching reality.
Spend an hour a week in front of the computer in your underwear and you’ll be filthy rich!
Not.
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Yeah, don’t get me wrong - having a partner has been good for me, but I still own other sites outside of that partnership and can’t always depend on him to get my ass in gear, if that makes sense ;-)
@paul everyone is always looking for the silver bullet (see #3 in the series LOL)
Then again, if the habit was really really really bad, a person could do alright. A few hundred half finished websites could generate a decent income…
I think this one of the key problems most developers have, they spend ages designing and developing a site, but when it comes to marketing they get lazy and leave the site, in my eyes half done.
I agree with eathan though, having a 100 half finished sites could still help generate a decent income with a little luck, but still nowhere near the potential income of 10 well made marketed websites.