What Is The Biggest Mistake New Affiliates Make?

I was asked in an interview today “What is the biggest mistake new affiliate marketers make?” and I thought my answer was worth posting about (if I did say so myself…)

I believe the biggest mistake new affiliate marketers make is…

No, not the ability to generate traffic…

Not the ability to convert visitors into sales…

But in fact, the biggest mistake is…

To misinterpret what level of dedication and work is required to be successful as an affiliate marketer.

Which isn’t really the new affiliates fault, because they’re only believing what they’ve been told in sales letters. Nevertheless, there’s nothing that stops new affiliates in their tracks more than the realization that the money isn’t going to arrive as fast as they thought it “should”.

Hand in hand with this thinking is the mindset of “making money online” rather than starting a business. No one starting a business would expect enormous results, particularly not monetarily within weeks of startup, but people looking to “make money online” can’t help but be disappointed at such a situation.

So how do you avoid being a statistic of this mindset and really make it online?

1. Decide from right now that you’re going to treat your online activities like a business, and that business like you would your child.

If your child misbehaved or started not turning out like you wanted, would you “hop” to another child like you do with opportunities online?

If you’d started an offline business with a shopfront, big investment, man hours, the lot, would you change businesses within a couple of weeks of it not turning out how you’d planned?

2. Realize right now that your success is going to take time, commitment and a lot of work. I don’t care if you want a lifestyle business and only want to work 4 hours a week. Take it from someone who’s been in 7 countries in the past two months while running a business… a lifestyle business is awesome, but you don’t START OUT working 4 hours a day. You work your ass off when you’re starting out and then SLOWLY, it pays off and you get the opportunity to work less and less if that’s what you desire.

3. You focus. Plain and simple, you focus your efforts on the smallest possible number of projects, sites or businesses and don’t change until it either fails or it makes so much money that you can afford to outsource staff to help you start something new.

No one is a professional basketball player AND a professional baseball player.

And while Google now does web browsers, analytics tools, advertising, and more… they didn’t start out trying to do it all at once… they started as one thing and didn’t try anything else until that initial venture became a success.

By reminding yourselves of these three things every day you can dramatically increase your chances of becoming one of the few who “make it” not just with online business, but with life as well.