When people look for advice on how to become an affiliate marketer, they often don’t consider the fact that they’re not just setting up a website or promoting links through social media or newsletters. Actually, they’re business owners. And being a business owner can be a wonderful thing. It means that you’re working for something that you truly believe in, that you can decide the direction that the business takes, and that you can be your own boss. This gives you the fulfilment of chasing your dreams while also allowing you the flexibility that a 9-to-5 job lacks.
Being a business owner can also be stressful and hard, and there might be times that you don’t even enjoy it all that much. When things go wrong, you’re the one who has to handle it. When sales are down, you feel the effects. When the business fails, it can feel like you, too, are failing. While starting an online business is certainly less difficult than starting a brick-and-mortar business two decades ago, there is definitely a reason why people don’t all just quit their jobs and set up their own biz. Successful business owners might make it look easy, but just ask and they’ll let you know about some of their bumps along the way.
Everyone is different, but there are a few qualities that make a truly amazing business owner. If you don’t feel like you have the qualities here, then know that they are traits that you’re able to develop and cultivate over time. Which of these would you say describe you well?
Having A Realist Attitude
A negative attitude is just going to bring everything and everyone down. There will be natural ebbs and flows in the success of your affiliate site, especially in the beginning, and if you let that get you down then it’s going to make the whole process unbearable. The truth is, even during the difficult times, business owners enjoy what they do.
You also can’t be too positive, either. In many ways, you do need to be planning ahead and predicting future problems that might happen, and simply throwing your hands in the air and saying “C’est la vie!” won’t solve your problems.
The middle ground is having a realist attitude. This means you’re able to assess the situation for what it really is, while at the same time not being too positive or negative about it. You can incorporate your goals into what you envision for the future, but you also can look at what’s going on around you and decide what the best plan of action to get there is.
What this means for affiliate marketers: don’t expect hundreds of thousands of dollars in your first few weeks or months working. Decide how much you’d like to make per month off of affiliate sales (coffee money, rent, or your entire living) and decide, based off of your current situation, how you can achieve that.
Able To Solve Problems
Think about one of your first big jobs. When you ran into a major issue, you likely reported it to someone to take care of it. Well, when you’re the owner of your own affiliate site, you’re the one responsible for every single problem that comes along. This doesn’t just mean that you quickly try to resolve the issues so that they go away—it means that you look for lasting solutions so you don’t have to deal with them again.
Part of being a problem solver as an affiliate marketer means having the skillset to deal with whatever you may encounter. This usually means a bit of know-how regarding websites, using the internet, social media, or other technology. If you’re looking to expand your knowledge regarding these topics, I highly recommend Affilorama. They have amazing intro courses about SEO, content creation, site building, and more.
Part of being a problem solver also involves knowing when to hire someone else to do the work. You might know your way around WordPress like a pro but have no clue had to change the appearance of your blog’s theme. Instead of spending hours looking at YouTube videos and confusing online tutorials, know that it’s perfectly okay to outsource for things you just don’t have the best grasp on.
What this means for affiliate marketers: constantly be trying to improve your skills as an online business owner but also knowing when you really need outside help.
Adventurous
Starting your own business is a scary thing, but the best business owners embrace this fear and go full-force anyway. It doesn’t mean that they don’t feel frightened; instead, it means that they bravely move forward with their ideas. If you want to be a successful affiliate marketer, you have to be different than the others in your niche. You can’t simply mimic what someone else is doing and expect success. You must think up new, exciting ideas and a way to implement them.
This requires an adventurous spirit because you must be ready to succeed and have some failures along the way—which, let’s be honest, is never the most enjoyable feeling in the world. But it’s helpful to remember that great success requires some amount of risk!
What this means for affiliate marketers: a good affiliate marketing website (or newsletter, social media platform, YouTube channel, etc.) is different than the other ones out there in some way. This might require you to try something a little different, but it could pay off big.
