Avoid Distractions
Avoid Distractions
This is just a short piece of advice brought on by many of the questions I see in Live Chat.
First of all, here is the simple path to affiliate marketing success:
- Select a niche that you will maintain interest in over the long term and that has affiliate vendors with quality products and decent commission.
- Get a relevant .com domain name.
- Build a website on that domain name. Don't fuss about theme. Understand that you can change it at any time, but you won't see much of an effect until your site is properly structured with header and footer menus, sidebar, logo and general "look and feel".
- Add the legal pages to your footer menu.
- Create About Me and Contact Me pages and them, along with Home, to the header menu.
- You can use Hubs to help with this, but learn how to build your website directly. Understand that your hub is not your website. It's just an aid to building it and creating content.
- Create content, specifically blog posts providing useful information in your niche. Include categories in your blog posts. Add images, but resize them to the actual size to be used first.
That's just the start.
Anything Else Is a Distraction!
Yet what I see over and over in Live Chat are people who've done little or none of the above (and certainly haven't applied to affiliate programs, haven't got affiliate products to promote, haven't created landing pages or product reviews and haven't considered engaging an autoresponder and using a Lead Magnet to start creating a list).
Yet they've found an esoteric plugin that might solve all their issues (spoiler: it won't) and are spending time in Live Chat asking for help with installing it.
Or something else.
Stick with the Basics
Look, the world of esoteric plugins or how to leverage social media platforms is an exciting one, but they are all just distractions until you have mastered the basics.
The seven items I've listed above are just the start.
Focus on them until you've got a structure strong enough to springboard off.
Recent Comments
50
Hi Phil,
Thanks for the bucket of cold water on my face, a wake up call and get back to basics because this is what it`s all about .
As a newbie and still building my website this advice is timely. Thanks for making time to share it.
Have a great day ...Good morning
So long.
Some good advice, Phil. Lately, I've noticed a lot of people asking questions about things they should not be doing because their site isn't loaded with content yet. Sadly, I am afraid they will be disappointed and give up because they are anxious to get to the end results without putting in the work. I think the distractions are not researching and trying to go the quick road of being told what to do instead of taking advantage of our excellent training and learning about affiliate marketing and how to do it correctly. It's totally different from asking for help if you are stuck and don't understand something.
I firmly believe that you need quality content on your site and some traffic before you try to monetize it. You need first to follow and understand the basic steps you listed above.
Nancy
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about, Nancy.
And I agree with you. They are setting themselves up for failure.
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Great message, Phil. I used to get hung up on all of that stuff like plug ins and things like that. Now, well, I guess with practice comes wisdom and the understanding that while a fancy looking website is nice, it is the stuff on the page that will make the difference in someone's life.
Master the basics! Yes, sir, you have got that right!
Karin
Thanks, Karin. Sounds like you "get it".