Why Is Affiliate Marketing So Hard? (Everything Explained)

I know the feeling and I have been there as well. Affiliate marketing could come across as very different from what you are taught it is in the beginning.

What you learn is that all you have to do is spam products here and there on the internet and you will easily generate thousands and thousands of dollars in just a few days or weeks.

But that doesn’t happen and you feel like it’s not worth it or affiliate marketing is dead. But that’s not the case my friend.

In this post, I’m going to answer the question – why affiliate marketing is so hard, or why affiliate marketing is so difficult for beginners?

You can put the question in several different ways but the answers I’m going to share will apply to all of them.

So, without any further ado, let’s jump right into our pool and learn why affiliate marketing can be quite difficult for beginners and what needs to be done to make everything work.

1. The Increasing Competition

There used to be a time when not many people were involved in the affiliate marketing industry. Times have changed and today, more and more people are getting attracted to the industry because of the earning potential and business flexibility it offers.

Majority of the people or beginners are doing the same things. Everyone is writing the same kind of reviews, running similar advertisements on Facebook or Google, making the same type of videos, and even promoting the same products.

This is one of the most common reasons why affiliate marketing is so hard while executing, especially for beginners. There are millions of publishers and the majority of them use the power of affiliate marketing in some way.

Hence, if people see the same stuff over and over again, it’s pretty common the conversion rates will go down for individuals on average. People have so many options and they will buy after going through tens of other sources to make better purchase decisions.

The solution to this problem is quite simple. You are going to want to stand out from the crowd to attract people, make them stick, and convince them to buy through your affiliate links because let’s just be honest – more people are buying online than ever and there’s still a lot of potential…you just need to figure what works and that’s done by testing.

Every time there’s a loser, there’s a winner. All you have to do is figure out what the winners are doing and then instead of copying them, you are going to want to come up with something even better regardless of that being web design, video editing, graphic design, or the content itself.

2. The Rise Of Trust Issues

Another common reason why affiliate marketing is becoming more and more difficult with time is that people are losing trust. There are a lot of scams here and there and those haven’t stopped increasing either.

People have become smarter with time and if you still use the old ‘tactics’ or ‘strategies’ to mislead people and push them to buy something, that’s not going to work anymore.

It doesn’t matter if you see the big guys doing it. You will understand the power of being realistic and building trust when you do it. It’s much more powerful than any ‘tactic’ or ‘strategy’ out there on the planet.

This is a bit connected to the earlier problem of rising competition but you need to address this individually and specifically because trust is what this world is relying on.

You will have to attract people, engage them, connect with them as a person, and then after a certain period of time, you will be easily able to influence them for a better business and a better solution.

It’s not just the case with affiliate marketing, it’s an ethic or principle that applies to every other business out there whether that’s an online business or a brick & mortar business.

One of the best ways to build trust is being realistic and authentic to the audience. People don’t want advice or information from so-called experts, they just need a friendly suggestion/advice to make their lives easier than ever before. That’s the key to building trust and doing well than what an average marketer does.

3. Patience Is Crucial In Affiliate Marketing

I won’t stretch this generic topic much but it’s important to remind you once again that you won’t start making millions of dollars or even thousands in just a few days or weeks.

It is going to take some serious skills (which you will learn over time) and time before you will see any results. It’s common to very little results or no results at all in the first few days, weeks, months, and in some cases even years.

But the truth is, the one who never gives up till the end and sticks until he starts seeing any serious results, is the one who wins.

So, keeping showing up, keep learning stuff, keep getting better, and ultimately things will commence falling in an array for the better.

4. Promoting Products Without A Strategy

Strategy plays an extremely important role when it comes to affiliate marketing. You can’t just go out there and do anything and everything to generate commissions.

If you don’t have a strategy in mind or execution, all you will ever do is hope for sales to come in and that’s not how the process works. Everything needs to have a process or strategy in place to make things work.

Therefore, you will need to create an action plan of when and how you are going to promote products for them to sell effortlessly and generate affiliate commissions.

Decide whether you want to stick with blogging, creating content on YouTube, posting on Instagram, recording podcasts, running paid advertisements on Facebook or Google, do solo ads, or utilize influencer marketing.

Also, pick what kind of content you are going to create and what kind of products you will promote to generate consistent revenue every single month without having to work like a crazy 9-5 guy.

If possible, learn from the industry leaders and try to follow what works and what will work in the long run. This way, you won’t just hope for things to happen but rather make them happen.

5. Not Utilizing Email Marketing

You won’t necessarily fail with affiliate marketing if you don’t utilize the power of email marketing but you definitely will lose a lot of capital as well as fanbase if you don’t.

Email marketing is the most profitable industry that is already worth billions and billions of dollars and big companies such as Amazon, WordPress, Wish, and thousands of other ones are using it to generate a hell of a lot of money.

You will have to be consistent at it and create some more content to deliver to your email subscribers but you will also find that the sales and commissions will go up as well.

If you are interested in knowing various creative ways of building an email list, check out this guide.

The closing statement is: if you are not using email marketing, it’s the right time to go with it. You surely will find the process even smoother and affiliate marketing won’t come as difficult to you as it used to be.

6. You Haven’t Produced Much Content

Content is the real king in the online world. Whether it is videos, blog posts, social media posts, podcasts, or webinars…you have to put out content at scale before you expect any good results.

And when I say content at scale, I mean ‘quality content’ and not another mediocre content piece that everyone else is putting out. According to Ahrefs, more than 90 percent of the content gets no attention at all and the reason why this is the case is that either there’s is consistency from the creators’ side or on the other side of the table, the content is just not good enough for the web.

If you have recorded 20 podcasts, made 15 videos, or wrote 20 blog posts and you are expecting millions and millions of dollars in affiliate commissions, that’s not going to happen.

You will need to create more content to attract more people/buyers/customers. This is where the vast majority of the beginners get it wrong. It’s about both quality and quantity.

You should create more content and keep the pace up and running if you are serious about getting into affiliate marketing because let’s face it – it’s not even that easy and the story revolves around every other industry or business out there on the planet.

7. Utilizing Shady Promotion Strategies

The promotion strategies those gurus teach you on YouTube are far from reality in this growing and evolving world of the internet. Using strategies such as scarcity or doing shady tricks to get traffic is not a good way to do well.

You can’t mislead people by sending spammy scripts over and over again to people on social media, email, comments, or search engines.

That used to work back in the day and fortunately, this doesn’t happen in the current world of the internet. You have got to care about people and genuinely help them solve problems. You will be surprised by the results if you follow this ‘strategy’ instead of those shady techniques every other YouTuber teaches you.

8. Hard Work And Consistency

This is another generic problem why people find affiliate marketing so hard but I would like to sum this up in a few sentences.

Hard work and consistency are the two things that will make or break your marketing results. Not many people can put in the work and do what it takes to succeed in the affiliate marketing industry, if you can do that without expecting anything in return on a consistent basis, the traffic, sales, and commissions will follow along.

Hence, keep putting in the work continuously without expecting miracles and you will start seeing visitors/views/listeners/readers, and commissions as well.

9. Not Promoting High Ticket Products

Another reason why beginners find affiliate marketing difficult is because they don’t focus on promoting high-ticket offers. If you don’t know what a high-ticket product is, it’s a product that’s expensive than normal products.

The price and standards of high-ticket products differ from person to person but for me, anything that costs above a thousand dollars ($1000+) is a high-ticket product.

So, coming back to the topic, if you are not promoting high-ticket products, you won’t be generating influential commissions and this can lead to poor overall results.

Just think about it, if you make a sale and generate $5 in commission and on the other hand, you generate $500 on a single sale, which one would you like?

The second one, right? That’s what promoting high-ticket affiliate offers means. So, you should pick and promote some high-ticket offers as well.

10. Promoting Products You Don’t Believe In

It’s not always about the commissions companies or vendors offer. It’s about the quality of the products as well.

If you are promoting products you yourself don’t believe in, how can you expect others to purchase those? That’s just not very practical.

Hence, you should promote the products you deeply believe in. When you do that, you automatically will stand out of the crowd and jump the line because the content you will produce and the advice you will give will come across as more authentic and genuine.

That’s the key to a successful affiliate marketing business. If you want other people to believe in your products or services, start with yourself.

11. Intention Matters A Lot

The last reason why affiliate marketing is hard for you is because of the intention behind your promotions. If you are just promoting products to get people’s money, people can recognize that.

Grant Cardone says you will never be able to become a good businessman if you don’t have good intentions behind your work. If you actually care, people will recognize it and you will be rewarded for that.

Thus, your intention behind recommending an affiliate offers matters and you need to look into this quite seriously.

In Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is one of the greatest industries of all time that is helping people achieve financial freedom and live their dreams.

If you are a beginner and you are finding it hard, make sure you consider the things I just discussed above and take them seriously.

I hope you found this post helpful and if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to jump into the comments section down below and let me know what you think.

Why Affiliate Marketing Isn’t Working For You: A Practical Guide