What Moves The Needle On Your Affiliate Business?

What moves the needle on your affiliate business? Are you taking those actions every single day? Chances are you’re procrastinating and doing things which don’t move the needle. Most of us have a leaning towards those things which we like, rather than those which make us uncomfortable. Unfortunately it’s often the “uncomfortable” things which are going to make the biggest changes for your bottom line.

With me, I can definitely say I’ve procrastinated away from the uncomfortable things with my affiliate business. Only when I focused on the things I did not like to do did things move in my business. These were (and still are):

• Learning about tracking, data and numbers
• Creating videos and content
• Running and cross testing advertising campaigns
• Growing the email list

I could write blog posts all day long and they still won’t move the needle on my affiliate business. However, I find myself writing this post all the same, since my ad budget has run dry and I have lots of time currently! That’s my excuse anyway!

What Moves The Needle On An Affiliate Business?

The “needle” refers to your income needle. For a long time I focused on a single particular strategy which was fraught with difficulties. I build niche websites in the hope of landing an affiliate sale. This made me very good at creating websites and building content – which I can almost do in my sleep now. Unfortunately my income was pretty sporadic when I started out as an affiliate and so my habits got built around content generation – creating blog posts and videos. Sadly this is a slow and labour intensive way to build an affiliate business.

To change things quickly with affiliate marketing, you need to figure out which actions lead to the best outcomes – more sales. Then, make habits out of performing those actions over the long term.

Watching training video after training video I learned a lot. However, I still gravitate towards my favourite go-to actions – blog posts and emailing my list. Email the list is also a good one to move the needle, but it’s far better to focus on actions which grow your list first! A small list can only give you a small income.

Zooming In And Out With Your Affiliate Business

Zooming in and out of your timezone on your affiliate business is a good idea. By this I mean take a long term view of your affiliate business (and life) over the next 10 years.

What do you want your affiliate business to look like in a decade? How about 20 years? Now zoom back in to the present day. Are you performing the actions which will lead to your longer term goal? If not why not? It’s probably because sharpening your pencils feels good and keeps you safe.

We are hardwired to “stay safe” and there’s plenty of evidence to show this. Unfortunately this can massively get in the way for us when we want to build an online business.

Our “safe” little bubble keeps us performing those actions we like, rather than those which move our business forwards. So if you’re busy wasting time, sharpening pencils, browsing social media or chatting with friends, you need to keep you 10 year goal in mind.

See also mindset of successful affiliates.

It’s A Numbers Game

Remember affiliate marketing is a numbers game and although it can be easy to get caught up in the trenches, you also need the “bird’s eye view” on what you want from your affiliate business. Endlessly watching training videos or posting on social media is not going to move the needle of your income from affiliate marketing.

Testing advertising is something you want to focus on because it has the power to drive your affiliate business forwards in leaps and bounds once you find a profitable campaign. While posting content can work in a slow progressive sense, again, it doesn’t do the heavy lifting like a paid marketing campaign can.

Paid advertising is scalable so it’s worth pursuing if you can afford it, even if you only start with a small advertising budget you can afford.