I had a bit of an interesting e-mail from Mike recently asking for some guidance on whether his affiliate income aims were realistic or not!

Here’s his question…

Kirsty,

Thanks!

I think aiming to earn $100 a day is a good aim to have BUT (and lord you must have known there was a but coming). If you’re still at the stage of trying to refine your niche ideas and really work out where you will make this money from, you may be getting a little bit ahead of yourself. Don’t get me wrong here it’s absolutely correct to set yourself financial aims, something which has been a huge motivator for me. I don’t want to put you off, but you have to consider that lots of affiliates have been trying to make money online for a year or even two and still haven’t reached the goal you’re talking about. The thing with affiliate marketing is that it is all very much down to the individual. One persons ability to make $100 a day is very much different to another person with the same aim. So you might get $100 a day in your first month, it might also take 2 years.

Some of the reason for potentially taking a while (or never) to make affiliate cash is EXACTLY what you are facing right now… Where the hell do you actually make this money?! The other part is the really important bit of what I’m going to tell you – people set themselves these kinds of aims, fail to meet them because they can’t find their “affiliate mojo” and they get disheartened. However, in my opinion it can be overcome and your earning power speeded up if you deal with things in the right way.

So keep your $100 a day in your mind, but don’t focus on it. First of all….

Find Your Affiliate Mojo!

LOL. The first thing you need to do is find that product that’ll make you go “Yeah Baby, Yeah!” I always tell new affiliates its SO important to find an area that you are passionate about and try to find something in that area you think you can make work. If you try to do something you don’t give a toss about just because you’ve been told you’ll make a killing, you’ll get bored and most likely fail. It’s basically because you can’t identify with your buyer (something you get better at as you go).

A couple of things I’ve written about that might help you: -

How To Find Your First Affiliate Niche
http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/getting-started-as-an-affiliate/ask-kirsty-how-do-i-find-my-first-affiliate-niche/

There’s a fair bit in there that will try to give you insight into how you should think to find that first place to make yourself a bit of cash.

Top tips from Super Affiliates – I went to the Meet the Super Affiliates Panel at the A4UExpo last year and took a note of the success tips the 4 panelists were handing out.
http://www.affiliatestuff.co.uk/general/top-success-tips-from-super-affiliates/

Then…

Start Small And Build It Up From There…

One of the most pertinent points in the articles above was that you should start small and build your expertise around a small area. I agree wholeheartedly. Once you’ve perfected your technique in your small niche you will be able to re-use the same method to build traffic and drive sales in other areas – and scale up your income. Find one thing that has really worked for you and then use that to find lots of other little things that’ll line your pockets.

So, this has been an incredibly long winded way of saying this to you – Don’t focus on getting $100 a day. Focus on getting your first sale, then focus on how to get another one, and another, another, etc. Compartmentalise your aims. First of all aim for a sale a week, a sale per day, 3 sales per day, 13… and the $100 will take care of itself. The main thing is that you should always be setting yourself small goals and working towards them constantly. They work so much better than one big aim which is designed to achieve all your aspirations. Forgetting to take account of the small achievements can really drag you down.

Its really important to get your mindset right to do affiliate marketing. I know a LOT of people who could make bags of cash as affiliates and they know too. But they just don’t… because their mindset is wrong. They can’t motivate themselves to get to where they need to be with things.

So yeah, that’s how all the above can be summarised. “Yeah, $100 is no bother at all. BUT you need to make sure you motivate yourself to get it!”