Declining Sales in Affiliate Marketing! What’s going on and how do I adapt?
I don’t know about you but I what I have noticed the last six months or longer is, (I watch a lot of videos from top marketers… Russel Brunson, Anthony Morrison etc.) that the marketplace is shifting again as it often does.
The changes that I am talking about are the way that the big marketers are promoting their courses and such, to new players in affiliate marketing.
There is no doubt that increased interest in how to make money online in light of the YouTubers and influencers seem to be driving this trend. To me, it's just a shell game with the same results. Just dressed up and renewed in a fancier gown, mixed in with new technology (AI) showcasing the benefits of joining their lists.
The products they promote may be new, but the formula is still the same. Buy a product…sell a product and try to make a living in-between!
The result of this new wave is the amount of work that you need to learn and monitor, has increased. Whether it be to research your niche, your product, or narrow down your ideal customer. The best way to ensure success is to keep these fundamentals current in a never-ending flow of internet turbulence. Hence the extra work!
Keeping up with the flow is hard without a crew that’s watching your back! Not all Entrepreneur’s have staff to back them up. Money flows in and out like the tide, and the volume and consistency depends on the internet’s twenty-four-seven schedule. If you’re like me, I am sure you noticed this too.
Here is what I mean. Not too long in the past, funnels were the big thing, and setting up a website and pushing traffic to it was all you had to do to make money. You probably learned how to do that, or maybe you purchased traffic or even created your own lists from scratch. If you had money, you probably used paid traffic and joined Facebook groups etc., or other platforms to capture it and add it to your list. Then you continued to sell to them and run as a bona fide business. Many tried and many failed. I know I did!
The amount of money I spent was crazy. Having followed some courses and videos, podcasts, etc. did not give me anywhere the return I was looking for. In most cases, I bombed out! You may have to. As time went by, I managed to narrow down the money I spent. I reinforced my focus on relearning how to use the tools I purchased or was given to me to facilitate the work. The trouble was I could not learn fast enough.
Wait before you say it! I have been at it for a long time and I know what you’re thinking, but you are wrong. No matter how fast I learned, I could not factor in the changing landscape of Internet business. It was like preparing to go skiing only ending up at the beach! (Not a bad analogy!)
Okay, so I stopped to regroup and that is when I noticed that with Apple turning off their customer information, Facebook dealing with their Insights unbalanced and declining sales, and Google tightening up their regulations, I found that I had to revisit everything I was doing to make a buck online. Then throw in what has happened in the real world, (Pandemic wise), we all were thrown into a never-ending spiral of confusion with methods and courses, that literally changed overnight and were no longer valid. At least from my perspective.
In reality, if you had commissions on affiliate products, you might have seen a decline in sales, or the traffic you had been pursuing, decided to take an alternate route.
Contributing to this, obviously, was the ongoing promotion of the gurus selling their courses to new subscribers, with reinvented razzle-dazzle.
Even Amazon sellers took a big hit, and continue to do so as the behemoth continues to strengthen its rules and terms of service. With disruption in importing and exporting, with every Country dealing with the outcome of the Virus, bringing inflated prices, with increasing numbers we haven’t seen since your Great Grandpa was alive!
Now I know competition is competition, but when you have some time in the game, you begin to see patterns. Yes, I said patterns and no I am not a savant. The patterns I have come to notice are the promotions for affiliate marketing. They are being sold as a completely new thing. How to take advantage of it by jumping on this, or joining that, even new software that is being produced with AI (Artificial Intelligence) some of which looks very promising I must say, can persuade the newbies into joining up and delivering more commissions to the big Affiliate guys. Once they are there it is harder to market to them or ethically steal them as they are inundated by promos from these top affiliates.
Don’t forget, that most of the companies that pay big commissions, like YouTube and Facebook, and Google, have learned to tighten up the qualifications for you to be accepted into that pool of monthly earners.
The big affiliate marketers have adapted to it because they have the money and staff to look for the internet changes as they are implemented. As a result, they make money explaining it to their lists, generating even more income for them. I am not saying it is wrong, but I am seeing the pursuit of making a monthly income is now turning into a full-time job of mostly watching daily changes and not so much of making money.
In conclusion when you are keeping an eye out for trends, and following the latest software, you have to be careful that you are not sold the same things you already know wrapped up in a different package, with added bonus giveaways as an incentive.
REMEMBER
It’s still the same formula… find a niche…buy a quality product…sell a quality product… live on the difference!
Follow me as there is more to report like how influencers are changing the landscape, (not what you think) and some interesting things I have been able to put together. Talk soon!