Affiliate Marketing Lessons Learned From The Bowling Alley
Here’s another guest blog post by my bud, Susanne Myers of Daily Affiliate Tasks. In addition to being one of my favorite people on the planet, Susanne is a successful niche affiliate marketer, too, and is also my mastermind partner.
Turning this over to Susanne. Enjoy her brilliance!
Affiliate Marketing Lessons Learned From The Bowling Alley 
By Susanne Myers
Learn Susanne's system here -> Daily Affiliate Tasks
I’m sitting in a bowling alley as I’m typing this watching my daughter and her friends bowl. I know, it’s a weird place to work, but hey … I’m not a big bowler and one of the big advantages of being an affiliate marketer is that I can work just about anywhere. As I’m watching all the fun and excitement here, it struck me that there are quite a few lessons to be learned from bowling.
Lesson #1 – Practice Makes Perfect
Let’s start with the obvious lesson here. The more you bowl the better your score will be. The same holds true when it comes to building and marketing small websites that are monetized with affiliate offers. At first things can seem a bit overwhelming and you won’t always get the results you want. But as you stick with this business model and get better at your craft, it will become easier, more fun and most importantly more profitable to be an Affiliate Marketer. We’re not born with the skill set it takes to make this work, but a little practice each day helps to hone our skills.
Lesson #2 – They Can’t All Be Strikes
Even if you have bowled for 20 years, I’m sure you can’t throw a strike every single time. The same is true in online marketing. Not every niche website you build will be a big hit. Some may only make you a handful of dollars each month; some won’t make any money at all. Not every mailing you sent out to your list will work as well as anticipated. I’ve had some that resulted in only one or two sales… but that’s ok. They can’t all be strikes and if you pay attention to what’s happening and listen to your subscribers, you can learn something from each of those “flops”.
Accept that they won’t all be strikes and move on. Most importantly don’t let this fact discourage you. Keep working away … stick with what you know works and sooner or later, you’ll get that big strike in the online world.
Lesson #3 – The Right Equipment Makes A Difference
Have you ever tried bowling in your street shoes or with a playground ball you had laying around the house … it doesn’t work very well, does it? The same holds true for affiliate marketing. Like in bowling, you don’t need a lot of equipment, but getting the right stuff in the beginning helps set you up for success. Don’t try to build your site on a free platform. Get a webhost, buy your own domain name and start stuff of right. I promise it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.
When you start to build your list, stick with a reputable service like Aweber or Feedblitz. Set a little of the money you’re making aside and invest in new courses and eventually some coaching. Attend some events and conferences like NAMS. Reinvesting in your business is one of the best ways I know to really grow things.
Lesson #4 – Keep it Simple
Bowling is really a rather simple process. You look down your lane and roll the ball, hopefully knocking out lots of pins in the process. There aren’t a bunch of fancy techniques. You just do what works and keep doing it turn after turn. Sure there are some variations depending on what pins you’re trying to knock down, but overall it’s pretty simple and something you can explain to a 5 year old.
Look at affiliate marketing the same way. Sure you could do all sorts of elaborate and fancy stuff, but what works is doing the simple stuff and doing it over and over again. You know that guest blog posts like the one you’re reading right now work to get more traffic to your site and to help with search engine rankings. Sit down and write some of them this week. The same goes for articles… they still work as well. Add more articles and blog posts to your own site, submit some to article directories. Keep it simple and work on what works.
Lesson #5 – You’ve Got To Ignore The Noise
This one isn’t very easy, but I can tell you from experience that you have to work on tuning out the noise, whether it’s the bowling alley noise on your next turn to roll (or while you’re trying to work in this place), or the noise of emails, tweets, and the latest and greatest tip, advice or product offer in the online realm. There will be all sorts of distractions that will keep you from completing the handful of tasks each day it takes to grow your online business.
Don’t let the latest email or webinar distract you from what it takes to grow your site. Yes, there is a time to learn more and implement new ideas, but don’t allow it to take over your entire day. Make a list of things that you should be getting done today, work on those first and then take a look at the other offers, courses and ideas. In other words, don’t get distracted by all the noise around you.
Lesson #6 – Coaching Helps … Or even just a few pointers
Right in front of me a dad is showing his son how to hold the ball and throw it straight down the lane. The little instruction is making an immediate difference in the boy’s score. Sometimes all it takes are a few pointers. Talk to other affiliate marketers, find a mentor or hire a coach. Take a look at some good courses and most importantly apply the tips and strategies offered. Then watch as your own score (your affiliate income) improves.
Ready for more tips on how to grow your affiliate income?
Join Daily Affiliate Tasks.com for $10 per month and work on things that actually work to bring you more traffic, more subscribers and make more affiliate commissions working as little as 30 minutes per day.
Learn more and join today at www.DailyAffiliateTasks.com
Want More from Susanne?
Here are some places you can learn more..
- Free Affiliate Marketing Fast Start Lessons
- Daily Affiliate Tasks
- Susanne has also shared great information all over my blog. Click here to learn more from her
James Artre
January 19, 2012 at 10:24 amLesson #5 – You’ve Got To Ignore The Noise
AMEN!
This is the best piece of advice of all the points listed.
You must fight to block out all the “chatter” online. And just as in the bowling alley, you must focus all your energies at what lies in front of you in order to have the best chance at making a strike.
Great tips, all!
Be good to yourself,
James
Susanne Myers
January 23, 2012 at 6:07 amThank you James. Yes, the “noise” thing is a constant struggle but well worth ignoring as best as possible.
Dave
January 20, 2012 at 8:41 amOne of the most important things I learned in marketing was the idea of simplicity and not striving to “reinvent the wheel”.
I’m guessing that also holds true to bowling balls! A valuable lesson alongside drowning out the noise. I am trying to coin my own catchphrase around meditation! lol
L
I look forward to your next post…
Dave
Susanne Myers
January 23, 2012 at 6:10 amExcellent point Dave – Thank you. I kept trying to “reinvent the wheel” myself in the beginning until I had some excellent teachers point out that it would be much more profitable to go after proven markets – and meditation is certainly one of those. Which reminds me, I need to get back in the habit of meditating regularly. It works wonders for my ability to drown out the noise.
Chris Cobb
January 20, 2012 at 8:51 amLesson #3 — The right equipment makes a huge difference in productivity. Why spend an hour doing a manual task when a piece of high or low technology can do it exactly the same in 5 minutes?
As someone who can easily be distracted by the noise, I have to be careful not to grab every tool that hits my inbox, but without some key tools, I couldn’t get as much done in the same about of time.
Susanne Myers
January 23, 2012 at 6:12 amI completely agree Chris. I can’t even imagine running a website without WordPress anymore. And before that I was excited about getting and learning FrontPage. My very fist website was handcoded in html. Adding a single new page to my site would take me at least a day. Now I can have a new blog post up in less than 15 minutes. Can’t imagine doing this and being as productive as I am now without tools.
Love your affiliate toolbox by the way. Another great time saving tool.
Annerly King
January 20, 2012 at 3:21 pmVery entertaining article. It takes some time to know what works and what doesn’t in affiliate marketing. Some niche markets you just cannot build a list in. They’re too small and the subject matter is just not interesting enough. I’m talking about physical products markets here.
Annerly
Susanne Myers
January 23, 2012 at 6:17 amThank you Annerly. It always helps me learn when I read something that’s a bit entertaining at the same time.
When you’re talking about physical markets, yes it can be hard to build a list if the focus is too narrow. For example, let’s say you have a mini site on Keurig Coffee makers … it’ll be hard to build much of a list there. Instead, I would focus on building a group of related mini sites and then creating a more broadly themed list that covers all of them. For example, you could build several coffee maker related sites and then set up a “Coffee Lovers” newsletter with quotes, pictures and coffee related news. Within the newsletter you could rotate through the products on your various affiliate sites.
Vernette Carbon
January 21, 2012 at 8:48 pmTurning off the noise…lesson #5 used to be my biggest barrier. There is always someone doing this, selling that, information overload is what I call it. I used to buy so many WSO products from the Warrior Forum. It was absolutely ridiculous. Have I implemented 99% of those programs that I purchased a few years ago? Nope! If we can all turn off the noise and focus on that specific goal that we want to accomplish, then we will succeed. I had to learn that the hard way. Thanks for sharing this great article.
Susanne Myers
January 23, 2012 at 6:23 amVernette, I have entire hard drives full of small info products like that (including plenty of WSOs) that I bought and never taken the time to go through and implement. There’s just something about buying them that makes you feel productive and like you’re making progress.
I started by unsubscribing from a lot of lists. I know what works – it’s the basic stuff that takes some work, time and effort. So that’s what I focus on… Writing a lot of great content and sharing it across the web – like guest blogging for example.
What helps me more than anything with accomplishing goals is to list them, with a timeline and then creating daily task lists that help me reach those goals.
James | Bodyweight Exercises
February 24, 2012 at 1:57 pmPoint number 6 needs to be underlined and in cap locks! Having a coach in internet marketing (or any endeavor in life) can be the difference between making income or just doing this as a hobby.
Thanks for sharing this list.