The Five Features Of Fearsomely Successful Affiliates (8)
The Five Features Of Fearsomely Successful Affiliates
What do successful affiliates all have in common?
We're a super-varied bunch, after all. There's no fixed line on age, location, background or career training. You don't need a degree in marketing, statistics or computer science - hell, you don't need a degree. (I don't have one.) Top affiliates come from every continent, every lifestyle and every outlook on life.
But there are a few - very few - traits that most, if not all, successful affiliates share, and which are uncommon in other people. And it's a large enough sample size that it at least strongly implies you should probably cultivate these traits if you want to be a successful affiliate.
They're "lucky"
Affiliate marketing is a game of luck, there's no doubt about it. Most campaigns won't work. Most offers won't work.
And so, most successful affiliates have been lucky quite a few times.
But there's a twist to this. To misquote Thomas Jefferson, "I'm a great believer in luck. The more campaigns I launch, the luckier I get."
Stackman, one of STM's founders, runs a lot of very big campaigns - campaigns he had to be lucky to find. How does he find them? He forces his luck. Here's his explanation of how he found a single $x,xxx a day campaign - it involved testing more than 50 campaigns to find it.
Likewise, Charles Ngo first hit success as an affiliate when he found a "lucky" campaign - after 6 months of 7-hour evenings running unsuccessful ones.
Successful affiliates test. A lot.
They run losing campaigns. A lot.
And that's why they're so damn lucky.
They keep moving forward
A lot has been said about the virtues of hard work, but it's possible to work very hard and not actually achieve success. The difference between that and what successful affiliates do is that successful affiliates keep moving forward.
That can be as simple as keeping testing new campaigns rather than just getting stuck trying to make the same one work over and over again. Or it can be as dramatic as what Alex "Angry Russian" Tsatkin did - closing things down and moving back in with his parents to give himself time to make the next big leap in his career.
As an affiliate, it's very important to learn the difference between motion and action. It's very important not to get hung up on any one thing: I've noticed over the years that most successful affiliates are far more likely to quickly and brutally kill campaigns.
STM itself is no exception to this rule - that's why we're constantly doing new things, from the amazing 6-week Affiliate Mastery Course to the - well, I can't talk about it, but it's very cool and it's being announced next week.
Moving forward might even end up taking you out of affiliate marketing altogether - it has for many affiliate success stories. But then it often takes you right back in, but in a different direction!
A related quality to this is making decisions quickly. Successful affiliates usually make decisions very fast. A lot of the time it's better to make a sub-optimal decision now, and then deal with the consequences, than no decision at all - and then deal with the inaction.
They network
OK, there might be some super-affiliates who are exceptions to this rule, but I don't think there are very many. By and large, successful affiliates talk to people.
This doesn't mean that they're super-well-known. For every superaffiliate blogger, there's a quiet guy who doesn't post much but is doing 5-figure days every month.
But that "quiet guy" still talks to people. He talks to networks, he talks to fellow affiliates, he talks in private little mastermind groups.
He goes to conferences and talks to people to find out what offers, what traffic sources, are coming up. He talks to website owners to get exclusive media buys that no-one else is even aware of.
He talks to his affiliate managers and negotiates payouts that mean he can outbid his competition.
Why is this so powerful? Two reasons. Firstly, because all of this business is, at the end of the day, built on people.
And secondly, because it's hard. Networking is inconvenient - it means you have to travel. It's scary - you have to take the risk of talking to people you respect, and everyone finds that at least a bit scary. And all of that means that most wannabe affiliates won't do it - which gives an unfair advantage to those who do.
They train their strengths
A lot of beginning affiliates worry about their weaknesses. They wonder if they should learn to code, or learn to maintain a server, or learn statistical math.
Now, I'm on record as saying that all of those things can be good ideas.
But the key thing that most successful affiliates do is to focus on what they're really good at, and not worry too much about the rest.
Stackman, for example, didn't run tracking software for the first few years of his affiliate career. MrGreen jumped into affiliate life with, as he put it, "nothing but a knowledge of Photoshop", and made a million dollars.
By contrast, bbrock32 used his knowledge of technology and focused on that to dominate first Web and then mobile.
Bruce Lee taught this principle in Jeet Kun Do - “Focus on your strengths and they will overcome your weaknesses.”.
Super-affiliates recognise the same thing that Bruce Lee recognised. There's no such thing as a "best" approach to affiliate marketing. There's just a best approach to affiliate marketing for you.
That doesn't mean completely ignore things you're not great at. Stackman might not have run tracking but he certainly kept an eye on his ROI. However, once you've got the basics down, focus on the strengths you can use to destroy the competition.
They Have A Why
And this is probably the most important quality of all.
Nearly every top affiliate's drive to do what they do stems from knowing why they do it.
Everyone's "why" is different.
Kokofai does what he does to support his family. That's what gave him the drive to get through his learning years, to test campaign after campaign - and business after business.
Tim Tetra does what he does because he, more than anything else, values freedom. That's why he's been running businesses since he was 11, and that's what fueled his drive to get to the top of the affiliate game.
One of the reasons that affiliates are such interesting people is that it takes drive to get to the top, and that drive comes from our "why". That's why you'll meet people from such a wide variety of walks of life at an STM conference - because it's the powerful "why" that got them there.
And if you want to succeed in AM, above all else, be clear about your "why". What is it that drives you to succeed? Is that drive powerful enough, is your desire for the end of the "why" great enough, that it can support you through whatever the business throws at you?
If so, I have no doubt you'll succeed.
I hope that was interesting! Are there any qualities you think I've missed from the list? Post 'em below!
Thanks Caurmen.
Great boost for me, and I'm sure for alot of us, who are doing work now. 
great post caurmen!!!
"Or it can be as dramatic as what Alex "Angry Russian" Tsatkin did - closing things down and moving back in with his parents to give himself time to make the next big leap in his career. "
I would love to hear that story. living with your parents, now that takes balls of steel!
great posttttt
Great post. You talked a lot about "luck", a quote i like is this: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity"
People may label you as "lucky" for getting that big money campaign, which implies anybody could have achieved the same thing had they been there at the same time as you, however what they don't appreciate are the trial and tribulations you had beforehand where you kept your head held high and trooped on.
Originally Posted by hlyghst
Mom, I'm moving back home!He ended up coming out of that, and started building mobaff.com, which ended up being acquired by matomy.com.
Indeed.. still have alot going on motion but you are right, actions make it work.. often easier than with planning one..
thanks MR.G. great read.
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