Fear, Failure and Affiliate Marketing

Without sounding trite, the quickest way to succeed with affiliate marketing is to fail as fast as you can. In fact, in practice and in life, the faster you fail the quicker you’ll succeed.

Yes, this sounds contradictory. Yes, you’re feeling conflicted. But there’s a lot more to failing than just falling down.

Let’s back up a bit and consider what goes into turning anything, especially affiliate marketing, into a success. It takes some knowledge, some work, some time, some money and last but not least, some time. Let’s examine each of these factors:

• Knowledge: No one can know everything. Some of the things you will learn will not be applicable immediately. Thus, your search for knowledge you can use immediately will have failed. The quicker you fail, the faster you learn what can be used right now.
• Work: Success require work. How much depends on a great many factors. But there will be work! Now, work for me may not be for you. You may despise writing code or perhaps writing copy. Others may not find that to be work at all. No matter how you define it, you will have to find some thing, some method or some process that resonates with you. Some trial and error will be involved in finding whatever that is. In other words, the faster you fail at things that don’t resonate with you, the faster you’ll find the thing (or things!) that do.
• Time: You will find more Unicorns than overnight successes. Anyone, anywhere who has ever succeeded has put in his or her time. The faster you put in your time, the faster you become an expert. Let’s say it takes 20 hours to master your trade. The faster you fail at being a master during hours 1 through 19, the faster you get to 20. If you never move past 14, you never make it master status. You need to fail for those first 19. Again, the quicker you fail, the faster you succeed.In more practical terms, if you have to write 20 sales letters before you can “get your copy on”, if you only write 14 you never make it. The faster you write those first 19 failures, the quicker you get to 20th.
• Money: You must sow to reap. You must invest to prosper. Sometimes a little and other times, a lot. But you must throw something into the pot. I can only hope you don’t believe that everything you touch turns to gold. That’s not just wishful thinking, that’s insanity.Affiliate marketing, and internet marketing in general, is a number game. It’s direct marketing on crack. Since you must invest something every time you enter into a market and every entry won’t be a success, the sooner you identify your losers, the quicker you identify your winners. Again, fail fast!
• Luck: Last but not least, luck. Whether it’s luck, Karma, the Gods or planetary alignment, whatever it is won’t be on our side all the time. But we can be sure that no one’s luck is all bad just as no one’s luck is all good. We all have our moments, our 15 minutes if you will. Therefor, if you’re having a bad streak it is sure to change. Guaranteed. Once more, the quicker you get through the bad stuff, the faster the good times come at you.

The point I’m trying to get across is simply this: Do not be afraid of failure. Do not let the fear of failure prevent you from taking action. You may not be moving forward, but you will be on your particular path to success.

This is all good in theory, of course, but in practice it can be a little difficult to remain positive in the face of failure. Everyone will agree that the view from the bottom looking up is substantially different than from the top looking down despite the fact that the change in “elevation” is the same. This, however, is a topic for another day.

For me, I hope my failures come at me fast and furious. That way I know I’m moving as fast as humanly possible towards success.

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