Thoughts On Staying Motivated And Rekindling Lost Motivation

I work with a lot of beginners, it's the bulk of what I do. Over time I've learned that we are all different, but we suffer from the same difficulties.

Everybody is different and brings different things to affiliate marketing.

We all have different backgrounds, different goals, and different fears about making money online. Some of us have been bitten and experienced failure before. Others have never even tried before.

The one thing we all have in common though, is that we can succeed if we just stick to it (and fail if we don't).

Me, you, the person next to you. Anybody and everybody has what it takes, as long as they can knuckle-down and persist.

The process works.

Failure is down to either a.) Not following the right process or b.) Finding the right process, and not following it.

I'll admit there are scammers out there. There is misinformation and out-of-date information. There are people who lie, and there are people who don't know what they're talking about.

There are also different ways to succeed.

Despite all this, you WILL figure it out for yourself if you keep learning, trying and growing.

You Must Learn Before You Earn

Nobody is born an Internet Marketer, not even the greatest marketers out there. You have to invest time and commitment to get to where they are.

Without that tenacity and refusal to quit, even the greatest Internet Market would have got nowhere.

What's great about all of this is that tenacity and commitment is also something you can learn. You don't have to have been born with it either.

I definitely didn't have the skill to keep going when I first started out. In fact, I quit all the time. I went through niche ideas just as fast as everyone does.

In fact I spent most of my first year coming up with “great new ideas”, when I really should have just knuckled-down on one website.

If somebody had said to me when I first started, “You won't have any success for a year, maybe even two, but if you keep at it, you'll get there,” I probably wouldn't have started. I just didn't think I had it in me to keep trying for that long.

Fortunately, I'm still here. I guess I failed so many times along the way that I got fed up with failing and just kept going.

I've often wondered, “Do I have something that other's don't? I don't think so…so why did I get somewhere and they didn't?”. I'm convinced the answer is simply because I didn't quit.

I'm still here, therefore I'm here.

You Can't Possibly Visualize The Journey – So Just Give It A Go

Another thing that people struggle with is imagining the path ahead. This is generally a bad idea to try to do, yet it's something we naturally do all the time. We're always looking forward.

This is also where the fear comes from. The fear that we're not going to succeed. Fear is never about the present, it's always about something that COULD happen.

However I think for a lot of people it's not just fear of failure that demotivates them, but also an inability to properly see the path ahead.

You definitely need faith when you're starting out. As adults, we're always trying to figure everything out and visualize the path before we start. This is generally why children learn better. They're a lot more willing to at least give something a go.

At the end of the day, no matter how clear things are before you start, they'll turn out completely different anyway.

If you're hesitating about starting your first niche site because you can't quite “see” it, just start it anyway. Even if you fail you'll be a lot better off than if you hadn't even started.

Staying Motivated

So I've covered the two things that tend to stop people getting started; fear of failure, and uncertainty.

These two things are also one of the main reasons people to quit as well (if they ever got started).

That, and not seeing immediate results.

Just like trying to lose weight, learn a new skill, or achieve anything really; if you don't see results fairly quickly, you'll lose motivation and end up stopping.

You'll have doubts about whether you're using the right method, whether you're doing something wrong, or whether the process really works.

I've said this before many times, and I'll say it again here.

The best piece of advice I ever received about Internet Marketing is (roughly) as follows:

“You seem to be too hung-up about whether or not you'll succeed at this. If you focus and stick to it, you'll succeed in the end. Sooner or later you'll get traffic, and growth, and income.”

The day I was told this, I remember feeling immediately more relaxed. I had a light-bulb moment. Life becomes a lot more simple when you realize you have to just keep doing what you're doing.

Faith is not blind. It's enlightening. I don't mean this in a religious way. I just mean that you have to have faith in yourself.

I'm repeating myself a little bit in this post and I apologize for that, but I really want to drum it into you. It's so simple.

Keep Going

So let's say that you can accept what I'm telling you. You have the faith, you want to get started. You've got the commitment, and you're ready to go.

What do you do when 2 months from now, you're still not getting any traffic to your website? You're still spending money on articles, links, all the other things that go with launching a business. What do you do then?

I think a lot of people who quit do it in the first few months.

The novelty and enthusiasm wears off, and all they see is expenses in their bank account. They try to visualize the path ahead, and they've got the commitment, but what if the next six months are the same? Wouldn't it be better to cut things loose now than go on *wasting* money?

Perhaps it would, but what if tomorrow you earn that first commission?

It really only takes one dollar to turn things around. Those first few months are up and down like a million rollercoasters on a bouncy castle. For everyone.

If you could measure thoughts, and there was a spreadsheet of every “I'm not going to succeed” thought I've had in the last 3 years, then it would be huge. Google would be telling me to upgrade my Google Drive account because I'd used up all their space.

Sometimes, a slump would last for several days, maybe even a week. These are the “trying times” when a lot of people quit.

For me, I guess I got lucky. Every time I felt like things were failing, I received a lifeline. Maybe it was a small $1 commission on Amazon. Maybe it was a new subscriber or comment.

Maybe it was a $50 commission.

It doesn't really matter HOW MUCH it was. Every single time I got one of those things, I felt immediately better, and I was able to get through it.

Now when I get a down moment (and I still do, as I suspect I always will), I just know that if I keep  soldiering on, I'll get something that comes my way and makes me feel great again.

It could be an email from someone I respect, or it could even be a new post hitting page one. It doesn't really matter.

Closing Thoughts

What I'm trying to say with all this is that when those moments come, and they will, you have to just push through them, because sooner or later something small will come along and boost your confidence again.

It's such an invigorating feeling, that it often propels you on to new highs and new successes.

You don't get to enjoy the peaks unless you have the troughs as well.

For the benefit of those reading this, do me a favor and let me know below: What keeps you motivated? What gets you down? What stops you from starting? What stops you from quitting?