Most successful affiliate marketers do one important thing that most unsuccessful marketers do not do and that is to educate themselves on how to do affiliate marketing.
Plainly for some of you this is a no-brainer, but for others the idea that they will need to learn something is just very tiresome. The normal response I get is that, "Affiliate marketing is meant to be simple, so now I just want to make money". Yes, it is simple, but lots of this is simple, but it depends who is the one saying it is simple. I personally find coding and web design simple but not everyone is able to build their own webshop.
Affiliate marketing is a very attractive way of making money. The start up costs are almost nothing and if you have a laptop you are ready to go. The trouble is that believing that affiliate marketing is easy is the same attitude as saying driving a car is easy. Yes it's easy when you have had lessons and some driving experience. However, if you just jumped in and started to drive you will surely make mistakes and have an accident. Fortunately, if you make mistakes as an affiliate you will only hurt yourself by having no success.