Affiliate marketing. Great, isn't it? All you do is sit at home, watching TV in your pyjamas and popping over to the computer every now and then to check how much money you've made in the last hour. A job to kill for, right?

Except it doesn't quite work like that.

Many of you will have a rather different experience of affiliate marketing – one involving lost money, scams, and endless frustration when the profits you were told you would make just never appear. Others will never have got to that stage, but they'll still have the same feeling: that all affiliate marketers are scammers, selling a dream that is impossible for most to achieve.

If you're feeling like that, stop it. Because it's not true. Affiliate marketing is difficult. But it's not impossible, and not all the ‘gurus' are scammers. Some are genuine, and really will help you, if you let them. It is possible to succeed.

So why do most wannabe affiliate marketers fail?

1. They give their money to scammers who then give them useless information.

Many scammers, after they've taken your money, will offer a cheap e-book to download. Sometimes this is stolen from another site, but more often it's something they've written in twenty minutes when they remembered that they needed to offer people something. That means it will be filled with useless information that the scammer probably knows nothing about – and if you try to follow it, you might soon conclude that affiliate marketing is impossible and you were a fool for even trying.

2. They don't have enough patience.

It takes time for the money to start coming in. You need to build up a steady stream of traffic and a mailing list before you can think about earning serious cash. When they only earn a few dollars a day, or fail to receive the thousands they were expecting, many people get disillusioned and decide that they're better off with the day job.

3. They don't follow the instructions properly.

I know. Why would you spend your money on an affiliate marketing course only to ignore what it says? But people do. They think they know better than the pros who have been doing this for years. And they usually end up making a mess of it, losing money on unprofitable advertising techniques that don't work. But, of course, they don't blame themselves and go back to try to work out where they went wrong. They blame the course they bought, and decide it must have been sold by a scammer – a scammer, like everyone else who claims they make a living affiliate marketing!

4. They think they're not clever or skilled enough.

Normally, they're wrong. Affiliate marketing really is very simple. You need intelligence and initiative to become one of the top affiliates, yes – but if you just want to earn some extra money, all you need to do is follow instructions. Buy an affiliate marketing course and do what it says. Too many people sit there and think ‘I can't'.

5. They decide it's too much work.

They get taken in by the promises that they can make money going to the cinema, watching TV, washing their hair. In truth, there's a bit of work to do before you get to that stage – like setting up a website and promoting it, for starters! As soon as they realise that it's not going to be as easy as they thought, they give up. The truth is, there's no such thing as money you don't have to work for (lottery winners excluded!).

Did you notice anything these five reasons have in common?

All of them involve people giving up.

Whatever the reason, if you give up, you're not going to become a successful affiliate marketer. Fact is, nothing worth having is easy. Being an affiliate marketer is worth it – not just the money, but the excitement of seeing your list grow and traffic rise. And it's not easy. Most affiliate marketers had to work hard and experienced plenty of failure along the way. You've got to be ready for that as well.

Most wannabe affiliate marketers fail because most affiliate marketers give up. You make sure you're not one of them.