INTRODUCTION
Hey, thank you for downloading "The Definite Guide to Affiliate Marketing Success" I really do hope that the information you find in this guide is not only helpful, but that you actually implement some of the things you'll learn and get results.
What I'm going to share with you in this guide is years of knowledge in the affiliate marketing space, hopefully it jump starts your journey to your own success story in affiliate marketing. Below you’ll find multiple strategies I’ve personally used to make money online, these are proven to work, however, it’s important to not get overwhelmed. Simply read everything and once you figure out which strategy you want to focus, give it a try, but don’t just read the guide, take action.
Also, at the end of this guide I’m going to show you an internet marketing education platform you can use to truly become a master internet marketer and make a full-time income online.
The Author
INDEX
- Understanding the basics of affiliate marketing
- How to find affiliate products
- The top 4 platforms to grow an affiliate marketing business using paid and free traffic
- The $40 per day method for quick cash
- Making money with niche blogging without writing
- The YouTube affiliate review method
- How to 10x your revenue with the right affiliate products
- How to guarantee your success in affiliate marketing
- Understanding the basics of affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing has been around for decades, but thanks to the power of the internet, this industry has exploded, allowing regular people like you and I to take advantage of technology and connectivity to tap into massive numbers of people all over the world.
Websites and sales funnels run 24/7 online and people are watching your videos, commenting on your posts and liking your pictures even while you're sleeping. Which opens a massive opportunity to build a long term semi-automated income online, yet few people even know what affiliate marketing is all about. Believe it or not most people don't even know affiliate marketing is a thing, but there are a select few who are taking advantage of this amazing opportunity, if you're reading this guide you're one of those people.
In this guide I'm going to skip the bullshit, I'm going to dive into the meat and bone and show you how you can make money by applying real methods that are proven to put money in your pocket if you apply them.
How do I know these methods actually work?
Simple, I've been through the grind of experimenting and testing them. I have achieved results from them to the point where I've managed to make a full-time income online. And because I know they have worked for me, I'm positive they can work for you.
Now let's discuss the basics of affiliate marketing.
The concept of affiliate marketing is quite simple, you don't own the product or service but you earn a commission for referring a lead or sale. This is usually a percentage of the total cost of the product. For example, if someone is selling a product for $50 and it's paying a 50% commission for each sale, then that means you earn $25 for every referred sale.
The benefit is that you only have to worry about one thing and that is TRAFFIC, as an affiliate you don't have to worry about delivering the product, doing customer service, handling returns, complaints or doing any selling.
You simply send quality traffic to the sales page where the product or offer is being sold (usually through an affiliate link that is unique to you) and you wait for the commissions to roll in.
Neil Patel who is a very experienced and successful affiliate marketer explains affiliate marketing in a very simple way:
"The idea behind it is that you promote other people’s products, often through an affiliate network, earning a commission if people actually end up buying thanks to your marketing. It’s based on revenue sharing. If you have a product and want to sell more, you can offer promoters a financial incentive through an affiliate program. If you have no product and want to make money, then you can promote a product that you feel has value and earn an income from it as an affiliate marketer."
In a nutshell that is what affiliate marketing is, however if it's so easy, why doesn't everyone succeed with it?
The answer is simple, IS NOT AS EASY. There's one skill that most people who are successful in affiliate marketing have mastered and is called TRAFFIC GENERATION
This is the key to achieving massive success in this industry, if you can generate on-demand high quality traffic to any offer whether that's using free traffic strategies like blogging, videos, social media or paid traffic, you'll get results. The truth is if you don't learn to generate traffic, you won't succeed or make any sales, because traffic (also known as real people) are the bridge between getting an affiliate sale or not.
Now, there are a ton of ways to generate traffic, there's the slow way like using free content strategies and there's the fast way which is investing into paid advertising with platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google and many more. Some people focus on mastering paid traffic, while others because of a lack of resources and money tend to focus more on content marketing.
Later on we're going to cover some of these free and paid traffic techniques so you have a better understanding on where to focus your energy.
So, by now you should have an understanding of what is affiliate marketing is and most importantly the #1 thing you need to learn to succeed with it, which is TRAFFIC GENERATION. This guide will serve you as your first step towards your journey, I'm going to share many tips, strategies and even a few methods that (if applied properly) can make you an extra $40, $80, $100 or more per day working from the comfort of your home, using your computer on a part-time basis.
Let's dive in...
- How to find affiliate products
Okay, so you want to be an affiliate marketer. I'm sure you see the potential and you probably are already seeing yourself in a beach somewhere sipping on margaritas while checking your affiliate commissions :)
Well before you start thinking about retiring to a beach somewhere, there are probably a few questions in your mind:
- What do I promote?
- How do I find the right affiliate products?
- How do I even get started with all of this?
Don't worry we'll cover all of this, first thing you should know is that there's no such thing as finding the right product to promote, there are millions of products, services and websites with affiliate programs so saying one is better than the other is simply dumb.
However, there are different type of affiliate commissions and some pay better than others, so I'm going to show you the best trusted networks where you are guaranteed to get paid when you make a sale. I'm also going to show you how to identify a winning product and whether or not you should focus on one niche or the other.
Let's talk about niche selection. This is basically picking an industry or category for example a few industries or niche would be: weight loss, internet marketing, software, dating, finance, social media training, etc...
Some niches are more popular than others and some pay better than others depending on the product, but the good news is you can find affiliate products to promote in all of them.
The best place to find them are in affiliate networks here are the top 4 and most trusted affiliate networks online:
- ClickBank:Massive and popular network with millions of affiliate products from all over the world. Level of access EASY as anyone can grab a link to any affiliate product and promote
- JvZoo:Digital platform similar to ClickBank with large selection of digital products in hundreds of categories. Level of access MEDIUM as some affiliate products require approval in order to promote
- CJ:Most trusted by big brands for affiliate offers like Godaddy, McAfee and other big brands. Level of access DIFFICULT as each affiliate product requires approval before being able to promote
- Amazon Associates:Well we all know Amazon but the Amazon affiliate program also known as Amazon Associates is widely used considering the millions of products Amazon offers. Level of access EASY anyone can apply and promote any product from Amazon.
Now of course there are more affiliate networks out there but I wanted to keep it simple and just show you the top most popular ones because they're trusted by millions, they been around for years and always pay on time, every time.
This brings us to the next question, finding the right products to promote. Again, this part is mostly based on your choice, you pick the niche and within that niche you can find hundreds of products to promote.
Let's use ClickBank as an example since they are one of the largest affiliate networks online and have thousands of products in hundreds of categories from which you can choose from.
If you visit the ClickBankhomepage you’ll notice that they have a CATEGORIES section.
On the left side you can see all the categories available, these are what you would call a 'niche' where you can click on the (+) icon and subcategories will display. Each category and sub-category contains many affiliate products you can promote.
Let's click on one of the categories in the AFFILIATE MARKETPLACE section of Clickbank so that we’re able to see all subcategories and list of the top selling and most popular products in that category:
So, in the image above I have chosen HEALTH & FITNESS as the main category and DENTAL HEALTH as the subcategory.
Notice that I have also SORTED the results by GRAVITY, gravity is a filter that ClickBank provides to show you the top selling affiliate products from any category or subcategory inside of ClickBank. Here's the direct definition of GRAVITY from ClickBank:
“Grav: Short for GRAVITY™ performance statistics, this number represents a unique calculation by ClickBank that takes into account the number of different affiliates who earned a commission by promoting this product over the past 12 weeks. Since more recent transactions are given a higher value, this number can give you an idea of what products are “hot” at the moment, in terms of being promoted by many affiliates
and making a good number of sales. However, high gravity can also indicate that there will be a lot of competition in promoting this product.”
In other words, the higher the GRAVITY of a product on ClickBank the better, because that means the product is selling well and affiliates are making money with it.
In the example above the top product pays an AVERAGE commission sale of $24.26 per sale and it says it currently offers a 13.2% conversion rate.
Conversion rate is simply the percentage of website visitors who buy the product, so that would give you an idea of what kind of sales percentage to expect when you send 100, 1000 or 10,000 visitors to the product sales page, keep in mind that conversion rate is measured by targeted traffic, meaning you can't expect a 13% conversion rate to a product promoting dental hygiene if the traffic you're sending is interested in losing weight, the traffic needs to be targeted to ensure the highest conversion rate.
So if you were to promote that product or any product from ClickBank all you have to do is click on the PROMOTE button and ClickBank will give you a unique affiliate link which will track the traffic and sales you generate to that product.
Inside your ClickBank account under the REPORTS section you'll be able to see the amount of clicks, sales, conversion rates and commissions earned for each product.
POWER TIP: Never, ever grab the NAKED affiliate link ClickBank provides and post it somewhere, that does not work and it's an amateur move. Instead grab a unique affiliate link from ClickBank and head over to a website like bit.ly which is free in order to mask the affiliate link. You can also use a custom domain and then redirecting that domain to the Clickbank affiliate link, you can buy one from places like Espnhost.com or also on Bluehost
Okay, so you know how to find high converting products on ClickBank, that's great, but how do we get traffic to those products in order to generate sales?
Good question, traffic like I said before, is the most important factor to become a successful affiliate marketer, because if you can generate traffic on demand, whether that's free or paid, you'll be able to make money with any affiliate product you want.
Let's discuss the top platforms you can use to generate traffic to affiliate products...
- The top 4 ways to grow an affiliate marketing business using paid and free traffic
Here's the part that is crucial to your success as a marketer, you learn this and making $100 a day online will be a walk in the park. Let's talk about the most effective platforms where you can generate massive numbers of traffic to any affiliate product, service or offer. I will not list them in any particular order of importance, there are all very unique in their own way and quite powerful for traffic generation.
First, I'll give you an overview on how each can be used for affiliate marketing, then I'll dive into a specific strategy you can implement to start driving traffic:
YouTube Video Marketing
We all know YouTube is powerful, is the second largest search engine in the world and the 3rd most visited website in the world. Because of that YouTube is a traffic monster, and if you use it properly it can bring you passive traffic. Passive traffic is when you generate consistent traffic from content you created one time and it continues to generate traffic for you for months or even years.
YouTube is one of the best places to generate passive traffic, because you can create the videos once and they can bring you consistent traffic for years to come.
With YouTube you can create channels around a specific niche or category and create videos where you don't even have to show your face or talk in front of a camera. In fact you can make videos that are simply music, text and transitions that provide information about a specific topic and you can link to an affiliate product in the description of the video.
Niche Blogging
Niche blogging is quite simple, you set up a blog around a specific niche for example let's say you were to promote products from the dental health category in ClickBank, then you would buy a domain name and hosting service to setup a Wordpress blog ex: dentaltips.info and in that blog you would add 20-30 articles maybe adding 2 articles per week over the course of 6 months providing different tips and information about dental health.
You would then link text within the articles with your affiliate links to different dental affiliate products either from ClickBank or other affiliate networks. You would also place banners linking to affiliate products or perhaps utilize Google Adsense to help you drive some additional revenue.
Side note:Google Adsense is Google's affiliate program for website owners, where ads are placed on your website and you can earn money when people click on those ads. Adsense is free to sign up but you will need a blog in order to be approved for Adsense since they require to go through an application process.
Facebook Pages
Most people underestimate the power of Facebook pages, if used properly, Facebook can be a consistent source of free or paid traffic because it allows you to target individuals based on their location, interests, age, activity and many more options.
If you have the money you can probably invest in some ads to help you generate traffic to an offer, but you gotta know what you're doing. But if you want to drive free traffic to an affiliate product using Facebook there are a few things you can do.
Not only that but Facebook has opened the door to monetization features like the Facebook Audience Network program that utilizes Facebook Instant Articles where you can make money by simply adding a plugin to your Wordpress site that converts all your articles into Instant Articles.
Currently one of my accounts generates $200 per day with Instant Articles alone and it can be a very simple way to monetize content that you'll create anyways. The screenshot below are earnings from Instant Articles in just 3 days:
Although is important to note that Instant Articles works best for blogs where content is being posted daily, I recommend that if you plan on using this method that you only implement it on a news blog. Your news blog can be about sports, politics, specific country news, viral stories or anything where you can add consistent daily content to it.
Here's all the information on how Instant Articles work:
The first step is building a Facebook page in the niche you want, build that page to at least 10,000 likes, which is quite simple on Facebook (I have a few videos on my YouTube channel showing you how)once you have a following which you can achieve in less than 90 days with some money invested, you don't need much more than just consistency and to continue to increase your audience.
Then you can start adding content through your blog that talks about a specific affiliate product or content designed around the product.
For example, let's say you have an affiliate product you can promote about "How to train a dog in 90 days"
Instead of posting a link on your Facebook page to the affiliate product, you can create a post on your blog that says: The #1 trick dog owners are using to train their dog in just weeks.
If you had a Facebook page with 10,000 dog lovers, then they would most likely click to read something like that. Which means once they're on your post you can promote the product indirectly, and that is how you use Facebook to drive free traffic to affiliate products.
Instagram Marketing
Last but not least is another popular Facebook property, Instagram is one of the fastest growing social apps online. The best part is that a majority of its users are 30 and under. Which means this is where you can find young money for affiliate products targeting a younger demographic.
Now, as of this moment Instagram does not allow links in their posts, is a place for pictures and videos. But it can be a powerful selling tool as well, in fact Instagram stories can be used to promote affiliate products, though it's fair to say that it can be a little tougher to build an audience on Instagram. If you don't want to spend a lot of time commenting or uploading images there's an alternative.
With a bit of money and some creativity you can use videos and stories to drive traffic to any affiliate offer. For example, let's say you were promoting a dating guide for men, which you can find lots of those on ClickBank.
You could create an Instagram Story where you're giving away "#7 tips to make any girl fall in love with you"that story would take them to a landing page where they would provide you with an email in exchange for the 7 tips, which then you can use to promote that affiliate product to that email list. Though a bit more complex because you need some tools like landing page, email autoresponder, domain and some money to
invest into Instagram ads. This would generate instant results for you without having to build a following.
And based on the targeting options available on Instagram which you can setup from the Facebook Ads platform, it's fair to say you can target millions of people and generate unlimited amounts of traffic.
- The $40 per day method for quick cash
Okay, so you might be thinking but Lester, I'm completely broke I don't have money to buy a domain name, set up a blog or invest into paid ads. I know...I've been there trust me. But there's one thing you gotta remember if you want to succeed with affiliate marketing or any type of online business:
If you want to make money with an online business, you must treat it like a BUSINESS, and there's not a single business on earth that didn't require at least some time and money to get started. if you treat it like a hobby it will pay you like a hobby, meaning nothing...
But I understand we all have different situations, in the beginning I had to borrow money and sometimes I intentionally paid some bills late so I could purchase a course or tool I needed for my internet business.
Which is why I'm going to show you a method you can use to make quick cash online, like today, if you can follow directions. This method works because it's simple and it can get money in your account fast, in a week if you do it right.
I call it, the $40 per day method...
The reason I call it that is because the first week I started using it I was consistently making $40 per day, to a point where eventually I was making $100 or more daily just doing it 2-3 hours a day at night. An extra
$20 or $40 per day could give you the funds to invest in your first blog, website or affiliate promotion using paid ads. It's extra money that you don't have to spend from your pocket.
This method consist of the following:
Promoting an affiliate program that offers FREE TRIALS for popular products and brands to people who are also interested in working from home. Which is perfect for anyone even if you're broke because these companies that offer these type of affiliate programs don't require any upfront fees, meaning you sign up for free, complete their 1.0 credit requirement which can take you 20 mins by signing up to 1-2 trial offers for a service or product you're interested in like for example a free trial for Netflix, Amazon Prime, Blue Apron, Credit Monitoring, etc...
Once you complete that 1.0 credit requirements then you don't have to do it again, you do it one time. They give you an affiliate link which you can then share on social media or anywhere online and for every referral you get that signs up and completes their 1.0 credit requirement by also completing an offer you get paid $20 to your PayPal the same day.
Let me say that again, you get paid $20 to your PayPal the SAME DAY! So, when I saw this I jumped right to it. I started promoting the program as a "work from home opportunity making $80 per day working part-time 2-hours posting ads online"
I was getting 10-25 referrals per day and about 1-5 completed referrals daily and it started adding up:
Every completed referral is $20 paid to PayPal in less than 24 hours. After you get a completed referral you can request a payment and it's mostly paid less than 24 hours after you place the request.
There are a few affiliate networks that offer these types of programs, however the one from the screenshot above is called ZipnadaZilch also known as ZNZ which has been around for 10+ years.
I also used Instant Rewards which is another network and almost the same thing as ZNZ but it has a variety of offers different to ZNZ.
Let's talk about how it works, so that if you're interested in using this method you'll know exactly what to do:
The first step is you need to pick 1 of the 2 trusted networks recommended below, mainly because I have confirmed they pay on time, every time and have been around for more than 10 years. Both are free to signup and both pay via PayPal in less than 24 hours.
(ZNZ) ZipNadaZilch: Click Here to Register Free (IR) Instant Rewards: Click Here to Register Free
You can also sign up for both and promote both if you want a wider variety of trial offers to promote.
Once you sign up, the 2nd step would be to complete your 1.0 credit requirement, remember you only need to do this one time. Once you have your credit requirement you never have to do it again. Each offer tells you how much credit it provides and whether it's free or if you have to spend money to complete it.
In the screenshot below you can see some of the available offers available in the ZipNadaZilch network.
Be sure to read the requirements of each offer to ensure you get credited properly after completing the offer. But, they do have a large variety of offers from which you can choose.
Final step is PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE...
Once you have completed your 1.0 credit requirement in either ZNZ or Instant Rewards you need to grab your affiliate link and get ready to promote it and get people to it.
ZNZ provides you with the link for you to simply copy and paste like the example below:
Let's talk about the promotion part, how exactly did I manage to get 10-25 referrals per day and 1-5 completed referrals.
In order to accomplish that I used ONLY 2 websites, Craigslist and Facebook. These websites are huge and can be an unlimited source quality traffic from people who are interested in working from home or learning how to work from home.
The most effective for me, was Craigslist.org which has a JOBS section with different categories where you can post a classified ad and get a ton of people to reply to your ad.
I highlighted the top categories inside the JOBS section where you can get the best results:
Keep in mind that depending on which city you live in the U.S some of those categories you have to pay Craigslist in order to post your classified ad. Which in some cases is worth it because your ad stays on Craigslist for up to 30 days and tons of people see it on a daily basis.
Typically what I would do is post 5-10 Craigslist ads per week, in different cities to gather traffic from just different places and get more people to see my ad. If you need some help on how to post on Craigslist, here's a good article that provides some useful info: https://www.betterteam.com/craigslist
This is something that you can also outsource, you can use sites like Upwork to find freelancers that can post ads for you in different cities around the U.S and they either charge you a flat fee per ad or charge you a total fee for a specific number of ads.
Apart from Craigslist another excellent place to post ads to promote these type of affiliate programs is Facebook, if you have a large network of friends where you have more than 100 friends you could promote it on Facebook to your friends, however if you prefer you can also use Facebook groups since there are a lot of Facebook groups, for example, here's what happened when you type "stay at home moms" and filter the results by Groups:
As you can see there are hundreds of groups with thousands of members in each group and that's just one search phrase.
There's also groups on: work at home, stay at home dads, make money online, affiliate marketing, etc...
This means that you can find an unlimited number of groups where you can find people who might be interested in these type of offers and making extra money online using the trial affiliate networks.
POWER TIP: Never post or spam Facebook groups, instead focus on getting people to add you as a friend and use your Facebook wall to promote.
Instead of spamming Facebook groups is important that you have the right strategy in place because spamming Facebook groups can get you in trouble. Instead what you want to do is get people to add you as a friend if you they want more information using ads like these for your profile or groups:
● AD for Facebook Profile:
Hey guys, I found a site that pays $20-$60 daily for simply posting ads online for free. My friend showed me the site and he makes a consistent
$40-$60 per day posting ads on Craigslist and other places.
It’s free to get started and it takes less than 20 minutes to start working, you can work 1-2 hours a day and you set your own hours. Let me know if you would be interested by replying with "More info"
● AD for Facebook Groups:
Hey guys, I'm looking for some people who might be interested in a part- time gig just posting ads on places like Craigslist and other sites just 1-2 hours a day. You can make anywhere between $20-$60 just doing this. If anyone is interested just add me as a friend for details and I’ll explain how you can get started in less than 15 mins.
Payment is deposited daily via PayPal and guaranteed. No investment necessary to start working, perfect for anyone looking to make a few extra hundred bucks.
These are just 2 examples or templates you can use and as you can see, none of them have a link to the affiliate program, instead you're forcing people to contact you to know more, this creates more trust and as a result you get higher conversions of people ACTUALLY completing their 1.0 credit requirement.
Once they contact you, explain via Messenger how ZNZ or IR work and provide proof using the payment proof gallery section showing that they do in fact pay and how they can do the same just posting ads.
For Craigslist I was doing a similar thing, below is just one example of an ad I used to post on Craigslist:
● AD for Craigslist:
Title for ad: Part-time gig easy $20-$60
Looking for someone interested in a part-time gig posting ads online 1-2 hours daily. Pay is anywhere from $20-$60 paid daily depending on your efforts and time working. No experience is necessary, all you need is some free time and willingness to follow directions.
Only serious inquiries, no need to send resume since this is a remote job, all you need is a great attitude! If interested please reply to this email and details will be sent: youremail@gmail.com
I would post multiple variations of the same ad, never posting the same but using different wording on Craigslist and it worked really well, I would get sometimes hundreds of inquiries on a weekly basis and many of those did convert into referrals in ZNZ and Instant Rewards.
Then I would provide those referrals with the same templates and strategies I was using they would also get results doing it.
It's important to remember one thing!
This is NOT MEANT to be used as a way to quit your job or make a full- time income, this method can be used if you need to make $500 fast or need to save to invest in paid ads, buy a computer or pay some bills at the end of the month.
When I started making big money with other stuff I stopped doing this because you tend to make money as long you can keep posting ads on a weekly basis. But I wanted the so called PASSIVE INCOME everyone talks about in my affiliate marketing business.
But the "$40 per day method"works like a charm, if done properly it can put more than $40 per day in your Paypal account so if you're
basically broke where you need to make some money to pay rent, bills or invest to start your own online business, this method is perhaps the fastest way I know to make money online.
- Making money with niche blogging without writing
Niche blogging is basically starting a blog around a specific topic or niche where you only post content about that topic in your blog. For example, here's a list of some of the most successful niche blogs that make thousands of dollars each month:
- com- Blog about frugal living, saving money and personal finance tips.
- com- Blog about eathing healthy, food recipes, cooking and food photography.
- com- Blog about DYI, home decor and organizational tips for your home.
These are just 3 examples of what a successful niche blog is all about, these three blogs were started around 1 topic specifically and a topic that the owner was passionate about.
So the question is do you have a passion, topic or hobby you know about where you can share your expertise, tips or information?
Most of us do, most of us have something we’re passionate about, whether that is entrepreneurship, personal finance, cooking, dancing, sports, cars, traveling, dating, gardening, video games and so on…
Chances are you can start a blog about a topic and earn money writing about the things you’re passionate about. So, in this lesson we’re going to cover how to start a blog and some of the things you’ll need to get
started, as well as the right monetization strategy to ensure you’ll be able to make money from your blog.
Step #1: Decide your topic or niche
This is the easy part, you already know about a topic or hobby you’re passionate about, but now let’s dive deeper into finding out whether there’s an audience for that topic, after all we’re doing this to get people to read our content so let’s make sure there’s an audience for it.
For that we can use a simple tool called Keywords Everywhere, you can use this free tool to study your niche and get some ideas for what topics to talk about in your blog as well as how big is the audience.
For example if I search on Google for “gardening tips for growing vegetables”or “how to grow vegetables at home” Keywords Everywhere will provide me with a number of topic suggestions and keywords people are searching for and the audience size on a monthly basis:
It’s fair to say that if a few thousand people are looking for topics like this then starting a blog on this topic is not a bad idea. There’s a demand for this niche and your blog could fill that demand.
So, let’s assume you know a lot about growing vegetables at home and you decide I’m going to start a blog about this and add 1-2 post a week
with different tips and information. Well, the next step is picking the right name for your blog.
Step #2: Picking the PERFECT name for your blog!
The right name for your blog is important, you want something that is catchy, easy to remember and can easily relate the name of the blog to the topic of the blog.
You don’t want to name your blog “Making a Living Online”if you’re blog is about gardening, it has to make sense. For that I suggest you use Lean Domain Search is a free tool where you simply enter a keyword or phrase and it provides you with a list of available domain names you can purchase for your blog. Here’s what happened when I simply entered the word “gardening”
As you can see lots of available domains to choose from, be sure that whatever name you decide to go with, that is a name for your blog that you’re happy with. Remember you’ll be creating a brand, you want to be an authority blog in your niche, a place where people can go for trusted information and articles about that niche.
Be sure that whatever name and domain name you choose for your blog that the usernames are also available for use, like for a Facebook page, Pinterest page or Instagram account. Mainly because these social media platforms will help you gain the momentum you’ll need to get traffic.
Step #3: Creating your blog
After you have chosen your name and domain name you want to use for your niche blog, the next step is to simply register your domain name and get a hosting service to be able to host your blog on the internet where is available 24/7 worldwide. You’ll also need a content management system where you can edit and add content to your blog, for that I strongly recommend WordPress, which is free and the most popular blogging platform out there because is very easy to use.
Starting a blog is something anyone can do and is EXTREMELY affordable, in fact creating your first blog can cost less than $20 to setup the whole thing.
The cost of a domain name is usually $13 per year and a basic hosting service to ensure you blog is live on the internet can cost you
$5 - $10 per month. Now, there are many hosting services out there but don’t worry from my experience on Bluehost and Espnhost are one of the best options.
It’s easy to use for beginners and they give you a free domain name, meaning you won’t have to pay for the domain name the first year, just the hosting fee. It also has a 1-CLICK Wordpress install which means you can setup your Wordpress blog with 1 click with no technical mumble-jumble. This means, that your blog with domain and Wordpress installed can be setup in basically 10 minutes. If you need help adding your first post on your blog using Wordpress then there are a ton of tutorials on YouTube for Wordpress for beginners, for example you can check this: Wordpress Tutorial.
Another good one you can consider is espnhost.com since they offer reliable web hosting service and affordable domain prices.
Yes, really affordable prices on EspnHost. You can choose there according to your needs. You can also consider hosting your website on Liquid Web, Hostgator, Namecheap, Hostinger, and Kinsta.
Step #4: Picking a design for your blog
Alright, so you have your blog almost ready, now we have to make it look pretty. If you want to look professional like the sample niche blogs I listed above a nice logo would help, you can use sites like Fiverr which
is a freelancer network where you can find really cheap freelancing work, you can probably get a nice logo for your blog designed for just $5.
You also need a template for your blog, Wordpress comes with a large selection of free templates (designs) for your blog which you can easily install, you simply find one you like and click INSTALL.
If you want a theme or template for your blog so that it looks more professional, you can use a PREMIUM template which you can easily find a ton of marketplaces to purchase them from like ThemeForest, where themes can cost from $35-$70 per theme or you can use ThemeCountrywhich is one of my favorites because they give you a ton of professional themes for one price, meaning you’ll be able to change a theme anytime you want without purchasing a new one.
But initially if you want to stick to a free template to get started that’s fine too, once you get the funds you can invest into a more professional designed for your blog. This is where “the $40 per day method”came in handy for me because I use a lot of those funds to buy tools, templates and courses online.
Step #5: Getting content for your blog!
Alright, so you have your blog all setup, you’re ready to start publishing content, my advice would be to add at least 3-4 posts per week about topics relating to the niche of your blog.
However, if you’re looking to outsource the content where you don’t want to spend time writing, researching and publishing content on your blog you can outsource the writing part.
You can use sites like Upwork or Freelancer to find virtual assistants that can research, write and publish content on your blog for you. There’s also places where you can buy articles for your blog on any niche or topic you want. Places like Iwriter, Contant Content and Fiverr can also
be used to buy articles for as low as 500 words for $5.
Step #6: Monetizing your blog
This is one of the last pieces of the puzzle, you have a blog and content, now you have to monetize it to ensure that you’ll be able to make money from your efforts.
But it’s important to remember that your expectations need to be real, don’t think that you’ll be making thousands of the very first month, most of the successful blogs out there have been building an audience for years. But there are a few things you can do to ensure that you’re positioned to make money from your blog.
There are multiple ways to monetize your blog:
- Earn from advertising revenue
- Earn from affiliate programs
- Earn from your own products/services
Let’s talk about the first 2, if you want to earn money from advertising on your blog I would recommend using Google Adsenseand Facebook Instant Articles. I already told you about Instant Articles earlier, but I actually make money from both. Adsense will pay you each time a visitor clicks on ads placed around your blog, which you can install with a few simple clicks once you’re accepted into the program. Facebook Instant pays each time an article from your blog is open from within the Facebook app where ads from Facebook are placed, in the case of Instant Articles you make money for the amount of people who see the ads which is measured by impressions.
You will need a Facebook page in order to apply for Instant Articles and you’ll also need to install the Facebook Instant Articles pluginto your blog in order to apply and convert your articles to instant articles on Facebook.
Earning from affiliate programs is as simple as placing a few banners on your blog promoting an affiliate program related to your niche or a link inside your article. You can use Clickbank to find a top selling affiliate product or products where you can make a commission each time someone buys the product from your blog.
Step #7: Getting traffic to your blog!
This is perhaps the most important aspect of having a blog, all that work to set the whole thing up and yet if your blog is not getting traffic then you won’t build an audience or make money.
So getting traffic to your blog is crucial to make it successful. There’s multiple ways to do that. The first thing you should do is make sure you have your social media accounts for your blog ready to go. Be sure you have a Facebook page, perhaps a Pinterest page to ensure that you can share your posts in these places.
The quickest way to generate traffic to a blog is using your NETWORK, if you have friends on Facebook asking them to check out your blog, perhaps like your Facebook page.
Find Facebook groups in your niche, if your blog is about “gardening tips to grow vegetables” find gardening groups on Facebook and join them, interact with the members and ask members if they can give you an opinion on your blog or content. Reputations are not built overnight, it takes time.
You can also use YouTube to generate traffic to your blog, sites like Lumen5 allow you to turn your articles into videos using text, images and music where you can upload them to YouTube and get people to check out your blog. You can also use those same videos to share them on Facebook or Instagram to bring awareness to your blog.
Paid traffic is another alternative and the fastest way to get high quality traffic to your blog.
You can use Facebook Ads to generate quality targeted traffic to your blog and that will build your audience extremely fast, but you will have to spend money on advertising for that, otherwise you might have to stick to free traffic methods.
But in case you do want to speed up the process and generate lots of traffic using Facebook, I have a free video training series on YouTube called Facebook Ads For Beginners showing you how to get started and get traffic step-by-step.
Pinterest is also a very powerful traffic generation tool for blogs, In fact here’s 9 ways to generate traffic to your blog using Pinterest which I believe if you apply some of the tips mentioned in the article above you’ll definitely see results.
However, the big dog when it comes to generating free targeted traffic is Google, organic traffic from Google is the highest quality traffic you can find, because is people searching for your content. Which is why is always a good idea to optimize your posts for search phrases and keywords people are typing on the Google search bar.
This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and although is one of the slowest forms of generating traffic due to competition and other factors, it’s worth aiming for anyways because with time you will start getting traffic from Google and the better the content and the more you have the more likely Google will index your articles and give you traffic.
If you want to learn the basics of how to optimize your Wordpress blog for SEO I strongly recommend you read this: Wordpress SEO for beginners
Remember, if you feel like this is all too much take one step at a time, this stuff is not something you need to learn in a day or two. Running a blog is work, you’ll need to spend time taking care of it, publishing content and promoting it. On top of that you’ll also need to learn new terms, skills and know how to use tools to get to the end goal. Which is why if you’re not enjoying this process, if you don’t enjoy learning new things while taking action, then it’s probably not for you. A blog can be a way to build true passive income, it’s hard work in the beginning but worth it.
- The YouTube affiliate review method
Let’s say blogs are not your cup of tea and you prefer something that doesn’t take you as long to setup but at the same time it has the same potential of bringing you passive income, what can you do?
Enter YouTube, the second largest search engine in the world after it’s owner Google. YouTube is super powerful when it comes to generating traffic to anything, and so it can be used to promote affiliate products, services or anything you can imagine.
Which is why I’m going to show you this method which you can start doing today, is called the ‘affiliate review method’ because you simply create small 2-5 minute videos talking about a specific affiliate product.
Let’s use the previous example, the bad breath free forever product we found on Clickbank with a high GRAVITY and highest selling affiliate product on the Dental Health category which pays a commission of
$24 per affiliate sale.
If we take that same product and we copy the name of the product on YouTube, this is what we get:
Notice how many videos are showing up for the name of the product like ‘Bad Breath Free Forever’and ‘Bad Breath Free Forever Review’ those are all short videos promoting the same affiliate products. Some of those videos are even a year old.
That’s because these affiliates are tapping into the ‘buy’ traffic, this means people who are thinking of buying the product but are looking for reviews and information before making the purchase. This is some of the best type of traffic you can get because these people have already made the decision to buy, which is why this method is so powerful and effective.
If you go on Google the same thing happens, the first results are all videos from YouTube from affiliates promoting the product:
This is proof that making review videos for affiliate products work, otherwise you wouldn’t see so many people doing it.
One thing you’ll notice is that most of the videos are simply made with music, text and images, nothing fancy. These types of videos are easy to
make you can use Lumen5or a screen recording software to make a quick 2-5 minute video talking about the product and its benefits, there are a ton of free software you can use like Screencast-o-matic.
The key is being able to get those videos to rank on the first page of YouTube, the higher they appear on the YouTube search results the more likely you are to get views. Which is why optimizing the video with the right keywords, title and description is important.
Think about this...if you have 20 short videos about different affiliate products in a period of 90 days where each video is getting a few views, but you’re getting just 3 sales a week from those 20 videos, each sale being an average $25 in commissions, then that means you would be making $300 a month from a few videos that you did one time and it took you 15 minutes to make. That is the power of this method.
- How to 10X your revenue with the right affiliate products
We all want to work less and make more, luckily for you affiliate marketing provides that opportunity, if you know where to look and what to promote. Let me explain what I mean, when it comes to affiliate marketing there are four types of affiliate commissions:
- One-time commissions:These are commissions earned from one-time sales which means you promoted a product, someone bought it and you earn a commission for it, end of
- Recurring commissions:These commissions are earned when the product or service you’re promoting is recurring, usually with memberships or subscriptions. Someone buys the product and you earn a commission every month for as long as that person stays a customer.
- Multi-tier commissions:These are multi-tier commissions, which means you make a sale, and earn a commission, But if the
customers also becomes an affiliate and makes a sale, you also generate a small commission from their effort.
- High-ticket commissions:These are affiliate products or programs that pay higher commissions per sale, usually above
$500
There’s nothing wrong with affiliate products that pay one-time commissions, but in order to build TRUE passive income you might get there faster if you promote products with recurring commissions or high-ticket commissions.
Recurring commissions is my favorite of all, you do the work once, generate sales and continue to earn revenue month after month. These types of affiliate programs with recurring commissions are usually found in subscription services.
For example Netflix, which is a $10 per month subscription service. Netflix used to have an affiliate program where they would pay you a one-time commission for referring a customer who would sign up for a free trial and then pay the monthly fee.
They don’t offer that affiliate program anymore. They did it in the beginning to build their membership base and it worked. Today they have millions of subscribers who are happy to pay the monthly fee for their service (Including me) because the service has value.
Now imagine if Netflix had a recurring commission affiliate program where you would earn 50% recurring commissions for each new subscriber you referred. That would mean earning $5 per month on the
$10 plan for each new subscriber you refer to Netflix.
Would you spend time and money to promote Netflix if it had a recurring commission affiliate program?
Absolutely, if you referred 100 new subscribers that would mean $500 per month in affiliate recurring commissions.
That is the power of recurring commissions and why I prefer affiliate programs with these types of affiliate commission structure. Now, we might not be able to promote Netflix but there are affiliate programs out there that do offer these types of commissions. In fact this program offers both recurring and high-ticket commissions and it’s been referred to as the Netflix of internet marketing training.
Just like Netflix, the product or service has to be good enough for you to pay for it for more than a month, there has to be real value in using it otherwise the customers will cancel after the first month.
This is how you scale an affiliate business from $1000 a month in revenue to $10,000 a month. For example, if you want to make $10,000 per month online with affiliate marketing you could:
- Generate 200 sales (EVERY MONTH) of an affiliate product that pays you $50 commissions for each one-time
- Generate 200 sales (ONE-TIME) of an affiliate products that pays you $50 in recurring monthly
- Generate 10 sales (ONE-TIME) of an affiliate product that pays you $1,000 in
You’re probably thinking that option B makes more sense, it’s a smarter option since you’re doing the work one-time and getting paid monthly for it. However, high-ticket commissions are also very lucrative because you only need a few sales per month to earn a bigger income.
Some people say that it takes the same energy and effort to promote a product that pays $100 to one that pays $1,000 and I believe this is a true statement.
Currently I promote all types of affiliate program including high-ticket programs that pay me $1,000 in commissions per sale. Which is great because sometimes I wake up and see emails like the one below:
That $1,000 commission was earned using this program which has an affiliate program that pays one-time commissions, recurring and high- ticket commissions all in one.
So, if you want to 10X your income with affiliate programs, find affiliate programs that pay recurring or high-ticket commissions that fill a real need in a niche or industry.
A famous quote from J.Paul Getty said:
“I’d rather have 1% of the effort of 100 men than 100% of my own effort.”
Because in the end, we all want to work SMARTER with our affiliate business, not HARDER.
- How to guarantee your success in affiliate marketing
If you made it this far, I sincerely hope this guide has provided you with ideas, and has inspired you to take action. That is the most important step, taking action.
When I got started online, I didn’t have a free guide to show me the basics, I basically stumbleupon thing after thing trying to find what worked for me. I made a ton of mistakes, barely made any money and most people around me were telling me to quit dreaming (yes, even family members).
But I kept learning, applying, fixing, learning again and applying. I bought courses, pay for tools, software and invested into trainings and coachings. I was mostly going through this entire process by myself and along each obstacle and failure I doubted myself constantly.
If this even possible, can I really make an income online...or quit my job to become an internet marketer?
I would watch videos of people who were making thousands or even millions per year on YouTube with affiliate marketing and I would ask myself, what makes them special, why do they have results and I don’t.
Honestly, they didn’t seem that smarter than me. Heck, if you’re reading this I’m not any smarter than you.
But then I finally discovered the secret…
It was FOCUS, CONSISTENCY & GOAL SETTING. You see the first 2 years online I was all over the place, no focus, jumping from one thing to another looking for that quick rich method that would put me at $10K a month in a month. It never came, instead I wasted time and money.
I wasn’t consistent at all, I didn’t have a gameplan on what to do on a daily or weekly basis. I didn’t have a specific goal other than just “I want to make more money”and I had no clue or specific path to follow in order to achieve my goals.
You see everyday I see YouTube videos of people wanting to do Shopify, Amazon FBA, Affiliate Marketing, YouTube Marketing, Niche Blogging and every other method of making money.
Yet the answer is simple. PICK ONE, spend 3-6 months learning it. Spend both your time and money to acquire as much info as you can learning that one thing. Setup a plan with short and long term goals for what you want to accomplish doing this one thing.
Be consistent daily, doing the small tasks that you need to do in order to reach that goal, whether that is recording a video, researching, reading, talking to people, writing a blog post, posting ads, creating affiliate campaigns or whatever those tasks are.
And focus on the end goal, avoid distractions by jumping to the next strategy 2 weeks after starting another, focus on what you want. Wake up early if you have to, don’t listen to the doubters, ignore the haters and focus on getting stuff done.
Each time something doesn’t work, each time you’re facing a new problem and get frustrated, each time you lose money, think about what
you started in the first place. Stay focused on the end goal, whether that’s making an extra $500 a month to pay for the car you always wanted or quitting your job and be able to provide for you and your family. Focus, consistency and goal setting are how you guarantee your success with affiliate marketing.
Thanks for reading. To our much deserve success!
PS: If you're interested in learning even more from top affiliate marketers on how to make a full-time income online CLICK HERE
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