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Laptop Affiliate Marketing
So you want to try your hand at affiliate marketing?
How long do you want to try and figure it out?
Starting with the end in mind
Before diving into my story, let’s begin with your goals. By now, you’re likely well aware that affiliate marketing is when brands and businesses give you a portion of their sales revenue for every purchase that you referred their way.
Free yourself from a lifetime of 9 to 5 labor
Earn passive income while you sleep
Achieve success while minimizing your up-front investment
Spend more time doing the things you love
Promote products or services that you feel good about
Learning the hard way
When I first learned about affiliate marketing in 2016, I felt indefinitely chained to my 9 to 5. For the first time in my life, I saw a way out. From what the gurus online were telling me, all I needed to do was build a website, launch a YouTube channel, cross-promote on social media, and weave everything into a smooth-flowing sales funnel. Easy, right?
Wrong. After following the steps above, I had less traffic on my affiliate website than a back road in the Midwest. I then went on a knowledge-hungry spending spree. Here’s what I paid…
- $900 per month for an SEO agency that barely impacted my traffic
- $250 per week on native ads that yielded zero results
- $450 for a 30-minute affiliate Q&A session, only to learn that my entire approach was off
- And worst of all, years of my life that I’d never get back
The costs above aren’t including all of the freelancers I hired to work on my website. So now, the question you’re probably wondering: how much did I make after all of this effort? I’m sad to say that even on my best month, my earnings were right around $12.
My path to passive income started with the right affiliate marketing strategy. Yours can too.
My “Aha!” Moment
After watching every YouTube mentor imaginable, falling for every affiliate scam in the book, and wasting thousands of dollars on strategies that didn’t work, I was no further along than where I started.
Was it time to throw in the towel?
No! Quitting simply wasn’t in my DNA. Instead, I took action with three strategies that worked.
Please note, that while the recommendations below worked for me, they may not be for everyone.
As I mentioned, one of my goals was affiliating with products or services that I felt good about.
With my new strategy, I achieved not only that, but also a way to narrow down specific offers based on if they had a reasonable payout in a marketable industry that wasn’t oversaturated.
Sometimes, a $10 commission for an easily-marketable offer is better than a $300 commission in an ultra-competitive industry. To find offers, I recommend the following listing websites:
• Clickbank.com
• Rakutenadvertising.com
• Offervault.com
• Maxbounty.com
After finding my niche, I began analyzing competitors affiliating with the same product to see who had the highest traffic volume and the smoothest sales funnel.
Were they getting their traffic organically, or from paid ads? Did they have an email newsletter? How many of them were offering a lead magnet? By understanding the competition, I could refine my own approach before I even started. To find key analytics, I recommend using the following websites, each of which offers site audit tools:
• Neilpatel.com
• Semrush.com
Now that I knew my niche and understood who the key affiliate players were, I was ready to start increasing my exposure through a quality website, a share-worthy social media presence, a baseline of SEO integrations (wherever possible), and a whole lot of sweat equity.
Rest assured, doing the leg work up front can pay dividends down the road.
The truth is that your goals are 100% achievable. The problem is that there are countless pitfalls laying ahead. I implore you to read my story to avoid making these costly mistakes or you can find out how I achieved the goals above right here.
The ways that worked for me
Really take the time to find a niche that you can support, (something you would actually buy yourself) as far as having the product being ethical, as well as something you know about or something you are interested in. THEN look at the analytics to that niche or offer. Is there a decent size market for the offer? How competitive is its keywords, is the market over-saturated with that topic?
Check its statistics and payout, is it substantial? These are just some of the things you should look at before you narrow down your affiliate offer. It’s easy to see an offer that pays $300 an opt-in and model your whole strategy around it, when it might be impossible to promote or not many people can afford that service. Some of those offers are for the experts and the “big dogs” but for just stepping in the ring and looking at high dollar returns can be flashy, but hard to get right sometimes, it might be easier to get an offer that just pays $12 commissions, for example and you may see more sells in a that.
Remember your niche has a lot to do with your success when you first start out, think of it as your foundation to build upon.
Some heavy hitters with decent affiliate offer listings you can check out:
- Clickbank.com
- Rakutenadvertising.com
- Offervault.com
- MaxBounty.com
Once you find out what niche you’re interested in, look at some of the leading competitors pushing that product or service, examine their monthly traffic numbers through sites like Neil Patel’s or SEM Rush’s site Auditor for example to get the analytics, get a feel of what method they use for their check out or sales process, for example, is it just an explanatory video, an opt-in page, add to cart button, sign up for an email list, maybe even pursue it like you want to buy from them, is there a retention pop up window? Things along those lines, are not necessary to copy but see how they promote their goods or services, for example, if you click on a link to get a free ebook, and once you click on it, it says buy our product for $12.99 you’re probably going to be turned off because you just want the free ebook, instead think about adding them to an email list through like Constant Contact, or Get Response and do a “slow drip” approach on them with weekly emails on what’s going on, or helpful info or resources. Once they see the value of your offer they can put two and two together on how they can benefit from buying your offer.
When you analyze to see your competitor’s traffic you can also see if they are getting most of their traffic organically (being sought after) or are they coming by paid ads. And see what you are up against. When taking someones phone number or email address, do not spam them ACTUALLY PROVIDE QUALITY CONTENT OR VALUE TO THEIR LIFES!!!
Once you get everything narrowed down, and you have your niche and ready to get started, my recommendation for you is start on what you think would be the most effective way of promoting your product, here are some common ones; create a Facebook, or Instagram page, or a Tik-Tok account, these are often overlooked but can be an untapped gold mine if done correctly. Another route is to create a website, this can take many directions, but this is not as easy as people make it sound by creating a website and it will just do all the work, unfortunately, this will need still a lot of attention like content creation, create backlinks, by either creating some social platforms to coincide with your site or join forums to recommend your site when appropriate.
Why many more experienced affiliate marketers will say SEO is a waste of time if you find the right niche, I wholeheartedly disagree, while I also agree that buying an expensive SEO service to boost your search results usually isn’t necessary either, I say find the sweet spot by putting in your own little SEO where possible, like just adding a plug-in from your domain provider will even help a tad.
Ultimately before you flip the switch do you’re research, if you need additional help, I am more than happy to help with basic questions on helping you formulate a game plan on reaching your successful start!
Ultimately when starting any new business venture, you need someone more experienced, who has gone before to show you the ropes, that’s why I encourage all who need help or just getting started to try out the program that helped me click here to learn more! And get the business Challenge started! Best Wishes friend!
How I transformed my plateau into profits
Ultimately, my success boiled down to more than persistence alone. Here’s the guiding light that helped me break through my affiliate plateau on the path to success.
DISCLAIMER: Here is what worked for me, it may not work for you, I do not guarantee any results but insight that could prove useful.
What people say?
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I also recommend the following affiliate groups and marketing websites
My recommendation that put me on track
