Here’s my affiliate marketing cheat sheet – strategies I’ve used to bring in a regular, passive income from affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is a big industry and there’s many products and strategies you can use to make online sales. But not all strategies or products are equal. When I first started I worked incredibly hard selling products which paid me peanuts! I didn’t know which were the best kinds of products to sell, nor which were the best marketing strategies I could use.
So I spent years struggling simply because I didn’t get the right knowledge upfront! In this affiliate marketing cheat sheet, I’ll share some of the most important realisations I’ve had over the last several years as an affiliate.
Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet #1 – Get Help & Model Success
When I started looking to the internet for a means to earn an income, affiliate marketing was still something relatively unknown. Everyone told me to avoid the “get rich quick” schemes as they were all a scam! There were many courses I took which taught all sorts of things. Some taught blogging and other taught niche website building.
But each course taught something different. By the time I was a year or so into my affiliate marketing journey, I was already burned out, disillusioned and confused. I had tried so many different approaches and yet still struggled to make a consistent income from the internet.
Several years in, I discovered an online mentorship community. It’s basically an all in one internet business system and training resource. You can access a free video series to learn more about this online business community. Joining an online community of other like-minded people can give you the best chance as an affiliate marketing. You can follow other leaders in the industry, copy what they have done, and ask them questions. It’s really the best way to get the best information and turn that information into your own success online.
Affiliate Marketing Cheat Sheet #2 – Products (Use A Range Of Products)
The SFM digital business system offers a range of high value digital training products designed to help with both your training and earning potential. With a high ticket digital business system, you can earn much more per sale than with low value physical products.
For years I struggled as an affiliate marketer. I promoted products from Amazon and eBay, and although the products sell well and the websites are deemed trustworthy to most people, it’s not great for affiliates. That’s because the affiliate marketing commission rates on these platforms are so low. With both Amazon and eBay, you can expect to earn between 3% and 11% on a sale you have referred to the site.
On low value physical products, like the ones I used to promote, commissions can be less than $1 per sale! The same amount of effort went in to selling a high ticket product and earning a commission of $1000 shortly after joining The SFM Mentors.
Smart Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate Marketing The Smart Way
When you also start selling recurring commission affiliate products, you’ll realise that’s the way to do affiliate marketing the smart way. With recurring commissions, you sell a product once and earn commissions continually month after month. Over time, as you sell more memberships and subscription products, your income grows. It’s one of the fastest ways to earn a regular income from affiliate marketing. If you do nothing else I recommend in the affiliate marketing cheat sheet, use recurring commission products.
Ideally use a strategy which also gives you:
- High ticket digital products – digital products pay out 40% + commissions (compared to 3-11% for physical products)
- Recurring commission products – memberships and software type products
- A product range and built in sales team – closing sales on your behalf
- Multi-tier commissions – earn from sales made by your referrals
See SFM Digital Business System for more on this.
Cheat Sheet #3- Sales Funnel & Email List
You should definitely use a sales funnel – an email marketing list with a product range to offer to your subscribers. As someone purchases a product from you, they are offered other related products automatically. With a product range you can earn much more from your email list. With only a single product, you can’t take advantage of the lifetime value of a customer. You only get a single commission from each one, with a single product to sell, and therefore have to continually find new customers.
Having regular customers is key to building a sustainable business online. So subscription products are vital.
Building an email list is the best way to control your traffic. With organic marketing, or paid marketing strategies, you can spend a lot of time and/or money but you don’t get to build a relationship with people. Email marketing lets you do this and over time as your email list grows, your affiliate marketing sales will grow too, if you’re doing it right!
Of course you also need to build your email list, which comes down to marketing, a vital ingredient in the affiliate marketing cheat sheet.
Cheat Sheet #4 – Marketing & Your Funnel
The higher value the products in your marketing funnel, the more you can afford to spend on your marketing budget. This is another very important aspect of the affiliate marketing cheat sheet. If you want an online business fast, you’ll need to invest in the higher value digital products which pay out the most.
That way, you can afford to use paid marketing as your strategy to get more people on your email list. With cheaper affiliate products in your “digital store”, it’s much harder to make a profit while spending money on paid advertising. So, for lower value affiliate products, you’ll often need to use cheaper marketing strategies or even the free ones like blogging or organic video marketing. These strategies are much slower than through using paid marketing.
There’s two distinct disadvantages when it comes to free and cheap marketing strategies: blogging, organic video marketing on YouTube, free social media marketing, etc.:
- It is very time consuming creating content and getting it in front of people. You need to stick at it for months or years before you generate the kind of results you can have with paid marketing in a much shorter time frame.
- You can’t scale up content marketing like you can with paid marketing. With a paid marketing strategy, you can easily increase your budget once you find a profitable campaign. But with content, you can’t do so as easily.
Summary
So that’s my affiliate marketing cheat sheet for faster and longer lasting affiliate marketing results. Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a legitimate business model which works really well when you get it going. But at first, you’ll have to overcome a lot of difficulties while you understand what works and what doesn’t work for you. Here’s a quick recap of the top tips I’ve shared in my affiliate marketing cheat sheet:
- Get the help and support you need. Join an online community which offers tools, training and market leaders to learn from so you can model success.
- Use a digital product range rather than a single product. Ideally use one with recurring commission products, a high ticket range, built in sales team and multi tier commissions. See SFM Digital Business System. (Digital products pay larger commissions than physical products 40%+ compared to 3%-11% commissions). See affiliate marketing commission rates.
- Use a sales funnel which offers a built in sales team and product range automation. This way, existing customers will automatically be offered other products in a range. Also use an email marketing list, which is the best way to control your traffic.
- Choose paid marketing and a high ticket sales funnel. With paid marketing, you can scale more easily and get traction more quickly. With a lower product value, you will need to use cheaper and free marketing tactics which takes much longer and isn’t as easily scaled up.
Download this affiliate marketing cheat sheet in pdf format here.
