The Power Of Micro Habits

Most people think a dramatic change is required but the power of micro habits can be life changing. The idea of micro habits is that over the course of several months or years, micro habits will have changed your behaviour. Without installing micro habits into your day, you’ll naturally gravitate towards your default settings.

Your default settings are ultimately habits, whether you’re conscious of them or not! They are mini habits which have grown over time. Hence the importance of setting micro habits which are aligned with positive change!

the power of micro habits

In his book Mini Habits, Stephen Guise uses the example of a single daily push up. By itself a single push up won’t win you any medals, of course. It won’t get you on the cover of GQ magazine either, or make you incredibly fit! But by choosing a mini, or “micro” habit to build your intention with, you circumvent the most difficult obstacle you have; momentum.

Apathy, indifference and depression even all have their say in your daily routine. If you’ve been depressed, it’s very much more difficult to change the direction of your energetic momentum. But with a mini habit you can side step the power of your existing routine by giving yourself a ridiculously easy task to complete.

The Power Of Micro Habits: Momentum

If, on the other hand you decide it’s time to dramatically change your habits what happens? You join a gym, you go a few times a week until you burn out. Months later you find yourself still paying your membership but never turning up! Why is this? It’s because you tried to do too much at first and you couldn’t sustain the pressure you placed on your change of direction. Before long, older better established habits and unconscious behaviours took priority. You find yourself back where you were, disappointed that you gave up!

the power of micro habits

A mini habit is different because you start with something you must do every day, however you are feeling. Even in the depths of depression, with a terrible hangover, your mini habit should be reflective of this state of being. So if you can do a single press up in this state, you will maintain this as a mini habit for months, preferably years.

What’s the point in a single press up you might ask? Well the idea is to install the behaviour. The press up is only used to establish the habit in the right direction. On a good day, once you’re down there on the floor, you’ll more than likely do a couple, or even more. Once you establish the position of a press up on the floor, you have begun to create momentum in the right direction. Once you’ve done one, you can let yourself off the hook for the day. You’ve done what you set out to do.

The Power Of Micro Habits: Any Topic

You can apply the power of micro habits to any area of your life, be it online business, fitness, learning a new skill, playing an instrument and so on. I’ve used the power of micro habits to install the habit of writing a daily blog post. Over time this generates momentum. Some days, it just feels wrong not to write a blog post, because I’ve been doing it for so long now!

You can use the power of micro habits in any topic you choose.

In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits he points out what he terms the “valley of disappointment” where results don’t meet expectations. This might explain why so many people quit the gym just shortly after joining.

the power of micro habits

Initially there’s a lot of enthusiasm for getting fit and joining the gym. This often happens after a period of gaining weight and perhaps even getting a little slothful or lethargic! This motivates you to join a gym with the intention of getting back in shape and gaining more energy. After a month of training, you look in the mirror, perhaps expecting some amazing gym body! You’re disappointed because after all you still think of yourself in perhaps the same way. So you lose momentum and quit trying!

With a mini habit, there is less expectation because, after all, you’re only installing a new habit, rather than trying for any particular goal or desired weight, for example.

The Self Image

The self image is a major motivator (or distractor) from applying yourself to a new venture. Unless you change your self image as you go, you’ll pull yourself back to the “old” version of yourself who you think you are. This is a very strong pull and you have already invested years into being “who” you think you are. It’s more difficult to alter things on the “outside” because you always remind yourself “who” you are on the inside!

Again, mini habits can help here because you can circumvent your magnetic “self image” by installing new habits over time. Once you commit to a basic “mini habit”, you create momentum for change. It may not be dramatic, but over months and years if you maintain and grow your mini habits they will replace existing habits and help you change the way you see yourself (the self image).

the power of micro habits

Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon who discovered that if he were to change the self image of his patients, they no longer desired a physical transformation with surgery. In his book Psycho-Cybernetics he explains the phenomenon of self image in detail.

Summary

The power of micro habits can be used for anything you would like to change in your life. However, doing one pushup daily is only the momentum building part of the idea. Over time, and with persistence, you can then add to your daily routine and grow it into a stronger and better habit as you gain momentum and strength.

When I started blogging, I was struggling for ideas and writing maybe only once a week. But over time as this habit became a regular practice, I got better at finding ideas for my blog posts and faster at writing.

With an online business model, a regular habit of building content can ultimately give you a passive income. If you’re interested in learning more about building an online business from scratch, checkout this free video series.

Online Education Affiliate Program

If you’re looking for an online education affiliate program, you can find one on this site. Just sign up here to learn more. I found a program (called SFM) back in 2014 which I later became an affiliate for. I wanted to earn an income online but had previously struggled with making consistent affiliate sales. The program I joined helped me learn multiple marketing strategies and gave me a ready made business system to promote. I also learned:

  • Blogging
  • Keyword research
  • Using paid marketing strategies – YouTube, Facebook, Bing, Google Ads etc.
  • Building an email list and following up with email marketing campaigns
  • Video marketing
  • Understanding your target audience (customer avatar)

In short, the online education program I now promote helps people build online businesses from scratch; whether that’s affiliate marketing, print on demand, import export or another kind of online business.

Learn more with the free video series here.

Online Education Affiliate Program: Linkedin Learning

Microsoft Lynda (Under the Linkedin umbrella of companies) recently partnered with SFM as a way to offer their own 6,500 training courses as part of the SFM curriculum. 

DigitalMarketer (The world’s longest standing and most highly respected B2B and B2C marketing training company) also partnered with SFM and now offer their own training as part of the SFM curriculum. 

As part of the training offered by SFM, you can access over 10,000 Linkedin learning courses. Of course no one should need all 10,000 courses but the diversity of topics included means whatever your goal online, you can reach it through the training resources available.

Commission Structure

If you’re planning on promoting an online education affiliate program, it’s worth noting that some plans offer recurring commissions. With a one off affiliate sale, you only earn once. But with subscription affiliate programs you can earn ongoing income each and every month for referrals you make. This is why an online education affiliate program is such a good idea for affiliates. Here’s some of the commission structure available with the different programs available through the SFM:

online education affiliate program

As you can see the Ambassador commission structure offers a larger level of commission for referrals. In order to qualify for the larger commission structures, you’ll need to have purchased the products yourself.

online education affiliate program

The diversity of products available with this mentoring and coaching program means you can earn from “up sells”, even long after you have referred the initial sale.

These high ticket affiliate products give you greater earning potential as an affiliate and offer much more value for the customer; giving them personal one to one mentoring and coaching for their online business development. Customers can also spread the cost of these payments to make it more affordable. This means you’ll receive spread payments as an affiliate should you choose to promote these courses.

Learn more about this program with the free video series here. Or get started by creating your own account here.

Why Promote An Online Education Program?

There’s a few reasons why it’s a good idea for affiliates to promote an online education program. Firstly you should ideally choose a program you believe in to promote. If you believe in your product as an affiliate it means you are more invested in what you’re doing. This shows up in your content and marketing efforts.

If you’re promoting something you don’t care about, the same applies! People are much more likely to buy from someone who has actually bought a program themselves, and is an advocate of it because of their trust and belief in it, rather than if their promotion is solely for financial reasons.

So, if you believe in an education product which has helped you personally, you’ll be much more persuasive in your marketing copy and believable too!

The other reason to sell an education product is much more mercenary! A high valued education product is worth a lot and if you choose to promote high ticket affiliate products which also have subscription affiliate payments within them, you’re likely to earn more as an affiliate than you would from selling the average affiliate product.

Start a free account and get started here, or access the free video series to learn more.

Low Search Volume Keywords

Is it really worth going after low search volume keywords with your content? Low search volume keywords are those keywords which get few monthly searches. You can find them using Google’s free keyword planner tool. As you type your main keywords into the planner, you’ll see a number of related keywords which are currently being search for on the search engine. The first keywords to come up are the most popular searches. The trouble with these keywords is that there’s huge competition for them. For example, using the main keyword from this site I would type “affiliate marketing” into the planner.

The top results are the most competitive (and most searched for) keywords which relate to my main keyword.

keyword finding

Low Search Volume Keywords: Competition

If I were to create content based around these kinds of keywords, I would have trouble getting found in the search results. For example, let’s look more closely at the keyword “Amazon affiliate program”. If we type this keyword into Google as a normal search, you’re likely to find a lot of competing information which would surely drown out any content you might create. Even a phrase match of the keywords (with the term in quotes) brings up thousands of competing pages for this particular search:

using google search

Want to get noticed with your content using the search engine results pages (SERPS)? If so, you’re far better off looking for longer tail keyword phrases with lower competition. These are also known as low search volume keywords.

Low Search Volume Keywords

While low search volume keywords don’t offer the same high volume of monthly traffic, they do offer less competition on the SERPS. This means you have a far better chance of ranking your content for them. You’re never guaranteed to rank your content on Google, Bing, Yahoo or Duckduckgo.com. However, a small chance of some traffic is worth more than no chance of high volume traffic!

Let’s use the same keyword “affiliate marketing”, but look for the longer tail keywords which offer lower competition. To do this I’ll use the keyword planner and click on the tab for Avg. Monthly Searches.

low search volume keywords

As a click on the tab, the average monthly search volume will change to eventually show the least searched for keyword terms. See below.

low search volume keywords

While these terms may not be exactly what we want as content creators, we are far closer to finding terms we can create content for. When we create content for the longer tail keywords with low SEO difficulty, we’re more likely to get our content ranking on the SERPS and get free traffic; if not from Google then from Bing, Yahoo and the other lesser used search engines. This is still traffic even though fewer people use these search engines than Google. If you use this tactic to create a lot of content, you increase your chances of building a nice flow of steady, free traffic to your website; potentially for years to come!

Low Search Volume Keywords: Finding Hidden Gems

At the bottom of the page of your keyword planner, you’ll find a tab where you can scroll through the pages of search results. Use this tab to scroll through and find keywords which might give you a chance of ranking some of your content.

Google keyword planner

I like to start with a search volume of at least 30 searches per month. Even if your content ranks at the top of Google for your chosen term, searches will be distributed between the top ranking pages. This means you’ll share those 30 visitors with other websites. You’ll only get a percentage of visitors (of the 30) per month even with a top listing.

Bing reports that websites on the top get only 42% of the traffic! The second gets 11% and the third only gets 8%. So, it clearly indicates why your websites needs to be on top. Other search engines will have a similar spread. With a top listing on Bing and only 30 visitors for a given search, you’ll only get around 12 visitors a month.

This means you’ll need to create a lot of content for many keywords in order to get the most from this tactic!

Domain Authority

As you get more domain authority over time, you may find your content is ranking better with the search engines. As this happens you can find that more competitive keywords are easier to compete for, given your authority. But in the first instance it’s a good idea to find the “low hanging fruit”!

The low hanging fruit are those keywords which have the least competition. Longer tail keywords will fall into this category. Short tail keywords are much more difficult to rank for because there’s so much competition. If you’re a new website, it’s also much harder to compete with sites that have been around a long time.

To check for the relative competition you can do a simple Google search for your chosen keyword. Let’s use the example from the above image “15 day affiliate marketing” and look on Google for competition. Here’s the results from a simple Google search:

low search volume keywords

Look at the number in the top under the search bar. 146,000,000. You can also do a phrase match search for greater clarity:

low search volume keywords

2,820 competing pages for this particular keyword phrase. This means it may be a good one to rank some content. However, did you spot the paid ads in the previous image?

This means people are paying to place adverts for this particular keyword and it might get in the way of your ranking. Also, there’s only 10 searches a month for this particular keyword. If you rank top on Bing, you’ll only get 4 searches a month! That’s not much for all your work! So it’s worth considering all these factors before you start writing your content! However, you may also attract visitors from other search engines, which can help to add to your multiple trickle of traffic.

With hundreds of pieces of content and through using this strategy over and over, you can ultimately build a lot of traffic to a website for free! It’s much more work than running a paid advert, but ultimately you can have free traffic and that’s well worth the effort in my view!

Easy Start Up Business Ideas

Looking for easy start up business ideas? There’s a huge variety of business ideas available online. From drop shipping, to eBay, to print on demand, online stores and affiliate marketing businesses.

Whatever floats your boat, you can use your laptop and internet connection to build a business from wherever you are.

easy start up business ideas

One of the simplest business models you can use is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing uses third parties to help sell products and services online. When an affiliate makes a sale, they earn a commission based on their referral. Affiliate marketing is definitely one of the simplest online business models you can use if you want to generate an income online.

Amazon, for example has one of the most popular affiliate programs. Anyone can join Amazon and earn money by promoting pretty much any product from the site. When you join Amazon’s partner program, you will get access to your affiliate “portal”. You can link to any product on the site, and earn a commission for any referral sales you make.

Easy Start Up Business Ideas: Advertising

While most business models today offer an “easy start up” process, you’re likely going to find that it is advertising that is key to your success. Whether you build an online store through Shopify, start a print on demand business, or create a drop shipping or affiliate business, you’re going to need to find customers. The initial setup of an online store, a sales funnel, a website or a landing page is relatively simple and straight forward.

easy start up business ideas

With a good program this can be done in a matter of hours with only a few clicks. Since the online set up process is the easiest part of building an online business, it’s worth noting that you will need to spend a lot more time on advertising and marketing your online store to become successful.

Marketing your online “store” can be the toughest part of building an income online. It’s also the most important aspect of running a profitable online business. So it’s worth getting some help and training with this aspect of your business.

Easy Start Up Business Ideas: All In One Business

An “all in one” business system and training community is something I found in 2014 when I was struggling to earn an income online. You can learn more about it in these free videos. What you get from an all in one business system is:

  • A range of digital products you can earn from
  • “Plug and play” software you can use to set up your business systems
  • Pre-made email templates, landing pages and websites you can set up in a few clicks
  • Training and resources to learn all forms of online marketing
  • An online community you can plug into for help and support.
  • Multiple possible business models you can tap into: print on demand, affiliate marketing, direct sales etc.

Click here to access a free video series and learn more.

easy start up business ideas

The Small Print

What most online business “systems” don’t tell you is the easy part is the setup. The more difficult part is the advertising and that’s something you need to learn. Shopify stores, “plug and play business models“, Clickbank courses and the rest will charge you to access the “bells and whistles”. You get to go through a step by step course, a business setup with an email list and automated website and so on. This can all be done within a few days but once it is all set up comes the small print. By this time you’ve usually spent some money with the course you have joined.

You’ve got a business effectively set up and ready to go. But you now need to learn how to promote your online store, or landing page, website or whatever you have chosen. This is by far the most difficult aspect of building an online business and takes the most amount of time and study. If you want a faster outcome, you’ll need to spend money on paid advertising. If you can’t afford paid marketing you will need to create a lot of content. This blog is an example of a free marketing strategy. However, content creation is a much slower means of attracting an audience with an online business. So choose your marketing strategy wisely.

To access an online business coaching and mentoring course, create your free account here.

start an online business from scratch

Is The 4 Hour Work Week Possible?

If you’ve read The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris, you may be wondering”is the 4 Hour Work Week Possible?” The idea of working from anywhere, lying around in your hammock on the beach appeals to nearly everyone! So how come most people are struggling financially and stuck in jobs they hate?

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A recent Gallop poll stated that 85% of American workers are dissatisfied in their work. Why be dissatisfied in your job when you can have a lifetime of ease, laying on the beach?!

In the early 2000’s I was working on eBay, dreaming of Tim Ferris’s idea of a lifestyle business where I could live anywhere and not have to work! I was buying and selling things and dealing with customers. But it was a million miles away from the laptop lifestyle of working from my villa in the Maldives and sitting on the beach!

I knew there had to be a better way, and it set my on the path of becoming an affiliate marketer.

Is The 4 Hour Work Week Possible?

The main problem most people have is money! We could all live amazing lifestyles if it were not for money, or rather the lack of it! When you go on holiday, you’re spending money and borrowing time from your job. But what if you could automate an income from the internet which came in month in month out, whether you work or not?

This question haunted me for some time while I struggled to make an income juggling countless jobs and lugging items to the post office to sell through eBay. I knew there had to be a better way to use the internet to create both time and financial freedom.

beginners

I first started with the idea of trying to sell an ebook from a website. With a digital downloadable product, I could automate the entire process. That meant I wouldn’t have to be there to deal with customers, returns and questions. The customers simply found my website and downloaded my ebook. I get paid and they get their book. I could operate such a business on a beach with zero input once it was set up!

The problem was, I couldn’t make any sales! So I put myself on a marketing course and learned how to get traffic to my website. However, I also learned that through selling someone else’s product I could make a lot more than through selling my own ebook. So I dropped the ebook idea and switched to a business model called affiliate marketing.

Is The 4 Hour Work Week Possible: Affiliate Marketing

Not only is the 4 hour work week possible, but many people have created it already through a business model known as affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing you don’t need anything of your own to sell. You can “piggyback” off other people’s products and make commissions based off the sales you generate online. Because this process can be automated and you can sell products globally, it lends itself well to a transient lifestyle and financial independence/freedom.

is the 4 hour work week possible

All you really need to learn affiliate marketing is a laptop and internet connection. So why isn’t everyone doing it? While a lot of people start learning affiliate marketing, with the end goal of financial independence and geographical freedom, it’s not easy. There’s a 95% drop out rate in the industry. This is for many reasons such as the low bar to entry, finding customers online, education and experience. Many people think affiliate marketing is going to be easy and therefore quit too quickly when they realise there’s a lot of work involved.

Can affiliate marketing give you the laptop lifestyle Tim Ferris talks about in his book? That’s down to you, but it is a vehicle you can use to get there. You simply need to become the “engine”.

Is The 4 Hour Work Week Possible?

When I started learning affiliate marketing I had a lot of problems. I couldn’t get people to my websites, I chose the wrong products, I made next to nothing in commissions. But I didn’t know the best way to approach it. I was choosing low valued products from Amazon and eBay. As such when I eventually did make a sale, it would only be for peanuts!

The long battle to make a sale online was tough. When it eventually did materialise, it was a little disappointing. How come some affiliates were financially free, living their best lives while I was struggling so much, I wondered!

is the 4 hour work week possible
Check out this video here.

I eventually found the answer, but by this time I had been struggling for some time. I expect most people would quit by this point, and I wouldn’t blame them! But I was determined to create a passive income from my online sales. I eventually came across a video of a guy on a pedalo who was talking about online business. I clicked on his video link and joined his program through the free video series he was offering on his video. You can access it here.

Affiliate Marketing Business Models

I was about to discover what I didn’t initially understand, and what could have shaved years off my struggles! This is a major key to building a lifestyle business from the internet which can give you a very flexible and free lifestyle, or “the 4 hour work week”, as Tim Ferris calls it. Before, I was selling low valued items and I was working far too hard trying to get traffic. I needed a better business model and a better marketing strategy.

By using high ticket digital products and subscription affiliate products, I was able to make much more from fewer sales. (Read that again! It’s a major key to success online.)

high ticket funnel

By using paid marketing, I could get traction much more quickly than through using the old tactics I had learned years before. I was attempting to get free traffic. But with all the noise on the internet, this is incredibly difficult and very time consuming! Plus, paid marketing is scalable, while organic marketing isn’t so much.

While paid marketing can get expensive, with a sales funnel like the one you see above, you can make more per sale than you would for low value products which only pay you one time. With high ticket and subscription products in your funnel, the value per customer is much higher. This makes it easier to access the more expensive marketing tactics, which are also much better than cheaper and free ones.

Summary

The 4 hour work week is entirely possible yes. But don’t expect it to be an easy ride! The affiliates who succeed are generally workaholics and in order to get to the point of having complete time and financial freedom, they will usually work consistently at their online businesses for some time, months or years, before they can achieve this.

While this may put some people off, knowing it’s not just some push button system they can automate with little work, it’s worth remembering that this can set you financially free for life. Despite the difficulties and challenges of building an online business, it’s worth it if you have the ambition to create more time and financial freedom.

‘Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in two or three decades.’ – Ton Robbins

If you’re ready to get started you can access a free video series here, or create your startup membership here.

4 Hour Work Week Questions And Actions

After the reading the 4 hour work week I had a few 4 hour work week questions and actions I wanted to know. Like, how do I actually build an automated business which gives me this kind of freedom? I loved the idea of a life of freedom and flexibility but how was I going to achieve it? Working online in the early 2000’s on eBay, I had struggled to build a life of freedom, and was snowed under with customers and headaches! I wanted a better way to earn from my laptop and I knew this wasn’t it.

Access free video series here.

I had bought an ebook from eBay some months earlier. This purchase set the wheels turning in my mind and I realised that this was the answer. I needed a method of making money automatically over the internet. After writing my own ebook and trying to sell it from a website, I realised I was in over my head! So I put myself on a marketing course and this led me to a better business model, a business model known as affiliate marketing!

4 Hour Work Week Questions And Actions: Affiliate Marketing

Despite having spent some time writing my own ebook to sell, I now realised that I could sell other people’s products online for a percentage of the sale value. A sale of a course for example would give me 40% of the transaction. With a $100 course this was $40. My ebook was on sale for only $10 so even though I would receive 100% of the profit from my own book, selling other people’s products was more lucrative.

beginners guide to affilaite marketing

With affiliate marketing there are a lot of products to choose from. You can sell products from Amazon for example and Amazon has thousands of products you can choose from. You can also sell digital products, which pay more and there’s also subscription affiliate products and high ticket affiliate products. With subscription products you can earn a monthly income from each sale. High ticket products are valued much higher than standard products. So you can earn much larger commissions from selling a single item.

I started learning the tactics of affiliate marketing and I built many websites and wrote a lot of content. But after several months I was still struggling to sell anything! I had one or two affiliate sales drop in, but it wasn’t enough to call it a proper income and they were far too sporadic.

4 Hour Work Week Questions And Actions

Despite the struggling, I was determined find a way to make the 4 hour work week possible! The odd sale here and there didn’t make a living, but it gave me some hope! I was browsing through facebook one day and I found a video of a guy on a pedalo who was talking about online business systems and automation.

Of course I signed up for the free video series and they led me to an online business mentorship community. It was this find which was to signal the turnaround of my online struggles!

four hour work week questions and actions
Is the 4 hour work week possible?

Before finding this online business community, I was trying to sell affiliate products in all the wrong ways! I was selling low valued products and making only a pittance! I learned how to build a sales funnel through the step by step training and to start building an email list of subscribers. Get started here.

In the beginning there was a lot of work to be done and much of my efforts seemed like they were for nothing. In the beginning, it seems like progress is very slow. But ultimately I was setting the foundations in place for an automated business which could run itself.

The main elements for this business model were the combination of subscription and high ticket digital products within an automated sales funnel.

Using these types of products allows affiliates to earn the maximum amount per sale. This also gives you greater scope to use paid marketing strategies which are globally scalable.

Is The 4 Hour Work Week Possible?

Within only a few months I had made my first high ticket sale! This was around $1000 commission which to me at the time was like a $1,000,000! Before this time I was making peanuts selling books from Amazon online and was making less than $1 for each referral! More than just a commission, it marked a turning point in my belief and direction with the online business.

If I could make sales like this on a regular basis, using automation, I would be able to quit working a job permanently, I thought! Finally I thought I had found the 4 hour work week! Alas the sales didn’t last and because my finances were a mess I dug into my commissions to pay the bills! It was only later that I learned those in the know would reinvest their returns into their marketing budget.

4 hour work week questions and actions
Is the 4 hour work week possible? Check out the free videos and learn more here.

My lack mentality/poverty consciousness kept me stuck for some time before I realised that I needed to do this, and that I need to avoid spending my earnings and reinvest them instead. The more I could reinvest into my marketing budget, the more sales like this I would make, and the faster I would learn what worked and what didn’t!

This is the point where many affiliate marketers will quit, and I nearly did too. But something kept me going and it was the idea of the 4 hour work week which kept the belief alive – thanks to Tim Ferris!

Building A Scalable Online Business

Yes, it’s possible, but the journey to building a 4 hour work week has many twists and turns and will certainly take more than 4 hours a week to succeed with! 20 years ago it was much more difficult but today you can access a step by step business system which gives you products, sales pages, webinars, tools and resources to make the journey much easier. Get started here.

Once set up, your only job is to send targeted traffic into your sales funnel and make sales. Because you can automate advertising and scale up to a global audience, this has to be the easiest method of building a business which can give you time and financial freedom.

That’s not to say it’s easy, just that it’s easier than building your own business in the traditional sense. Plus you have access to a global audience with a laptop and internet connection, something which was impossible only a few years ago without a huge marketing budget and lots of know how!

If you want to learn more and join this online business community, access the free video series here, or create your free account here.

4 hour work week questions and actions
Access a free video series to learn more.

Affiliate Blogging

As an affiliate marketer who likes to blog I’ve been a big fan of affiliate blogging for some years now. Earning an income from affiliate marketing through blogging is definitely not without its problems. But it can be an enjoyable way to earn a living if you choose a topic you have a passion or interest for.

Before I started earning an income through blogging, I tried many tactics and strategies, and even blogged about topics I had zero interest in (or knowledge about)!

niche blogging

One blog in particular springs to mind and it was a blog about mushroom harvesting. At the time I was desperate to start earning online and so chose a topic which was pretty uncompetitive. This was in order to give me an edge on getting free traffic. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and I learned a hard lesson trying to sustain a blog about something I cared nothing about! I wouldn’t recommend it!

Affiliate Blogging – What Not To Do

Although I did rank my blog on Google for its main search terms, I struggled to keep it going and it quickly dropped off the rankings. Writing posts was a pain too. Each post had to be researched throughly before I started writing, since I knew nothing of the topic. So I would definitely recommend choosing a topic you are at least interested in and in which you can keep writing about for the long term.

Otherwise it’s just too difficult to sustain the necessary effort to see off your competition and create a following.

Having chosen a topic you think you can enjoy writing about, potentially for several months (or even years), it’s time to choose a domain name for your website. You can choose any domain name you like, and you should feel proud of your name of choice.

Affiliate Blogging – Domain Name Choice

However, I’ve always gone after building niche sites based on keyword research, as this can give you a head start in terms of free traffic. Since you’ll need traffic to get traction from a blog, this is the next step. The domain name I chose for this site is based around the keywords “affiliate marketing mentors“. Since affiliatemarketingmentors.com was taken, I opted for affiliatemarketingmentorsonline.com. It contains all my keywords (in order) and is congruent with my topic.

affiliate blogging

This choice was made after some keyword research using Google’s keyword planner. This keyword was chosen based on monthly views and competition on the search engines. Because it got some monthly views, and was fairly uncompetitive, it seemed like a good choice.

To find a good keyword for your domain, type your main keywords into the planner and look for longer tail derivatives which have low competition on Google. You can learn more about this in my ebook Niche Blogging For Profit. See also how to build a niche website.

Affiliate Blogging: Creating Lots Of Content

It took a fair while for my content to start appearing on Google, so don’t expect miracles without a fair amount of effort upfront! Even today, I need to work hard on content promotion. There’s a few plugins which can help you speed up the process of obtaining traffic, but initially, I would start with Yoast SEO to help you write SEO friendly content. In addition, you can use Google’s keyword planner to find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty.

If you create a lot of content using the long tail keyword strategy, you have more chance of getting ranked on Google (and other search engines) because there’s less competition. If you go for shorter tail keywords in your article titles, you’ll be competing with many more other articles just like yours. See also short tail and long tail keywords.

Find long tail keywords based around your main keyword for your site and write lengthy content for them. Use the Yoast SEO plugin to help you write in an SEO friendly way. Over time, Google should pick up your content and start giving you some free traffic. The amount of traffic is a large part of the key to success as a blogger. This will depend on a number of factors such as:

  • Your domain age
  • Your site’s authority (standing with Google)
  • Backlinks – how many, where from and the timespan of your link profile
  • Content – “content is king” as the saying goes. Make sure it’s good so that it will stand the test of time. Make each post at least 1000 words for the best results, preferably more.
  • Your SEO – search engine optimisation of your site and content (use the suggested plugin)

Affiliate Blogging: Blog Promotion

Although it sounds nice to have Google send you a bunch of traffic for free, don’t count on this happening. Depending on your particular niche, this can take months. Initially websites will likely be held in a “sandbox” period by Google and so you may not see traffic from Google for some time.

If you choose a particularly competitive niche, you’re even less likely to receive free traffic without a lot of work. Giving your blog posts a boost yourself is therefore a good idea, otherwise nobody will see them. When nobody visits your blog posts, it’s harder to Google to assess how they react to them and therefore harder to gauge whether to rank your content on the SERPS – search engine results pages.

affiliate blogging

So don’t rest on your laurels after posting a piece of content. Posting content is only half the job. You need to actively promote your content to get traction from your blog posts. After several months of doing this, you should see natural traffic coming from all the links you have build, and all the posts you are sharing. Plus, by that time you should also see some organic traffic from Bing, Yahoo and other search engines, if not from Google. Here’s the best free blog plugins for WordPress I have found to help with syndicating my content cheaply:

  • Social media share buttons: helps your visitors share your content
  • Revive Old Posts: lets you automatically syndicate older and new content via social media
  • Post planner: does the same thing and you can queue up old content to be shared automatically
  • Yoast SEO – helps you write SEO friendly content
  • Push engage – lets your visitors sign up to receive alerts for new content on your blog

Backlinking

Yes back linking is one of the best things you can do to boost your SEO score with Google and get more traffic for free! Back linking is one of the least enjoyable things I have done and so I outsource this task to the professionals.

hoth

Still, there’s some back linking you can do yourself and this involves reaching out to other bloggers in your niche and offering something in exchange for a backlink to your website.

Since back links are so valuable to bloggers, you’ll need to write some awesome content for other bloggers for them to offer you a backlink. You can do this by finding guest post opportunities online. You can also do blog commenting; find blogs which are suitable for your niche and comment on their blog posts. Some will automatically link back to your site as you do this.

If you create some awesome content on your site, you may even get people asking you for guest posts. I suggest focusing on your content is the most valuable thing you can do as an affiliate blogger. With good “evergreen” content, which stands the test of time and offers huge value, you should get people naturally linking to your content, as they find it. This is the best “signal” to Google that people are enjoying what you are writing. If you rush content, hoping to get a lot of content out there quickly, you may overlook this vital element of affiliate blogging.

Monetising Your Blog

There’s a couple of main ways you can monetise your blog. However you monetise your blog, the money doesn’t come until you get traffic and in large numbers, so much of your blogging success will depend on your content and your ability to draw a large crowd over time. So picking a subject you love and can sustain is paramount.

affiliate blogging

Still, your monetisation method is pretty important, if you want to make any money from blogging. The two main strategies are advertising and affiliate marketing. With advertising you place adverts on your content and earn from ad clicks from your visitors. Each click is only worth a tiny amount, so you need thousands of clicks daily in order to make this worthwhile.

Affiliate marketing is the other monetisation method and most bloggers will promote some kind of affiliate product to their visitors on their blog and through an email marketing list. Ideally find a product which is lucrative to promote, in your niche and which you can get behind and believe in. See also subscription affiliate programs and high ticket affiliate programs.

AI Blogging

There’s also artificial intelligence programs now which will write your blog posts in a matter of seconds! I personally don’t like this as I enjoy writing and creating content.

If a robot could write a blog post like this in a few seconds, what chance have I got s a blogger! But, still I am human, or so you think! 😉

Besides, robots have no sense of humour do they!? So how could they possibly compete?

Work For Myself Ideas

If you’re tired of working for the man, maybe you can use some of these work for myself ideas for inspiration. I was desperate to escape 9 to 5 and work for myself, doing work I loved. I tried all sorts of work including jobs such as delivery driver, taxi driver, lifeguard, trampolene coach, climbing instructor, waiter, fencing coach, martial arts instructor and stuntman. See my about me page.

But somehow there was always too much month left at the end of the money! I still felt trapped and uninspired in most of these roles, believe it or not! So I looked for a way to earn an income online so I would be able to work on my own terms. I also picked up several jobs working for myself in the interim, while learning how to earn online. Here’s a few of the jobs I found that you can do on a self employment basis.

Work For Myself Ideas: HGV Driver

While there is some training involved in HGV driving, you can pick up work sporadically and use your driving qualification to effectively work for yourself. Some agencies will require you to have some on the job training, so it’s worth getting some upfront experience first, before you start picking and choosing your jobs. HGV driving is a useful skill and there always seems to be a need for drivers, wherever you are.

work for myself ideas

In the UK, where I trained, I was able to get the qualification for a class 2 (rigid cab) for around £1000 all in. This was several years ago though so this will probably be a lot more today. Still, an HGV ticket gives you the opportunity to drive around the country and mostly be on your own. So if you’re a fan of driving and not a fan of people, it might be a solution!

Work For Myself Ideas: TV Extra

I worked as a TV extra for around 6 years. Initially it was a prerequisite to attain a certain number of days in order to qualify as a stunt performer. But over time I found the work to be fairly easy and even enjoyable, so I kept doing it. Extras works tends to be sporadic, and so it’s a good self employed income source to add to a portfolio. Some weeks you won’t work and then you’ll get a phone call from out of the blue, usually with little notice. It’s helpful to have a car to get to the locations and be able to drop everything when needed.

become a tv extra

TV Extras or “background artists” fill the scenes in TV shows and films and are often used for crowd scenes. Most of TV Extra’s work involves waiting behind the scenes until you’re needed, so bring a book or something to do! You can find TV extras agencies near you with a search on the internet. You may need to attend a short course and provide a photograph or two to join the books of your nearest agency.

Work For Myself Ideas: Taxi Driver/Uber

Today it’s Uber but I found taxi driving was a good self employed option which gave lots of flexibility. You can choose your own hours, work day or night and it’s a sociable job which brings you into contact with lots of people. In order to drive on the Uber app, you’ll need a private hire licence from a council that Uber is licensed by. 

work for myself ideas

You can also apply to your local taxi firm and ask them for details of becoming a driver. You may have to get a private hire licence and answer a short local knowledge test for a local firm. But Uber is different. London taxi drivers have to pass “the knowledge” test in order to work a black cab.

Handyman/Teacher

I worked as a handyman for some time while building an online business. To get work I use Google My Business which is a platform anyone can use to advertise their business from home for free! You simply sign up and list your skills from your home address. You can do this with any kind of skill you have to offer, so you don’t need to by a DIY fanatic! If you know something about something you can teach it or sell it! For example, you can do after school classes, teach the guitar/piano or offer painting and decorating!

work for myself ideas

Once I got my ad listed on Google, I got calls from around the city asking me about various jobs. I mostly did the small jobs I was able to do as I’m not a qualified tradesman! Still, it was a nice extra income source and I worked on my own terms. Jobs I did were things such as fixing a broken gate, curtain rails, painting and clearing etc. I once got a job where I used a screwdriver to tighten up a doors hinges!

eBay: Buying And Selling

Before starting an online business I bought and sold items from eBay and charity shops to then resold them for profit. There’s many ways of doing this but one strategy I found was through using a misspell tool you can find here. By finding badly listed items on eBay, and creating a better listing with more keywords and of course correct spelling, you can attract more bidders and sell an item at a higher price.

You can also find bargains because they are misspelled and therefore attract fewer bidders or even no bidders at all! You can read more about this strategy here.

Online Business

If you have a skill you can sell online, you can build an online business around your skill. You can also become an affiliate marketer and sell other people’s products online. You don’t need anything of your own to sell in order to do this.

I started looking for ways to earn online back in the early 2000’s . Initially I tried a couple of methods before finally finding affiliate marketing. Before that I tried eBay (buying and selling) and Forex marketing; both of which offer a means of earning on a self employed basis.

work for myself ideas

You can also create content online as a blogger, or video blogger and monetise your content with Google Adsense, or similar program. Learn more about strategies for earning online with this free video series.

Plug And Play Affiliate

You’ve probably seen those “plug and play affiliate systems”? They promise you that affiliate marketing is easy! All you need to do is “plug” them in, send traffic and make money! Mmmm, but it’s strange that the small caveat is actually the largest part of affiliate marketing: sending traffic. Any affiliate product can be sold, but that doesn’t mean anyone can sell it.

The hardest part of affiliate marketing is the “marketing” bit. Getting traffic to your affiliate offer is the biggest challenge for affiliate marketers and the part with which they need the most help. So purchasing a “plug and play affiliate business” is all well and good if you are already an experienced marketer. Otherwise, you’re better off with a program which gives you more help and support.

plug and play affiliate

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of value in a “plug and play” system. You can get a lot of the hard work of affiliate marketing done for you. You get sales pages, marketing materials, landing pages email templates and of course the product itself. But if you think you have bought a profitable business, think again! You have only bought the “guts” of a business, like with a franchise. You still need to work at your marketing in order to make money from it and that costs you either time or money, or both.

Marketing A Plug And Play Affiliate Business

Marketing a plug and play business system will involve some kind of marketing strategy. This is arguably the hardest part of affiliate marketing. Just sending traffic to a landing page doesn’t guarantee you sales. Your traffic also needs to be targeted. What is targeted traffic? Targeting for affiliates is super important and not all traffic is equal. If you’re selling a “money making” program for instance, you’ll need targeted visitors who are looking for what you are selling. If you want to run paid advertising to a money making program, expect to pay a lot for your advertising. Why is target market important for affiliates?

With the right audience and product, you can sell products quite easily as an affiliate. But if you attract the wrong audience, it’s much more difficult to sell. If you don’t want to pay a premium for your traffic, you’ll need to attract it another way.

Organic traffic is super competitive, especially in a niche like money making and unfortunately most of the “plug and play” affiliate products are in this niche. This means you’ll either be paying a premium for your traffic or working really hard for it. Blogging and video blogging are another ways to attract traffic online. But in a competitive niche it’s going to be a long, difficult journey attracting traffic to your products.

What Does A Plug and Play Affiliate Business Give You?

A plug and play affiliate system is a good idea for affiliates when it gives you help and support as well as the products, landing pages, sales pages, email templates and all the rest. Most plug and play business systems will offer:

  • A product to sell – or a range of products (ideally subscription and high ticket products)
  • An email marketing setup – which you can setup in a few steps
  • Pre-formatted email follow ups – follow up messages to send out automatically to your subscribers
  • Landing pages – where you can collect subscribers emails
  • Sales pages – to send your subscribers where they can purchase your products
  • Ready made webinars – useful for affiliates to help promote the products you’re promoting

A good “all in one” affiliate business will also offer training and support in the way of:

  • Pre-recorded video trainings, seminars and webinars
  • Live webinars and trainings which you can access regularly
  • Training step by step modules
  • Multiple training courses in a variety of marketing methods
  • Access to mentors and coaches who can help you 1 on 1

Access an all in one business system here which offers all of these options according to your requirements and budget.

What Most Plug and Play’s Are Missing

One of the most important ingredients in building a profitable online business is marketing. Without studying marketing, your chances of success are vastly reduced as an affiliate. In fact, most affiliates will fail and the success rate for affiliates is a shocking 5%! That means 95% of affiliates will fail! Perhaps the “plug and play” mentality is partly responsible for this statistic because so many affiliates can sign up to a program and just “give it a go”!

With a traditional business there’s much more cost involved in getting started which stops many from attempting it. But with affiliate marketing the costs are very low. This low barrier to entry means there’s a huge amount of people getting involved in affiliate marketing, many of whom will fail.

To be an effective marketer is becoming more difficult as more and more people enter the online space and attempt to make sales. Most plug and play businesses downplay the importance of learning how to become a successful communicator and marketer. But this is the crux of affiliate marketing success. A “plug and play” business has nothing to lose by selling their setup to partners who will absorb their marketing costs.

If you’re serious about building an online business, you need to factor in your marketing costs as well as the time and attention it will take to learn the strategies of online advertising. If you’re serious about doing this, you can get started here.

Does Clickbank Work?

Does Clickbank work? Yes, you can earn money using Clinkbank; however it’s no magic pill. Clickbank is an exchange network where vendors (products owners) place their products so affiliates can promote them. If you successfully refer someone to a product from Clickbank through your affiliate ID, you earn a commission based on the sale.

Because Clickbank uses digital products you’ll usually earn somewhere between 20-40% commission based on the sale. However, the main hurdle for most affiliates is actually making the sale. Since there’s a lot of people promoting the most popular products from Clickbank, you’ll find a lot of competition in the various promotion methods.

does clickbank work

A product will have a specific “gravity” which is a number Clickbank uses to rate a product based on sales being generated. A very high gravity suggests that the product is selling well, but also that there’s likely to be a lot of competition. A low gravity score means the products is not selling in as much volume, or at all! This can mean the product doesn’t have a good sales page, or that it’s new to the market. It may also mean than not many affiliates have picked up the product for promotion.

Does Clickbank Work?

“Does Clickbank work” is perhaps the wrong question to ask if you’re considering promoting a product from the site. The question almost suggests that Clickbank will do the work and guarantee sales, which of course it doesn’t. As an affiliate marketer you are the third party referrer of a product or service. If you generate sales, yes of course Clickbank (and the product owner) will honour the agreement and you’ll get paid. There is a payment threshold which you’ll need to meet to actually have the money paid to you of course. You can select an amount between $10 and $1,000,000 as your payment threshold amount. The default amount is $100.

does clickbank work

The real question for affiliates though isn’t whether some affiliate product is genuine or not, it’s whether you actually have the ability to generate sales using the knowledge you have of whatever affiliate promotion methods you intend to use.

Some products you might find on Clickbank are promoting the idea that you can make “easy money” online. While you can earn online I would suggest that for the larger percentage of customers this just isn’t true! So take those grandiose claims with a large pinch of salt. In fact there’s a huge drop out rate in affiliate marketing and most give up before even making a single sale. See affiliate marketing success rate.

Products

There’s a huge variety of products on Clickbank and this means it’s a good platform for anyone with a pre-existing website which they want to monetise. Simply sign up for an account and place a banner on your site: instant monetisation. However, before you do this you should check into the product and ideally buy it yourself. How does the sales page look? Is it a good fit for your audience? Unless you know how to sell affiliate products already, or have already acquired a source of traffic, affiliate marketing can be tough. It’s even tougher if you choose a product which doesn’t sell.

does clickbank work

Clickbank has thousands of products on its site, but that also means there’s a lot of bad products too! Look closely at the gravity of a product before you decide to promote it. Gravity is a good signal to a product’s worthiness. If you’re going to build a lot of content around your product, you want to genuinely stand behind that product and be 100% authentic about promoting it.

Before deciding on a product read a few reviews on it too. Often the review will be other affiliates promoting the product so keep this in mind when reading. The number of reviews can also give you an idea of the relative competitiveness of a product. If you were to write your own review of it, would you gain any traffic for instance? If there’s a lot of other affiliates promoting that product, you may struggle to make sales due to the competition.

It’s also worth considering promoting products which offer recurring income. Subscriptions can be a good idea, especially if you’re new to affiliate marketing. They pay out recurring affiliate commissions which means you can earn an ongoing income from only a few sales.