AffiliateMentor, Author at Affiliate Marketing Mentors

Online Income Leveraging System

Affiliate marketing is a type of online income leveraging system. With a job there’s no form of income leverage – you only trade your time. With a business, you generate leverage with employees and products or a service. An online business creates leverage by selling products and services online. With affiliate marketing, you don’t need your own products and services as you can promote other people’s goods to earn commissions.

Affiliate marketing can give you leverage through using software, systems and other people’s products and services. With an online business, you can sell to anyone anywhere globally too. When you learn how to sell products and services online, you can set up systems to make sales in your sleep!

Online Income Leveraging System – How It Works

Affiliate marketing is one of the most accessible online income leveraging systems. Anyone can join an affiliate program and promote products on the internet. When you make a sale through your unique affiliate link, you earn a commission. Affiliates promote all kinds of products and services online. They do this through running adverts, building email lists, creating content or connecting with people through social media channels.

Most affiliate marketers will build an email list of subscribers. The larger your email list becomes, the more affiliate products you can sell. With high value affiliate products and subscription affiliate programs you can generate an ongoing income from what you’ve already sold too – giving you even more leverage.

While most people trade their time for money in a job, affiliate marketers work towards creating an “autopilot” online business which works whether they are working or not! At first this can take some investment of time and money. But ultimately an affiliate business can still generate income long after an affiliate stops working on it, providing they build it to start with.

Online Income Leveraging System – Best Software For An Online Business

Arguably the most important software for an online business is an email autoresponder. See free autoresponder for affiliate marketing. An autoresponder collects emails from subscribers and automates the delivery of email messaging. Through using autoresponders, affiliates can build huge email list of subscribers and connect with them on a regular basis.

Over time, and through providing value through a messaging series, affiliates can build trust with their subscribers. When they recommend an affiliate product to their list, they can make affiliate commissions through selling products to their list.

At first, a list is generally very small as you learn the ropes of becoming an affiliate. But over time email lists can grow into the tens of thousands and above. An email list is a great way to create leverage and grow an online affiliate business.

Using A High Ticket Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is what affiliate marketers use in their online businesses. Email marketing is part of a sales funnel and helps find customers for online products and services. Once someone enters their details on a landing page, they “enter” the funnel.

With a number of products in a sales system, you can earn considerably more than through promoting only a single affiliate product.

A good sales funnel offers multiple products and you can earn ongoing income in the form of subscription commissions. Sales of an entry level product automatically triggers offers of other products to your existing customers and a built in sales team helps to close sales on higher level products.

Using an email marketing strategy together with a high ticket sales funnel is the ultimate online income leveraging system! You can also use paid marketing to send targeted visitors to your landing page and collect subscribers to your list. This is the fastest way to build an online business and can allow you to scale up more quickly to a global audience. See also the fastest legit way to make money online.

Summary

Affiliate marketing is a kind of online income leveraging system. With the use of online content, advertising, email marketing and other software, affiliates generate sales of other people’s products online. For each sale they make they can earn a commission based on the sale value and kind of product they are selling.

With recurring commission affiliate programs and high ticket affiliate marketing, affiliates can earn more from each customer they attract to their business. By using email marketing systems affiliates build huge lists of subscribers and automate ongoing email messages to them to build relationships and sell their products through affiliate links.

Access an affiliate training program through the free video series by clicking on the image below.

How To Remove Success Blockers

Wondering how to remove success blockers? A success blocker is an unconscious behaviour pattern or belief which is stopping you from achieving the success you desire. Often, no matter how hard you try on the “outside”, you just can’t seem to get to the next level of success.

But deep inside, on an unconscious level, you’re repeating an old behaviour or belief which is sabotaging your efforts. Once you can get more clarity on this behaviour or belief, you can start to see what is sabotaging your success.

How To Remove Success Blockers – Paradigms

A paradigm is a belief system you hold to be true – see paradigm shift meaning. So if you have a poor self image and believe yourself to be unworthy in some way, this can often be the reason why you can’t overcome a certain level of reality. Paradigms are powerful belief systems which we hold to as cornerstones of our world view. If our paradigm isn’t aligned with the success we say we want, it will stop us from achieving it because it is stronger and more powerful than your conscious mind’s attempts for success on the “outside”.

How you see yourself, or your self image is a huge part of this jigsaw. So if you see yourself as deserving of success, and believe you can achieve it, your journey will be much easier than if you don’t think yourself worthy.

How To Remove Success Blockers -Most Lottery Winners Are Bankrupt Within 3 Years

There’s a reason that 70% of lottery winners find themselves bankrupt within 3 years of winning. They haven’t learned to deal with success on an inner level and want to return to the safety and comfort of their previous lives. Having money is pushing friends away because there’s a different dynamic in their relationships. They don’t have the same things in common with people they know anymore. Ultimately they will find a way to lose their money so they can return to their more comfortable self image, of themselves without any money.

Our brains are hard wired to fear change and to cling to comfort. Our beliefs and thoughts therefore largely stay the same because it gives us a consistent world view. In order to change your paradigm, and alter your consistent world view you need to stop feeding your mind the same information and change your thinking.

Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon who realised that after changing his clients appearance, many of them still suffered. They weren’t happy even though the feature they didn’t like was changed.

Maltz started working with the self image of his clients and found that many were simply not happy with themselves. Their appearance was just something they had attached to this unhappiness. When Maltz was able to alter his clients self image, they no longer wanted the plastic surgery to alter their appearance.

The Power Of Repetition

Most paradigms and belief systems are built within the first 10 years of your life. As a child, information goes directly into the subconscious mind without the filter of conscious objection. What this means is that if picked a negative belief about yourself, money, success, love or anything else, it’s likely to stick around and cause problems in your life, even decades later.

A unaware parent can easily have installed some negative programming based on their own experiences and beliefs. If they said something to you enough times, it’s very likely to become part of your unconscious belief system. You’ll then act out your life as if it were true. Here’s some examples of some commonly used suggestions:

“Money doesn’t grow on trees”
“life’s a struggle”
“We’re not made of money”
“Money is the route of all evil”
“You’re too sensitive”

If you’re struggling with achieving something important to you, chances are you have some unconscious programming which is holding you back from achieving it.

Cybernetic Transposition – Stuart Lichtman

Stuart Lichtman was an MIT professor who discovered a strategy to transpose success from one area of your life to another. By using the power of suggestion and attuning all areas of the brain, he developed a method of helping people overcome many of their success blockages. He explains the strategy in more detail in his book “How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast“.

Using what Stuart calls a “Metastory”, you write out a story and repeat it over and over to reach your subconscious mind with an idea. Since success blockers are in the unconscious mind, that’s where you need to implant new ideas. Most people repeat their same programming when they talk to themselves in their heads. But if you change this story for a new story which you want to happen, you can create some amazing results in your life. Access Stuart’s book here.

Repetition Is The Key

Most of what we say to ourselves is simply a repetition of what we already believe. By changing our inner dialogue to more positive and self affirming words, we can alter our programming from self doubting, insecure and unsure to self assured and self affirming. By creating this positive feedback loop, we can keep moving forward and maintain consistency. When we doubt ourselves and talk negatively towards ourselves, we create a negative feedback loop which only acts as further proof to a negative self image.

So when the part of you which is full of doubt and insecurity starts speaking, notice what is being said. Learn to observe rather than enter into the dialogue. This dialogue is feeding an old belief system you might hold which isn’t serving you any more. Learn to have compassion for this voice and alter it accordingly for more life affirming dialogue which better supports your intentions for success and happiness.

Autopilot Online Business

An autopilot online business is basically a sales funnel. A sales funnel sends subscribers into an email marketing system and promotes affiliate products. As subscribers move through the funnel they can purchase products. The entry level product in a high ticket sales funnel is a relatively cheap product. It usually sells from $40-$100. As the purchase is made, automated software automatically offers another product to the customer. The next product within a range typically offers more value to the customer and therefore carries a larger price tag.

Sales funnels with multiple products can earn affiliates a good living. Plus with a scalable marketing strategy, the affiliate can simply increase their marketing budget to sell more of a product.

Autopilot Online Business – The Landing Page

From an advertising platform the online marketer sends targeted visitors towards a landing page where they collect subscribers information. The landing page offers a “legitimate bribe” in exchange for the subscribers information. This is usually something of value such as an ebook or series of videos.

A landing page example with an ebook as the “legitimate bribe”

Once someone enters their details into a landing page, they are automatically sent a series of email messages. These are sent through an autoresponder. An email autoresponder can send a number of automated messages over a long period of time.

This is an important part of an autopilot online business because it’s where the selling of products begins. With a website, someone only has a small amount of time to make a buying decision. But with an email marketing campaign, a relationship can be built up over a much longer period of time.

Autopilot Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best ways to build an affiliate business. With affiliate marketing you don’t need your own products and services to sell. You can simply refer people to other people’s products! With email marketing this can be much easier because you can connect with your audience over a long period of time. Over time, if you give value to subscribers through your emails, you can get them to know, like and trust you.

Once you have built some trust up with your subscribers, they are much more likely to purchase from you; especially if the products you promote will help them. Email marketing is a fundamental part of many affiliate businesses. Some top affiliates build their email lists into the tens of thousands of subscribers. One email message can reach many people. If enough of them make a purchase, a single email can be a huge pay day for an affiliate.

Affiliate Products

Affiliate marketers can sell pretty much any affiliate product they want. There are all kinds of affiliate products and some pay more than others in terms of commissions. See affiliate marketing commission rates and affiliate marketing business models.

One of the best ways for affiliates to automate their online business is to choose a product range which offers multiple up-sells within their sales funnel. Once they have referred a customer once, their customers are automatically offered more products within a sales funnel. See SFM Digital Business system for an example of this strategy.

By referring subscribers to affiliate products the affiliate earns a commission. This can be automated through their email marketing list and scaled up to an ever growing audience of subscribers. As the list grows in size, the affiliate should see a growth in their earnings is their messaging is working well and they offer the right products to their subscribers.

Targeting Your Perfect Customers

Depending on the products you choose to sell, you will need to attract a certain audience. If you’re selling flowers, you don’t want business opportunity seekers on your email list, for example and vice versa. So your perfect customer will depend on the products and services you decide to promote.

Targeting your perfect customer is therefore pretty important if you’re going to generate sales of your affiliate products. See also how to know your target market. But before you can target your perfect customer with your advertising strategy, you need to get to know who they are. This is known as knowing your customer “avatar”. When you know who your best customers are, how old they are, where they hand out online etc. you’re in a better position to target them with your advertising more specifically.

Paying for advertising can get costly so if you know who to target and how to get your message across well, you can save a lot on the wrong kind of customer.

Summary

Anyone can build an autopilot online business using the affiliate marketing model. Most affiliates will use a blog website to attract visitors or a landing page to send visitors directly from a marketing platform. Once you have mastered this step, you can get hundreds of visitors to subscribe to your email list every day! As your list grows, and you have a product or product range to offer your subscribers, you should make sales by automating messages to your email list.

With a good product range, your customers will automatically get offered other products which can help them. If your product range offers customers subscription affiliate products and high ticket products, you can earn more per customer than for standard one-off payment affiliate products. For more on affiliate marketing business models access a free video series by clicking on the image below.

Average Commission For Affiliate Programs

The average commission for affiliate programs is between 5% and 30%, depending on the product. Physical products from Amazon, for example, will pay out between 1% and 11% commissions to its affiliates. Digital products typically pay much more – between 20% and 100% in some cases but on average around 30%.

Digital products can be accessed online which means there’s less cost involved in their delivery. There’s also less manufacturing costs with digital products. Physical products carry more costs such as manufacture, handling and postage. Commissions are therefore much lower with physical products than for digital products.

Average Commission For Affiliate Programs – Commission Types

There’s three main types of commissions you can receive as an affiliate marketer:

One-Time payment – most affiliate products pay you only once for the referral
Subscription – Subscription products will pay a recurring monthly income for referrals based on memberships and software type products.
High ticket – high ticket products carry a larger price tag and therefore pay the most amount out to their affiliates for each purchase made

Average Commission For Affiliate Programs – Product Ranges

You can also combine the three main types of commission structure when using a high ticket sales funnel. A good funnel offers multiple products from within a range which you can earn from. See SFM Digital Business System. With a product range, you can earn from later purchases made by your referrals. This gives you more earning potential as an affiliate than through selling only one time commissions.

Most affiliate programs only pay once for a referral. So as an affiliate you need to keep referring new customers in order to continue earning commissions. Once you have referred the customer, you have handed over your customer to someone else; who could potentially benefit from a lifetime of customer purchases. But with a product range your referrals have the option of purchasing something at a later date for which you can benefit.

So to earn more as an affiliate, it’s worth choosing a product range to promote rather than just a single “one-off” product.

Subscription Products

Subscription affiliate products don’t necessarily pay the most amount of commissions percentage wise. For example, Aweber offer a free autoresponder software for affiliate marketing. Their affiliate program pays out 30% commissions for referrals which amounts to $5.70 a month for new paid accounts. While this doesn’t seem like much on the surface, this is a recurring payment which will continue as long as the customer maintains their membership.

Subscription affiliate programs are powerful because they can compound your income over time. With a $5.70 a month recurring commission for each customer, 100 customers will give you a monthly income of $570. Compare this to selling 100 “one time” affiliate products which offer the same commission and you’ll only earn $570 in total. Monthly recurring commissions can soon mount up once you start making sales regularly.

Digital Versus Physical

The average commission of a physical affiliate product is much lower than that of a digital product. Some affiliates will say that physical products are easier to sell. Most people know what they’re buying with a physical product. Digital products on the other hand can be less tangible. However when you consider that the average physical product sale will generate only 5% commission compared to 30% with the average digital product, it’s worth taking note.

You’ll need to sell a lot more of the physical product (in this example) to earn the same amount as for the digital product. With digital products you have the added benefit of recurring commissions which can make a massive difference to your business.

High Ticket Products

There are also high ticket digital and physical products which can make a huge difference to your commission potential. A high ticket product is a product with a much larger price tag than most products.

As such the commission is much larger. Selling a single high ticket product can make you as much in commissions as through selling hundreds of lower value products. Even though many affiliates think this will be more difficult, it’s not 100’s of times more difficult and therefore can be a smarter way to do affiliate marketing.

Summary

The average commission for affiliate programs varies from 5% to 30%. There’s a huge variety of products to choose from and your choice will affect your commission structure. Physical products tend to pay far lower levels of commissions than digital products. Amazon, for example is one of the first stop shops for new affiliates. They pay between 1% and 11% commissions on their products. Clickbank is another affiliate hot spot for new affiliates and Clickbank’s commissions will vary from 20% to 50% in general.

It’s worth considering using subscription affiliate programs too, which pay recurring commissions on your sales. These can make a massive difference to your bottom line over time, as can high ticket products. Using a product range is another option too. With a product range, you automatically have a number of products to sell to your referrals. A customer might upgrade their purchase even months after your initial referral and you’ll still get the commission for the up-sale.

Product ranges are good too for new affiliates because you can benefit from a built in sales team who close sales on your behalf. For more information on affiliate marketing click on the image below for a free video series.

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Free Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing

Looking for a free autoresponder for affiliate marketing? Look no further! One of the best bits of kit for affiliate marketing is an autoresponder. I’ve always used Aweber for my list building services and they also offer a number of advantages for affiliates:

Email marketing
Automations
Landing page software
Sign up forms
Integrations with other software
Great customer service

You can access a free autoresponder account here which offers email marketing completely free and with no time limit! But what’s the catch? With Aweber free you can build a list up to 500 subscribers and send out up to 3000 emails a month completely free.

Free Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing

That’s pretty great if you’re just starting out as an affiliate marketer. Getting an email autoresponder is pretty much the best thing you can do for your affiliate business.

As you grow your list, and if you decide to take your affiliate business seriously, you’ll want to upgrade your account at some point through. 500 subscribers is only a small number of subscribers. Top marketers build lists into the tens of thousands of subscribers and this is where the money is!

But as a beginner it can take some time to build your list in the first place. So having your autoresponder for free initially will save you a bit of cash. As a new affiliate, it can take some effort and time to learn the ropes and decide on your marketing strategy. So depending on the steps you take, it can take weeks, months (or even years if you’re slow) to get to 500 subscribers.

The time will depend on what marketing strategy you use and how consistent you are with your method. See 22 ways to promote affiliate products for some ideas!

Free Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing – Pro Vs Free

free version versus pro version of aweber

The pro version of Aweber offers unlimited subscribers, email messages and list profiles. Plus you’ll get greater functionality such as being able to remove Aweber’s branding and split testing. Some tracking and analytics data is only available with the pro version, but again, this is likely only to confuse if you’re just starting out; so you don’t really need it as a beginner.

How Much Is Pro Version?

The Pro version of Aweber works on a sliding scale which grows as your business does. So initially it’s a lot cheaper because you won’t have such a large list of subscribers. As you grow your affiliate business, you will need to pay more according to how many people you have on your email list. (See image above).

As your list grows your earnings should grow too, especially if you’re using a high ticket sales funnel with a range of products including high ticket affiliate products and some subscription affiliate programs too! This kind of funnel is much more lucrative for affiliates!

Unlimited Landing Pages

Another great feature of the free Aweber account is the ability to create unlimited landing pages. Aweber’s user friendly interface includes a number of landing page templates which you can use to collect email addresses from. So whatever your topic or niche, there’ll be something which you can use.

Why Is An Autoresponder So Important?

An autoresponder is probably the most important thing you can invest in as an affiliate marketer. With Aweber’s free option, it’s a no brainer! With an autoresponder you can build a relationship with your potential customers and give them value. Promoting affiliate products from a website alone can be tough because most website visitors only stick around a few minutes. But with an email list you can extend this time period and keep in touch with website visitors.

Over time, people on your email list get to know, like and trust you (if you’re trust-worthy!). Then, they are much more likely to purchase something which you recommend (an affiliate product). See also the power of email marketing.

Micro Habits Examples

If you’re looking for micro habits examples, you’ve probably got a few already of your own. How about brushing your teeth before going to bed, or drinking a cup of tea in the morning? Often micro habits are attached to other behaviours which when made conscious can have a dramatic effect on your life over many years.

Blogging is one of my micro habits which over several years has allowed me to earn an income from the internet. Anyone can set up a micro or mini habit which compounds over time. Here’s some more micro habits examples:

One push up a day
Drinking a glass of water after waking up in the morning
Reading a single page of a self help book a day
Listening to an audiobook for 5 minutes a day
Writing one blog post a day

On their own, micro habits don’t look like much. But by maintaining a micro habit over the longer term, larger goals and achievements can be made. The point of building a micro habit is to generate momentum for an otherwise difficult accomplishment.

Micro Habit Examples

Micro habits are the tiniest of accomplishments in the direction of your goals. To set a micro habit, decide on your longer term accomplishment and break it down into tiny steps which you can do right away. So for example if you wanted to lose weight, you could choose a micro habit which relates to diet or exercise. A single push up a day is an example of an exercise habit.

While a single push up won’t have massive implications for an exercise program by itself, it sets into motion a momentum which otherwise you wouldn’t have started. Once in the press up position, you’re all the more likely to do two, three or five pushups.

Choose a daily habit which you can do whatever mood or state you are in. A mini habit, or micro habit should be something you can sustain, even on your worst days. After all, it’s only one push up, so even if you’re completely depressed, you can easily manage it! It should be ridiculously easy and simple to do. Over time, your habit of doing something simple will grow, and you can build more activities on top if you’re having a good day!

Habit Stacking & Environment Cues

Habit stacking is adding new habits on to existing habits which are linked somehow. For example, after you have brushed your teeth at night, you might get into your bed clothes/pyjamas, or the other way around. You might have done this for years already without being very conscious of it.

With a push up, once you have developed a habit of doing your single push up a day, and this is well established, you can add something similar to it. So for example, you might add a sit up to your daily push up regime. Once you’ve completed your push up, just do a sit up. Again, start with an easy task and don’t give yourself too much to do initially. Once habits are well established and growing naturally, add something on to them.

Often well established habits which we already have are inspired by our environment. So in the office, you might naturally have the habit of checking your emails. A book by the bed will remind you to read before going to sleep. Once you’re in the car, you are reminded to turn on the radio, or play some music.

You can use these environmental cues to your advantage. So in the car you might start a new habit of listening to an audiobook, or self help book instead of the radio. Or you could learn a new language just by switching your old driving habits to some new ones and listening to foreign language lessons.

Micro Habits To Change Your Life

Micro habits can change your life if you have a long term goal you want some help with. Learning an instrument, speaking another language, getting in shape or building an online business can all be helped with micro habits. Often a long term goal of learning a new skill or escaping your job with an online business can feel like an enormous task. But with mini habits you only need to focus on creating the habit, which is much intimidating.

Once you have established your habit, the habit does the heavy lifting. Learning a musical instrument is only a matter of practicing a little each day. Mountains are climbed a step at a time and even a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Mini or micro habits are those steps. If you focus on the step, the habits will take care of the long term goals.

Micro habits are therefore great for overcoming procrastination. As an affiliate marketer with an online business, having a large goal without a clear path to accomplish it can lead to procrastination. But with a micro habit, you only need to focus on the small, daily action you can accomplish each and every day. Don’t look at the whole mountain every day because it will put you off. Instead, focus on what little you can do which will get you further towards your goal.

By focusing on the tiny steps in front of you today, you avoid being off-put by the large mountain ahead. Celebrate small wins rather than looking at what you haven’t achieved. Focus on activity and not results and build tiny habits which lead to the result you want.

Find Low Competition Long Tail Keywords

A simple blogging strategy is to find low competition long tail keywords. This can be done with Google’s free keyword planner. Simply type in your main “seed” keyword and Google will give you a number of keyword variations. Here’s a quick video explainer.

Once you’ve found a good long tail keyword which is suitable for your blog, you can build content around it. With long tail keywords, there’s often less competition on the search engines. A short two word keyword will have a lot more. So by finding the long tail keywords you can more easily get your content found on the search engines. At least that’s in theory!

Find Low Competition Long Tail Keywords

Ideally find an unusual long tail keyword which is at least three words long. Then head over the Google and type it into the search bar. You should see a number at the very top of the screen on a desktop computer or laptop. This number won’t appear if you’re using a mobile phone. Competitive keywords have more pages which show up when you do this search. So you’ll see a large number. For example “earn money from laptop” brings up a very high number of 135,000,000.

Then use the same keyword for a search but put it in quotation marks like so.

Take a not of the number underneath. In this case it’s a very low number. These numbers can give you an idea of how competitive a keyword is. The larger the number the more competing websites you’ll be up against.

I like to find keywords which have less than 10,000,000 for open search and less than 10,000 for phrase search (in quotes). The lower the numbers the more chance you can have at ranking your content and getting free traffic.

If you find a good keyword which looks like it’s uncompetitive, have a look at the main search results on Google for your open keyword search. If the high domain websites with lots of authority are ranking for your keyword, it can be more difficult to get your content ranked. There’s a great tool called Keywords Everywhere which can help you assess the competition for your keywords.

Looking at competition for long tail keywords

Find Low Competition Long Tail Keywords

Once you have found a good low competition long tail keyword which gets traffic and gives you a good chance of ranking, it’s time to write your content around it. Ideally use an SEO plugin (search engine optimisation) to help you write your content with SEO in mind. I use Yoast SEO.

There’s a number of other plugins which can help you get more from your content through SEO too:

Speed up your website
Help visitors share to social media (social share)
Automatically post to social media (helping your visibility and SEO)

See best free blog plugins for WordPress.

Look at the competition again for your chosen keyword and have a read of the content which already has the top ranking. This is your competition so you need to write better and longer content than the best result! Ideally write at least 1000 words for your article.

Make sure you use your keyword in your SEO plugin. Yoast SEO will help you write SEO friendly content and get a good balance of the keywords within your article. It will also remind you to use your keyword in your article’s title, description, meta tags and image alt attributes.

Summary

So, to find low competition long tail keywords can involve a bit of research. But it’s worth taking the time with this before starting with your article. Not every single piece of content is going to find its way to the top of Google! Some won’t even get to the first page, depending on your content, backlinks and of course competition.

There’s many ranking variables used by Google (and the other search engines) so don’t expect miracles with this strategy. But remember also that Bing, Yahoo, Duckduckgo.com and other search engines will also rank your content. So you’ll get a small trickle of traffic from those search engines too. Aim for the long term with this and make sure your content is good enough to last. It can take several weeks for your content to get listed too, so be patient and keep going.

Is Being An Affiliate Worth It?

Is being an affiliate worth it? Affiliate marketing gets a bad rap but it’s a legitimate way to earn an income online, and many affiliates do very well. A lot drop out though, and the affiliate marketing failure rate is pretty high at around 95%. That still leaves 5% of affiliates who stick it out and earn an income from it. For these affiliates it definitely is worth the effort.

Some earn more than others of course and generally the longer someone has done affiliate marketing for, the more they will earn. Most of the people who quit do so because they don’t see any results for the work they put in. That’s because affiliate marketing doesn’t work straight away. It takes time and effort to build an income online using the affiliate marketing business model. Even with help and support, it can take months or even years to replace an existing income with affiliate marketing; depending on the marketing strategy and business model you use. Not all affiliate marketing business models are alike either and some are better than others.

The barrier to entry with affiliate marketing is so low that pretty much anyone can give it a go. But you don’t need a “give it a go” mentality with affiliate marketing; you need a “whatever it takes” mentality.

Is Being An Affiliate Worth It?

“Being” an affiliate can really suck, or it can really kick ass! It really depends on where you are in your journey. Top affiliates can earn six figure incomes plus, live anywhere and work from their laptop! They don’t have a boss, a job or have to commute! That’s pretty good from most people’s viewpoint! But beginner affiliates don’t automatically qualify for these benefits! As a beginner affiliate you’ll need to learn and grow as you build your business.

The best way to get started is through a training course which offers support and help. But even with the right training, a step by step automated business system and support, it can be tough. Earnings only come when you start making sales and this can be months after you have started, (or even years – depending on your marketing strategy).

Most people don’t have the patience and discipline to maintain the necessary focus – especially when they aren’t making any money from their efforts. That’s why so many quit. But if you stick at it and start seeing some sales coming through, this can inspire you to keep going.

Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It? The Chinese Bamboo

I often use the analogy of the Chinese Bamboo tree in my articles. The Chinese Bamboo tree has a super long gestation period of 4-5 years before anything breaks the surface of the soil. Once it does, the tree can grow 90 feet in 4-5 weeks.

Affiliate marketing is much like the Chinese Bamboo tree. If you are prepared to nurture and grow your affiliate business, it can produce some amazing results. But this can take a lot of time and patience. If you’re looking for a “get rich quick” scheme, affiliate marketing is not the answer.

The fastest legit way to make money online using affiliate marketing can still take several months at least. By using a multiple income funnel affiliate program and using paid marketing, the affiliate can quickly build a list of email subscribers and promote their products. Once profitable, this can be scaled up simply by increasing the marketing budget. A much slower method of earning through affiliate marketing is through blogging and content generation. This strategy will take considerably longer then the paid marketing strategy. See also 22 ways to promote affiliate products.

Fulfilment & Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing requires personal growth and self development which can be seen as part of the journey. Many people going into affiliate marketing are put of when they don’t make money instantly, and they drop out.

But for those who are determined enough and willing to learn, there’s huge rewards both from personal fulfilment and development and of course financially too. By developing a growth mindset, an affiliate can take failures and turn them into success. A successful affiliate has failed many times and built their success on their “failures”. To “fail forwards” as an affiliate marketer is to try things you haven’t done and get feedback from them. By doing this over and over, you will eventually find something which works and generates a sale. Once you have done this once, you can learn from it and repeat it.

Successful affiliates are those who didn’t give up. They failed just like the 95% of affiliates who quit. The difference is their attitude to failure. They see failure as stepping stones to success, and keep going.

Is It Worth It?

So is affiliate marketing worth it? This of course will depend on where you are in your affiliate journey and how you perceive your success, (or lack of it!). Affiliate marketing can give you a passive income and even financial freedom. For some, the concept of being financially and geographically free, to live on their own terms without a boss, job or commute is a goal worth working for – wherever they are in their journey.

But when you’re struggling this can be difficult to remember. There’s many hurdles and struggles for affiliate marketers to overcome to even get to the point of making their first sale online. I’ve been an affiliate for several years now and it definitely has its challenges.

But it’s given me the opportunity to work on my own terms, make an income from my laptop and replace my employment income. Perhaps more importantly it’s armed me with new mindsets and skills which I can use in life and in my affiliate business too.

Is affiliate marketing worth it? It’s worth it if you see it through and commit to the journey for the long term. It can give you new skills and the ability to earn from your laptop and live on your own terms. But if you think you’ll “give it a go”, or see how it goes, it might not be for you!

Google Adsense Vs Affiliate Marketing

Google Adsense vs affiliate marketing – which is best? With Google Adsense you place advertising on your content. As visitors click on your adverts you earn a small percentage of the advertising revenue.

With affiliate marketing you earn money from selling products and services online. With a small amount of traffic to a website, you’ll only earn a pittance with Adsense, whereas with the right audience and targeted web traffic you can earn a lot more from affiliate marketing – with that same amount of traffic.

Many bloggers start out by using Google Adsense. You can use free blog platforms such as Hubpages.com and monetise very quickly and easily with Adsense. The main problem though is traffic. Unless you have thousands of daily visitors to your content, it can be difficult to make Adsense worth your while. Only a small number of your visitors will click on your ads too, so you need to attract a lot of them. This takes a huge amount of time and effort. Unless you’re already there with having a lot of free traffic, you might want to look at affiliate marketing instead.

The other thing about Adsense is that you’ll need free traffic. With some affiliate marketing business models you can use paid marketing and get traffic quickly. But Adsense pays so little this just isn’t possible, if you monetise through the Google Adsense program.

Putting all that aside, Adsense does offer a way to monetise which is quick and easy. If you enjoy creating content it can be the right path for you. Adsense is a useful alternative to affiliate marketing in a difficult niche to monetise too. If you don’t have an affiliate product within your niche, Adsense might be the way to go.

Google Adsense Vs Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be a lot more lucrative if, and it’s a big if, you get the right audience. With affiliate marketing you need to create content which attracts the right audience. This isn’t such a problem with Google Adsense as adverts can be placed on any content, whatever it is. Get the wrong audience to an affiliate marketing site and you’ll struggle to make any sales at all. So your content needs to be a good match with your product.

There’s more scope for alternative strategies too with affiliate marketing. With Google Adsense you need to create content to place your adverts on. This can be video content on YouTube, for example, or written content on a blog. But with affiliate marketing you can be a blogger, video marketer, use paid marketing, build an email list etc. There’s also scope for building a business much more quickly than with Adsense, particularly if you use recurring income affiliate programs and high ticket affiliate programs.

You can of course use email marketing in combination with Adsense too; build an email list from your website and send subscribers back to your website. But if you’re going to do this, it’s well worth having some affiliate products to promote as well.

Combining Google Adsense & Affiliate Marketing

Of course you can use both affiliate marketing and Google Adsense. Many online bloggers and v’loggers do this. Some say they wouldn’t use both because a Google Adsense click takes their hard earned website visitors away for a tiny reward. Affiliate sales are worth far more, especially if you have a high ticket program and recurring commissions from your sales. So risking a loss of a new sale for a few pennies/cents doesn’t make much sense.

On the flip side of the argument you might also say if someone is going to leave your site without taking any action, better they leave through an advert which gives you something rather than nothing! Adverts can make your site seem spammy, especially if ads appear on every page and obstruct the content. So visitors might think less of your site if it’s crawling with adverts.

So it’s worth taking some time to consider how you want your site to be perceived by your visitors.

Earnings From Affiliate Marketing

Earnings from both Adsense and affiliate marketing can vary from month to month according to your website traffic and many other factors. To monetise an affiliate website can be more tricky. Most affiliate marketers build an email list of subscribers and then promote products to their list. This gives them a long period of time to build trust with subscribers. See the power of email marketing.

Most people use the internet as an information gathering tool, not as a shopping tool. They generally won’t buy immediately from an unknown website without having built up trust in the owner. As an affiliate builds their list of subscribers, and if they have the right people and messaging, they can build a solid income which grows over time. With only adverts to monetise, you need to focus on generating more and more traffic. This can be tough, especially in the early days when you’re just getting started.

When I started trying to earn online, I first started with using only Adsense and blogging. My experience soon led me to focus on affiliate marketing and abandon Google Adsense because one affiliate sale was worth far more than several weeks of Adsense advertising “clicks”.

See also affiliate marketing vs blogging for more on this topic.

Summary

With Google Adsense you’ll need a lot of traffic to make even a small amount of income. You can make more from less traffic with affiliate marketing, but your traffic needs to be very targeted and lead the right people to products and services which they want. This can be a challenge if you don’t know how and it’s worth building an email list and building trust over time with your subscribers.

Learn more about the different affiliate marketing models in a free video series. Click on the image below for access.

Multiple Income Funnel Affiliate Program

The SFM Digital Business System offers a multiple income funnel affiliate program. With a multiple income funnel there’s a far larger profit potential and this means paid marketing is much more accessible. Using paid marketing means an affiliate business can be built very quickly online. This can allow anyone to replace income from a job or employment if they are successful.

A good multiple income funnel affiliate program contains the following:

Subscription products – a recurring income from sales generated of memberships or software products
High ticket products – coaching and mentoring courses offer the highest levels of commission and value for business owners
Multi-tier commissions – offer a larger potential earnings through sales generated by your referrals
A built in sales team – closes sales to existing members/referrals on your behalf
A range of products from entry level to high ticket

Multiple Income Funnel Affiliate Program Benefits

With a multiple income funnel you have a much higher earning potential than with most other affiliate products. With a normal sales funnel your earning potential is generally around $1 per month per subscriber (to your email list). But with a high ticket funnel it’s more like $5. This gives you much more leverage for advertising.

General affiliate programs offer low commissions too, so it’s much more difficult to build and scale such a business. Amazon’s commissions for example are from 1%-11% compared to 30%-40% for most digital products. With a high ticket sales funnel which contains multiple earning strategies you have the highest possible earning potential.

A good sales funnel should give you a good return on investment of advertising spend. By spending $100 and getting $200 in commissions, you know you can start to scale up and spend more. With lower valued products it’s much more of a challenge to spend money on advertising to make sales. A $40 commission just doesn’t give the same amount of return as a high ticket product would.

One Time, High Ticket & Subscription

By combining one time payment, high ticket products and subscription products, an affiliate can make a much larger return on investment through such a sales funnel. Most affiliate programs don’t offer subscription payments and only pay affiliates once. The product owner generates a customer for the affiliate’s hard work – and they can become a customer for life.

A good multiple income funnel affiliate program offers lifetime recurring income from up-sells and memberships. Should your member upgrade their membership, even years later, you still earn a commission because you referred the customer.

Entry Level Product In A Multiple Income Funnel

The SFM Digital Business System has a front end product which affiliates promote and sell for $99. Access by clicking on the image below.

As you can see, this package also has a subscription membership attached. This gives the affiliate referring the product a monthly commission of $20 for each member they refer (each month recurring).

As you go further down the funnel, there’s also a range of other higher ticket mentorship and coaching products to help you build an online business from scratch.

A good multiple income funnel affiliate program should have a low priced “entry level” product and a number of up-sells to offer more value to your existing customers. Most affiliate programs don’t offer this and only have one product which you need to continually sell. By selling a product range, rather than a single product, your efforts as an affiliate marketer can go a lot further for the same effort!

Access The SFM Digital sales funnel through the Mentors All In program here.