Are you an affiliate marketing ninja? Before becoming an affiliate marketer, I was a pretty dedicated martial artist. I even trained with a ninja who gained a 5th Dan ranking from Grandmaster Hatsumi himself!
In the 5th Dan grading there’s a test called the Godan test. Grandmaster Hatsumi would stand behind the student and strike with a practice sword. The student had to move at the right moment to avoid the hit. Too soon or too late and they would fail the test. Here’s a short video explaining the Godan test, also known as the Sakki test.
My instructor, Trevor Robinson explained the meaning of the Japanese Characters in the word Ninja. The kanji character 忍, (ninor shinobu) means “patience.” This character is made of two parts: The top is 刃, (yaiba) means “sword or knife.” The bottom is 心 (kokoro), which means “spiritual or physical heart”.
Trevor described this as meaning “even though you hold a knife to my heart, I shall prevail“.
I thought this was a fitting explanation of the character traits which an affiliate marketer needs!
Affiliates need to endure a long period of learning and development before they see the results from their actions. Particularly if they go down the route of organic marketing strategies such as blogging.
Affiliate Marketing Ninja – Blogging
Blogging is a strategy I used for years. I recently had a conversation about marketing strategy with another member of the affiliate community I’m a part of. Some affiliates say never to use paid marketing until you get traction with the organic strategy you use. But it can take years before you see any kind of traction from blogging, for example (depending on your niche and the effort you put in). So others recommend the use of paid marketing to enable you to move forwards more quickly. Especially if you can benefit from subscription products and high ticket products.
This member had been using paid marketing but struggling to build a list and get traction. This is typical in the affiliate marketing business and I had the same issues when I started out doing affiliate marketing. He asked me how I was able to carry on for so long with nothing to show! I had to think myself too. Why did I carry on when most would have quit?
The answer came to me when stoicism was later mentioned in the conversation. Here’s a video I found just recently of Tim Ferris explaining the stoic philosophy.
Affiliate Marketing Ninja
In his video, Tim Ferris explains how by focusing on what we can control, and not focusing on what we can’t control, we can become much more effective and efficient while not wasting emotional energy on those things which essentially don’t matter to our goal.
While this is a more specific strategy, I like the description of the term “ninja”, meaning patience.
The second character of this Japanese term means “person” or “a person who is like that”, (referring the the previous character). Mono (者) means “a person”, or a person who is patient.
If you’re an affiliate, you need to be patient. I wasn’t patient when I was a beginner. I couldn’t afford to be, I was in deep debt and struggling massively. But I still managed to move forwards very slowly because I never quit!
So if you’re struggling with your affiliate marketing business, remember the ninja! Remember, you’re an affiliate marketing ninja!
“Many Stoics—such as Seneca and Epictetus—emphasized that because “virtue is sufficient for happiness“, a sage would be emotionally resilient to misfortune. This belief is similar to the meaning of the phrase “stoic calm”.” – From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoicism
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If you’re interested in learning more about affiliate marketing, or joining the community I’m a part of, you can access a free video series here. You can also access a free webinar here to learn how you can start earning from the internet.
“I too one day some time ago was sitting in my teacher’s room, when he said “Please close your eyes and wait, and what whatever happens, make sure not to open them!” Then perceiving that my teacher went down the stairs, I let my guard down a little to the sign that he had disappeared. After several hours, some sort of heavy, pressing force approached diagonally from behind, and seeing an image as if of a body split in two, I went into sideways-rolling body movement. Then I had a feeling right from the side, of the head flying, and executed a forward breakfall. As I slowly sat down into a natural Fudoza posture, I heard my teachers voice, saying “Well done, you made it, you may open your eyes now”, and when I opened my eyes, there stood Sensei, lowering an unsheathed sword in his right hand.” – Soke Masaaki Hatsumi on his Sakki Test
Motivational books PDF free download? If you’re looking for this, you’ve come to the right place. Motivation, according to Wikipedia is a driving factor for action, willingness and goals. When I was getting started with learning how to earn commissions online, these were some of the best things I found to keep me motivated and inspired!
One of my favourites is Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Whether you’re interested in earning more money, or finding a greater purpose in life, this book will help. One of the main things I got from Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich book is that we are in control of our thinking. Thoughts lead to beliefs and beliefs lead to actions. So if we can control the thinking parts of our minds – that part of our internal dialogue which we listen to all day and which never stops, we are better able to control the outcomes we create in our lives.
Another of my favourites is David Schwartz’s The Magic Of Thinking Big. Taking the same idea from Think and Grow rich, that our thoughts ultimately create our reality, it make sense to think big! Most of us get caught up in the trap of thinking too small.
We think about problems instead of solutions, we accept the status quo instead of striving and imagining how good things can actually be. The Magic Of Thinking Big will help you stretch your idea of what you think is possible, by showing you just how our limited thinking shrinks us and how to expand the idea we have of ourselves.
The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles is another classic which talks about inherent attitude towards success and money. Although many of these books have similar concepts within them, relating to thought processes, this one in particular is a favourite of mine.
Wallace Wattles talks a lot about attitudes towards money and success here. Reading this book gave be a better appreciation of my own inherent attitudes towards money and success. If you find yourself disagreeing with any of the concepts in this book, you’ll probably find the physical manifestation of your ideas inherent in your life too!
As A Man Thinketh was written by James Allen. Although only a short book, it has some ideas within it which you should find inspirational. It has similar concepts to some of the other books listed here and is predominantly concerned with the thinking nature of the mind and how than manifests into physical reality. Here’s a quote from the book:
“..by virtue of the thoughts which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master-weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness”
Shad Helmstetter’s “What To Say When You Talk To Yourself” is one of my favourite all time self help books. When I first read this book, it must have landed at the right time because I thought it was the best self help book I’d read! I’m a bit of a self help addict too as you can see! Our inner dialogue is one of our most powerful tools if we can learn how to channel and control it. In this book Shad discussed the topic of self talk in great detail.
Although this can be our greatest tool for transformation, most of us don’t use it. We are often trapped with replaying unpleasant discussions from our past and damaging and judgemental self talk which destroys our self worth and self image. This book examines how to change this by being more compassionate with ourselves. By switching the dialogue to more positive and self affirming self talk, we can take better control of our self esteem and create more positive outcomes in our lives.
Emile Coué wrote a book called Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion. This concept is discussed at length too in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Chapter 2 is dedicated to this topic in fact and Hill discusses it it length. Autosuggestion is the concept of how our inner dialogue, which never stops unless we consciously stop it, affects us in many ways. By taking control over this endless stream of dialogue, we are better positioned to take charge of our lives.
Maxwell Maltz was a plastic surgeon who noticed that after plastic surgery many of his patients still had problems. It was their self image which was at fault, rather than the particular feature they were unhappy about. So even after the facial surgery, or change in their body part/s, they remained unhappy about their life or image. Maltz experimented with a form of self development to help patients pre-surgery and many of them decided against surgery altogether once they felt happy in their own skin!
This is a great book to read if you’re unhappy with yourself in any way. People are constantly bombarded with images of “perfect” people in terms of their image, body shape and sexual appeal. Surrounded with unrealistic expectations and levels of achievement which are impossible to attain, it’s no wonder people are unhappy! The result is a poor self image and growing levels of self doubt and unhappiness. It’s no wonder that this is a global problem!
If you’re a fan of The Secret – Rhonda Byrne, you should definitely read The Strangest Secret by Earl Nightingale. The Strangest Secret was a 1956 spoken word record by Earl Nightingale which sold over one million copies and received the first Gold Record for the spoken word, which helped launch the fields of business motivation and audio publishing. It was later adapted into print and video forms. See Wikipedia for more details.
Although only a short book, it encapsulates much of what the law of attraction and Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret is trying to convey.
Working With The Law by Raymond Holliwell is another of my favourites in the “law of attraction” collection. As you can see in the content table below, Holliwell covers a number of principles you should apply in your life if you are to successfully use the “law” of attraction to consciously improve your life.
This book opened my eyes further to the concept of the law of attraction and I’ve re-read it a number of times. Each time I find gems which give me further insight into my own beliefs, concepts and prejudices which hold me from what I desire to obtain. In this sentence from the book I believe is one of the most important and overlooked ideas from the law of attraction:
THE underlying law that regulates supply in the world of effects has two important phases, one is “desire” and the other “expectation.” These mental attitudes represent lines of attractive force, the former being the positive phase of the law and the latter the negative phase, while phases must be complied with to obtain the best and greatest results. – Raymond Holliwell (Working With The Law)
I found this book when I was in my early 20’s and found it to be a great help. Creative Visualisation is a fantastic resource if you’re finding yourself struggling with something in life. One of my favourites quotes from the book is this:
” …if you learn to relax deeply and do creative visualization, you may be able to make far more effective changes in your life than you would by thinking, worrying, planning, and trying to manipulate things and people.”
I’ve found this idea to ring true in my own life. When I worry and stress, I push away the good in my frenzied worrying mind (and vibration). But when I practice relaxing and communicating the ideas I want to manifest to my unconscious mind (through visualisation), things happen naturally and spontaneously without struggle and strain. When I let go of making things difficult, they become much easier and I become less attached to some outcome of my choosing on which I’ve placed my entire happiness.
The penultimate “motivational books pdf free download” book is an old classic entitled The Richest Man In Babylon” by George S. Clayson. This is a timeless classic book which explains a number of financial principles anyone can learn from in story format.
The Law Of Financial Success by Edward E Beals was originally published in 1907 and is a still a classic. Here’s a snippet:
THERE is no idea that seems so much misunderstood as this idea of “Money.” On the one hand we find many people engaged in a mad chase after “money for moneys sake,” and on the other hand, many others who are decrying money as the root of all evil, and severely criticising the tendency of the age to seek money actively. Both of these classes of people are wrong-they are occupying the opposite sides of the road of reason, whereas truth is found here, as always, “in the middle of the road.”
All these books have been a massive inspiration for me and I am deeply grateful to the authors for their creation. If you’ve got some benefit from this post please share it!
If you’re serious about changing your life for the better, and are looking for another income source, you can also access a free video series which will explain a few strategies you can use to earn an income from the internet.
If you’re wondering how to make a website to sell stuff, you’ve come to the right place. Selling things over a website can be done in a few ways. In this article I’m going to cover the best ways you can start making money from a website by selling stuff! Don’t forget too that you can sell physical products from eBay, and other auction sites (Bonanza, eBid, eCrater, Etsy etc.). Facebook marketplace offers a free place to sell your household items. So unlike eBay, you won’t get any sellers fees.
But if you want to sell something you don’t own personally, there’s a clever business model known as affiliate marketing you can use. With affiliate marketing, you can promote many products using your own unique affiliate link. When you refer a customer to a product, you earn a commission. Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to earn online from a website. You don’t need products of your own to sell and you can sell products without speaking to customers or physically handling products yourself.
How To Make A Website To Sell Stuff – Traffic
You might thinking selling stuff from a website is easy. Simply build it and they will come, right?! Sadly there’s billions of websites on the internet which were built with this attitude which see zero traffic. The “build it and they will come” mentality doesn’t apply to a website, sadly. Imagine a gas station in the desert and you’ll have an idea of what your website looks like.
One thing you will need to sell stuff from a website is traffic. Without a hefty flow of website visitors who are purposeful about your products, you’ll struggle to sell anything. Even the best product in the world won’t sell without visitors to your site; and some of the worst products will sell if they have a large volume of targeted visitors looking at them. See how to know your target audience.
You can set up a website very easily and quickly with no technical skills or experience. Here’s a video which shows you a couple of free website platforms which can be set up in minutes.
How To Make A Website To Sell Stuff – Traffic Generation
What “stuff” you’re selling will determine how you set up your website. There’s a variety of ways to generate traffic to a website.
You can create content and use SEO (search engine optimisation)
Share your content on social media
Use paid marketing to drive traffic to your website
Upload videos to YouTube and link back to your website
Link to your site from other sites on the internet
These are the main strategies and some website owners will spend years building back links and working on their SEO. Others might use paid marketing to generate sales more quickly. Your own marketing strategy will depend on your personal financial circumstances, risk aversion, product choice and available time and resources. Someone with a lot of time on their hands, but who has less to invest might use organic marketing to sell stuff from a website. Someone who works long hours will want to use paid marketing to build an online business quickly.
What Stuff Are You Selling?
What you decide to sell on your website is an important consideration. It will determine your choice of marketing, and can have a bearing on how you build your website. If you want free traffic to your website, you’ll need to consider the main keywords you’ll be targeting with your content. If you’re selling low value products this is an option you could choose. Let’s say you decide to use Amazon’s affiliate program and sell photography equipment. You might want to build your website around the keywords “photography equipment”, for example as this can potentially help you get traffic to your site.
If you’re selling high ticket affiliate products, you might be more keen to use paid marketing to automate traffic generation more quickly. If this is the case, you might choose a domain name which has a connection to your product and which is part of your personal branding. This site, for example has been built on keywords “affiliate marketing mentors online“. Another site I have built is called defy9to5.com and is used with paid marketing.
So depending on how you will build traffic to your site, through either paid or organic marketing, you’ll want to consider your domain name before getting started.
Free Website Building & Blog Sites
In the previous video (above) I show two of the main free website builders Wix.com and WordPress.com. Anyone can use these sites to build a website with which to sell stuff from. This is ok to get started but it can be more difficult to sell products from. This is for a few reasons:
Free website builders sometimes limit functionality such as linking to some affiliate products – and so they can limit your ability to sell.
You’ll find it more challenging to get free traffic from the search engines with a free website.
There’s other free blogging sites too you can use such as Hubpages.com, infobarrel.com and iwriter.com plus many more. With these kinds of sites you can earn income from commissions or advertising placed on your content. You can also link to some affiliate products from some of these kinds of sites.
How To Make A Website To Sell Stuff – Recommended
Since marketing your website is the most difficult part of selling stuff online, I recommend using a program which offers a range of products already set up for you to sell. With many affiliate products you only make tiny commissions. See affiliate marketing business models. Amazon for example pays only from 1-11% commissions on any products you sell from their site. But with digital products you can earn a lot more (40% and above). Subscription affiliate products can pay you a recurring monthly income from sales and high ticket products give you a nice fat payday too! In combination with each other, this is the best business model I’ve found for selling stuff online! See also fastest legit way to earn money online.
You’ll also be able to use a website builder which will let you set up your own website, with domain name with a few clicks. Click on the image below to see a short video which shows the process of building your own website:
Building A Niche Website To Get Free Traffic
This website is an example of a niche website and has been carefully built around specific keywords: “affiliate marketing mentors“. You can do this too and the ease with which you can get free traffic will depend on a few factors:
The products you choose to promote
The niche you decide upon
Your knowledge of your niche and
The process you use to create and share content
Ideally, if you’re going to choose this route to sell stuff from a website, it’s a good idea to choose a topic you love, or have an interest in. Otherwise it can be difficult keeping up the necessary motivation to keep going getting your site up and running. Without traffic to your site, you won’t sell anything. So you’ll need to put in some work to get people to see your products. See this article for more on this strategy.
Building An Email List
Most people don’t buy directly from a website the first time they land on it. It takes some “getting to know” before they will trust it. For this reason, it’s a good idea to build an email list of subscribers. An email list is usually built from a website by offering something to give away to visitors in exchange for their email address.
Once on your list, you can promote products and services to your subscribers and build a relationship through offering value in your emails. On a website, someone only has a small window to purchase something you’re selling. But once on your email list, you can extend this time period to weeks, months and even years.
What exactly is an entrepreneurial mind frame? Why are entrepreneurs so different to employees and what sets them apart? There’s a huge amount needed for a mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur. An employee works within an organisation as one of its constituent parts. An entrepreneur, on the other hand, often works to drive a company and is more of a visionary than the employee.
An employee doesn’t take financial risks and instead trades their time for money. (Arguably this is a greater risk, given the finite nature of our time!) An entrepreneur risks all often because of their vision, drive and purpose. So what does it take to build the entrepreneurial mind frame, and can anyone do it? Most people don’t want to be entrepreneurs.
Sure, they want the freedom and the money, but most aren’t prepared to take the risks and do the things which entrepreneurs are prepared to do. So, ultimately entrepreneurs see things differently to most people. They don’t follow, they lead. They don’t accept the status quo, they create their outcomes driven by passion, purpose and a vision!
Entrepreneurial Mind Frame
Most of the entrepreneurs I’ve met are very driven and purpose focused. They see that they create their lives. They have a strong in-built belief that they can, and must change themselves if they are to change their lives.
Nothing drains my belief and purpose more than working in a job I have no passion for, and many business owners and entrepreneurs are the same. It is perhaps this experience which drives entrepreneurs to excel in some way, (in a purposeful endeavour), which means something more than simply drawing a regular pay packet.
Entrepreneurs have often worked jobs they hate too, and aren’t necessarily born into their entrepreneurial lives. Most have a burning passion which drives them to overcome obstacles which most would simply be a reason to quit for most people.
Entrepreneurial Mind Frame – James Dyson
Inventor James Dyson had the idea of a vacuum cleaner which wouldn’t lose suction. He invented the cyclone vacuum cleaner but had far from an easy ride to success.
After around 5 years of being supported by his wife and about 5,127 prototypes he launched the G-force cleaner in 1983. Unfortunately no manufacturer or distributor would touch his product. They were concerned about the lucrative industry in vacuum cleaner bags – of which James’s design had none! Dyson launched it in Japan through catalogue sales instead, winning a design award.
Dyson’s breakthrough in the UK market came more than ten years after the initial idea. After a successful campaign in the UK promoting the “bagless” machine proved to be a greater pull than the “no loss of suction” slogan. Hoover also paid damages of £4 million to Dyson for copying his idea as it took off.
Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison is another famous example in which the entrepreneurial mind frame overcame many odd. Edison did not invent the light bulb as it was already an invention. In 1840, British scientist Warren de la Rue developed an efficient light bulb using a coiled platinum filament. However it was expensive and not a commercial success due to the high cost of the platinum.
Early bulbs were either too expensive, used too much electricity or burned out too easily. On November 4, 1879, Edison filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp.
His famous quote is: “I have not failed, I just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”
Other Edison quotes are: “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” “I never did a day’s work in my life, it was all fun.” “Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” “One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work.
Entrepreneurial Mind frame – Start With Why
In Simon Sinek’s “Start With Why” he draws comparison with The Wright Brothers who sought to be the first to fly, and Samuel Pierpont Langley. Langley was given a $50,000 grant, was a mathematics professor who had worked at Harvard, had the best team and connections with the rich and famous. The Wright brothers had no government grants, no expert team and no high level connections, or qualifications. Yet they were the the first to succeed and on December 17th 1903 manned the first flight.
“Only the Wright brothers started with why” – Simon Sinek
The Entrepreneur Mind
Here’s a list of entrepreneurs from history and alive today. Entrepreneurs often have a different mindset to most people. They have high risk tolerance and are creative and hard working.
They are usually highly motivated and have the ability to be flexible in their work practices according to what needs to be done. Most people are the opposite and lack motivation and are risk averse. Most of this strength comes from a strong belief in themselves and in their abilities to overcome the roadblocks to achieving things others would consider too much hard work or impossible.
Are You Entrepreneurial?
Want to meet an online business entrepreneur and learn from the experience of an 8 figure business owner? Join Stuart’s webinar here. His mindset change allowed him to escape a job as a mortgage broker and become an full time online entrepreneur. In the live webinar he will explain the main things which he was able to leverage in order to escape a job.
There’s a necessary mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur if you are to become successful. Without it, it’s all too easy to repeat work and thought patterns which don’t serve you or your business. As an employee you’re in the role of a “technician” working a small part of a greater whole. The buck stops with the owner/s, not you. Your only responsibility is your small role in the company, with a regular job.
There’s a certain comfort in this too, and you can leave the job after the day knowing you’ll get paid for what you have done, or at least for your time. As an entrepreneur it’s very different. There’s risks and more responsibility. You can’t take your “time for money” mentality into an entrepreneurial venture and expect the same results. You need to approach it differently.
Mindset Shift From Employee To Entrepreneur
You may think that switching to the entrepreneurial role will give you more time, money and greater flexibility. While this can be true, it also brings a whole host of other problems you never thought about. While you’re working in a job, trading time for money, you have learned that working in such a way gives you a regular income and provides all you need. You have been conditioned by that job to expect a regular income, by trading your time for it.
In entrepreneurship you can’t expect that income because you haven’t built your business yet. So you might work longer hours for less money, or even for nothing in the early years of your business. While you work away in your new venture, enjoying being the “boss”, you are unaware of what actions and activities bring about the results you really want. So you might find yourself in the role of the “technician”, repeating roles which brought you success as an employee, but fail to do so as an entrepreneur.
As an employee you had the “cushion” of the company giving you a regular income. Other roles within an organisation did other things like drive the company, which you now must do as an entrepreneur. The problem is, you don’t know what actions and activities you need to focus on. You’re still stuck in the mindset of an employee – working on activities which don’t move your entrepreneurial life forwards!
Mindset Shift From Employee To Entrepreneur – My Story
Before working starting my own online business I worked for a company as a content creator. I got paid for writing articles. As it happened, it was articles about airport parking! For months I created new content around the topic and was severely burned out by the time I left! I thought it would be great to own my own online business and get paid the same just for writing content!
So I found some affiliate products to write about and I wrote and wrote. But I didn’t make any money. Despite working longer hours and for a much longer period, I still made much less than I did at my employee role. It wasn’t until I changed my focus that things began to change. I took my employee role and thought it would work in entrepreneurial life. It didn’t.
A similar thing happened when I built a martial arts school. I loved training in Wing Chun Kung Fu and did so for many years. “Great”, I thought -getting paid for my passion! But the things I was good at didn’t translate into building my school up and I struggled for several years.
I didn’t have the entrepreneurial skills to promote my school. I didn’t set out a curriculum which my students could follow and learn from. My mistake was that nly interested in my own training and didn’t know how to “package” my skills into a business model which was attractive. I was “stuck” in the habit of doing “my thing” rather than switching to providing value for my students. I was in the role of technician rather than business owner.
Employees Work, Entrepreneurs Drive
As an employee you job is to do as you are told. You work in a smaller role often, providing some element of value for a larger whole. But in entrepreneurial life, you’re the driving force behind your business. Without a vision of what you want to create with your business, it’s easy to fall back into the technician’s role and focus only on smaller actions which don’t generate the larger results.
The technician’s role is vastly different to the entrepreneurs. Their skill sets are different too. The technician works in the comfort of their skill set. The entrepreneur needs to focus on the bigger picture and if the company doesn’t make money, they are solely to blame.
So one of the best things you can do for a mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur is to take full responsibility for your success, or lack of it, and “failures”.
Reclaim Your Vision – Dream A Little!
As an employee too, it’s easy to lower your vision of what is possible. You position yourself with the people around you; many of whom lack vision and drive. Your circle of friends are your greatest influence. How many of them are entrepreneurial? Getting a “safe” job is often a priority for them, rather than living a greater life and finding a purposeful direction.
Another way to reclaim your drive for entrepreneurial life is to recall the dreams you had earlier in life. What was possible as a child someone loses its momentum as you grow up! You fall into the pattern of thinking like the masses, and never escape.
“Don’t take risks”, “get a steady job”, “stay safe” they say. But this kind of mentality doesn’t translate well into entrepreneurial life. Entrepreneurs take risks and have a larger vision of what is possible. You can’t bring the “safe”, steady mentality of 9 to 5 work into entrepreneurial life without it having an influence over the outcome.
Pain Pushes, Visions Pulls
As an employee, you need to keep turning up and trading your time for money. Your income in capped and you’ll always need to keep showing up to get paid. In entrepreneurial life, you need a “why” pulling you, or pushing you to take action to move your business forwards.
Without a strong motivating force, it’s hard to keep going when you don’t get paid for the work you do. As your business grows, you can, over time stop working and keep earning money, especially with a fully automated online business. But in the early days of building a business, you’ll work long hours and not see much. You need to lay the groundwork of your business and this is “underground” so you don’t see the results for it!
This is why so many quit before they start seeing the fruits of their efforts in entrepreneurial life. Often, the pain of working a job you hate forces you to take action and start your own business. This is the driving force to make you work so you have an escape route.
Once you’re out of your job, this goes away, and hence so does your motivation to drive your business forwards! That’s why pain pushes and vision pulls. As an entrepreneur, you need to use these forces to help motivate you. In a job, you know the money forces you to show up, day after day, until the pain overcomes the motivation to keep doing so!
When you shift from employee to entrepreneur, you’ll bring a bunch of habits with you. Most of these won’t serve you so you’ll need to do some “house cleaning”. As an entrepreneur you’ll need to be in charge of your business and this means getting clear on your objectives and manage your time well. Creating goals, putting up vision boards and creating clear targets to hit are pretty important and in employee life, these are often the things which are done for you.
Here’s a few of the habits you should start making as an entrepreneur:
Reading – read inspirational and helpful mindset books regularly
Goal setting – set specific and measurable goals for long term, short term and medium term so you can track your progress and hold yourself accountable.
Time management – time is valuable as an entrepreneur. You don’t get paid for time in business, you get paid for results.
Make daily lists and prioritise them
Create a “don’t do” list too – this is a list of things which if you did, it wouldn’t make any difference to your business.
Remove time suckers and distractions which cause any problems with the above.
It’s also useful to connect with other like minded thinkers. Many employees would kill to own their own business, but instead of doing it, will try and pull you back in. They secretly hope you’ll fail and can (perhaps unconsciously) sabotage your efforts with “helpful” words – often only meaning well and “looking after” you! See why your friends and family don’t want you to succeed.
Don’t ever complain to these people, as they will use it to “hook” you back into employee land to keep them feeling safe!
The idea of a fully automated online business is far from a pipe dream. But what exactly does it take to build such as business? Can anyone build a fully automated online business and what do they need to do it? A business model which supports automation is a good place to start and affiliate marketing is such a business. See affiliate marketing business models.
With affiliate marketing you get paid for referrals. So when you refer a sale online, you earn a commission. This process can be automated in several ways:
Through email marketing – email marketing lets you communicate with potential customers and build relationships. You can also sell affiliate products directly through emails. See the power of email marketing.
Through content marketing – blogs and videos online can lead customers to products through affiliate links directly. When someone makes a purchase through your link, you earn a commission.
UsingPaid marketing – is generally used to collect subscribers information and in conjunction with email marketing. But it can lead customers directly to affiliate products.
Payments too can be automated and affiliates earn through referrals; meaning you can earn without owning products or services yourself. Instead just point customers directly to existing businesses online. Earn for each paying customer you have referred.
Fully Automated Online Business – The “Why” vs. The “How?”
It’s pretty obvious why you would want such a business. A fully automated online business is basically a cash machine which prints money for you! You can work from anywhere and live anywhere. Without a physical location, like with a bricks and mortar business, you are completely flexible.
If your business is profitable it means you no longer need a job, a boss or a commute. Sounds pretty incredible really, especially if you’re used to trading time for money in a job.
But what is the reality of creating such a business? What is the “how”?
The “how?” is through using an existing business model. Drop shipping or the affiliate marketing models let you refer customers to existing businesses. The main problem with this kind of business model is that it is a performance based earnings model; don’t make sales and you don’t earn anything. However, the flip side of this coin is that the earning potential is unlimited.
There’s various business models within affiliate marketing. Amazon is a commonly used website for affiliates because there’s so much choice in products they can promote. However, Amazon pays pretty poorly (1-11% commissions on sales). Compared this to digital products which pay 40% and upwards in some cases.
Then there’s subscription products to consider. Subscription affiliate products are products which offer memberships and software for example. They pay a recurring income to affiliates who make the sales.
High ticket products pay much more too. With a high ticket digital product you can earn up to $8000 on a single sale. This gives you much more potential for using paid marketing as well as the obvious profit potential you can make.
With the SFM digital business model, you can benefit from multiple income sources including subscription commissions, high ticket products, multi-tier and a built in sales team.
This means you can build a fully automated online business much more quickly than by using lower value physical products which pay small commissions. With low value items, you simply can’t use paid marketing and still profit, in many cases.
This leaves only free marketing strategies available to you which it can take years to generate traction with.
Is It Really Fully Automated?
Is an online business really fully automated? Well it can be, but there’s a set up process you’ll need to follow initially. But most of the software you use can be fully automated and scaled up to a global audience. Depending on how you market your business this can take several months or even years. With organic traffic generation, it will take considerably longer to generate traction than if you use paid marketing.
Organic traffic is hard won traffic too and not everyone can have a top placing in the Google rankings. So expect your business to take longer if you go the organic traffic route. With paid traffic you can set up an advert and have it running the same day. It can be scaled up too, which is more difficult with organic content.
Fully Automated Online Business – Subscriptions & Up-Sells
With subscriptions, a built in sales team and a range of “up-sells” in your sales funnel, you can simply automate the referrals and let the system do the selling. With the right products, services and selling system, your marketing “engine” simply drives targeted traffic into your sales funnel which does the selling for you.
Your “front end” marketing “engine” is the most important part of your job, as an online business owner. Once you have done this, and it’s working properly, you can simply show your message to more people through using automation.
Your advert then drives people into your sales funnel and an automated email marketing system does the selling.
Access an online business system and training platform through this link. You’ll be able to build up your sales funnel and learn the marketing strategies to drive traffic to your affiliate products.
The plug and play business model allows anyone to set up a business system and sell other people’s products. Affiliate marketing is the broad term for this kind of business model. With affiliate marketing, you sell other people’s products and services online.
When you make a sale, you earn a commission. There’s many affiliate programs on the internet which let you sell their products. But most of them won’t show you how to do it! So you can spend months or years trying to sell products online, without actually having any success! The real key to using a plug and play business model is to have help and support with your marketing. Marketing affiliate products is the key to building a successful income from the internet.
The Plug And Play Business Model – Step By Step
A good “plug and play” business model will have a number of products you can use to generate income from. Most affiliate products offer from 1-11% commissions which is hardly enough to build a successful marketing campaign with. To market these kinds of products and still profit can be a long term project. This isn’t what you need if you don’t have time for creating a tonne of content.
With a range of digital products which pay you 40% commissions and above, you can more easily use paid marketing to drive your conversions. This is a much faster route to building a successful online business. Ideally a plug and play business model should contain a number of revenue generating products within a sales funnel:
Subscription affiliate products let you earn ongoing commissions for each sale you refer. These are things like memberships and software products which offer ongoing value to the customer.
High ticket digital products give you both a large value and a high commission rate. High ticket products can range from $1000 to $20,000 and offer up to 40% commissions on each sale.
Multi-tier sales – a multi tier program will offer you commissions based on the sales you generate through your team of referrals. It’s another income stream for those wanting to create large online businesses.
Built in sales team – a built in sales team and automated up-selling is vital for a “plug and play” business model. It lets you focus on marketing, while allowing an existing business system to do the selling.
In the getting started modules (access here) you’ll be able to set up your website, landing page, autoresponder and email follow up series. Your products will already be in your sales funnel ready; with your own unique affiliate links attached.
With the unique start up modules and step by step setup process, you’ll be able to work at your own pace setting up your sales funnel and system. Once done, you’ll have a powerful marketing system which can help you promote and sell digital products globally.
A plug and play business model gives you the tools and software to create your own digital online business system from scratch. Once set up you will need to drive people into your sales “funnel” to make sales and earn commissions. This is where many affiliate programs will leave you. But with The SFM Digital Business system you also have access to training, mentors, coaches and a community of people to connect with to help you learn marketing.
If you already understand marketing, you can simply drive traffic into your sales funnel to make sales and earn commissions.
Plug And Play Business Model – Traffic
Customers are key to any business and without customers no business will make money. As the owner of your business, you’ll be responsible for how well it does. A plug and play business model does give you the tools and training to get started. You don’t even need any knowhow, technical skills or products of your own. However, you will need to roll up your sleeves and learn how to market your business if you are to be successful.
This involves driving customers into your sales funnel. A sales funnel starts with a landing page which you will be able to launch using the step by step modules. It’s basically a web page which has only one purpose: to get people to sign up to your email list of subscribers. You’ll also have this set up during the step by step start up process. Here’s an example of a landing page which is designed to attract customers to sign up to a landing page and enter your sales funnel.
Getting traffic to your landing page can be done in many ways. The fastest way to build your plug and play business model is through the use of paid advertising. With paid marketing, you test and measure adverts until you get a “winning” ad which converts leads into sales. Once you get to this stage you simply increase your marketing budget and scale up.
There’s also free traffic strategies which can take much longer, but of course are much cheaper too! These can be things like blogging, organic video marketing, using social media and so on. According to your available time and money, you can choose from multiple marketing strategies to suit your own unique situation and circumstance. See 22 ways to promote affiliate products.
Access The Step By Step Modules
Within each step of the modules you’ll be able to learn powerful strategies to earn online through selling of affiliate products or using another online business model.
According to how you choose your direction, you will work through the modules and set up your business system, website, landing pages and sales funnel. An email autoresponder can be set up here too with a range of emails already in place to do the selling on your behalf.
If you’re wanting to get started online, and ready to take the first step, you can do that here. There’s also a 30 day money back guarantee with this program so if you decide it’s not for you you can claim a full no quibble refund!
The truth about affiliate marketing is not always what you’ll be told just before buying a program. Affiliate marketing is tough, so it’s wise to go in with your eyes open. Most affiliates will quit long before they make any sales and many will rush in thinking they can make quick money. The truth is that to make money consistently with affiliate marketing you’ll need to put consistent work in and treat it like a real business.
With any business, you need to work hard and put the hours in. But with affiliate marketing many think of it as a get rich quick scheme. This can be a major problem and when it turns out not to be, it can be a hard reality to face. Affiliate marketing is an alternative for many seeking more choice and freedom. But there’s a price to pay with affiliate marketing and you’ll need to study it and build your business over time. It’s difficult especially in the beginning when you don’t have any experience or data to act on. You’ll need to spend months or even years before you see a regular income from it.
The Truth About Affiliate Marketing
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Affiliate marketing is a business model and anyone can learn to use it. If you are determined and persistent, and you use the right business model, you can make affiliate marketing pay! See affiliate marketing business models. There’s various ways to do affiliate marketing too. So depending on your available time and or money, you could take one of several routes.
The fastest way to generate income from affiliate marketing is through purchasing a high ticket sales funnel and using paid marketing. But you’ll need to test and measure your advertising and spend money in order to find a winning advert. This can take some time and there’s no guarantees. So while you’re spending money learning paid advertising, you aren’t necessarily earning money. This path might suit someone with little time but who has the disposable income to use for running advertising campaigns.
If on the other hand you have plenty of time but money is more of an obstacle, you can focus on building content instead. Affiliates create content in various different topics or “niches”. But there’s lots of others doing the same and not everyone can have a first place ranking for their content on Google, for example.
With fierce competition, you face going up against multiple other affiliates within your same niche. If you’re attempting to get your content found cheaply, or for free, this can be a major stumbling block.
But where there’s a will there’s a way; and there’s many other ways to get your content in front of buying customers.
The Truth About Affiliate Marketing – Rates Of Commission
I wouldn’t be doing this article justice if I didn’t mention commissions. When I started out I used physical products which pay very little. Amazon and eBay pay from 1% -11% commission on product referrals. But using digital products can change your potential earnings quite dramatically, when you start generating traction. Typically, digital products pay 20-40% commission.
Is this the truth about affiliate marketing?!
Recurring commission products are worth a mention here too. If you choose recurring commission products, once you overcome the learning phase of affiliate marketing and get traction, things can happen quickly. A membership or software product can pay you ongoing income from each sale. This is well worth considering if you venture down the affiliate path.
But you still need to make the sale in the first place, which is the most difficult part of affiliate marketing, especially if you’re just starting out. Many affiliates build an email list of subscribers and after several years have email lists of tens of thousands of subscribers. With a list like this, it is so much easier to make a sale by offering products to your list. As a beginner, your list will be very small. Even after a few months you’re unlikely to have more than 500 people on your email list unless you use paid marketing and have a large marketing budget.
Most new affiliates will quit before they reach 1000 subscribers.
The Truth About Affiliate Marketing – How Much Can You Make?
Affiliate income varies too and it’s not something which is stable, especially in the beginning. With high ticket products and recurring commission products though it can be more straightforward creating a consistent income from affiliate marketing.
As a beginner in affiliate marketing you should expect to work consistently for several months before seeing much in the way of results (depending on your marketing strategy). With paid marketing this can be speeded up but with content generation expect to work for a longer period before you start gaining traction.
Getting Affiliate Marketing Wrong
There’s also the possibility of working consistently at the wrong activities within your affiliate marketing endeavour. You can work for months without getting anywhere. This can be very demoralising and it’s something which leads many to drop out and quit. But if you can learn from mistakes and see them as learning opportunities, rather than failures, you’re more likely to succeed over the longer term.
Marketing affiliate products and services is the biggest problem for new affiliates. It’s easy to build websites and sales funnels with pre-made affiliate websites and drag and drop software which you can purchase.
But getting people to your website and/or landing pages to drive sales is much more difficult. This is where most affiliates will struggle. There’s various marketing strategies you can use as an affiliate. See 22 ways to promote affiliate products.
Blogging – creating content like this article for example
V’logging – video blogging and uploading to YouTube
Social media marketing – connecting with people through the various platforms like Facebook, Twitter etc.
Email marketing – building a large email list and creating content to build relationships and offer value
Your Affiliate Link
When you first start out with affiliate marketing, it can be very exciting! You get your affiliate link and look for places to paste it! See where to put your affiliate link. But with only a link and no content it can be difficult getting anywhere. Why would someone use your affiliate link?
To generate sales you need to offer some kind of value first before sending people to products. You need to place yourself in-between the customer and the service somehow.
Example – A Review Website
One of the best ways you can do this is to give value and help them in some way. An review site is a good example to use. With a review website, someone is looking for information on a product or service.
After reading a review (the you have created), the visitor clicks on your affiliate link and purchases an item. Often affiliates will use review sites to give customers information on a number of products, comparing them to each other. Each product review links to the actual product through an affiliate link. So when someone buys you are credited with the sale.
Example – A Niche Website
Affiliates build niche websites too, like this one. AffiliateMarketingMentorsOnline is a niche website within the affiliate niche. But you don’t have to choose the competitive topic of affiliate marketing. There’s many niches you can choose from and ideally pick one which is much less competitive. It’s a good idea to choose a topic which you have a passion for if you’re going the niche route.
Niche websites can be built on specific keyword domain names to help them rank and get traffic (visitors) for free from the search engines. This can take some time and effort though and you should expect to work generating content for several months or years before you are generating a regular income through selling affiliate products.
An Analogy Of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is definitely a tough business and not for the faint hearted. But it can be an option to escape a career and if you’re persistent you can, over time, generate a good income from it. The fact that most will give up and quit leaves plenty of room for those who are determined!
A good analogy I like is that of the Chinese Bamboo tree which takes a 4-5 year gestation period before you even see it sprouting. Most people would give up unless they knew the Chinese Bamboo operated in this way. Once it does sprout, with 5 weeks it grows to 90 feet tall.
If you can see your affiliate business like the Chinese Bamboo tree, you’ll be much better prepared for the tough times and you are more likely to see it through. Don’t expect an easy win from affiliate marketing through because it’s unlikely you’ll succeed with this attitude. But if you work consistently at it over a number of months and years, continue to water and feed it, you’ll reap the rewards!
How do you resell digital products which don’t belong to you? It’s simple, you join an affiliate or partner program which offers them, and refer customers through your unique affiliate link. When a sale is made, you earn a commission which is tracked by your link. Reselling digital products is known as affiliate marketing. Affiliates can earn commissions through referring customers online to a variety of products and services.
Amazon is well known as one of the biggest online stores for affiliates but its products are physical. You can find digital products to sell on sites such as Clickbank, JVZoo.com and Click2sell.com. With digital products there’s less cost involved so profits can be shared more with the affiliate who refers the sale. Physical products have larger manufacturing, storage and delivery costs so commissions are generally much lower.
Amazon, for example pays affiliates from 1-11% commission on a referral. Digital products pay much more and some even offer 100% commissions on products you sell. Mostly though digital products will pay from 20-40% commission on a product.
Resell Digital Products – Flexible & Uncapped Income
One of the main reasons people learn how to resell digital products is to earn a flexible income which can be built on. All you need is an internet connection and a laptop to become an affiliate. You can join a number of affiliate programs to promote digital products which you don’t personally own; although it’s a good idea to purchase them yourself if you want to promote them.
Selling digital products online is a skill to be learned, and you can replace your income through using affiliate marketing. But it’s no easy thing and you should expect to spend several months learning before you start making regular sales.
Another benefit of affiliate marketing is that you can work flexibly around existing work and build your business up over a number of months or years. Some affiliate products even pay you a recurring income. Recurring income affiliate programs are usually programs which offer memberships or software products. These can be the most lucrative to use if you decide to learn how to sell them.
Over time, a recurring commission affiliate program can give you a passive income too. If you only make $20 a month from a membership product, for example, after 100 sales you’ll be earning $2000 passively, if your members maintain their memberships.
How To Resell Digital Products
Learning how to resell digital products can take some time. But once you learn this skill, you can automate sales. This is a skill which can serve you for life, replace your income and give you geographical and financial freedom. Not all affiliates are successful however, and many quit before they reach this point. The first 6 months to a year of your affiliate journey is likely when you’re most likely to quit. That’s the difficult part because you’re only getting going and won’t have any experience to draw on, or data to learn from.
Many affiliates build an email list of subscribers and automate an email follow up series which sells their products and services on autopilot. As a beginner, your list will be very small. As your list grows, you can expect to gain experience and start making sales. But a list of 100 members won’t products the results of someone with a list of 10,000 subscribers. This is why it can be difficult as a beginner getting through the quiet phase where not much happens!
Your first online sale should be celebrated as this marks the start of things to come! This can come after several weeks, months or even years. It’s different for everyone. The key is to keep moving forward and commit to learning and growing personally and with your affiliate marketing business.
Generating Traffic
To build an email list you’ll need to learn how to generate website traffic. Getting traffic to your website and landing pages can be a challenge, particularly when you are learning. There’s a few ways to do this and depending on your individual circumstance you may decide to opt for free marketing or paid marketing strategies. Or you might even do a little of both. Paid marketing is the fastest way to resell digital products but you’ll need to make sure you make more money than you spend.
This can be difficult with physical products because of the low levels of commission they pay. But it’s more attainable with reselling digital products because you’ll usually make 40% commission and above on your sales. If you use subscription affiliate products, you’re giving yourself another advantage still.
There’s several ways you can generate traffic to resell digital products:
Another key advantage is to use high ticket affiliate products. High ticket products pay much larger commissions. The average digital product you might find on Clickbank, for example, will cost $100. With a 40% commission you’ll earn $40 a sale. With a high ticket product, the price tag can range from $2000 to $20,000. 40% commission on a $2000 product will give you a nice $800 for each sale you make.
It’s also possible to resell digital products which cost upwards of $10,000. These can be membership programs and offer more personal coaching and mentoring. See 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching and mentoring.
Main Benefits Of Reselling Digital Products
There’s a few main benefits of reselling digital products. With an online business you can work flexibly around existing work and build up your business over time. Affiliate marketing is also a scalable business model and you can sell digital products globally from wherever you are in the world. You don’t need your own products or even any experience to learn this skill. Access a free video series to learn more here.
People who are long term affiliates enjoy working their online business from anywhere and with a flexible working pattern which suits them. They don’t need jobs and many have made their online business their main source of income. With a scalable income, geographical freedom and no need for a boss, job or commute, many affiliates relocate or travel while working from their laptops.
An online flexible working income is a good way to escape the 9 to 5 and replace your income. This is a real possibility for those who are prepared to work for it. Access a free video series to learn more here.
Affiliate marketing programs for bloggers can cover pretty much any topic. You should choose a product which is suitable for your audience, according to your blog topic. So if you’re blogging about sports cars, for example, it’s not a good idea to sell fertiliser from your blog! You won’t sell any fertiliser to car enthusiasts because that’s not what they are looking for when they visit your blog. This brings us to an important issue about aligning your blog topic with your product. Get this wrong at your peril!
Ideally when someone comes to your blog, you’ll have products and services which are useful and valuable to them. They’ll see your products and buy, or purchase from your email list after signing up for your freebie – an ebook or pdf download typically.
Affiliate Marketing Programs For Bloggers
What is your blog about? What kind of person visits your blog and what kind of products would interest them based on this?
Ask yourself these questions to determine which product or service you should choose for your blog. Then do a search for “{your topic} affiliate programs” on the search engines. You should find many since there’s so many affiliate programs available to join.
So if your blog is about bonsai trees for example, do a Google search for “bonsai tree affiliate program”.
Affiliate Marketing Programs For Bloggers – Choosing Products For Your Topic
Your choice of affiliate marketing program is pretty important too. If you pick a bad product or don’t get a good match, it can be harder to make money from your blogging. Clickbank is a good place to find a lot of digital affiliate products, but there’s also a lot of products which don’t do very well on Clickbank too. It’s a good idea to research your products well before choosing it. A bad product won’t sell, and this could be for a number of reasons: bad sales page, poor product, or negative reviews etc.
Join Clickbank and you can browse through hundreds of digital products in the Clickbank marketplace.
Here’s another way to find products you might want to sell from your blog. Looking at this particular product notice the Grav: 1.51 under the product listing. This means very few affiliates promote this and this can be for a few reasons. This might be good if there’s less competition for SEO (search engine optimisation). But it might also mean it doesn’t sell well.
Choose Products You Purchase Yourself
The best way to align affiliate products with your blogging is to choose products which you have purchased (and value) yourself. If you’re recommending a nice restaurant to a friend, you really should have been there yourself! The same goes for affiliate products. If you have personally bought a product, you’re also in a much better position to recommend it to your website visitors and email subscribers.
When I started out as an affiliate, I just promoted affiliate links willy nilly! I didn’t buy the products often but was just desperate to make money from selling them. Unfortunately this was a difficult learning curve and many products I choose didn’t sell at all.
Having great products which are hugely valuable is a must if you want to make consistent sales. It’s also worth choosing products which offer recurring commissions if you can too. Affiliate products with recurring commissions are usually things such as training and education tools, memberships and software type products.
Offer A Giveaway Product On Your Blog
Whatever affiliate program you decide to join is a representation of you. Your blogging style and content will draw in an audience who should be a good match for your product. However, not all products sell directly from a marketing banner placed on the side of your website.
Sometimes you need to build a relationship with your audience over a longer time period. With physical products you can find on Amazon, it’s much clearer cut what value your products offer. So if you have a photography blog, for example, you can sell cameras and camera equipment from Amazon. You can sell photography courses perhaps too.
With digital products such as trainings and courses, the product value is typically less obvious than with a physical products from Amazon. In the case of digital products (trainings, courses and software), you may have to take a different approach to marketing from your blog. The power of email marketing can help you build relationships with your subscribers and sell less tangible products like these.
To build an email list of subscribers from a blog you’ll need to offer some valuable freebie giveaway which connects you to your affiliate products in some way. On my site I offers a number of ebooks and a free video series explaining the different affiliate business models you can use to build an income online.
Not Started Yet?
If you’ve not started blogging yet and are yet to choose your topic, it’s worth giving it some serious consideration. Blogging is a long term marketing strategy and great fun if you choose a good topic you align with. But it can be tough to earn from if you don’t get the traction you need, or if you choose a topic which is not your passion.
I made the mistake of building a blog with the sole intention of making money from it. I didn’t build it around my passions! I found a domain name “whentoharvestgarlic.com” and starting building content. 6 months in and I was demoralised and burned out. I didn’t give a hoot about Garlic harvesting which made the topic hard to write for and less than a joy. I quit after a year and my site slowly dropped off the search engines!
It was a valuable lesson. So if you’re thinking of picking a topic just for the money it could make, I’d advise you to pick something else which you’re passionate about instead. That way writing is easier and more fun, and you can sustain the necessary effort over the longer term.
