AffiliateMentor, Author at Affiliate Marketing Mentors

Affiliate Mentoring

Affiliate mentoring is an important part of becoming a successful affiliate. Without it, you’re choosing to go it alone. Even the top affiliates have been mentored, so it’s important to park your ego and ask for help.

Before I found a mentor, I was the same. I was determined to go it alone and prove I could do it all by myself! But I spent years on bad strategies and tearing my hair out trying to make things work. Don’t make the same mistake – affiliate mentoring will save yourself a lot of problems.

Why You Need Affiliate Mentoring

Affiliate marketing is a pretty vast topic. There’s many ways to do it and if you’re not careful you can spend a lot of time on a strategy and still get nowhere. There’s many courses too which will take your money and still not give you the personal coaching you really need. I took many of them over several years. Read about them in my digital profit course review.

Once you hit a bump in the road, it’s far too easy to give up without someone to reach out to. An affiliate mentor is a “touchstone” to help keep you on track, motivated and buoyed up by the belief it is all possible. When you are on your own and things get tough, you can quit more easily. Your belief can drop and when your uncertainty takes over, it becomes much more difficult to maintain forward momentum.

affiliate mentoring — Stuart Ross mentoring during a live SFM seminar

With a mentor guiding you, your belief is much stronger. When you have a strong positive belief in what you’re doing, you can sustain your efforts for much longer. This is definitely needed with affiliate marketing, which can be a tough business.

Affiliate Marketing As A Beginner

As a beginner in affiliate marketing I spent a lot of time working on strategies which are now redundant. Back in the early 2000’s, I bought several online courses which taught affiliate strategies for building traffic. Some of them worked but mostly the results I got were disappointing.

This is the reality for many affiliates who start out with huge optimism. Over time, when they don’t see results from their efforts, they quit. But this is a mistake. They just need an affiliate mentor to help them breakthrough; and this can take some time depending on the strategies you implement.

Up to the point of the breakthrough, there’s a lot of time spent on learning and implementing strategies. If this time period is several months or even years before you see consistent results, many people will quit, thinking this is the “reality” of affiliate marketing and that it’s all a scam!

Affiliate Marketing Growth – An Analogy

I love this analogy for affiliate marketing and I even heard it from one of my mentors. The Chinese Bamboo tree needs a lot of nurturing, more than most plants. If you didn’t understand the tree’s needs, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was dead, and throw it away! This is similar to the path of the affiliate marketer and of those who quit too early.

In the first year of growing the Chinese Bamboo tree needs water and fertile soil. But we see nothing in terms of growth. The same is true in the second year, third and forth year of the plants development. In the fifth year the Chinese bamboo tree grows just 80 feet in 6 weeks! Of course the first few years of the trees development were vital to support the exponential growth of the fifth year.

The same is true of the path of the affiliate marketer. Setting up your foundations are vital to your growth. If you jump around from one strategy to the next, you’ll never see growth. If you’re impatient and throw a seed away before it takes route, you won’t see the magnificence of the bamboo tree!

Types Of Affiliate Mentoring

There’s various ways to get mentored in affiliate mentoring. You can access pre-recorded videos, download ebooks, purchase books online, join email lists and interact with 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching and mentoring sessions online. If you’re lucky you can even meet mentors personally in live sessions and even befriend them!

The most common affiliate mentoring is through pre-made materials you can find online. However, there’s so much of this material available that it can be difficult to discern one “guru” from another. Who is telling the truth about affiliate marketing and which way is the “best” way to do it?

Conflicting advice on affiliate marketing can be a major problem when you’re getting started. No sooner have you joined one program when your inbox is filled with the next best thing – promising faster results for much less work! So you jump on to that course only to find the same problems! How can you navigate such a minefield of disinformation?! The answer is to get a mentor you trust, and stick with them, taking the action steps they advise!

Q & A Webinars

Some of the best mentoring I’ve received has been through question and answer webinars and seminars where I can ask questions directly to the host. Mastermind webinars too are really powerful and being part of a group of people is very powerful for your belief in what you are doing.

Without a community for support, you’re forever looking at videos and scraping the internet; trying to make sense of something all by yourself!

On a live mastermind webinar session with other online business owners.

Affiliate Mentoring 1 to 1

With Jay Kubassek in 2014 in London on a live event

In 2014 I was introduced to the world of affiliate marketing mentoring. I met Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek during a live SFM meeting in London. Since then I’ve met many mentors (through the community) who have helped me build an online business through their support and encouragement.

If you’re going it alone in the affiliate journey, I highly recommend joining this community. Access a free video series to learn more about The SFM here.

Affiliate Marketing Business Models

There’s many affiliate marketing business models you can use as an affiliate. Not all of them give you the same benefits either so it’s prudent to do your homework. You could spend years working on your affiliate marketing business and make peanuts if you choose the wrong one!

Business models for physical affiliate products tend to pay far less than those for digital products, for example. Take for example Amazon and eBay who’s affiliate programs pay between 1% and 10% commissions. Compare this to digital products which pay from 40% to 100% commissions and you can see the difference isn’t a tiny one!

Sell just 10 products from Amazon at $40 a product and you’ll earn only $12 at 3% commission. But sell the same value of digital products and you’ll earn $160 (at 40% commission).

Obviously with the physical affiliate products business model you’ll need to deal in large volumes. But there’s more to consider too when it comes to affiliate marketing business models.

Affiliate Marketing Business Models – Recurring Income Products

Digital products also offer recurring commission on certain products. If you choose business tools you can even earn lifetime commissions on sales you make should your customer stick to the product for good! Recurring commission affiliate programs aren’t all alike either. Some only pay you the commissions for the first year. After that, your commissions end and you’ve sent your customer to the product owner, who could go on to earn a lifetime of sales from your efforts.

Recurring commissions are often found in business products and tools used for online businesses. Autoresponders, hosting providers, online marketing courses and SEO and keyword tools are just some examples of products which offer lifetime commissions.

It’s well worth choosing these kinds of products if you’re serious about making your affiliate business pay too. Compared to one-off commissions from single-point-of-sale products, you could save yourself a lot of hard work and make your life easier.

Affiliate Marketing Business Models – The Six Figure Sales Funnel

You can build a six figure business from affiliate marketing if you use the right business model. It’s a whole lot more difficult if you’re stuck with low paying physical products and a slow marketing strategy. But with high ticket digital products you can maximise your earning potential and scale up quickly using paid marketing strategies.

With low valued products, you’re stuck with cheap and free marketing tactics which are time consuming, slow and unscalable.

The six figure affiliate business model uses a range of products too, not just one. With a product range, you can offer your products to many people. A low valued “entry level” product is just the beginning of the sales funnel. A mid-range product and high ticket product should be a part of a six figure sales funnel. Add in recurring commission products and multi tier commissions and you have several income streams from a single funnel.

Build a sales funnel like this: access here.

Multi-Tier Commissions, Subscriptions, High Ticket, Built In Sales Team

The SFM Digital Business System offers a high ticket product range paying up to 40% commissions on a range of digital products:

Affiliate marketing business models don’t often offer this in terms of commission levels. In fact most affiliate business models will pay out $1 a month for each subscriber you get on your email list. With The SFM model, you should average $5 a month per subscriber – 5 times that of the average sales funnel.

Of course this all depends on your advertising. Once you have set up your sales funnel, you’ll need to market your online business. The SFM offers training and education for anyone wanting to start an online business from scratch using this system and strategy.

You’ll need a marketing budget in order to drive targeted visitors into your sales funnel. Or, create content if you have the time.

Learn more through this free video series.

Summary

There’s various affiliate marketing business models out there. Free products are free, but often end up giving you less back than the high ticket affiliate products which are worth paying for.

With a high ticket product, you get a high commission. With a business model which offers high ticket, subscription commissions, a product range, multi-tier and a built in sales team, you will be able to earn far more than with a free affiliate product which only pays you once.

Whatever affiliate business model you choose, think about the hours you’ll be putting in making those sales. With often what amounts to the same amount of effort, you can earn a lot more using the right products.

Access a free video series to learn more about The SFM Digital Business system and product range.

You can download this article here: Affiliate Marketing Business Model PDF.

Autopilot Business Ideas

I started looking for autopilot business ideas after working for some time on an eBay business strategy. The eBay idea, (I thought) was pretty clever, and involved finding cheap items on eBay that were badly listed. I then resold them and made a profit on the difference. The problem was it wasn’t a scalable business. I could purchase more valuable products and increase my profit with a larger mark up. You can read about the strategy in this article.

But I was stuck to my laptop all day answering customers questions. I had to physically post things out too which meant I was physically trapped by this business model and it didn’t give me the freedom I was looking for.

I knew the internet offered something better. So I looked for autopilot business ideas which could work for me whether I was at the computer or not. Here’s the short version (click on the image below).

Autopilot Business Ideas

The eBay business model came originally from an ebook I purchased from eBay. The purchase of this ebook stuck in my mind and I realised that it was an automatic transaction. The seller had created it himself and just set up a listing. He could also sell the same book over and over again with no printing or postage costs. So I decided this was an awesome autopilot business idea! See also how to sell ebooks on your own website.

I went to work and created an ebook about how to become a stuntman! Since I had joined the British stunt register some time earlier I though it a good idea to write about what I knew! I also created an ebook about being a TV Extra but despite a lot of website building and learning some online skills I didn’t sell either book!

I realised that what I didn’t know how to do was market my websites which sold the ebooks. So, I put myself on a marketing course online to learn how. Once joining a course, I soon realised there was a better business model than selling my own ebooks. It was a business model called affiliate marketing.

Autopilot Business Ideas – Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is now my favourite of all the autopilot business ideas I looked at. What struck me about affiliate marketing was that you can sell almost any product available on the internet. I even learned how to sell the course I had bought to learn about it!

My ebooks were priced at $10 and I got 100% of the profit. But the course I promoted offered a lot more value and to a larger audience. It was priced at $100 and I could earn 40% commission. So for each sale I earned $40. This was four times what I would have earned selling my own ebook!

autopilot business ideas - affiliate marketing

So I quickly dropped my ebooks and worked on the affiliate model strategy. Using paid marketing I built an email list and started making sales. I was just about to start scaling up my efforts using a larger advertising budget when I got my advertising account shut down by Google, and I couldn’t get it back!

No matter what I did, Google wouldn’t let me have another account. So I looked for more autopilot business ideas that I wouldn’t need a paid advertising account for.

After joining another course, I found a strategy. It meant I could still work online and automate an income by blogging! It was Adsense!

Autopilot Business Ideas – Google Adsense

Google Adsense lets you automate an income from anywhere by putting advertising on online content which you own. You can use Adsense from a blog, or upload videos to YouTube and monetise through using advertising. There’s many Adsense alternatives you can use too, but I used Adsense (and still do).

Adsense pays you a portion of advertising revenue collected by Google from advertisers. When someone clicks on your advert, (on your content), the advertiser pays Google for this advertisement and Google pays you a small percentage. This is usually a tiny amount (less than a dollar) but with a large volume of traffic you can make this a nice passive income with enough content.

Despite building a lot of content, Google Adsense didn’t pay enough to make it worth my while in the early days. It was only years later that I had enough content to make a regular passive income from it. Even, then it wasn’t enough to pay the bills!

Adsense is great if you have lots of content, or a willing to create a lot of content. But it’s a “slow burner” if you’re starting out. Plus, Google has pulled many accounts over the years and people have lost their livelihoods. So it pays to diversify.

Affiliate Business Models That Pay The Most

This takes me full circle back to affiliate marketing again. After experimenting with Adsense, I realised that affiliate marketing was going to be a better earner. I jumped on another affiliate marketing course in 2014 after finding a video online by a guy called Stuart.

Here he is on a pedalo in Mauritius. Watch the video here.

Stuart Ross teamed up with Jay Jubassek in 2010 and created an online mentoring program called the Six Figure Mentors. I was sceptical, of course, since I’d already been here before and failed several times. But I was struggling getting work as a stunt performer and fed up of the other jobs I could get (office work, HGV driving, hired hand etc.)

So I took a leap of faith and joined the community.

On a mastermind call with other online business owners through the SFM community.

The Six Figure Funnel

The SFM Mentors uses affiliate marketing as one of their business models. Although they also teach marketing for other businesses and import exports business models too. Many members also have their own marketing businesses as a result of the education they received from the SFM.

I was interested in their affiliate marketing model because I was looking for autopilot business ideas. What was different about The SFM’s business model was that it had multiple earning strategies in it.

the six figure online funnel — The SFM Digital Business System offers a six figure funnel

Most affiliate products only pay you once. When I promoted products from the likes of Amazon, for example, I only earned for each sale. With the SFM’s business model, you can earn recurring commissions for affiliate sales. With recurring commission affiliate programs you can sell once and earn an income for potentially a lifetime. Each sale therefore gives you an income rather than a single commission. Other earning strategies using this business included:

High ticket digital products – earn up to 40% commissions on products valued up to $20,000
Multi-tier commissions – earn from sales made by your referrals
Subscription products – (recurring commissions from previous sales)
A built in sales team – closing sales on your behalf
A product range – a number of products you can promote to existing customers.

See SFM Digital Business System for more on this model. Get started here to join the SFM.

How To Build An Audience For Affiliate Marketing

Are you wondering how to build an audience for affiliate marketing? Building an audience to promote affiliate products can be done in a few different ways. But the key to getting your messages in front of as big an audience as possible is to build a list of email subscribers.

Once you have an email list, and a strategy for growing that list, (and communicating with your subscribers), you can take your affiliate business forwards in leaps and bounds. Until you do so, you’re forever stuck either paying for traffic or building content in the hope someone will find your content and purchase a product from it.

But most people don’t purchase affiliate products from a website. On a website, someone only has a few minutes before they are gone forever. In that small window of opportunity, they are unlikely to buy from a link or banner on your website. They came to your website to find something out or read some content. They didn’t (necessarily) come to buy a product. So, they are usually gone in under 10 minutes.

How To Build An Audience For Affiliate Marketing

But get their email address and things change. Once someone enters their email into a form on your website, you can extend this time period dramatically. With an email list, time spent on a website can be extended to days, weeks and even months, years and decades. You can build a relationship with your audience and most importantly build trust.

It can take some time to do this however. Your email messages need to be congruent with the intent which your subscribers had when they opted in. You need to provide value and genuinely offer to educate, inspire and entertain your subscribers. If each email you send out has a link saying “buy this”, it’s pretty uninspiring. That’s not going to help build your audience and build trust.

You may sell products but you won’t build trust. Arguably trust and building long term relationships is worth far more than selling the odd product. If your audience trusts you, they’ll buy products from you and keep buying (if you’re trust-worthy!).

It can of course take a little time to get used to writing to your email list. Provide value as your priority and you’ll build confidence in your audience. There’s one or two emails in my inbox which I never open! That’s because I know they are from someone who is trying to sell to me and I’ve decided that their tactics are untrustworthy!

In particular I hate the “time is running out” theme and other scarcity tactics of that ilk! Everyone is different though and of course these strategies obviously work, otherwise, marketers wouldn’t use them.

The emails I do open are those from people who talk naturally in their emails, as if I were their friend.

How To Build An Audience For Affiliate Marketing – Building Your List

Building an email list can take some time and, in particular, it’s difficult at first when nothing much happens! A lot of activity can amount to not much in the way of traffic when you first get started. But, if you stick at it, over the longer term you’ll start to see some traction.

You can build a list very quickly if you use a landing page and paid advertising. If you’re a blogger, or using free marketing strategies, expect it to take much longer. See get traffic to your website free.

One of my favourite strategies has been creating ebooks and offering them up as list building tools. See ebook lead magnet. An ebook is a great tool for building your audience for affiliate marketing from a blog.

using ebooks to help build an email list — Ebooks make great lead magnets and lead website visitors onto your email list.

At first, with less than 1000 subscribers, your uptake of affiliate products will likely be fairly low. At this point, it’s easy to become disheartened with your affiliate business. But stick at it and you’ll start to see some sales coming in if you contact your email list regularly and offer useful insights to help your subscribers.

Over time, the people who opted into your list early on should get to know, like and trust you. So you should see more sales coming in from longer term subscribers as you get better at building your email list.

Keep the long term strategy in mind when writing your emails too. Short term thinking can put people off opening your emails. Think about your subscribers as you would a friend. Offer up a few valuable emails before asking for the sale. If every email has a link to purchase something, your subscribers will soon get the measure of you, and stop opening your emails!

Blogging To Build Traffic

Once you have a lead magnet such as an ebook, you can create more content around your ebook to draw traffic from the search engines (and other platforms). This is a slow strategy but over time your efforts compound and you’ll start seeing a steady increase in your daily leads if you keep at it long enough. A good strategy to do this is discussed in my ebook “Niche Blogging For Profit“.

Basically this strategy involves finding long tail keywords which relate to your ebook in some way. Use Google’s keyword planner to find them and write content around your keywords. Then, promote your content through social media sharing and link building. Over time, some of your content will attract free traffic from the search engines and you’ll get some leads who find your ebook and sign up to your list.

See also how to sell ebooks on your own website. It takes a bit of time to create an ebook, but in truth, not much longer than writing a good quality article. Plus you can outsource the ebook cover using Fiverr.com and easily convert a document to pdf using free online tools such as freepdfconvert.com.

Summary

So, how to build an audience for affiliate marketing? Building an audience for affiliate marketing can take some time depending on how you go about it. The fastest way is to use a paid marketing strategy and offer a valuable giveaway on a landing page which is specifically designed to capture emails. On a website, there’s far more choice, so less people will sign up. With a landing page, there’s only two options: sign up or leave.

With paid marketing you can scale up your traffic too. Which can build a list very quickly with enough budget. But you also need the right affiliate products and strategy on the “back-end” in order for your enterprise to be profitable.

Once on your list you should build confidence with your subscribers by offering value. Educate, inspire and entertain your audience and build trust for the long term. Don’t just spam your list with products because you’ll lose trust and people will stop opening your emails!

For every product you promote, you should be sending out a few value packed emails first. Otherwise, your audience will quickly lose faith and trust in you. Then, you won’t see any opens, let alone sales!

If you’re serious about taking your affiliate business to the next level, access a free video series by clicking the link below. You’ll meet one of my personal mentors Stuart and you can access a community of online business owners and affiliates.

How Much Traffic Do You Need For Affiliate Marketing?

How much traffic do you need for affiliate marketing? There’s many ways to do affiliate marketing and you will definitely need some traffic to sell affiliate products. How much traffic you need will depend on a number of variables. Generally you should be able to convert 1% of traffic from a website into sales. But how you do this can have an effect on your numbers.

There’s a few variables which will determine your success as an affiliate. Traffic is a major factor and you’ll need traffic to get anywhere with affiliate marketing. Generally the more traffic you get, the more sales you get too! But you also need to consider the type of traffic you’re getting. Whether your traffic has been pre-sold on your product, how you communicate with your visitors and whether you capture your visitor’s emails, all factor in to your conversion rates.

How Much Traffic Do You Need For Affiliate Marketing? – Types Of Traffic

Without traffic you won’t make any sales. So you’ll definitely need to prioritise getting traffic if you want to make any money as an affiliate. However, some traffic is better than others. Targeted traffic is really what you want as an affiliate. A good example of targeted traffic is through using a review website. With reviews your traffic is very targeted. A review website is often the last piece of information someone looks at before making a buying decision. So if you can create a review which gets traffic, you’re in a good position to make sales online.

The flip side of this equation is that you can create a lot of content which gets traffic but doesn’t convert into sales. If you create content which is vaguely related to your product, your conversion rate is likely to be much lower than with a very targeted piece of content like a product review. So for affiliate marketing specifically you’ll want your visitors (traffic) to be very targeted. See how to know your target market.

You can also generate targeted traffic by using what is known as the pre-sell. The pre-sell is an advertising campaign which gears traffic up to be very targeted. It pre-sells the product you want to sell on your website or through your email list. With a good video advert, for example, you get very targeted visitors coming to your website ready to sign up and purchase. With a piece of content which only vaguely relates to your product or service, it is going to be a lot more difficult to sell something.

An example of a pre-sell advert on YouTube. Watch video here.

Customer Journey

The customer journey is an important factor too. Even with targeted traffic, if the path for your visitor to the product they want is unclear, they might leave your site to continue their search. If your link is broken, they’ll look elsewhere. Even if your website is too slow to load, they can easily click away to look for their answers.

A good customer experience is congruent with your visitors needs. So if they are looking at a review website, they want to get the answers they need to make a purchasing decision. If your site doesn’t answer their questions, they’ll click away.

A sales funnel involves an advert, a landing page and a follow up series of emails. If anywhere along this journey there’s a disconnect from the initial message to the final product,(or the message is incongruent), the visitor is less likely to convert into a customer. But if there is a congruent message which continues throughout the customer journey, the visitor is more likely to become a customer.

For example, if someone signs up for a free ebook on affiliate marketing, they should expect to receive emails on this same topic.

Choice Of Product

A high ticket digital product pays far more than a low value physical product. Physical products pay from 1%-10% commission, on average, to their affiliates. Whereas, digital products pay more like 40%-50% commissions. Compare a low value physical product at $20 to a high value digital product at $2500 and you see a massive discrepancy in your earning potential: 0.60 cents (at 3% of $20) compared to $1000 (at 40% of $2500).

With the same amount of traffic, you can make $0.60 or $1000! When you also consider the use of recurring commission affiliate products, you can see it pays to work smart, not just hard. Recurring commission products are software products and memberships. You can earn ongoing commissions potentially for life with these kinds of products. (See lifetime commissions affiliate products). With physical products you need to continually sell more and more of them to keep your income coming in.

So, with even a smaller amount of traffic, you can make affiliate marketing work harder for you with the right kinds of products. You’ll still need traffic, but a smaller volume of sales can give you a larger income with the right kinds of products.

Email Marketing – Converting Traffic Into Leads

With a website your traffic can evaporate as quickly as it came. If you don’t have the right kind of traffic, or your content is only slightly connected with your products, it’ll be harder converting that traffic into sales. Most people don’t browse the internet with the intention of purchasing something. The internet is an information gathering too. So unless you specifically build a website to review products, for example, chances are good that your content won’t necessarily lead people to the checkout!

Some affiliate products are more obtuse than others, too. With a toy from Amazon, you know what you’re getting. But if you’re choosing to sell digital products as an affiliate, it can be harder to get customers to understand the value in those products.

Most website traffic won’t convert into sales. Usually around 1% or less of website traffic will actually make a purchase. But you can substantially improve those odds if you build an email list from your website. A website visitor usually only hangs around for 10 minutes or less.

So you’ve only got that amount of time to turn them into a buyer! With an email list, you get to capture your visitors email address, in exchange for giving them something of value. This dramatically extends the time period with which they can make a purchasing decision. You can build a relationship with your subscribers, and offer them products for months, years and even decades!

You can also use your emails to better help your subscribers understand your products and how they can help them.

Summary

So, how much traffic do you need for affiliate marketing? With the right kind of traffic, a good lead magnet, email mail follow up series and range of products, you need far less traffic than you would using low value products, badly targeted traffic and no email list. Of course you still need traffic and lots of it. But with a good strategy, products and proper targeting, you won’t need as much traffic to make the same income.

If you’re selling single products which only pay once, you’ll need a continuous flow of traffic to keep those sales coming in. But with subscription products you can make ongoing income from the same customers. So you’ll need fewer clients to make your business pay.

Traffic is massively important of course to make an affiliate business work. But it’s also part of a larger whole. To make an affiliate business work, it’s worth knowing which pieces to get right first, before starting out. Otherwise you can waste a lot of time chasing traffic only to make peanuts when you actually make a sale!

If you’re serious about building a realistic long term income from affiliate marketing, you can join a training and mentorship program here.

Affiliate Revenue Model Examples

There’s many affiliate revenue model examples you can look at before building an affiliate business. With affiliate marketing, the affiliate refers customers to a product online.

When someone buys from an affiliate’s unique link, the sale is tracked back to that person and they get a commission. To do well as an affiliate you need to learn how to sell through your affiliate links. Once you can do this well, you can repeat the sales you’ve made quite easily, having learned from your experience.

Top affiliates learn how to sell online and then scale up this success to sell multiple products. But there’s various affiliate revenue models you can choose from, and it’s wise to know which products will give you most commission for your hard work.

Affiliate Revenue Model Examples – Amazon

Amazon pays affiliates between 0% and 10% commissions depending on what kind of product they sell. Let’s use the example of a 3% commission. As you can see in the image below, products such as toys and home improvement items fall into this category.

So let’s say our example affiliate is selling from the toys category. Small value toys will only earn tiny commissions. So an astute affiliate will choose products which can earn them a larger commission. Since we’re looking at affiliate revenue model examples, let’s take this as the first one. The drone below sells for £947 on Amazon (about $1300). The affiliate commission on the sale would therefore be £28.41 (or $39).

So obviously if you choose to sell from Amazon, you’ll need to sell a lot of products in order to make your affiliate business a worthwhile enterprise. But if you can sell a lot of products, from a niche website for example, and automate the process, it could be worthwhile. The other thing to consider with this example is that your margin is very low. So if you intend on using paid marketing, you only have $39 of leverage to play with your marketing.

Affiliate Revenue Model Examples – Hammacher Schlemmer

Hammacher Schlemmer offers affiliates 8% commissions on products from its site. Again, this isn’t great but with some of the more expensive items like that pictured above, you can earn larger commissions. You’ll earn $15,200 on a flying hovercraft if you managed to sell one through your affiliate link! But of course not everyone is in the market for a flying hovercraft. You might sell more of a lower priced product which is more affordable.

Here’s an other example which will likely sell in greater numbers than your flying hovercraft will!

Looking at the ride on Children’s Jaguar convertible, you’ll earn $20 if you sold one through your affiliate link. So you’ll need to sell a fair few of these to make a realistic income. Compare the 8% commission rate to Amazon and you’d expect to make $7.50, given Amazon’s 3% commission rate on toys. That’s quite a lot less than with Hammacher Schlemmer.

Affiliate Revenue Model Examples – Digital Products

Digital products tend to offer the affiliate larger commission percentages than physical products do. Let’s look at affiliate revenue model examples using Clickbank. Clickbank is a digital marketplace where you’ll find thousands of digital products to sell. You can also find digital products on JVZoo.com and Click2Sell.com.

Here’s an example of a Clickbank product I found at the top of the Health and Fitness niche in the Clickbank marketplace.

As you can see, you’ll earn $25.13 on a sale of a $46.20 product. That’s a little over 50% commission on the product! Quite a dramatic step up from a 3% commission from Amazon.

So how can digital product afford to give so much to the affiliate? Well, simply put digital products don’t spend so much on postage, manufacturing and handling costs. Their main costs are therefore advertising, which is what the affiliate does.

Affiliate Recurring Commissions

Another consideration with affiliate marketing is affiliate recurring commissions. Certain products on Clickbank offer recurring commissions. You can find them using a website called CBEngine.com. Just scroll down the left hand side and click on the recurring tab. You’ll find multiple digital products which offer ongoing commissions for memberships and software products.

Recurring commissions are awesome for affiliates because you can continue to earn a regular income from sales you’ve made previously. It’s a great way to stabilise your income as an affiliate marketer.

If you choose wisely when you come to promote affiliate products, each membership or software product you sell can potentially earn you an income for life. See also lifetime commissions affiliate program.

High Ticket Digital Products

High ticket digital products are the best kinds of products to sell in terms of income and affiliate commissions. Given that physical products pay the least in terms of percentage commission, and higher value products pay more (whichever products you promote), a great way to monetise an affiliate business is through the use of high value digital products.

With high value digital products you get the best of both worlds: high percentage commission and large value products. So a sale of a $2500 product can earn you $1000 in a single sale, for example. A $20,000 product can earn you $8000 for a single sale. The downside of using high ticket digital products is that you’ll need to purchase the products yourself in order to benefit from the highest commission possible.

Using A Product Range

A product range gives you larger earning power as an affiliate than with only a single product to sell. With a single product you can only earn a single commission per customer. So you’ll need multiple customers to make a business out of your sales.

With a product range, you can benefit from multiple products within a range and sell products to existing customers. Most business models have customer loyalty – returning customers who purchase again and again.

high ticket products — The Product range within the SFM Digital Business System

But most of affiliate marketing product you refer someone to a product and they become loyal to that company, not to you as an affiliate. With a product range you simply refer the customer once, and can benefit from later purchases they make within a product range.

Affiliate Revenue Model Examples – Summary

So as you can see, there’s a variety of affiliate revenue models available for affiliates to choose from. Physical products from Amazon pay from 0% to 10% commissions. Digital products typically pay around 40%-50% commissions. You can also use recurring commission products and high ticket digital products to maximise your revenue potential.

The highest paying affiliate products offer multiple earning strategies including:

Digital products which pay up to 100% commissions
A product range – a number of products to “up-sell” to existing customers
Multi-tier commissions – some affiliate programs pay you commissions based on sales generated by your referrals. See best two tier affiliate programs.
High ticket digital products – pay the largest commissions on high value products – e.g. training courses and memberships
A built in sales team – closing sales on your behalf.

See SFM Digital Business System to learn more about this model.

Automated Affiliate Marketing System

An automated affiliate marketing system can make your life as an affiliate a whole lot easier. With an automated system you can benefit from pre-made products, email setup and sales funnel. You can use existing an sales team and a proven product range. All you need to do is setup your sales funnel using a modular step by step process. Then, learn how to send qualified leads into the system. Start here.

If you venture into affiliate marketing without an automated affiliate marketing system, you could spend years figuring it all out. You’ll need a marketing strategy and to choose affiliate products to sell. What if your marketing doesn’t work, or you choose the wrong kinds of products? How will you handle hurdles when things don’t go as expected?

These are the things you don’t have to consider when you use a pre-made system and get the help and support you need.

Automated Affiliate Marketing System – Products

There’s literally thousands of products to choose from as an affiliate marketer. Unless you have experience, it’s easy to choose the wrong kinds of products to promote and get lost trying different marketing strategies. Physical products tend to be the “go-to” products to use as a beginner. But it’s a mistake because they only pay tiny commissions. Physical products pay from 3% to 11% commissions in most cases. So selling a $100 product will usually only make you some pocket change ($3-11$).

Digital products offer larger commissions but can be less tangible for many online customers. Most people have bought something physical online, from the likes of Amazon, for example. But far fewer have purchased digital courses or trainings which can be accessed over the internet. Still, more people are getting comfortable purchasing online and digital products pay far higher commissions than physical one. Typically you can earn 40-60% on a digital sale you refer. So for the same valued product ($100) as the previous example, you would earn $40-$60 per sale compared to $3-$11. See also affiliate marketing commission rates.

Digital products have another ace up their sleeve too though. With digital products you can earn ongoing commissions from previous sales. Recurring commission affiliate products offer ongoing support, membership or software which can be used for building of online businesses. Physical products simply can’t compete with the commissions since they have more costs associated with postage and handling not to mention manufacturing costs.

Automated Affiliate Marketing System – Range Of Products

Another advantage of selling digital products as an affiliate is having a range of products in your automated affiliate marketing system. A product range means you can benefit from your referred customers even years after they initially purchase with you. The automation in a product range automatically shows your range of products to each customer. Plus, with a built in sales team, sales are closed on your behalf without you having to do the selling yourself.

Most traditional businesses benefit from repeat custom. An affiliate business should offer the same. If you only sell a single physical product as an affiliate, you’ll have to keep selling consistently to make a consistent income. With a product range, and subscriptions, you have a built in recurring income. The SFM Digital Business system offers:

A ready made sales funnel – just follow the modules to set up with your own email autoresponder, product range and pre-made email messages.
A range of digital products to offer your email subscribers – including subscription products. See SFM Digital Business System.
High ticket product range – as an affiliate, a high ticket digital product range can dramatically increase your earning potential
Multi-tier sales – at the very top level you can benefit from multi-tier commissions which are commissions based on sales made by your members. See multi-tier affiliate program.
Training and mentorship – even with an automated affiliate marketing system like the one the SFM offers, you’ll still need to learn how to market your sales funnel (send qualified leads into your funnel). Training and support is therefore vital if you’re serious about building a successful online business which will last.

Marketing Your Sales System – The Vital Ingredient

Even with an automated affiliate marketing system which has all the bells and whistles, you still need to market your funnel effectively for it to work. Without a driving engine to feed subscribers into your funnel, the best funnel in the world will still fail to make sales. Marketing can be done in a number of ways:

Paid marketing PPC Pay per click marketing can be done on YouTube, Facebook, Adwords, and a number of other paid marketing platforms
Organic marketing – this article is an example of content marketing which can grow organically. Organic marketing (video or article) will take much longer than paid marketing for it to work
Social media marketing – using social media platforms to generate leads can be done in a number of different ways

The main purpose of your marketing campaign is to find qualified subscribers who want what you’re offering. You can then offer them a free giveaway product to encourage them to subscribe to your email list. The SFM offers a free video series where you can learn more about what their automated affiliate marketing system can offer you. Checkout the free video series to learn more here.

Automated Selling

As your subscribers enter your email marketing funnel, they will receive automated emails which are set to go out on a predetermined schedule. The SFM Digital Business system offers a pre-made set of emails which you can use in your funnel.

Once someone enters their email into your landing page (software included), you’ll see their details appear in your autoresponder software. They will automatically be offered the first product in a range and subsequently other, more expensive products which they might find useful. With The SFM’s product range, there’s also a built in sales team who do the selling on your behalf. Your main job then as an affiliate is to find qualified leads and send them to your landing page or website.

As you get better at this skill, you’ll be able to increase the volume of qualified subscribers entering your sales funnel.

Access An Automated Selling System

Access an automated affiliate marketing system.

Learn more with the video series
Access Mentors All In and set up your sales system
Get a free account to see the first module

Six Figure Income Affiliate Program

If you’re looking for a six figure income affiliate program, you’re going to need a high ticket product range. With high ticket affiliate marketing, you can earn the highest levels of commission by selling digital products valued from $2500 to $20,000. Plus you can earn up to 40% commissions on these products too. So, if you sold a $20,000 product and you make 40% commission, you would earn $8000 on a single sale.

A range of products too makes a lot of difference with affiliate marketing. With a single product to sell your customers, you should expect to earn $1 a month for each of your email subscribers (on average). So with a list of 10,000 subscribers on your email list, you’ll earn $10,000 a month, if you’re doing everything right. But with a product range, and high ticket products in your range, you should expect to make 5 times this amount.

Six Figure Income Affiliate Program

The SFM (Six Figure Mentors) offers a range of high ticket products you can use to build a six figure income with. According to your investment level, you can earn from 5% commission to 40% commission on the high ticket product range. There’s other ways to earn too. The SFM’s product range includes multiple earning strategies and a built in sales team. You don’t have to sell the high ticket products personally. You just use the sales funnel to refer people to the first product, and the system does the selling.

Within the product range you can earn commissions based on:

Memberships offer a monthly recurring commission – one of the best ways to generate an income online is through a lifetime commissions affiliate program.
High ticket products and entry level products – with a product range, you get paid when your customers purchase more products later on. Simply refer them to the entry level product and should they upgrade their account, you’re credited with the sale
Multi-tier commissions – at the partner level (Digital Experts Academy) you can earn commissions based on sales made by your referrals. If you’re looking for a six figure income affiliate program, you’ll definitely want these commissions.

Six Figure Income Affiliate Program – Promotion

Selling products as an affiliate is done through email marketing. To get the volume of sales needed to generate a six figure income, even with a high ticket product range, you’re going to need a large number of people subscribing to your email list.

Volume can be generated quickly using paid marketing. But paid marketing platforms are pretty expensive. You’ll need to access the top levels of commission and multi-tier commissions in order to generate a profit.

marketing on YouTube — A video marketing campaign I’ve run on YouTube (Click image for video)

As your membership grows, you’ll be able to reinvest back into your marketing in order to scale up to ever growing numbers of subscribers. This all starts with creating a good marketing strategy which is scalable. Once your numbers are showing a consistent profit, you know you can start increasing your marketing budget. Some top earning affiliates spend upwards of $20,000 a month on advertising. However, they don’t start with this kind of budget. They begin with only a few hundred dollars/pounds a month.

In basic terms, once you’ve figured out how to spend $5 and make $10, you’re ready to start increasing your marketing budget. Each time, you can double your money, by spending on your marketing and building your email list.

Testing & Measuring

Many marketing campaigns don’t work. This is the truth of affiliate marketing. So when starting out, be prepared to run a few campaigns that fail! The affiliates who succeed, know this but keep creating new campaigns until they get a winner which makes a consistent profit. Of course running marketing campaigns costs money. That’s why you’ll want an ace up your sleeve – a six figure sales funnel which contains multiple earning strategies and high ticket products.

With small value products, it’s much more difficult to get traction. But with a high ticket product range, you can earn large commissions in a short amount of time. With the SFM Digital Business system, you have multiple earning strategies which can give you a large return on your investment from high ticket commissions, subscription commissions and multi-tier commissions.

Help & Support

If you’re serious about generating a six figure income from affiliate marketing, you’re going to need help and support. Top earners don’t get there by themselves. They get help. You can access a community of online entrepreneurs, and the SFM Digital Business system through this link. Once inside you can choose your level of investment and affiliate products you can put in your “digital store”.

To generate a six figure income from affiliate marketing, you’ll want to place yourself at the top of the business system. This means you’ll be able to access top level commissions on the high ticket product sales. You’ll also be able to access multi-tier commissions and earn from sales made by your referrals. This does require considerable investment and commitment.

Access the SFM through this link to get started.

Passive Income And Affiliate Marketing

Passive income and affiliate marketing go very well together. Affiliate marketing offers a number of ways to generate a passive income online. You can sell other people’s products over the internet and automate the process. Without having to deal with customers or handle products directly, it offers a hassle free way to make money once you know how to do it. You can also use recurring commission affiliate programs to generate ongoing commissions from previous sales, too.

These are products which are either software tools or memberships. Business tools and website optimising software are some of the best products to sell as an affiliate. Once such tools become beneficial to someone’s business and profit margins, customers tend to be very loyal to that product. If you have referred the sale, you’ve potentially got a lifetime commission from each sale. A lifetime commissions affiliate program offers ongoing value typically for online businesses or website owners. Sell a product once and earn for life!

Passive Income & Affiliate Marketing – Strategies

Affiliate marketing by its very nature is passive, too. Affiliates sell other people’s products and services for a share of the profit. They do this through email marketing, websites and paid advertising. All of this can run without interference 24 hours a day 365 days a year, selling products on autopilot.

Using subscription products is another way to generate passive income with affiliate marketing. If you choose to sell subscription products, your income compounds over time because of the sales you’ve made previously.

Multi-tier commissions is yet another way to earn a passive income with affiliate marketing. A multi-tier affiliate program pays you based on the sales made by people whom you’ve referred that program. They are members of your members. Some affiliate programs offer multi-tier commissions and it’s another means to automate commissions and earn a passive income through affiliate marketing.

Passive Income & Affiliate Marketing – A Product Range

Many affiliate products only pay you once for the sale. Physical products fall into this category. But some digital products pay you over and over again for the lifetime of the customer. Some, too only pay you recurring commissions for the first year. So it’s wise to start out with your affiliate marketing journey using the products which will compensate you the most for your hard work.

Having a product range is another consideration, still. With a product range, you only need to refer the initial product to your customers. Once your customer purchases the “entry level” product, they are automatically offered other products within the range and you receive commissions on those sales. Some affiliate programs also have a built in sales team – closing sales on your behalf.

With a built in sales team, a digital product range and automation in your referral processes, you can scale up your online business very quickly to a global audience.

Why Digital Not Physical Products

Digital products offer the best of all worlds when it comes to creating a passive income online. With physical products, you only get paid once per sale. Your commission rate is usually much lower than for digital products. See affiliate marketing commission rates.

Plus, with physical products you can’t create a passive income through ongoing recurring commissions. There’s no product range, built in sales team or up-sell with physical products either. So you’re leaving money on the table by choosing physical products which typically pay 3-11% commissions compared with 30-60% for digital products.

This is a massive disparity and because physical products require handling, manufacturing and postage costs, they can’t compete with digital. Digital products however, once created, don’t carry these costs. So digital product owner can afford to pass the savings on the the affiliates, since they’re the ones making the sales.

A Digital Product Range + Marketing

With a digital product range, subscription products, a built in sales team and multi-tier commissions, you can potentially have a much higher return on your investment.

Compared to physical products, it’s massively higher. This means you can afford to advertising using the best platforms. YouTube and Facebook for example are notoriously expensive. But they’re also very clever and you can target your customer very specifically and reach a global audience.

With cheaper, lower commission products, you simply can’t use some platforms because you won’t recoup your advertising spend. Paid advertising is much more difficult if you’re promoting low value physical products and this means you’re stuck with content marketing and other cheap alternatives.

This kind of marketing can take a whole lot longer to generate any traction with. It can take years, compared with months if you’re using paid marketing strategies. Plus, paid marketing can be automated and scaled up. With slower content marketing, you’ll have your work cut out.

Access A Digital Product Range & Business System

The SFM Digital Business System offers an all in one digital business system and training platform. You can benefit from:

A high ticket product range – earn up to 40% commissions on a number of digital products
A built in sales team and automated “up-selling system” – simply refer the initial product within a range and let the system do the selling.
Subscription products – earn recurring commissions from your referrals
Multi-tier option – choose a higher level commission option and multi-tier commissions with higher value products.
Training and mentorship available – earn as you learn and access an online community of online entrepreneurs.

Access here to get started.

Lifetime Commissions Affiliate Program

With a lifetime commissions affiliate program you get paid recurring commissions for software products and memberships. Most affiliate products will only pay you once. But with recurring commission affiliate programs, you can keep earning from sales you’ve made previously.

Some programs will only pay you recurring commissions for a set time, such as the first year. But others offer commissions for the lifetime of the customer. This can be years and even decades, with the right products and customers.

The main keys to earning lifetime commissions is in choosing the right products and finding the right customers! When a customer truly values a product, and it becomes an essential part of their life, they’re going to keep paying for life!

Lifetime Commissions Affiliate Program

Products which offer lifetime value are often those for online businesses.

Here’s a few contenders:

Lead pages – Is a business tool which lets you build custom made landing pages. Earn 30% commissions
The Six Figure Mentors – Offers training, tools and software for building online businesses from scratch. Commissions of up to 40% on a high ticket product range and 20% recurring commissions.
SEM Rush – Is an SEO (search engine optimisation) and SEM (search engine marketing) tool for website development and traffic generation. Earn 40% commissions.
Convertkit is an email marketing services, again a business tool. It offers 30% commissions
Elegant Themes – Offers WordPress Themes and Plugins for use with websites. 50% commissions are offered.
ThriveThemes – Again WordPress themes offering 35% commission on sales and 25% recurring commissions.
Social Pilot – Social media scheduling marketing and analytics.
Live Chat – Live chat support offering tools for increasing conversions through websites. 20% commission.
Rose Hosting – Website hosting offers 50% for the first month and then 20% recurring commissions.
Shopify – Online store builder – 20% recurring commissions.
Aweber – Email marketing service offers recurring commissions of 30%

As you can see, these programs are business tools for business owners who operate websites and/or online businesses. Once someone starts generating income from using a particular product, or improving their business, they’re going to be a customer for life. So products which offer the most amount of value for the customer are the ones to go for.

Lifetime Commissions Affiliate Program -The SFM

Before finding a lifetime commissions affiliate program, I struggled as an affiliate for some time. I used both Amazon and eBay affiliate programs when I started out because they were the most well known programs at the time (early 2000’s).

But they only paid tiny commissions and however hard I worked I was left with a measly drip of an income from my efforts.

In 2014 I found a company called The Six Figure Mentors which was created in 2010 by Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek. The SFM offers a variety of products and services to help affiliates build profitable online businesses. They even offer their own product range which members can promote.

The SFM offers a lifetime commission structure and built in sales team to help you generate an income through its products. If you promote the free account membership, and someone accesses it through your affiliate link, they are locked in for life. Should they leave and later return, you’ll still be their referring affiliate, whoever they return through!

Plus The SFM offer a range of digital products valued up to $20,000. At the top level of membership, you can benefit from a 40% commission on a sale! That’s $8000! However, you’ll need to purchase the product yourself in order to benefit from the top level commissions.

Multi-Tier Commissions & High Ticket

The SFM also offers multi-tier commissions too. Multi tier commissions allow you to make commissions from the sales made by your referred members. If you partner with The SFM you can earn commissions based on what your members sell. Get started here.

You can earn $10 a month for memberships your members have referred and 10% of the high ticket product range.

High ticket products can make a massive difference to your earning potential too. With a high ticket product range, you can earn $1000 on a single sale with the lowest valued high ticket product. With the top valued product (Mastermind Experience) you can earn from 5% to 40%, according to your positioning in the business.

A high ticket product range can allow you to use more expensive advertising platforms too. With paid marketing strategies, you can get a digital business system going very quickly. Other tactics such as organic marketing, blogging or organic video can take much longer to gain traction.

Traffic Generation

Using a lifetime commission affiliate program is definitely a good idea. With recurring commissions coming in every month, it’s much easier to build a sustainable income. Even if your sales are sporadic at first, while you’re learning, you can benefit from membership sales forever. Using business tools and software products can give you the best advantage as far as longevity is concerned.

Of course there’s a drop out rate which you’ll need to contend with. But over time your attrition rate should be less than your intake. How you do this will depend on the traffic generation strategy you implement. If you’re not sure of the direction of your marketing strategy, or what products to choose, it’s definitely worth getting help and support if you want to build an income online.

Access The SFM’s digital business system and support community here if you want to get started.