AffiliateMentor, Author at Affiliate Marketing Mentors

Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks

Usually the “secret affiliate marketing hacks” are behind a sales page, and you have to pay to get the “inside info”! I’ve bought a tonne of those kind of courses. Fortunately I stuck around for long enough to learn something valuable.

If you’re Googling “secret affiliate marketing hacks” perhaps you’re looking for a get rich quick scheme. Let me tell you that’s your first mistake. You’ll be disappointed if you think it’s going to be easy. Those courses which promise the Earth don’t deliver. You need to stick at it and get educated, if you’re going to succeed online.

Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks

Firstly a “hack” suggests something easy. I apologise for this because an online business isn’t easy. So if working hard and building a genuine business is not for you, this article isn’t either. However, that being said there are certainly easier methods to earn online than some. I tried many strategies over the years which didn’t work. And I found one strategy which did and is working; not just for me, but for many online entrepreneurs.

The key is scale. With an internet business you can reach the whole planet! That’s plenty of people for many people to succeed. No there isn’t going to be a tipping point where it’s saturated. How many people want to escape their current jobs/careers and lives. The internet is a solution for the billions of people in such a position. Many haven’t yet woken up to the possibility of a full time income online though yet. But over the next 20 years many will!

What’s the catch? The catch is that reaching a scalable audience online which is well targeted to your affiliate products costs money. Of courses there’s free strategies such as blogging. If you’re reading this article, this particular “hack” has worked! Checkout my ebook (above) for more on this strategy.

Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks – A Scalable Business

For years I worked away at the free strategies, hoping Google or YouTube would eventually reward me or that my content would go viral. But it didn’t. Even with a “lucky” article and some viral traffic, this strategy is not something which is easily repeatable. If you’re interested in creating viral content here’s a good book on the subject.

But a lot of work goes into articles which go viral and often it comes after many other failed articles. A repeatable scalable business is much more possible if you use paid marketing and a good business model.

Paid Marketing & ROI

Most affiliate strategies won’t work with paid marketing because they don’t recoup the money spent on advertising. That’s why you need a business model which offers:

Recurring income affiliate products – Recurring income products pay you over and over again for each sale you make
High ticket products which offers large commissions – digital products offer the highest levels of commissions compared to physical products which tend to offer much lower payouts.
Multi-tier sales – earn money from sales made by your referrals
A built in sales team – close larger value sales on your behalf (you only refer the initial products within a range of products)
A number of products within a range of products – gives you the opportunity to earn from regular customers

See the SFM digital business system for more on this strategy.

Without such a business model like this, you’ll need to rely on cheap or free marketing strategies. These take a long time and a lot of effort. And there’s no guarantees either that your content will generate sales; even with a lot of hard work! Of course there’s no guarantees in entrepreneurship anyway.

But if you’re going to become an affiliate, do you want to be a struggling one, making tiny commissions here and there, or a successful one making huge scalable commissions? How do you see yourself and your affiliate business?

Secrets Of Super Affiliates

Super affiliates see the larger picture. You need to become like a super affiliate too if you’re going to succeed in affiliate marketing. Of course you can create a website, create content and hope people come to see it. But this isn’t how the super affiliates see things. They think bigger! To think globally and build a global business you need a marketing engine driving customers to your products. This takes time and effort with free marketing strategies but can be very fast with paid marketing.

But paid marketing is expensive and you’ll need a range of expensive products in your sales funnel to make it viable. Without high ticket items in your funnel, you’ll need to use free marketing strategies which are time consuming and unreliable.

It all starts with your mindset. Do you want a full time business or a small extra income. Think about it because you can spend the same amount (and effort) building either. Your affiliate psychology has a huge amount to do with your online business. Think small and you’ll have a small affiliate business. Think big and you can have a massive 6 figure business if you want. See also super affiliate secrets.

Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks – Summary

So there’s a few hacks I’ve shared in this article. One is to target long tail keywords in your article titles and aim for ranking your content on Google. You can read about this strategy in my ebook Niche Blogging For Profit. This is a slow and definitely long-term strategy. But if you’re on a budget, it’s probably one of the more viable ones.

The better strategy (if you can afford it), is to use a high value sales funnel and paid marketing. Once your funnel is up and running, turn your attention to the marketing “engine” which will drive targeted visitors into your funnel. Access a online business and community to learn this strategy here.

You can of course mix your strategies. Using a combination of free and paid marketing is a good idea according to your budget. But ultimately affiliate marketing isn’t as easy as many make out. Ideally join an online business community which offers help and support, not just a range of videos!

Affiliate Marketing Coaching

If you’re serious about affiliate marketing then getting some affiliate marketing coaching is definitely a good idea. Before I found a coach, I struggled for years trying to make money from affiliate marketing. In this article I’m going to share some of the top reasons why it’s worth paying for an affiliate marketing coach.

If you want to get started with a from scratch affiliate business and connect with coaches, you can join through this link.

Affiliate Marketing Coaching

So why get affiliate marketing coaching? One of the best reasons to get a coach is that it’s very difficult to make an affiliate marketing business work on your own. I tried this for years and bought many online business courses. See my digital profit course review for details of the many trainings I purchased.

One of the problems with jumping from course to course like I did is that the courses all taught something different! One course taught using paid marketing while another taught generating organic traffic. The mix-mash of marketing strategies left me confused and worn out. After attempting many different strategies I was still no further towards replacing my employment income through affiliate marketing.

Once I found a coach, and a business strategy which worked, I was able to tread more confidently in the right direction. Until this point, I was still carrying scepticism and doubt in my mind. This works against your best intentions and keeps you stuck in fear mode.

Affiliate Marketing Coaching

So what does affiliate marketing coaching do for you? With a coach, and a good business strategy, you can become more empowered to take larger steps in your affiliate business.

While I worked hard for some time before finding a coach; I was still trapped in strategies which didn’t propel my online business forwards. I hoped that “one day” Google would reward me for all my hard work. But that day never came! It wasn’t until I shifted into another marketing strategy that things really started happening. Perhaps you’re the same? Trapped on the treadmill of building content without really getting any traction?

Affiliate Mindset

I have written about your affiliate psychology as one of the main things holding back your affiliate business. You might not think that mindset has anything to do with your bottom line. Let me tell you that it has everything to do with it! Whether you are holding yourself back for financial reasons or because you’re afraid of taking the big actions in case something doesn’t work, your mindset is in charge.

Do you have a vision for your life, which an affiliate business can enable to happen? Or are you plodding along, hoping “one day” things will eventually work out in your favour? I did this for years and spent far too much time on the free strategies which simply didn’t work. I chose the wrong business model and promoted cheap products which paid a pittance.

With the right mindset, your intention changes and you’re prepared to take full responsibility for your outcomes. The wrong mindset will keep you stuck forever. Affiliate marketing coaching can help you see and understand that your thinking is the cause of all your effects in life; not just for your affiliate business.

Entrepreneurial Thinking – Your Business Will Never Outgrow Your Thinking

Your affiliate business will never outgrow the level of thinking you bring to it. If you’re aiming for a bit of extra pocket money, this thinking will manifest in your business. If you want to create a 6 or 7 figure business from your laptop, you can do it but you’ll need to think differently about the kind of business model you’ll need.

With a website and a few Amazon products you can make a little “on the side”. With a business model which offers high ticket items, subscription products and multi-tier sales, you can build an online business which can replace your existing income. (See SFM digital business system). It is your thinking which will determine which one you go for and the risks you’re prepared to take.

What are you prepared to do to build your business? Will you pay for a coach or do you want one for free?

Affiliate Marketing Coaching & Ikigai

Ikigai is a Japanese term which can be summarised as “reason for being”. Your Ikigai is where what you love, who you are and what you do for a living intersect. It’s useful to know your ikigai in your affiliate business for a number of reasons. If you’re not loving what you do, it’ll be very difficult to keep doing for the time necessary for it to work.

This is particularly relevant for an affiliate business. Putting the money before my ikigai was a mistake I made early in my affiliate career. I built one website with the view of making money and spent about a year building it. Eventually I ran out of steam and gave up on it.

Although it did rank on top of Google for a while, I wasn’t interested in the topic, but had chosen it only for the money it might bring. Ultimately the site failed and another one took over on Google; someone who was passionate about the topic. Try as I did, I just couldn’t get passionate about mushroom harvesting (the topic of the site)!

Read Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why” for more on this subject.

The Upper Limit Problem

The upper limit problem is particularly relevant when it comes to building an affiliate business. Gay Hendrick’s talks about this in his book The Big Leap. An upper limit problem is the psychological reason why people stop growing and developing themselves as their affiliate business grows. Instead, they reach a “glass ceiling” and can’t get beyond it. This can be for several reasons such as beliefs about money, poor self image or limiting beliefs.

Often when people are at the pinnacle of their success, they create some self sabotaging outcomes which destroy their happiness and/or success. You can see this happen for many celebrities and famous people as they fall into situations and drama which destroys what they have built, often over many years.

If you’re serious about getting affiliate marketing coaching, access an all-in-one business system and mentorship program here.

Affiliate Psychology

Many affiliate marketers fail to create the success they desire because the affiliate psychology isn’t geared for success. There’s many reasons why someone’s psychology gets in the way of their business. It could be a sense of entitlement, fear of success or a poor self image which doesn’t allow for growth. Or perhaps you’re repeating unconscious behaviour patterns which don’t support your business.

The technical problems associated with building an online business can be easily overcome; especially with available software which takes most of it out of the equation. It makes an online business very accessible to everyone. However, someone’s psychology isn’t as simple. The invisible enemy of an affiliate marketer is their affiliate psychology.

Affiliate Psychology – Time For Money

Most affiliates come upon affiliate marketing in a bid to escape some job or career role which doesn’t suit them. In a job or a career, you trade time for money and get paid for your time. You’re therefore accustomed to getting paid for turning up. An online business, or affiliate marketing is very different. You get paid for the results you create. So if you’ve been used to getting paid for your time, it’s an easy assumption to make that by sitting in front of your laptop, you’ll start earning money from it. It’s not a correct assumption, but an easy one!

“Here I am working on my internet business”, you say. But in reality, you’ve poured 7 cups of coffee and browsed the internet for a while, chatting with friends on social media. Here lies one of the main problems when transitioning into an online business: being a “busy fool”.

Time on the laptop should be given the utmost importance when you start out as an affiliate marketer. You’ll likely spend time doing tasks which aren’t getting you paid, too. Time management is a skill and knowing how to spend your time with affiliate marketing is a hugely important skill.

Of course this all depends on your situation. Maybe you work really hard because you’re desperate to leave your job and want your affiliate income to replace that of your career. Your “why” is very compelling and you’ll do anything to escape the 9 to 5.

Affiliate Psychology – Affiliate Mindset

If this is the case, it leads to another potential problem – rushing in too quickly. You’re desperate to succeed so you work really hard and for long hours – but you work hard at the wrong activities.

Again, you take the strategies which have worked in a job or career and apply it to your affiliate business. It doesn’t! You’re not impressing anyone and if you’re in the habit of doing so, you’ll likely take that habit with you to your affiliate business. The “work hard play hard” mentality can apply to an online business. But you’re wasting your time working at some activities if they aren’t moving your online business forward.

Affiliate Psychology – Playing A Technician’s Role In A Business

In the book The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber talks about this problem. As you transition into a business from the role of a technician in a company, it’s an easy mistake to make. You think you have a business, but you repeat your role as an employee and wonder why your business isn’t working. That’s because a business requires a different mindset to an employment. In an employment role you get paid to turn up and play a small role in a bigger picture. In a business, you must learn the role of the entrepreneur. You need to have a vision of where your business is going. You need to learn new strategies to drive your business forwards – marketing.

Are you playing a technician’s role still in your affiliate business? Do you favour activities according to how much you like them, or according to how they will grow your business?

Affiliate Mindset – Fear Of Success

Do you have a fear of success? “Of course not”, you say! But think for a minute how your life will look like once you have “made it” as an affiliate marketer. Where will you live? What will your typical day look like? Imagine making tens of thousands of dollars/pounds every month.

What will you do with your new found freedom? Is this hard to imagine? If so why is it? In many ways it’s difficult to imagine your perfect life because you have already identified with your struggle. Who are you to be so successful? Does money even matter? Your affiliate psychology determines the upper limit of your business and this also comes down to how you see yourself and how you relate to money.

If you have any issues with money and abundance, they will likely surface to sabotage your business in some way – even if it’s only to limit its growth. Have you noticed how when a successful actor reaches the pinnacle of their career and then self sabotages by getting into a fight? Or they get involved in drugs.

How can someone so successful, and which such a (perceived) wonderful life fall so bad? It’s the upper limit problem and it’s not uncommon. In “The Big Leap” Gay Hendricks talks about this in detail. It’s a great book if you’re interested in affiliate psychology and overcoming the upper limit problem.

Affiliate Mindset – Comfort Zones

If you’re a struggling affiliate it could be for several reasons. Perhaps you haven’t found the right help yet – get an affiliate mentor. You are promoting the wrong products and using a bad marketing strategy – use the SFM digital business system. Perhaps you’re losing focus or working too hard in the wrong areas. There’s many ways to do affiliate marketing and if you’ve been working for some time without results, it could be time to shift.

I worked for years in the wrong areas, doing the wrong things. Blogging was comfortable for me. I wanted to make money without spending anything. This was partly through necessity, but also because I had a poverty consciousness. I was afraid to spend money and trapped by only spending time in my comfort zone of writing content. Are you stuck in a comfort zone desperately trying to prove yourself right?

Wanting to be right about something is another mindset trap of the affiliate marketer. Do you want to be right or do you want your business to be profitable? Which do you want more? Investigate your affiliate mindset and you’ll discover that resistance to change will be based in fear. What actions are you avoiding to remain in your comfort zone?

Do You Have A Vision?

Having a vision for your future is a good way to look at what you want from your affiliate business. If you can’t see that far ahead, you may be too focused on the tiny details of your business. Work on your life, not just in your business. Ask yourself whether your business is working you, or whether you are working your business? Do you own the business or does it own you? A business is a tool to take you somewhere. If the business is only to help you feel better about yourself and keep busy, you may be thinking too small.

This is why many entrepreneurs have a vision board. A vision board is a notice board where you put up your dreams and aspirations which you want to create in your life – cars, houses, relationships, children etc. Whatever you want to create in your life, put it on your vision board. It will remind you why you’re working in your business and your reasons for doing what you’re doing.

Taking Responsibility

Are you putting the responsibility onto someone else outside of you? Are you plodding along expecting something external to save you? A victim mentality is another thing which will work against you in your own business. For a long time I was creating content (like this article) in a bid to build a six figure business from nothing! I was deluded and as much as I did, and as hard as I worked, this strategy was flawed. Google didn’t reward me, or at least not as much as I expected or hoped.

Are you taking full responsibility for all your outcomes in life? Who are you shuffling the responsibility towards? Your spouse, your parents, the internet? Once you get this, and accept full responsibility for your online business, you won’t accept failure and you’ll start making bigger steps towards the life you want.

If you’re in the habit of idling along, hoping things will eventually come your way, you may be in victim mode. Are you a passenger in the car of life or are you driving?

If you’re serious about building a long term sustainable online business, checkout the free video series available by signing up on this website. Or access one of my personal mentor’s (Stuart’s) webinar here.

Entitled Attitude

An attitude of entitlement seldom goes very far in a business like affiliate marketing. Affiliates get paid when they do the work and make sales. You can float about in a job without doing much work, at least for a while. But this kind of work ethic doesn’t work well in an industry where you’re paid on the basis of your results.

I’ve fallen into this camp too when I started learning affiliate marketing. I expected to get easy results – in part due to the advertising at the time when I got involved. Many marketers were pushing the idea that making money online was easy. You could just set up a push and play system and sit back raking in all the money. I fell for this complete lie and expected to earn money from little work. I did work, of course, but it wasn’t enough or at the right activities.

If you have an attitude of entitlement, you’ll easily give up too, or you’ll blame affiliate marketing instead of taking responsibility for your lack of results. I spat my dummy out a number of times when affiliate marketing wasn’t working for me too! Fortunately I was able to see my failures as stepping stones to success.

Poor Self image

A poor self image will always perpetuate results which reflect this back to you. If you have a poor self image and are building an affiliate business, your affiliate psychology can be a massive drain on your resources.

The reason self image is so important, in any aspect of your life, is that you take it with you wherever you go. It’s your constant companion. A poor self image will tell you that you can’t do it. It’ll tell you there’s no point in doing it anyway, and that you’re worthless even if you “make it”. But you’re much less likely to be successful in any business with a negative voice in your head 24/7.

See law of attraction self esteem for more on self image and how to improve it.

Affiliate Mentors

If I had only found affiliate mentors years ago I would have saved a bunch of time and effort. But when I started out online there were no real mentors. There were courses though which taught tactics for earning online. But none of them offered personal 1 to 1 affiliate marketing coaching – or at least none that I found anyway.

At best they offered a number of videos which you could access through a members area. There was no community and no support. Thankfully things have changed since then. You can have a look at the many courses I found online in my digital profit course review. Eventually though I did find affiliate mentors who helped me through the many technical and mental challenges you’ll deal with as an affiliate marketer.

Affiliate Mentors – My Journey

Back in 1995 eBay opened its doors and I opened an account. It wasn’t until years later that I used the platform to make money. After purchasing an ebook on eBay which taught me a business strategy (read about it here), I started buying and selling items for profit. After a while of buying and selling I realised there must be a better way to use the internet to generate an income. I was spending all my time shifting products physically and tied to my computer. What if there was another way?

There was. I bought an ebook which taught me the eBay strategy and realised that this was an automated sale – no dealing with customers or queueing at a post office. I wrote a couple of my own books and tried to sell them but had no luck. A marketing course put me on another trajectory – affiliate marketing. I realised affiliate marketing was a better way to earn than selling my own ebooks, so I started learning. After a lot of struggle and making many mistakes with affiliate marketing, I almost quit completely. Luckily for me I didn’t and I found a community of affiliate mentors who would help me turn my laptop into a veritable cash machine!

Affiliate Mentors – Finding A Mentor Online

I found a video of a guy on a pedalo called Stuart Ross. At the time I was struggling with my affiliate business and thought I needed to take another chance. So I joined his course and found an online community. This was very different to the other courses I had purchased in the past. I was able to meet up with the person who brought me in – a guy called Oliver. He arranged a number of meetings locally in the UK and I also went and met the founders of this community Stuart Ross and Jay Jubassek.

The community was called the SFM – Six Figure Mentors. Of course this sounded too good to be true and a little spammy to me at the time. But the SFM Mentors helped me build a business online and start earning fairly quickly. I was able to make a couple of high value sales within my first few months. Of course this isn’t typical and everyone’s journey is different. Here’s a picture of me with Jay Kubassek at my first Momentum meeting in London in 2014.

What Can They Do For You?

Affiliate mentors are pretty important with building an affiliate business. I tried for years on my own and faced a huge number of challenges. It’s just not worth trying to do it all alone.

Through the community I was able to see real people face to face and it’s amazing how much this can change things. It can give you confidence in what you’re doing. When I first started learning about affiliate marketing, nobody knew anything about it. Most people were sceptical. And this is a major problem if you are surrounded by scepticism.

Your “tribe” can help you or hinder you and if the people around you aren’t on the same path or mission as you it can be a major thorn in your side. So having access to a community of people who are in the same boat is massively beneficial to building an online business. Not to mention that those people can also help you directly with your business – both in terms of mindset, technical difficulties or simply as a shoulder to cry on when things aren’t going so great!

Affiliate Mentors – Right Business Model

Are you stuck with a bad business model and marketing strategy? I was for years and this was the crux of my issues. An affiliate mentor can help by giving you a business model which works and helping you decide on a marketing strategy which is right for you.

Some products such as physical products only pay 1-11% commissions to affiliates. If you choose this path you could be struggling for years before earning enough to quit your job.

Marketing Strategy

Likewise, some marketing strategies are very long term. I got stuck blogging for years with hardly any results. I thought that eventually it would pay off. Meanwhile I saw others overtaking me and this forced me to switch gears. But it was only because I could attend meetings and see for myself what was working that I was able to do this.

Affiliate Mentors – Mindset

Mindset is such an important issue that it deserves an article all to itself. An entrepreneurial mind frame is very different to an employee mind frame. There’s a mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur which is necessary for success. As an employee, you turn up, do the work and go home. The boss or company has the responsibility to make the business profitable. You just work on a small part of it and get paid for your time.

As an entrepreneur in an affiliate business, it all comes down to you. If you don’t make your business profitable, you can’t survive in it. Affiliate marketing is different to being an employee and you don’t get paid for your time. You get paid for your results.

So if you think your affiliate business is there for you to enjoy yourself and do what you love, you’re only half right. Yes it can give you a lifestyle which a job can’t. But you’ll need to make it work and this sometimes can mean taking stock of how you see yourself and the limiting beliefs you’re bringing to your business. Affiliate mentors can help you see these limitations. Without them, you can get stuck in your own thinking patterns which aren’t serving you.

Join The Community

You can join the community of affiliate mentors and access an all-in-one business system here.

Six Figure Mentors Affiliate

Yes I’m a Six Figure Mentors affiliate. I will earn commissions should you purchase something from my website. I started learning about affiliate marketing before stumbling across the SFM, though.

My main reason to learn how to earn from the internet was that my financial life was a complete mess! I was struggling building a career as a stunt performer and had to juggle a number of jobs around the work; which was very sporadic.

So I had multiple jobs including HGV driving, office work and several other low paid jobs. In my late 30’s I was still doing crummy jobs which paid next to nothing and often didn’t get stunt work for sometimes years at a time. I realised something had to change or I’d be stuck in this situation for the next ten years. That was unbearable to me so I looked online for courses about making money.

Six Figure Mentors Affiliate

I tried all kinds of strategies to earn online including Forex marketing, building an eBay business and even writing my own ebooks to sell. But I faced one problem after another. Jumping from course to course trying to learn how to sell my ebooks, I realised there was a better business model than selling my ebooks. It was called affiliate marketing. Here was a strategy which required no products of my own and I didn’t even need to directly speak to customers or handle products.

So I ploughed hours, weeks and months into learning affiliate marketing and trying to make money from it. I was still juggling HGV work and the stunt work at this time, so it was full tilt ahead.

After a lot of failure and some small successes I found a video of a guy on a pedalo. He claimed to have the knowledge I was searching for and despite having spent money already on a number of other such claims I knew I had to keep going. Otherwise I’d be right where I was and things would never change.

Six Figure Mentors Affiliate

I took the plunge and became a Six Figure Mentors affiliate in 2014. I was sceptical for sure and had already put loads of time and energy into affiliate marketing – with little in the way of results. But Stuart seemed genuine to me and I needed to make an online income work.

I was able to attend a local meet up at first in the North of England near where I lived. At the time, meeting anyone who made money from the internet was pretty impossible. The owners of the courses I had done previously were phantoms!

They were nowhere to be seen and I never actually met any of them in “real life”. But at one of the first meetings I attended in London with the SFM I was pleasantly surprised to find both the co-founders there together with a lot of other members – many of whom had made the SFM their sole source of income.

SFM affiliate — Me with Jay Kubassek in London at Momentum Day 2014

Six Figure Mentors Affiliate – A Genuine Business

So I figured by this point the business was genuine. However I was still sceptical and anyone I spoke to about the online business at the time was extremely scathing of it; despite them knowing less than me!

My sponsor ( the person who brought me in through their affiliate link) was running an advertising pool. This meant he ran advertising campaign on behalf of his members. We paid in to a cooperative and Oliver ran adverts on Facebook. Of course this took a massive amount of trust on my part.

But I didn’t know how to advertise myself, so trusted him with some advertising budget. He came through and I made my first high ticket sale; earning $1000 in commissions. It was a massive first for me to make this kind of money from the internet.

Fear & Uncertainty

The money I made went straight towards my debt, as was my usual habit. My fear and uncertainty kept me where I was for some time and I nearly dropped out too. My advertising strategy was just free (blogging) from here on for some time. I made a couple more high ticket sales from my articles and then ran some paid marketing to them; making a couple more.

There were some problems I encountered with Google’s Adwords at this time and I lost faith in what I was doing. I hadn’t realised but I had become pretty depressed at this time; having lost a long term relationship. Everything had become about money and work and I hadn’t got a life! Small negative emails or doubt from friends affected me greatly too – so I’d shut myself away as a protection strategy.

I looked at my outgoings for the online business fees and panic set in! Had I really spent all that money, I thought? I reached out to the customer service team and asked about closing my account. Luckily I was put in touch with the support of Frank and Jill who met me regularly in several online meetings one to one. Without their help and support I would likely have dropped out at this point. They gave me some resources to work through and set me back on track – putting me in touch with a mentor and I became a member of his group.

Bouncing Back – SFM Affiliate Marketing

I had been focused on blogging for much of this time in efforts to gaining free traffic from Google and the other search engines. However, this was a flawed strategy because it took so long and was incredibly difficult. Although I was getting some traffic, there were only a few leads and sales coming in; and sales were very sporadic.

But what I didn’t realise was it was my mindset which was all wrong! I was scared to spend money because my income was so sporadic. Other people in the groups and leaderboard were gaining traction with far less time within the business. That was because they used paid marketing! I was still juggling stunt work and I had also built a kung fu school up – a long term passion I decided to turn into a business. I used the marketing strategies I had learned through the SFM to market my school and this was giving me more of an income over time.

Playing chi sau with Grandmaster Ip Chun (Son of Ip Man – Famous for being Bruce Lee’s teacher)

Scarcity Mindset

Despite having done a huge amount of work on my blog, I was still carrying a scarcity mindset. I didn’t want to pay for marketing because I was afraid of losing money I didn’t have. My income was still low so I didn’t have much to put into paid marketing. However, the people who were succeeding were mostly using paid marketing – so I changed gear.

I upgraded to the top level of the business which took some courage! I had to get a loan to do this but it put me at a higher earning potential. (see below).

Once I recovered from the stress and shock of having made such a decision, I went to work modelling success. The most successful people in the business were all on the leaderboard in the back office. This showed who was making the most sales, had the most members and so on. I could find those people and model what they were doing.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that there’s many ways to succeed online using the SFM training. You don’t have to use the SFM to sell the SFM’s product range. Some Six Figure Mentors affiliate’s build their own digital marketing agencies. Others use just organic marketing and some decide to sell physical products and learn through their “Import Exports” training resource. I used the training to help me build my kung fu school.

After my school got shut down due to Covid-19 in March 2020, I had more time (and space) to concentrate on promoting and selling the SFM digital business system.

A Final Push

It’s worth sticking at some things and The SFM most definitely falls into this category. It’s not been as easy as I thought when I joined in 2014 – although I did made some fairly easy sales. But now looking back, I’m so glad I joined and became a Six Figure Mentor affiliate and stuck with it.

After spending many weeks plugged in to the recommended groups, I started doing video. I wasn’t keen and really wanted to hide behind my blog posts. But I realised that I was trying to work within my comfort zones and that this was holding back the growth of my business (and myself).

I did some soul searching and deep digging into the route causes of my thinking, with the help of the many mentors who I was able to reach for personal 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching. Many of these thinking patterns were rooted in fear and of old scars which didn’t serve me any more. Once I became more aware of my limiting beliefs, I was able to take bolder steps and I made my first DEA sale in June 2020. This has been a complete game changer! I’m super grateful for all the mentors who have worked with me and for this amazing community. Thanks Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek for building this awesome resource.

When I began this business in 2014, I would never have believed I could earn this kind of money in one month! Stick at it, ignore the naysayers, do the work and you can too. Access The SFM here to get started.

Affiliate Marketing Mentorship

I found a great affiliate marketing mentorship program after years of jumping from course to course. It offers personal coaching and mentoring, 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching and support and a whole host of other resources.

One of the main problems with learning affiliate marketing alone is the huge variety of strategies you can employ to build your business. I tried to do everything on my own for several years and had a lot of problems. If you want to take affiliate marketing seriously, and build a long term sustainable business from it, it’s worth paying for the help.

Affiliate Marketing Mentorship – The SFM

The SFM (Six Figure Mentors) can sound a little off-putting if you’re a cynical UK based sceptic like I am! But since joining this community I’ve found it to be anything but. Founders Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek have created an online affiliate marketing mentorship community which offers a digital product range and business system and a community based support system for its members.

Here’s a picture of me at a local event organised by members of the community near me in Chester, (United Kingdom).

Here’s some members in Chester at a local meet-up – I’m in the red jacket!

Affiliate Marketing Mentorship – Why You Need Support

Affiliate marketing is a great business model. From anywhere in the world you can earn a full or part time income from your laptop using other people’s products. It’s great – in principle!

However the truth of affiliate marketing is that it’s much more difficult than many make it out to be. There’s literally thousands of products available online which you can promote. Just choosing the right product is a massive decision which will affect your affiliate business for a long time to come.

Then there’s promotion. How do you promote your affiliate products? For years I battled with this one; creating content which Google didn’t rank and getting advertising platforms closed down because I didn’t know what I was doing. Much of the stress and frustration of an affiliate business can be lessened if you get the help you need from the get-go! If I had found the community years ago it would have saved me a huge amount of stress and difficulty.

Affiliate Marketing – Technical Difficulties

The technical side of learning affiliate marketing has largely been removed. Most of the platforms affiliates now use are drag and drop platforms too. Even the business set-up is a simple step by step process with the SFM back office and business system set-up.

Of course there are still things to learn and the SFM provides all the training and support you will ever need to build a profitable online business from scratch and without any experience. From webinars and Q and A masterminds, to live events there’s a support system to suit everyone. Of course since Covid-19 the live events have been put on hold but several webinar events have been put on in their place.

Affiliate Marketing Mentorship – Product Range

The SFM’s product range offers a proven business model and has already allowed thousands of their affiliates to leave their jobs and become full time entrepreneurs. So what’s different to using standard affiliate products and why is your business model so important?

With some affiliate programs which are typically used by newbie affiliates, you’ll earn levels of commissions from 1-11% (typical on Amazon, for example). With digital products you can earn more like 40-50% and even 101% on the Mentors-All-In package – one of SFM’s best selling packages.

affiliate marketing mentorship — Amazon’s commissions are only 0-11% on their products

Recurring Commissions

Another good way to build a sustainable business online is by using recurring commission products. With SFM’s product range, you’ll benefit from not only the high levels of commissions which you get with digital products, but also through selling and promoting recurring income affiliate programs.

A recurring income product range means you can benefit from customer loyalty. With most affiliate products you only get paid once – when you sell the item. But with memberships and software products you earn ongoing commissions for customers who continue to subscribe to a service.

Even with small recurring commissions of say $10 a month, this can add up as you build your memberships. 100 members will give you a recurring monthly income of $1000. This is a far better strategy than selling “one-off” commission based products for 1-11% commission on Amazon, for example.

High Ticket Products

A “high ticket” product is one valued at over $1000, for example. With physical products you can sell high value products too but still only earn 10% commission. See highest paying affiliate programs list. So for example, selling a high valued physical product for $10,000 can make you $1000 as an affiliate (at 10% commission). For the same or similar effort you could also sell a book for $10 and earn $1. Which would you rather spend time on?

With high ticket digital products it’s possible to earn up to $8000 on a single sale with the SFM business model. This is because the products value into the tens of thousands of dollars/pounds. With digital products too, you can earn up to 35-40% commissions based on the sale according to where you are positioned within the business model. High ticket products used in conjunction with digital products and subscription based products give you a very powerful business model.

Multi-Tier Sales

The SFM offer a multi-tier sales model which lets affiliates (who are positioned at the top of the business model) earn from their members’ sales. This means by introducing members into the business, who then promote the affiliate products themselves, you can earn commissions based on how well your members do in their own businesses.

A multi-tier commission will be paid to you based on the sales your members make. So if they sell a membership, for example, you’ll receive a $10 monthly recurring commission for each membership product they sell. You’ll also receive 10% commission on the high ticket product range too!

Product Range

Having a product range is key to a successful online business too. Without a range of products which offer ways to meet customers needs in multiple ways, it’s more difficult to get traction with an online business. Many newbie affiliates choose to sell a single low cost product, thinking they will sell more of them because it is cheap!

However, with a product range you can sell low cost items and high cost items by offering both to existing customers. Meeting more customers needs at a price point which is suitable for them lets you offer more value to your customers. You can also benefit from later purchases from your existing customers.

With most affiliate products you can only sell a product once to a customer. You then lose that customer to the product vendor (owner); and have to constantly search for more new customers. With a product range, you can sell a product once and earn from the recurring revenue (and up-sells to that customer) for years to come.

Built-In Sales Team

The SFM has a built in marketing and follow up team which compliments your efforts as an affiliate. You only really need to refer the initial sale to the business system and the follow up team will do the rest. This makes your job as an affiliate far easier. All you need to do is promote the sales funnel once you’ve set it up!

Promoting a low cost product is fairly simple. Once you’ve done this, the sales team will promote other products to your customers as appropriate. You can even make a high ticket sale of products worth up to $20K simply by working the system and promoting the base level products. Your positioning in the business system will determine how much you can earn on such a sale – up to 40% on a $20K sale!

Marketing Your Affiliate Business

If cash flow is the “life-blood” of an affiliate business, marketing is its heartbeat. Without marketing, your business won’t survive. With a business system like the one described above, your chances of success are far higher than with a low commission setup or low value product.

With a product range, subscription products, high ticket items, multi-tier sales, recurring commissions and a built in sales team, your chances of success are far higher! But you still need marketing of course to make an online business successful. Without a good marketing strategy and consistent effort, your online business isn’t likely to succeed. But without proper help and advice, it’s far easier to drop out and quit too.

Marketing is one of the main sticking points for affiliates and there’s many ways to do it:

Content marketing – this article is an example of content marketing but it can also include things like YouTube videos, ebooks, digital downloads and many other content marketing strategies.
PPC – Pay Per Click direct response marketing is the fastest way to get people to your online business. However, it still isn’t without it’s problems. You can burn through a lot of cash with PPC without getting anywhere.

Paid Marketing

Paid marketing is the fastest way to build an online business when using a business system like the one described above. With multiple earning strategies, there’s a lot less to risk when using pay per click marketing.

With a lower value product range, it become more difficult and risky. You need to spend less than you can earn in order to be profitable. When you can get this right, you can slowly increase your budget and scale up to a larger audience quite quickly.

Ideally, use paid marketing to spend $1 and earn $2 or more. Once you get this relationship between spending and earning, you can scale up. This takes time of course and it’s worth getting help! The SFM offers several marketing groups and masterminds to help you build your affiliate business through paid marketing and free strategies too!

Free Marketing Strategies

Free marketing strategies typically take much longer to gain traction from as an affiliate marketer. A blog is a good example of a free marketing strategy. With a blog, (Web log), the affiliate creates content and hopes this will lead their potential customers into the sales funnel where they might purchase a product.

V’loggers also use free marketing strategies by creating multiple videos and building an audience. If you get your content right, you’ll be able to lead people into your sales funnel for free. A typical organic (free) marketing strategy might take 6 months to several years to generate the require amount of traffic, leads and sales. Whereas a paid marketing strategy can bring people directly to your sales funnel within a few hours.

Best Turnkey Affiliate Website Companies

Looking for the best turnkey affiliate website companies? There’s lots of companies out there who will give you an affiliate website. But without a strategy to generate traffic and sales, it’s just going to cost you money, and not make you any.

The whole point of an affiliate website is to make money, (for the affiliate of course). To do this, you need to find the right people for the products you sell. One of the main mistakes I made early on in my affiliate career was to look for the next shiny object which promised the biggest outcome for the smallest amount of effort.

Unfortunately, a turnkey website is only the start. You still need to build your traffic, in order to make it work for you.

Best TurnKey Affiliate Website Companies

The best turnkey affiliate website companies know this and offer training for your marketing too. Having a website which is full of your affiliate links is one thing, but it’s useless without a marketing campaign. Still, it’s worth using a company which lets you circumvent much of the technical set-up processes in building a website business, and cut straight to the chase. Checkout the video below (click the image) to see how this works.

Best Turnkey Affiliate Website Companies – Business Model

As you can see in the video, you can have a fully operational website, complete with your affiliate links set up in no time. Once it is, it’s your job to generate traffic. Without traffic your website is as useful as a chocolate tea pot!

There’s lots of ways to generate traffic to a website, and you can choose from a number of strategies according to your personal situation and preferences. The fastest and easiest way to generate sales from an affiliate website is to use paid marketing. However, what many affiliate companies won’t tell you is that to use paid marketing effectively, you’ll also need a good business model.

Many affiliate products are simply too cheap and/or offer such low commissions, that it’s nearly impossible to use paid marketing and come out with a profit. In which case you’ll need to focus on free marketing strategies which are time consuming and have no guarantees.

Take a look at Amazon’s commission setup for example below:

Even with the top level commission 10%, you’ll only make $10 on a $100 product. This makes it very difficult to use paid marketing because your profit margin is so low.

And so the best turnkey affiliate website companies offer a much better business model than this one. With physical products there’s a lot of cost involved in manufacture, processing and delivery. Digital products on the other hand are different. They can be accessed over the internet and delivered at a much lower cost. Because of this, digital product owners can afford to pay their affiliates much higher commissions – often 40% and above compared to 3-10% for physical products.

Best Turnkey Affiliate Website Companies – Turnkey Marketing

A good turnkey affiliate business is not the same as a turnkey affiliate website. Many turnkey websites do give you a ready made affiliate website with an affiliate product or products ready to go. However, they neglect to mention that you still need to spend months or years creating content in order to get the necessary traffic in order to sell your products. The affiliate products attached to them are too cheap (or offer too little in the way of commissions) to allow you to use paid marketing. So you have to build content, which is a very slow process.

The best turnkey affiliate website companies give you the ability to use paid marketing. With paid marketing you can shortcut the time consuming and difficult task of creating content in order to drive traffic. You can also scale up to a global audience much more quickly by using paid marketing.

A Turnkey Online Business

A good “turnkey” business model uses multiple strategies in order to generate revenue. With most affiliate products you get paid once. With a good company, you can generate income from repeat sales/recurring commissions, high value sales, up-sells and multi tier commissions. Let’s have a look what this means for your business.

Repeat Sales

Most affiliate products pay you once when you refer a sale. With recurring commissions, you refer customers to a product or service which offers recurring commissions. Recurring commissions let you earn again and again from each customer.

These kind of affiliate products are software and membership products which offer the customer huge value. Some products only pay you once which means you need to keep finding new customer. With repeat custom, you don’t need as many customers and your efforts are compounded as time goes on.

High Value Sales

Digital products offer commissions of around 40%+ compared to their physical counterparts as I’ve already mentioned. So just by having digital products your efforts will already be rewarded by larger commissions – often for the same effort. Some high ticket products though offer much larger commissions than standard products too. Having a larger value product range lets you use paid marketing and increase your advertising budget more easily and quickly by reinvesting your profits and scaling up.

Up-Sells

An up-sell in an affiliate marketing product range means that your referral is offered another product after purchasing one from a range. With a range of up-sells, you can earn from your initial referrals, even if your customer purchases another product much later. Most affiliate companies don’t offer their affiliates the ability to earn from up-sells. They take the customer and up-sell to them without giving the initial affiliate the credit. The best turnkey affiliate website companies offer a range of up-sells and even have built in sales teams closing sales on the affiliate’s behalf.

Multi-Tier Commissions

The best turnkey affiliate website companies offer multi-tier commissions. This means you can benefit from the sales generated by your referrals. When one of your referrals starts generating sales, you earn a percentage of their sales. With multi-tier commissions, high ticket products, up-sells, a built in sales team and recurring commissions, you have the best affiliate business model.

Once you start generating sales in such a model, your earning potential is far larger than by selling small value items from Amazon, for example.

Access a company which offers all of the above here.

Free Traffic Affiliate Marketing

Free traffic affiliate marketing is one route many affiliates take. It takes considerably longer than with using paid marketing strategies however. But there’s downsides to paid marketing too. You’ll need a good product range and high value recurring income products to be able to use the paid platforms; particularly the most expensive ones like YouTube and Facebook.

So free traffic affiliate marketing strategies ticks a lot of boxes for many affiliates. For me, it was the only option when I started out. I didn’t have a large value sales funnel, nor could I afford one. Neither could I afford to lose money on testing out paid marketing strategies.

There’s a downside of free traffic affiliate marketing too though. You can spend a lot of time and still get nowhere. Here’s a few of the strategies which have worked the best for me over the years.

Free Traffic Affiliate Marketing – Niche Websites

A niche website is a website which is specifically built around your major keywords. I started out with this strategy and had a lot of problems. But it is a strategy which can work if you go about it right.

The main concept is to find a good keyword which offers enough monthly traffic but less competition than most. Once you have found a low competition long tail keyword, or even a shorter phrase, you can build your site around it.

Although keyword targeted domain names aren’t as helpful as they used to be, you can still gain some advantage by using them.

Here’s an example of a site I built using this strategy and this article explains how it’s done.

Free Traffic Affiliate Marketing – Micro Niche Blogging

You can find micro niche blogging topics by using Google’s free keyword planner. You can also blog around a specific topic and use this idea with your niche website.

With a micro niche, you have less competition than with a larger niche. So you’ve more chance of getting free traffic from Google.

Starting with your main keyword domain, create content around this topic. Keep writing blogs using longer tail keywords which relate to your main “seed” keyword. Over time and with effort you can build up a resource which should get found for some of your content through a Google, Yahoo, Bing or DuckDuckGo.

It’s a long slow process this but worth it if you want a free traffic affiliate marketing income.

Free Traffic Affiliate Marketing – To Your Blog

Once you have set in motion activities on your blog to create content you’ll also need to share it. All the blogging in the world isn’t going to necessarily get eyes on your content. You also need to share it as much as possible. Don’t just sit back and rely on Google to rank your content as it may not do so!

To help you share content it’s worth getting some plugins on your site. Not only should you get a good SEO plugin to help you rank your content, but also get:

A social media autopost plugin – this automatically shares your content when you publish it.
Social media share icons – you can get a free plugin to do this.
Use postplanner.com too which will help you methodically post your older posts throughout your social media platforms

Back-linking To Your Content

There’s various methods to help you get eyes on your content:

Guest posting – on other blogs similar to your own
Writing on article marketing sites like Ezinearticles.com and Hubpages.com
Uploading videos to YouTube and linking back to your content
Dropping your article links on social media
Blog commenting
Taking part in discussion on forums and Social media groups and leading people back to your content
Inter-linking back to content in your newer posts
Deep link using the keyword/s you are targeting in your content
Q and A Websites such as Quora.com let you answer questions and post relevant content – while these are “no-follow” links they still help you get people to your content. “No-follow” means Google doesn’t count them as a ranking factor.

All these will help you get more people to your content and help you boost your SEO (search engine optimisation) score too.

Traffic Into Sales

While traffic is vital for an online business to operate, without sales it’s still going to be dead in the water! You need traffic first, leads second and sales third! Make sure your content is well targeted to attract the right buyers. All the traffic in the world is no use unless it’s well targeted traffic.

As an example, review websites are well targeted traffic. This is because when someone looks for a review, they usually already have a product in mind that they want to purchase. So a review is just a last step before someone makes a buying decision. So ask whether your content is bringing the right kind of visitors to your site before you start creating it.

Once on your site, a person will usually only have around 10 minutes before they are gone forever. If you can get them to subscribe to your email list, this time period can be dramatically extended. Also too, some “colder” traffic (as opposed to “hot” buyer traffic) can be “warmed up” and turned into customers.

So make sure you have the option to collect your visitors emails, and optimise your opt-in magnet to get the most from your traffic. See increase conversion rate on your e-commerce website.

Once on your list, your traffic is much more valuable to you. As a lead, you can deliver emails to your subscribers over months and even years. Once they leave your website without signing up to your offer, they are gone for good!

Retargeting

Retargeting is another way to get people who have already seen your website to come back for another look. This isn’t free but is a cheap strategy to help with your marketing campaign.

With a retargeting campaign, you can advertise to people who have already landing on your site. It’s worth learning about this once you have built up some free traffic over time through your content marketing efforts.

Free Traffic YouTube

YouTube can be used in a similar way to Google. Create videos and upload them to YouTube on a regular basis.

Target long tail keywords which are suitable for your target audience and products. One strategy to do this is to start writing your keywords into YouTube’s search bar. You should see other longer tail keywords appear beneath. These are the searches which are already being looked for.

By creating content around the less competitive keywords, you can gain some traction and get free visitors to your videos over the longer term. Again this is a long term strategy and takes some time and work.

Facebook For Free Traffic

You can also use Facebook for free traffic too. Make your profile picture showcase your main lead magnet. This is your “giveaway” product which you offer your website visitors in exchange for their email.

Here’s an example of what I’ve used on my Facebook page:

Once you’ve set up your profile to offer your giveaway “hook”, join some groups which are suitable places where your target audience might be hanging out.

You can join a number of groups and chat with other members. Don’t spam the groups with your affiliate links, just interact and offer value and connect. People will visit your profile and click on your link, bringing them to your opt-in offer or your website content. In some groups too you can even drop a link and share your content. Just make sure you abide by the rules or you can easily get kicked out!

Pre Made Affiliate Websites

It doesn’t matter how good your pre made affiliate websites look, there’s still going to be one factor that’s missing: traffic!

With pre made affiliate websites you get a lot of stuff done for you: ready made affiliate links in your copy, done for you banners and, with some, even a fully built email marketing follow up series. But one thing you will need to do is build traffic.

And building traffic to an affiliate website does take time. Depending on what your niche is, it can take a considerable time. But there’s a few considerations you should have before jumping in a buying pre made affiliate websites.

Pre-Made Affiliate Websites

The main considerations you should take stock of with pre made affiliate websites are:

Your niche
The business model
Can you create content in your niche?
The relative competition
Your marketing strategies

With a website there’s two main marketing strategies: free and paid. It doesn’t matter how good your products are or what your business model can give you, whether you are successful or not comes down to one thing: marketing.

Unless you get good at marketing your website, no-one will buy your affiliate products and you won’t make any sales. So let’s start at the bottom of this list with marketing!

Pre Made Affiliate Websites – Marketing

So you’ve got your shiny new website and it’s all set up with banners and affiliate links. Now we just wait for the sales to roll in right!? Wrong! No one will visit your site. Imagine you’ve just bought a garage in the middle of a dessert and you’ll be close to knowing how many people are going to roll up wanting their tank filled! It’s the same for a website. Only much worse! Your website is like a small store buried under millions of others just like it, hidden down an alleyway where nobody visits!

Paid Traffic

In order to get people to your affiliate links you’re going to need to do one, or both of two things: pay for marketing or build content. With a compliant site you can drive traffic to your “online store” within minutes. Set up a marketing strategy using Google Adwords, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook or YouTube. Then send targeted traffic to your site based on their search criteria, age, location and a number of other demographics which suit your target audience.

With targeted traffic you can test and measure your marketing strategy. After running a number of adverts over a long period of time, you’ll start to see which ones work and which don’t. Then you can focus in on the winning adverts and cut off the losing ones. Eventually, you’ll be able to determine which make a profit and scale up. This also depends on your business model too, of course. (More on this later).

“Free” Traffic

I say “free” in quotes because it takes a lot more effort and time to generate the same kind of traffic from free marketing than it does for paid marketing. Paid marketing is instant and scalable. You can easily determine what works and what doesn’t. With organic content creation, it’s much more time consuming, difficult to scale, and takes time before you see the results of your efforts. But it’s free!

You can generate free traffic to your website in a number of ways:

Blogging
YouTube’ing
Social Media platforms
Back linking
Article marketing
Email marketing

In short you create free traffic by creating content and getting eyes on it. A simple strategy is to look for all the possible questions your customers could ask about your products, and create content based around the answers.

One simple blogging strategy is to find long tail keywords which have a low SEO difficulty. This involves finding keywords which have less competition than most and building content around those keywords. They also need to be a good match for prospective customers too!

The Relative Competition – Pre Made Affiliate Websites

If you’re going into a competitive niche, such as money making online, health and fitness products, dating or wealth creation for example, you’re going to find both competition for free marketing strategies and paid marketing alike.

Paid marketing will be expensive because you are competing with other lucrative businesses. So you’ll be competing with them for expensive keywords and traffic. There’s also lots of content for similar businesses on the internet too, so getting your content found will be more difficult in these kinds of niches.

With less competitive niche topics, you’ll find paid marketing is cheaper and there’s less “noise” in the search engines too. So it’s something worth considering. With a pre made affiliate website which offers Forex marketing products, for example, it’s going to be very difficult to use paid marketing. Unless you have a very good business model behind you, which allows you to spend large amounts on advertising, it’ll be prohibitively expensive to use paid marketing.

Likewise if you look on Google for the organic results around this topic, it’ll be extremely competitive. Look at the image above which show both paid results at the top and a large number (17 million, 100 thousand) for competing websites just under the search bar.

So in this topic, even pre made affiliate websites which offer a great opportunity to make large value recurring sales, you’re still going to need to pay large amounts for advertising, or work incredibly hard creating content – without any guarantees!

Can You Create Content In Your Niche?

With a pre made affiliate website, you can either use paid marketing or create content. Let’s assume you’re going to create content rather than run paid advertising. If you go this route, be prepared for the long haul. In almost every niche now there is a good amount of competition. This is why it’s worth finding affiliate products in a sub-niche (or micro niche) so there’s less competing content for your specific products. See best micro niche for blogging.

If you’re choosing this route, it’s a good idea to know your subject too, or at least have a passion or interest in it. This way, you can endure the long term and not burn out. I made the mistake of blogging in a niche I had no knowledge in, or interest in! It was a long slow process of getting burned out and packing it in!

So before you buy pre made affiliate websites, it’s worth considering how you will market them. If you’re going the free route, choose a product which relates to some interest you have. This way you can endure a long term marketing strategy around creating useful content for your website visitors.

Pre Made Affiliate Websites – The Business Model

Many pre made affiliate websites will give you a cheap product which only pays you a small commission. This means you can’t afford to use paid marketing strategies to promote it. Amazon plugins, for example, let you quickly build an affiliate website which is full of affiliate products.

Unfortunately though, Amazon only pays its affiliates between 1-11% commissions on your sales. This means it’s pretty much impossible to pay for marketing and still come away with a profit. So you’ll need to get traffic some other way; and this can be tough.

Recurring Commission Products & High Ticket

Products which offer recurring commissions are far better because you can make much more from the same amount of work. For each sale of membership product, or a software product, you’ll continue to earn again and again. This makes much more sense for affiliates, particularly if they hope to use paid strategies for their marketing.

High ticket products too give the affiliate much more leverage when it comes to using paid marketing. With a high ticket product range and products which pay recurring commissions also, you can earn much more for each sale. Plus it gives you more opportunity to use paid marketing and scale up more quickly. Free marketing strategies are slow and difficult to scale up.

Multi-tier sales allow affiliates to benefit from other affiliates’ sales, who they have referred to a program. With a multi-tier program, you can build a team, help them succeed and benefit from their success.

Having a built in sales team and a range of digital products also is a massive advantage for an affiliate. With a range of products, you can benefit from products purchased later by your referrals. If you’ve referred a customer, a sales team will close these sales on your behalf.

Learn more about this business model and access a pre made affiliate website, a ready made sales funnel and choose a range of digital products to place in your “digital store”. Click here for a free video series and learn more. You’ll also be able to access a world class training resource and learn how to market your online presence through multiple avenues.

Stuart Ross And Jay Kubassek

Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek teamed up in 2010 to create the SFM – Six Figure Mentors. It’s a online business community and all in one business system and mentorship program which anyone can use to build an income from the internet. I joined the SFM in 2014 and met both Stuart and Jay within a few months of joining in London, UK for a momentum seminar.

Here’s a picture of me with Jay Kubassek from Momentum day. Seminars are held globally throughout the year. Although the lockdown has recently put pay to them, Stuart and Jay actually show up for their members in these trainings. They also hold regular live webinars and seminars throughout the year as do many of their members.

Stuart Ross And Jay Kubassek

Although there’s a few bad reviews I’ve found about the SFM, (many of them used to promote other affiliate products), I found both Stuart and Jay to be very genuine. They offer not just another “earn money online” course, but a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are actually there for each other to learn and grow their online businesses. Plus they are still around years later.

I didn’t know quite what was in stall for me going through the program though. As with probably many affiliate marketers, I expected an “easy ride” when I first started learning about affiliate marketing before having met Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek.

As time went on I realised that it’s not at all easy. I think this is what many get wrong when approaching any kind of business. Back when I first approached affiliate marketing in the early 2000’s there were lots of scammy programs around, many of which have since disappeared. See my digital profit course review article to read about them.

Stuart Ross And Jay Kubassek

I first found a video of Stuart Ross on Facebook and was at the time struggling with my affiliate business. I joined up, because I was desperate to escape the circumstances I was finding myself in – working jobs I hated and struggling to pay the rent.

I wasn’t sure what to expect and had already invested in a number of online courses. But Stuart didn’t lay claim to any high earnings which were easily obtained. I think this is what set him apart to all of the other sensationalist videos I had bought into before. I was also pleasantly surprised to find the community behind the founders. I was super-sceptical and expected my first meeting to be an empty garage!

The affiliate who had referred me created a co-op for marketing and I trusted him with some budget. This was a huge leap for me, but it paid off and I made my first high ticket sale within a few months of joining. The initial momentum I generated kept me involved but I think because it was a relatively “easy win” I hadn’t learned the skills myself to create the sale I made.

I later made a couple more high ticket sales from my blog posts and running an Adwords campaign to an article I had written. Despite the success of a few large value commissions, I found myself in full doubt mode later on and thought about dropping out.

Reaching Out

The previous courses I had taken online taught me to be self reliant. But with that I had also learned to avoid asking for help and do everything by myself! When I did finally reach out I was assigned two mentors who I met up with on live webinars on a weekly basis. Jill and Frank I’m super grateful you kept me going! The community and support is probably the best thing about The SFM. If you reach out, people are there. This was something I had never experienced in the previous online courses I had taken.
I’m sure there’s many others who drop out at this point but I’m so glad I didn’t. I kept going and changed my trajectory. I had been focused on free strategies but mostly had done blogging.

I was recommended a weekly webinar to join and started following another mentor – Dan! I’m super grateful Dan and always will be.

Since this I made a huge breakthrough and well, wow! The system does work but there’s a lot of work to be done initially. But once you do break through the doubt and fear, there’s an amazing strategy behind this business. With the automation and business model, you can earn in multiple ways:

Subscription products – pay you over and over
High ticket products – help you scale up and reinvest marketing budget
Multi-tier sales – I haven’t seen these commissions yet but it’s a way of earning from your referrals’ sales.
Up-sells – There’s a range of high value products which offer huge value
Built in sales team – A dedicated sales team closing sales on your behalf.

It’s A Business Not A Get Rich Quick Scheme

If you remember that it’s a business and not a get rich quick scheme, and you take full responsibility for all the results, you can’t go too far wrong. I expect that many do expect results without putting themselves as the cause though. Something like 3% of business owners actually break through and achieve success with a business of any kind. With online business it’s no different. There’s obstacles and things which stand in your way. Many of them are your own beliefs, judgements and limitations.

Sadly though most affiliates will drop out before they even get 1000 subscribers on their email list. With affiliate marketing being so accessible, this also means there’s a high drop out rate.

If you take it seriously and stick with it, it can be life changing. But if you think it’s going to be easy, you’ll be disappointed. So it’s maybe not for you!

For me though Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek are absolute heroes! Thanks Stuart, thanks Jay!

If you want to get started with The SFM, click here to access the workshop series of videos.