Category: Affiliate Marketing Mentor Blog

Here’s my affiliate marketing mentors blog! I’ve been an affiliate marketer since the early 2000’s and I ran into a lot of problems which, perhaps you have too?

I tried all sorts of strategies at first from building niche websites, running Google Adwords ads, blogging and using free blog platforms such as Hubpages and Blogger.com.

The struggle was pretty real but I was determined to make affiliate marketing work for me because life was so difficult in the many jobs I juggled to keep the wolf from the door!

In 2014 I found a community of online marketing mentors. I decided to start agains from scratch and “empty my cup”. It was tough and it’s hard to let go of thinking you know something when you really don’t!

I don’t consider myself an affiliate marketing mentor, although I hope that this website helps people who are learning. No, I’m still, and always will be a student, which means I can keep emptying my cup when it gets too full of the idea that I know something. The online world changes a lot and very quickly. So just when you think you are getting somewhere, everything is different and you’re starting all over again!

Welcome to affiliate marketing mentors!

Alternatives To Dropshipping

There’s various alternatives to dropshipping which give you the same freedoms associated with a drop shipping business. The appeal of dropshipping is you don’t need your own products, you can work from anywhere and you can send products directly to customers. But there’s downsides too. You can’t control the customer experience and you don’t control inventory. Shipping costs can vary, especially since Covid, and all manner of things can give you problems.

Other online business models can give you the same kind of geographical freedom without as many of the headaches. Here’s a few of them.

Alternatives To Drop Shipping – Etsy

Etsy is a platform which lets individuals sell their own products and services on a global scale. You can also become an affiliate for Etsy and promote the site to earn commissions. If you have a unique flare for creating something, Etsy might be for you.

Alternatives To Drop Shipping – Shopify

Shopify is another platform similar to Etsy. You can use the platform to create a digital online shop and put other people’s (or your own) products in it. Shopify is the better choice for online selling. It’s more scalable, more flexible, and offers better e-commerce tools than Etsy.

Alternatives To Dropshipping – Affiliate Marketing

The affiliate marketing business model is one of the most popular online. It’s similar to drop shipping in that you can work from anywhere and scale up your business. Affiliates use affiliate links to send people to various products and services online. Product delivery and customer service is dealt with by the product “vendor” or owner. So affiliate marketing can be much more hands off than drop shipping.

Affiliates use many kinds of marketing strategy to send people to products and services online. Many of these can be considered alternatives to dropshipping in their own right.

Alternatives To Dropshipping – Blogging

Blogging is a marketing strategy which can be used alongside many monetisations methods such as:

Selling your own business, service or product/s
Affiliate marketing products and services
Using paid advertising to earn commissions based on clicks (e.g. Google’s Adsense program)

Blogging is definitely a long term marketing strategy but many bloggers love their topic and so can build content over the longer term to generate free traffic and build a passive income.

Alternatives To DropShipping – Website Flipping

Website flipping is another alternative to drop shipping. Many website flippers will purchase a domain name and build a website into an asset – through some online business model. Some will monetise through affiliate marketing, or through using Adsense or even through drop shipping. Once built and the value of the site has increased, they sell the site through websites such as Flippa.com or empireflippers.com

You can also purchase domain names you think will appreciate and sell them on at a profit.

Selling Memberships

Another alternative to drop shipping is to sell memberships. You can either create your own membership product or use an existing affiliate membership program. With memberships, you can earn recurring commissions over the longer term. This can mean your business grows exponentially once you start selling consistently and providing you’re offering real value.

See recurring income affiliate programs for some of the best programs to promote.

High Ticket Affiliate Business/Lifestyle Business

Most affiliate marketing products pay only small commissions. Amazon, for example pays between 1% and 11% commissions on sales you can generate using their affiliate program. (See Affiliate marketing commission rates). This leaves very little scope for using paid marketing to generate sales and still come out with a profit.

A high ticket digital product gives you the largest possible commissions from the affiliate marketing business model. With a high ticket product range, you can more quickly tap into marketing methods which are scalable. See high ticket affiliate marketing for more on this topic.

With paid marketing, you can send targeted visitors into a sales funnel and sell a range of digital products. This is one of the fastest legit ways to make money online.

Ebooks – Selling Or Using

Ebooks can be used either to sell online or as a marketing tool to get people to join your email marketing list. What’s great about ebooks is the ability to sell them on complete autopilot. See also affiliate marketing ebook free download and how to sell ebooks on your own website.

Alternatives To Dropshipping – Access Free Videos

So there’s a short list of alternatives to dropshipping. If you can think of any more, please mention them in the comments. If you’d like more information on other online business models, access a free video series by clicking on the image below. You’ll be able to access a 4 video workshop series and a free webinar.

Jobs With Independence And Freedom

I was always looking for jobs with independence and freedom. A few of the jobs I tried over the years included:

Lifeguard
Taxi driver
TV Extra – Background artist
Stuntman
Trampoline coach
Martial arts instructor
Climbing instructor
Modelling/photographic work
HGV driver
and a number of fill in jobs in offices, supermarkets, warehouses, on building sites and the rest (not recommended for freedom and independence!)

I wanted jobs with independence and freedom that would allow me to work when it suited me. Perhaps I was naive and wanted too much from a job. I was always broke and looking for the next “best thing”!

Jobs With Independence And Freedom

The trouble with a job is you are continually selling your time, which is a finite resource. When you stop doing so, you stop earning money. So unless you continually sell your time in a job, the money stops coming in.

I thought being a stuntman was going to be the ultimate of all jobs with independence and freedom – travelling the world and getting paid! However it’s a competitive industry and unless you’re continually scouring for future contracts, you can get left behind!

Even when work was good, I was selling my time. When the work stopped the money stopped too! Over the years I came to realise that the only way to build real freedom and flexibility into your life is to not need a job and to become financially independent so you aren’t anchored to a job at all. JOB = Just Over Broke! In an independent career, you’re self employed and finding work can be as challenging as working for an employer you hate!

Don’t Sell Your Time, Sell Products Instead

I looked for another way to make money without a job or a boss. I looked into eBay and found an ebook which taught me how to find cheap items to sell on the site. You can read about the strategy in my article “how to start a profitable ebay business“.

But the strategy was a slow one and I found myself either tied to my computer or queueing up at the post office to weigh items I was selling. My time was still not free and I was barely making a living! I knew the answer wasn’t “jobs with independence and freedom“. Even with a number of flexible jobs, I didn’t have real freedom. I was still struggling financially. I juggled a martial arts business, HGV driving and stunt work at one point but was still broke most of the time!

I ditched the eBay business and decided to create my own ebooks and sell them online. Struggling to make any sales, I put myself on a marketing course and discovered a clever business model known as affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is a business model which lets you sell other people’s products and services online for profit. What was better was that I could sell a $100 product and earn $40 – 40% of the profit! This was far better than trying to sell my own ebooks at $10 a time! So I dropped my ebooks and started learning about affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing = Freedom

Affiliate marketing lets anyone sell other people’s products and services online for a share of the profit. Although affiliate marketing does take time to learn and get going, ultimately it can give you a passive income source.

You can use systems and technology to make sales around the world while you sleep! No job can offer this because you always have to keep turning up to keep making money. Only a job you absolutely love is going to have a lifetime of appeal! At some point you’ll want to stop working. But usually when this point arrives, you’re trapped with mortgage and family obligations to meet.

Affiliate marketing can give you both financial and time freedom because you’re using automation to sell products, and you’re not trading your time.

Jobs With Independence And Freedom

If you’ve been looking for jobs with independence and freedom, you might be interested in learning about affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing can give you time and financial freedom because you can eventually automate sales which happen online. It takes time and effort to learn affiliate marketing, but over the longer term, this is an investment which can ultimately pay off in passive income.

No job can offer this! To learn more about affiliate marketing and the different online business models available, access a free video series by clicking on the image below.

Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship: An Online Business From Scratch

A scalable startup entrepreneurship venture is possible with an online business system mentorship program. Many would-be entrepreneurs think they need a unique product or service they must provide themselves. But a clever business model known as affiliate marketing lets anyone build a scalable startup from scratch; even with no experience.

Affiliate marketing is a business model where “affiliates” promote and sell other people’s products and services. With the right business model, you can use online marketing methods which are scalable, to promote existing products.

There’s many affiliate marketing business models. But the best ones for scale are those which offer a business system which supports paid marketing strategies.

Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship

The SFM Digital Business System offers a number of products and services which can be sold through a digital sales funnel. A sales funnel is a system of selling online which includes a landing page, a sign up form and an email marketing system. As people enter a sales funnel, they are offered products and services through a series of email messages.

The whole system is automated and there’s no limit to the number of subscribers entering it. Traffic is driven towards the landing page to drive leads and sales.

A built in sales team, automated selling system and a powerful marketing “engine” lets you scale sales to a global audience.

Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship – Business System

Anyone can use the affiliate marketing model to promote and sell other people’s products online. But the difficult part of affiliate marketing is knowing how to promote products and make sales. This is what most newbie affiliate marketers struggle with.

To overcome this barrier, you can use an existing business model which offers a number of advantages over the most common affiliate programs:

High ticket digital products – most programs only pay tiny commissions. Amazon for example pays 1-11% commission on affiliate products. Compare this to digital products which typically pay 40%. High ticket products let you earn larger amounts per sale. This also gives more opportunity for using paid, (scalable) marketing.
Recurring commissions from software products and memberships. Recurring commissions are a game changer for affiliates and they can give you much needed consistency in income when you’re starting out.
Built in sales team – most affiliate programs don’t offer a team of sales people who close sales on your behalf. Just refer the front end products and larger value items are still credited to you if your customer makes another purchase.
Multi-tier commissions – means you can earn commissions from sales generated from your team; adding another valuable income stream to your business system.

Training & Mentorship

Most affiliates will quit before they have built their email list to just 1000 subscribers. See affiliate marketing failure rate. That’s because in the early days of being an affiliate, there can be very little to show for the work you’ve done. When you’re on your own, it can be very difficult to maintain the necessary work required to generate sales. When your friends and family are trying to talk you out of it, it compounds the issue!

Having a community of people who are doing the same as you is a game changer. With support, you can reach out when things aren’t going well! Without it, it’s much more difficult.

The SFM (Six Figure Mentors) offers training and mentoring programs for people looking to build a scalable startup entrepreneurship venture of their own. They offer a ready-built sales system and products you can use to sell through a digital sales funnel.

The step by step training will guide you through business system setup and you can access over 10,000 Linkedin learning courses through the Mentors All In program. Access by clicking on the image below.

Marketing A Scalable Business

There’s several products you can purchase through The SFM Digital Business System. To earn the maximum levels of commission requires more investment. With the basic Mentors All In Program this is the commission structure you can benefit from:

Investing in the higher level products also gives you larger commissions on those products, when you sell them. This is useful if you want to use marketing strategies which can be scaled up quickly.

Once your business system is set up, you’ll have a landing page from which you collect subscribers. Here’s an example of a sales funnel landing page.

To drive traffic to those landing pages, and send people into your sales funnel, requires marketing. This can be done in several different ways. But the most easily scalable method is through using paid marketing. Here’s a few of the most popular paid marketing platforms you can use to scale a digital business:

YouTube
Adwords
Facebook
Bing

With marketing you need to target people who are interested in what you have to offer. Before you start a marketing campaign it’s therefore necessary to define who your target market is, see how to know your target market.

Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship – Summary

Many entrepreneurs think they need a unique idea, product or invention of their own in order to start a scalable startup venture. But this isn’t true. Affiliate marketing business models allow anyone to use existing businesses and products to build a globally scalable venture.

The SFM Digital Business System allows anyone to use a proven business model to start out online and build their own global business. This is done through following the step by step training laid out in the Mentors All In program. Then learn a marketing strategy through the trainings and online groups.

To learn more, access a free video series by clicking on the image below. You’ll learn about the various online business models you can use.

How Can I Earn From Digital Marketing?

“How can I earn from digital marketing?”, you might ask! There’s many ways to earn from digital marketing.

If you already have digital marketing skills, you can sell your time (in a job), you can build a digital marketing agency (your own business), or you can use those skills to promote affiliate products, or other people’s businesses.

Digital marketing skills are fast becoming the most lucrative skills around today. Nearly every business wants to learn how to promote themselves better online. As a digital marketer, there’s many avenues you can take.

If you don’t yet have digital marketing skills, you can learn them and use them to build an online business using other people’s products and services (affiliate marketing). Start here.

How Can I Earn From Digital Marketing?

So, how can I earn from digital marketing? Here’s a break down of the most common ways:

Sell your time – in a job as a digital marketing “expert”
Build a business of your own selling yours and/or other people’s marketing skills – a digital marketing agency.
Use your skills to sell other people’s products and services online – affiliate marketing.
Approach businesses directly and offer to help them with their marketing.

Digital marketers use a number of strategies to sell products or services online. Here’s a few of the methods they use:

Paid marketing platforms – pay per click marketing platforms such as Google Adwords, Facebook, YouTube etc. let you run adverts and send traffic (visitors) to websites.
Organic marketing methods & SEO (search engine optimisation) – blogging, social media marketing and other organic methods use content generation to build an online presence. See how to increase organic traffic to your blog.
Building a following online through social media – some digital marketers use Linkedin, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and other platforms to drive traffic and make sales. See also unpaid social media marketing.

Don’t Know How To Market Online?

Perhaps, like many people you don’t have any digital marketing skills? If this is the case you can learn. The best way to learn digital marketing skills is through joining an affiliate program which offers training and has products for you to sell. This way you can earn while you learn and you don’t have to think about products.

In the SFM Digital Business system you can access over 10,000 courses and a business system which does the selling. You can also access a community of online entrepreneur and get the help you need to become successful online. Click on the image below for more information.

Digital Marketing & Affiliate Marketing

Digital marketing refers to any kind of online marketing or advertising. Affiliate marketing on the other hand is referral marketing. With affiliate marketing you get paid for referring people to other people’s products and services online. If you’re successful at this, and refer people to products which sell, you get paid on a performance basis.

This is one of the most accessible ways to earn through using digital marketing. You can even do it without any services or products of your own. Affiliates are everywhere online. You’ve probably bought something through someone’s affiliate link already, especially if you shop online a lot.

An affiliate basically recommends products and services through their own advertising strategies. Affiliates use content marketing (e.g. blogging and v’logging), email marketing and paid advertising.

They might also use a number of other strategies to get their message in front of an audience and lead them to an affiliate product. Since affiliates only get paid when something sells, it’s a very economical way for product owners to promote their products online. Since they don’t have to pay anyone unless they make a sale!

How To Earn From Digital Marketing – Summary

There’s many ways to earn from digital marketing and the value of digital marketing skill is rapidly growing. Here’s a few of the strategies you can use if you already have some marketing skills:

Sell your time in a job – SEO (search engine optimisation) skills, PPC (pay per click and other marketing skills are in demand.
Build a marketing agency – use other skilled people and/or your own skill base to build a business which helps businesses grow their online presence
Approach businesses directly and offer to help them promote their products/services using your skill set
Use affiliate products – promote other people’s products and services using online marketing strategies.

If you want to learn how to sell products and services online, access a free video series here which explains the various business models available, even if you have no previous experience.

Online Business During The Pandemic

Are you thinking of starting an online business during the pandemic? An online business is the best kind of business right now. Many physical businesses are being closed down due to social distancing measures being enforced all over the world. What does this mean for you if your business depends on a healthy flow of customers?

Perhaps you’re an employee of a business which is being curtailed? The future for many people is definitely uncertain. But there’s one thing you can do to future proof yourself from this ongoing threat to financial certainty; get educated in the skills needed for earning an income online. Start here or click on the image below.

Online Business During The Pandemic

An online business during the pandemic isn’t an instant answer for immediate income. It takes time to build an income online and it doesn’t happen overnight. But what is certain is that more people than ever are turning to the internet as a means to make a living. Throughout lockdown, people have had their lives turned upside down and the most precarious thing for many is their source of income. By learning the skills you need to generate an independent income online, you can ensure your future is not as uncertain as it might currently be.

So what’s involved in building an online business from scratch? Can anyone do it? Do you need technical skills and are you too old? The good news is that anyone can learn the skills required to earn online. You don’t need to be technical because online software has come a long way over the last 10 years. Drag and drop software makes website building easier than it’s ever been.

From a website you can promote other people’s products to earn an income. You don’t need any of your own products or even to deal with customers. Here’s a free video series which will explain the different models (click on image below).

Online Business During The Pandemic – How Long Will It Take?

The time take to start generating an income online depends on a number of factors. It’s different for everyone according to their own working preferences and how much time and energy they can give their online business. Here’s a few of the factors involved:

How much time each day you devote to building your online business
The activities you pursue – some take long than others
What you are able to invest – both in terms of affiliate business model and advertising budget
Your ability to learn and implement new skills
Your work ethic and motivation levels

See also how long does affiliate marketing take? In general, you shouldn’t expect an income from an online business before putting in consistent effort for several months. 6 months is likely to be the shortest time for many affiliates to start generating a steady income from being an affiliate. For some it takes much longer. See also fastest legit way to make money online.

Do I Need To Be Tech Savvy?

If you’re thinking of starting an online business you may be wondering whether you need to be tech savvy. But if you have an email address and are able to send and receive them, you can build an online business.

Most of the technical stuff has been done for you if you use the latest software and technology. Have a look at this video in which Stuart explains his software for building websites (Click image below).

So as you can see, anyone can use this software to build a website and do much of what’s involved in building an online business. Get started here and follow the step by step training.

Summary

So if you’re thinking about starting an online business during the pandemic, you can get started here. You’ll be able to build your own digital sales funnel, with a range of products to sell directly online to a global audience. You’ll also get access to training and development to help you learn the skills to market your products online.

An online business does take some time to generate income from, and you shouldn’t do this if you’re not prepared to work at it, or if you expect “easy money”. So it’s definitely not for everyone. Access the Mentors All In Package which has everything you’ll need to begin this journey including:

Products to sell
A step by step set up process
coaching and mentoring
training and support.

Plus there’s a full 30 day money back guarantee with this training and education program. So you can even try it out at zero risk! Click on the image below for access.

How To Sell Other Companies Products On My Website

Are you wondering: “how to sell other companies products on my website?” There’s a clever business model known as affiliate marketing which lets you do exactly this. Simply find a company which is a good fit for your audience, join their affiliate program and put a banner on your site! Hey presto, you’re now an affiliate marketer!

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways to earn an income online. If you already have a website, you can join any affiliate program and promote a variety of products from it. One of the best ways to find an affiliate program which suits your particular niche/topic is to do a search online. Type in “{your niche} affiliate program”. {Your niche} being the main keywords people would use to find your website. Look for a suitable program and apply to join.

How To Sell Other Companies Products On My Website

So that’s it? Isn’t there more to it than this? Well, yes of course there is. But that’s the basic starting point. Before you can successfully sell other people’s products, you’ll need to have a fair amount of website traffic. Unless you have traffic, joining an affiliate program will only give you the ability to promote products and services online. It doesn’t get you traffic!

If you already have a website which gets traffic, you need to carefully choose products which align with the interests of your audience. It’s no good joining a company who promotes kitchenware when your website deals with musical instruments, for example. Your website needs to be a good match for the products you’ll be promoting from it. Otherwise, nobody who visits your website will be interested and you won’t make any sales. This is what’s known as your “customer avatar” or target audience. See how to know your target market.

If you already have a tonne of website visitors, you’re in a good place. Most websites don’t get much traffic, particularly brand new websites which have just been built. In order to get traffic to a website you can either pay for it, or build content on it. See how to get traffic to your website free.

How To Sell Other Companies Products On My Website – Product Choice

Once you find a suitable affiliate program which meets your needs, you’ll need to apply to join the program. This isn’t always straight forward and depending on the program, you may have to show your website, or prove that you can drive enough traffic to make sales consistently. Many affiliate programs are quite happy for new affiliates to join them though, even without a proven record of traffic generation.

Google search for affiliate programs in your area — Amazon is one of the most well known affiliate programs and pretty much anyone can join it.

Once you find a company which sells products suitable for your audience, look on their website for their affiliate program. If you can’t immediately see an affiliate section of a company, you can approach them by email and ask if they run one.

Once you have joined an affiliate program, you’ll usually have access to banners, links and various sales pages which have already been built. You can promote the products/service through a variety of ways on your website:

Banners and images – (see below)
Links embedded in your text – (example: here’s a link to a free affiliate training webinar).
Through an email marketing campaign – sending emails to subscribers

Here’s an example of a banner advertisement for a webinar I promote, as an affiliate:

Email Marketing From Your Website

Email marketing is another technique which website owners can use to sell other people’s products from their site. On a website, it’s much more difficult to sell something because most visitors only stay a short amount of time; usually less than 10 minutes. But once you get them to subscribe to your email list, you can automate a long list of follow up emails which promote products over months, years and even decades!

To get people to opt in to your email list, you can offer something of value for free on your website. I offer ebooks, webinars and downloadable files to my subscribers. Once on my list, I follow up with useful information about the topics discussed on this site. I also promote products and services which I think would be of interest.

an email marketing form — Many websites will have a form like this one so you can sign up to the owners email list.

The power of email marketing is huge because you can eventually build a huge list of subscribers who are interested in your products/service. When this number grows, you’ll be making more sales simply by working the numbers! To do email marketing from your website, you’ll need to purchase an autoresponder which can allow you to collect information from a form on your site. Here’s the one I use! It offers a free trial period so you can try it out.

How To Sell From Your Website – Summary

Your website is unique and your messaging will be unique too. This is why it’s important to choose companies and products carefully. You will need to choose products and services which align with the topic of your website and the interests of your visitors.

So if your website sells kitchenware, you’ll want to find a kitchenware related affiliate program you can join and promote their products. You won’t have much luck selling protein shakes from a website which sells kitchen ware because your visitors didn’t come for that!

Once you find your topic, search online using Google (or one of the other search engines), and type in your main keyword which relates to your website; ({Your niche} affiliate programs).

Once you find a suitable program you like, join it and login to your affiliate area which is usually somewhere on their website. Get banners and affiliate links from the affiliate area.

You can also purchase an email marketing service (autoresponder) which lets you collect your visitors emails and promote products through an email marketing campaign.

Once set up, you’ll want to turn attention to building traffic to your site, to generate an ever growing number of sales. This can be done in several ways including using paid advertising or content creation. See Best free traffic sources for affiliate marketing for more on this.

For more training on affiliate marketing access this free videos series.

Best Business In Lockdown

The best business in lockdown has to work completely online. How can you run a physical business with new rules changing all the time; when you can’t even control your ability to offer your services? Sooner or later, customers are going to lose confidence in your service, if they can’t access them when they want.

Even companies offering physical products are losing out due to postage, handling and transportation delays. So what’s the answer? How can you operate and thrive in this strange new environment?

The answer is online services; which have been booming since the beginning of this strange new world in March 2020.

Best Business In Lockdown – Affiliate Marketing

But most people don’t know anything about operating a business online. Perhaps you’re thinking, “How does that help me?”. “I have no experience of the online world and nothing to offer”.

But you’d be dead wrong. The online world has changed and so has the opportunity to work online for everyday people. 20 years ago you would have needed technical skills just to build a website. But today, anyone can use drag and drop software which can allow you to create an online presence of your own.

“But I’ve nothing to sell, I wouldn’t know where to start”! Anyone can monetise an online presence through the use of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a business model which lets anyone promote and sell products online – even when they don’t personally own the products themselves. It’s one of the most popular strategies which ordinary people use to earn an income online.

Product fulfilment and customer service is the responsibility of the product owners, not the referring partners. As an affiliate, you’re a referring partner and you get paid for referring a product to someone online.

You can think of it as a recommendation to a friend. When you recommend a nice restaurant to someone you know, they might make a trip there – if post pandemic rules allow of course! With affiliate marketing, you receive a payment if someone purchases something from your recommendation online.

Why Affiliate Marketing Is The Best Business In Lockdown

An affiliate marketing business makes money from referring sales online. You don’t need to personally own products or services yourself, and anyone can learn how to do this.

An affiliate business can be built around other commitments and you can choose your working hours to suit you. There’s also many ways you can work with an affiliate business. Choose a strategy and working pattern which suits you.

Why is affiliate marketing the best business in lockdown? During a lockdown, normal businesses have been forced to close their doors. But an online business hasn’t. In fact more people than ever are taking to the internet to purchase things, learn new skills and get educated on various topics. The internet connects the entire planet and it doesn’t matter where you live, anyone can learn how to generate an income online using any of the affiliate marketing business models.

How Long Does It Take To Be Profitable Online?

Although an affiliate business can give you the ability to earn online, it will take some time and commitment to build an online business that earns you an income. Usually you should expect to work on your affiliate business for at least 6 months before you see an income from it. Depending on how you approach your business, it can take longer than this.

How long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing? With a high ticket business model, and through using paid marketing, you can build an income in the shortest amount of time. See fastest legit way to make money online. This requires more investment of course. But there’s many ways you can approach affiliate marketing, and even some very cheap and free strategies.

For a free video series explaining the various affiliate models available, click here.

Why An Affiliate Business Is The Best Business In Lockdown – Summary

Almost everyone has access to a laptop and internet connection. If you have too, and are concerned about your financial future, this is the best time to start learning about how to turn your laptop into another income stream. The digital economy is booming and more so because of the pandemic. Physical shops and services are either closed permanently or hampered in their business in some way.

One way to future proof your income is to learn skills which can enable you to earn from your laptop and become financially independent.

Access the free video series to learn more. Click on the image below to get started.

Affiliate Marketing Mindset

Your affiliate marketing mindset is either your biggest asset or your biggest liability, when building an affiliate business. Not everyone will succeed with affiliate marketing. Those who do, and turn it into their main source of income, are in a minority. Around 97% of people who “try” affiliate marketing will quit – see affiliate marketing failure rate.

But that’s partly because so many can “give it a go”, without much investment of time or money. But to succeed, you can’t have a “give it a go” mentality, you’ll need a “whatever it takes” attitude instead.

Affiliate Marketing Mindset – Your “Why?”

As an employee, you do the work and you get paid regularly for showing up; you trade your time for money. Affiliate marketing is different in that you don’t get paid unless you make a sale. The goal of affiliate marketing is to learn how to get paid on autopilot for the work you have done previously.

But before you can reach this stage, there’s a whole host of roadblocks and hurdles standing in your way. As a beginner, you’ll doubt whether it even works at all. In this state, it’s very hard to work towards something in a meaningful way.

The early days are the easiest to give up because you have no (personal) evidence that your work will be fruitful. You watch training videos and read blog posts. You may even make a start and join a program. This is all costing time and energy. If you’re also juggling family life, a full time job, a commute etc., it can be difficult to maintain the necessary motivation and enthusiasm to continue down this path – especially when you’re making no money from it.

You’ll need a strong reason to keep going. Otherwise, you’ll probably quit! A good reason is always something which makes you keep going no matter what. For many, this is the possibility of becoming financially independent and leaving their job.

Affiliate Marketing Mindset – Your “Why?”

Knowing your “why?” is a useful motivational support when things aren’t going as expected. If you have a burning hatred of your boss or job, or of simply feeling financially powerless, you’ll overcome a lot more adversity in affiliate marketing than if you are fairly happy in your life and in what you’re currently doing. If life is generally “ok” and you don’t have a strong desire to change your circumstances, you’ll probably have less drive to become successful as an affiliate.

You’ll likely come across plenty of adversity as a beginner while you’re learning about affiliate marketing. How you handle this is what’s important. Those who consider setbacks as important learning exercises will use it to further their knowledge, and move forwards. But some will look upon setbacks as failures, and use them as a reason to quit.

Entrepreneur Thinking Vs. Employee Thinking

The mindset of an entrepreneur is different to that of most employees. As an employee, you know you’ll get paid for performing a certain set of activities. But as an entrepreneur, which is effectively what an affiliate is, you’ll need to set goals and have a long term vision. The mindset shift from employee to entrepreneur is an important one if you’re to succeed as an affiliate. If you bring an “employee mindset” with you to your affiliate business, it can block you from realising the dream of becoming self employed and financially independent. But why is this?

An employee knows they can get away with as little as possible. Granted not every employee has this belief, but many know this to be true. With affiliate marketing, you only get paid for sales you make. So you’ll need a different approach to succeed online. With an online business you’ll need to work much harder for far less, at least in the beginning. But what you’re working for as an affiliate is freedom, rather than a steady pay package! If you keep this in mind, it can help motivate you beyond the initial startup phase, into actually making money as an affiliate.

Employees trade their time for money, and income is therefore finite. Affiliates see things differently; they know that by selling products online, there’s a point in time, (if they keep going long enough), where their systems will generate income automatically. They won’t have to work anymore, and they will still generate an income.

If you understand this deeply, and want this outcome badly enough, you’ll do pretty much whatever it takes as an affiliate to achieve it. You’ll have a “whatever it takes” attitude. This is the affiliate marketing mindset you need to make a success of it!

What You Need To Succeed As An Affiliate

In the free video below, Stuart explains what you’ll need to become successful as an affiliate. If you bring a “give it a go” attitude towards your affiliate business, your results will reflect this attitude.

If you bring a “whatever it takes” approach, likewise you can expect something more fitting. Like with life, you get out of something what you put in. If you’re just “dabbling” in affiliate marketing without taking it seriously, you can make some pocket change. But if you take affiliate marketing seriously, you can replace your income and become financially and geographically independent.

Not everyone has the same motivations of course. Some people want only a secondary income from affiliate marketing. But the benefit of learning affiliate marketing is the ability to work from anywhere and generate an income from your laptop. During the current times, this is a pretty good reason to learn, whatever your motivations are.

For more articles on mindset on this site visit this link.

Free Affiliate Traffic System

Looking for a free affiliate traffic system? Traffic is pretty important as an affiliate marketer. Without it you’re toast! So here’s an article to share some of the free affiliate marketing traffic strategies I’ve found over a number of years.

One of my favourite free affiliate traffic systems is blogging. So I’ll start with that!

Free Affiliate Traffic System #1- Blogging

Blogging can be a great way to get free traffic from many sources:

Social media
Other websites
Forums
Q & A websites – such as Quora
and of course the search engines

Blogging is a long term strategy of course but it’s a cheap option. It takes time to build up a blog but if you put in the effort it can reward you for a long time afterwards with a passive stream of traffic.

Here’s my ebook on blogging which I wrote some time ago now. But the strategy I write about is still the same as the one I use today! It works, but only if you do! It’s basically about finding long tail keywords in your niche and finding those with low SEO difficulty.

Some of your content will rank on the search engines, some of it will not! But it’s a numbers game. Just don’t rely entirely on the search engines indexing your content and make sure you share your posts through other channels too. Over time, and with effort, you can build a nice trickle of free traffic which comes in continuously.

See find long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty for more on this.

Free Affiliate Traffic System #2- Niche Website

A niche website can be built around certain keywords to indicate to the search engines (and visitors) what your site is about. It also helps you build authority in that niche and gives your website a specific area of expertise. This website, for example, is a niche website. I chose the domain name after some careful keyword research using Google’s keyword planner.

You can use the same method described in the blogging section of this article to find keywords which have less competition than most. Then purchase a domain name with those keywords in it and start building content.

The keyword affiliate marketing mentors seemed like a good choice so I built the site around it.

You can do this in any niche and by choosing a good domain name you can gain favour with Google and other search engines, and rank your site more easily. It’s by no means a definitive strategy, and you’ll need to create content on the site too to build your authority. But if you look at pretty much any keyword on Google, you’ll see that keyword domain websites do get listed, especially in less competitive niches.

For more on this topic see how to build a niche website and get free traffic.

#3- Snip.ly

Snip.ly is a free software which can help you create pop ups leading people to your content. By finding appropriate content to share on social media, you can generate traffic to your website.

I use Snip.ly in conjunction with Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo.com shows you the most shared content which currently trends on the various social media platforms. If you find content which has a good connection to your own website/content, you can leverage already trending content which can go viral. Snip.ly lets you embed your own customisable pop up on the shared article.

Buzzsumo.com shows you viral content which trends on social media

As people share the content, (using your Snip.ly link), your pop up gets shared too. This is another strategy which can work to great effect. However, you need to persevere with it and make a regular habit out of sharing good content which will attract the right kind of audience to your website. Choose content which is related to your website, or which would attract the right kind of targeted audience to your site.

Traffic System #4 – Facebook

Facebook is a great place to find free traffic for your affiliate offers. In this strategy you’ll be using your Facebook profile and joining a number of groups in your particular niche. Here’s a snapshot of my Facebook profile which is set up to showcase my particular niche – online business startup.

Ignore the comedic picture for a moment (which should be more professional really)! The main thing is that people should immediately be able to see what you are offering and understand in a moment where you are coming from.

Your tag line should immediately show someone what you do, and how you can help them, should they be interested in your service/s. A clickable link is also a good idea too, so they can view your website/landing page. If you have an ebook, free giveaway, or lead magnet you can also showcase it on your Facebook profile.

Once you have set up your profile to look how you want your “shop front” to look like, you can move on to the next stage of this strategy. It’s worth browsing through the various profiles on Facebook to see what others have done here. You should see some people doing the same – showcasing their business and offerings directly from their personal Facebook page.

Facebook Strategy Part 2

Next you’re going to look for groups you can join. There’s various groups on Facebook which accept Facebook users providing they stick to the terms and conditions of the group. Click on the “groups” icon at the top of your Facebook platform once logged in.

Then use the search bar at the top of the page to search for groups which relate to your particular niche/topic. So if your website is promoting home made bread makers, you would pick a group in a niche which relates to this somehow.

Choosing the groups you join should be done once you understand your customer avatar and have learned more about your target audience. Once a group allows you to join, you can post in the group chat and interact with people.

Don’t spam the group with your links as this is usually going to get you banned! Just interact and offer value, connect with people and see what’s going on! Over time, if you make a habit out of this practice, you will get people looking through to your profile and seeing what you offer.

Some people will click through your link and join your email list (assuming you have one). See the power of email marketing for more on list building. You need to be doing some activity using this strategy regularly, in order to generate any traction. But if you find the right groups and approach them in the right way, you should see some activity on your Facebook profile, leading people to your content/website/email list or affiliate products.

For more free strategies see get traffic to your website free, and 22 ways to promote affiliate products.

#5 – YouTube

YouTube can also be a great resource for getting free traffic. It’s competitive but less so than Google search. So if you’re good at coming up with ideas for content, YouTube could be the way to go. Type your keyword into the YouTube search bar and you’ll see a number of suggestions will come up.

Choose a keyword combination which is a good match for your video content. Upload your videos and tag them with the relevant keywords for title, description and tags. If you upload videos regularly, over time this can compound to generate natural links to your website.

Using YouTube search bar for keyword ideas.

You’ll need to create a lot of content for this to work and this can take time. But if you want a free strategy you’ll need to work at it over the longer term. Otherwise choose a paid marketing strategy instead.

Affiliate Marketing Traffic Generation

There’s many ways to approach affiliate marketing traffic generation. You can use paid marketing or look at the cheaper options such as blogging. Whatever you do, you’ll need to match your strategy with the time and money you have available. Your choice of products also matters in your strategy for generating traffic. See affiliate marketing business models for the different affiliate models available and affiliate marketing commission rates for types of products and what they pay.

Physical products, for example, typically pay much less than digital products. But product cost also has a bearing. A submarine, for example, although a physical product, carries a large commission if you can sell one!

Affiliate Marketing Traffic Generation – Paid Or Free?

According to your finances, available time and your product choices, you’ll need to choose an affiliate marketing strategy. All affiliates need traffic in order to get their affiliate products in front of potential customers. Without traffic, you won’t be in business for very long!

If you’re working long hours and making regular income, it might be worth using a high ticket affiliate program and concentrating on paid advertising. But if you have less money and more time, it’s probably worth looking at the cheaper marketing strategies which are more time intensive.

Affiliate marketing through blogging
Unpaid social media marketing
Finding long tail keywords with low SEO difficulty
Marketing on YouTube, or any other social media platform
Niche website building
See also get traffic to your website FREE

Paid traffic can be bought in a few ways too including:

Adwords – find search traffic through keywords typed into Google
YouTube – pay to have your YouTube video put in front of a targeted audience
Facebook – use video advertising or standard ads with images
Bing/Microsoft – offers a similar platform to Adwords
Solo ads – Solo ads are advertisements on other people’s email lists
Banners – advertise on someone else’s website through banners

Affiliate Marketing Traffic Generation – The Difference Between Paid & Free

So what’s the difference between paid advertising and free advertising. Well quite a lot actually! The free marketing strategies you can implement will likely take a lot longer in order to gain traction with an affiliate business. Content marketing means building a lot of content and getting that content to work for you building your affiliate sales. In the beginning, it will seem like a lot of work for little reward. But over time, content marketing can have a dramatic impact on your commissions, if you stick at it long enough.

One blog post, for example, isn’t going to make your business. But one post a day for several years will have a much larger impact.

Paid marketing is much faster. You can run a paid campaign and immediately see whether it works or not. This means you can find a winning advert much quicker than using a content marketing strategy. With paid marketing too, you can scale up once this happens simply by increasing your daily budget. This is much harder to do with content marketing.

So if you’re starting out with an affiliate business, it’s a good idea to get clear on how much time you can give, what your expectations are and your marketing budget, if any. With free and cheap marketing, you can expect a longer journey. With paid marketing you can get there more quickly, but you’ll need help to get there. A good business model is important too. With low value products, you won’t be able to learn paid marketing and still make profit, or at least it will be harder.

An Email Marketing List

Pretty much all affiliate marketers use an email list of subscribers. A list is key to success with affiliate marketing, whatever your marketing strategy is. With an email list you control your traffic. Paid marketing is expensive and organic marketing takes time and effort. But with a list, you can leverage both methods to get the most out of them.

An email list of subscribers is a list of people who opt in to whatever you are offering on a website, or landing page. Most affiliates have some offer to entice visitors to opt in to their email list. This is often called a lead magnet. I use an ebook lead magnet as one of my offerings to give to my subscribers. Ideally choose something of value which is aligned with your affiliate products.

Building a list takes time, but over time it will compound. At first, affiliate marketing seems tough because a small email list doesn’t produce much in the way of sales. But as your list grows, more people will follow you and buy products and services you recommend.

Affiliate Marketing Traffic Generation – Summary

So according to your affiliate marketing business model, and your affiliate commission rates, you should choose wisely depending on what works for you! You’ll also want to consider your available time and your finances. If you are time poor, but money rich, you should look into high ticket affiliate programs and using paid marketing. This will let you put in the least amount of time and build a business more quickly through scaling.

If you’re more time rich, but money is more scarce, you’re much better off choosing a cheap or free marketing strategy in which you can use your available time to grow content in your chosen area. See get traffic to your website free, and 22 ways to promote affiliate products.

Either way you should get an autoresponder and build an email list. This will help you leverage your efforts by compounding it over time through collecting interested subscribers. You can also choose subscription based affiliate products to maximise your efforts. With subscription affiliate programs you can earn ongoing income from each sale you make. This compounds over time and so your efforts are multiplied.

Access a free video series to learn more about the various options for affiliates.