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!

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.

Digital Marketing Mentorship

A digital marketing mentorship can give you the tools to be able to:

Become free of your job, boss and commute
Build your existing business with new marketing skills
Create an online business using other people’s products
Learn how to import and export physical goods as a business
Work from anywhere from your laptop
Start a digital marketing agency of your own
Develop yourself as a business owner and entrepreneur

Now, (during the 2020 pandemic), it’s become more important than ever to up-skill and future proof yourself for an economic downturn. Are you’re looking for a new skill-set which can set you up for a more secure future and allow you to build an independent income? If so, a digital marketing mentorship might be the way to go.

Digital Marketing Mentorship – My Story

I started looking for a means to earn from the internet several years ago. At the time I was financially struggling and jumping from job to job attempting to support a dream career as a stuntman. At the age of 38 I knew I had to do something else. If I didn’t, I would be stuck in the same “loop” which had perpetuated for years – constantly living in fear and at the whim of someone else or events I couldn’t control.

I tried several strategies to earn online including buying and selling from eBay, Forex marketing, selling my own digital products and eventually finding affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing gave me one or two early successes so I decided it was the way to go for me.

Digital Marketing Mentorship – Affiliate Marketing

With affiliate marketing, you can sell other people’s products over the internet. Despite some early successes, I still didn’t have the clarity I needed in this field and lacked the consistent success I needed to turn affiliate marketing into a full time viable living. This is where a digital marketing mentorship came in and I was lucky enough to find an online community which offered a range of services which could help:

Live webinars and seminars
Question and answer webinars to help with mindset and technical difficulties
1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching sessions.
Sessions with successful online business owners who have already succeeded in building multiple 6 and 7 figure businesses online
Community groups to offer support and advice

Help With An Online (And Offline) Business

Initially when I joined the community, I had just opened up a martial arts school and was struggling. One of the first things I learned was how to market my Kung Fu school using Facebook marketing. I was able to target my local area and build up my school.

Playing chi sau with Grandmaster Ip Chun (Son Of Ip Man) in the 1990’s

I also learned how to sell digital products and made my first high ticket sale within a few months of joining this online community. See also online business mentorship.

With an online business using affiliate marketing, anyone can use leverage and other people’s products to build an income which is completely portable and flexible. This is one the main things which attracted me to an online business; I was able to work around existing work in the film industry and building up my kung fu school. When the work came in I could drop the online work and pick it up again when it suited me.

Affiliate Marketing Struggles

When I first started learning affiliate marketing I struggled. I made a lot of mistakes such as:

Jumping from course to course and never settling on a direction and course of action.
Looking for the next “shiny object” course which would be “easier” than the last – (what they all promised)
Being a “busy fool” and working on the wrong activities or just filling up time with things I enjoyed doing rather than productive actions.
Getting stuck in “learning mode” – it’s good to always keep learning so long as you are applying your knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t give you results – actions do!

There’s lots of newbie affiliate marketing mistakes which you will avoid if you simply get the right help and follow the advise of successful people.

1 To 1 Coaching With Online Business

Getting 1 on 1 coaching with my online business has helped me tremendously. Without it, it would have taken much longer. A coach can help you overcome mindset issues, fears and conflicts which you would otherwise be unaware of. They can also hold you accountable to your actions which is an important part of building any business. Without accountability, it’s easy to go off-track and lose momentum.

For years prior to finding a digital marketing mentorship program I struggled for a number of reasons. One of the biggest reasons was lack of accountability. I also lost focus easily because I was juggling so many different jobs.

Local get togethers also helped to create a feeling of togetherness and community – something which can be hard to attain when working online on your own most of the time. Here’s a picture of me with a local group in Chester (UK).

Access A Mentorship Group

If you already have a business, want to build an online business from scratch or simply want to learn more about how to use the internet to create more time and financial freedom in your life, a mentorship group can help. Access an all in one mentors program which includes everything you’ll need to start and grow your own online business:

Tools, training, courses and support
Daily interactive live events
Community access – interact with groups and other online members
Website builder tools & plugins

Get started by clicking here or on the banner below.

Affiliate Success Blueprint

If I could sum up my “affiliate success blueprint” advise, it would be to follow those who are already successful; do what they do and model their success.

My affiliate journey began back in the early 2000’s and there wasn’t a lot of affiliate marketers around at the time. I certainly didn’t know any other people personally who were doing it. As such, there was a lot of scepticism around affiliate marketing.

I took a few courses to learn the basics but everyoneI knew who I talked to told me to stay away “it was a scam”! So I got quiet and learned to keep it to myself. The negativity affected my own belief, and I knew it was the future!

Affiliate Success Blueprint – Avoid The Pitfalls

Each course I took claimed to be the next “affiliate success blueprint“. I learned something from every course I did though, despite not getting the results which were claimed. There always seemed to be something missing from the courses I took. I wandered from one course to another and changed my strategy every 6 months or so if nothing seemed to be happening.

This, of course was part of the problem. Jumping from one strategy to the next meant that I didn’t get traction in any of them. It’s what’s known as “shiny object syndrome”.

Another common mistake affiliates make is to get caught up in learning mode. I fell for this one too; jumping from one strategy to another and constantly spending all my time watching videos and listening to “gurus”.

Affiliate Marketing Blueprint – Models

When I began I had no clue about affiliate marketing. I didn’t know which were the best products to promote, or what strategies worked best in promoting them. I had no money so I got most of my information for free from YouTube or through reading blog posts.

Amazon was one of the first affiliate partner programs I joined along with eBay’s partner program. Looking at Amazon’s commission rates now makes me wonder why I even bothered! I must have sent tonnes of people to Amazon through my website content over the years. And it all amounts to a very small amount of money. If only I had known better from the start. Here’s the breakdown of Amazon’s commission rates. (1-10% commissions).

Still you don’t know what you don’t know and as I gained information over the years I considered my many failures and shortcomings in affiliate marketing as learning tools: stepping stones if you will! Later I learned to use digital products instead which paid more in terms of commissions: 40-50% in many cases. Plus there’s recurring commission products and high ticket products which can make all the difference.

Amazon’s products are easy to sell though and as an affiliate starting out, ease is a factor. But it shouldn’t be. Ideally you should spend your first few months learning; gathering data.

Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying “ Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax. ” An ax is a strength multiplier. You can be the strongest lumberjack in the world, but with a blunt axe, it’ll take you much longer and be much more difficult.

affiliate marketing meet up — Me at an affiliate event in Chester (UK)

As an affiliate marketer, your knowledge is your axe, so it’s worth investing in. The trouble is, everyone wants it now, now now, and they often rush in too soon without the preparation needed for long term success.

Affiliate Marketing – Get Help

The problem with affiliate marketing back in the early 2000’s is that there was no help available. There were courses and training, yes, but no-one was at the end of the phone to help. The course providers were hiding!

That’s changed today. You can get more personal help and it’s well worth investing in if you want to make it a serious income. Since joining an online community I’ve been able to move my online business forwards in much greater leaps and bounds than I even could working on my own without the support I needed.

Joining websites, getting 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching and taking part in live meetings does a lot for your confidence and belief in what you are doing.

Take It Seriously

Take your affiliate marketing business seriously and you can make some serious money from it. Treat it like a hobby, and your returns will be of like mind.

Anything is possible with affiliate marketing. With the right products, support and marketing strategy, you can change your life and the lives of others too. But don’t take my word for it. Join an online community who are learning and helping each other to become online business owners and entrepreneurs. Access a free video series to learn more or join the webinar by clicking on the banner below to meet my personal mentors Stuart:

Belief In Affiliate Marketing

Henry Ford said: “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.“

Many quit affiliate marketing saying “it doesn’t work”. But this means they only found a strategy which didn’t work or they didn’t keep learning and improving.

In the beginning affiliate marketing is tough because you have no personal evidence of success. This is why it’s important to follow and model those who are already successful. You can struggle struggle with affiliate marketing and because you don’t fully believe in it, your action steps are timid and uncertain. It’s a bit like driving with the brakes on.

But once you see results for yourself, and make progress, the brakes come off. Once you know for certain that what you are doing leads to the results you want, you can take the brakes off!

Working On Yourself And On Your Business

Many business owners and affiliate marketers make the mistake of working “in” their business and not on themselves. Their thinking stunts the growth of themselves and their business. They work as “technicians” in the business but don’t develop themselves beyond the same level of thinking they habitually bring to the table.

A business can never grow beyond the level of thinking which the business owner brings to the table. This is why it’s important to get the help of coaches and mentors to help you change your thinking processes and challenge your limiting beliefs around money, growth and personal development.

Access a community of online mentors, coaches and entrepreneurs who can help you take your life to the next level. Your affiliate success blueprint is waiting for you!
Access an all in one mentorship package by clicking the image below:

Sunk Cost Trap

Have you fallen for the sunk cost trap? The tendency to expend more energy in a certain direction, or in a certain activity, simply because you’ve already invested so much time in it? Even when a certain activity doesn’t meet your expectations; it becomes more difficult to stop and change direction, the more time and energy or investment you have given an action previously.

Sunk Cost Trap Examples – Cinema Ticket

Here’s some sunk cost trap, (also known as sunk cost fallacy) examples. A common example is that of paying for a cinema ticket and you aren’t enjoying the film. Rather than leave the cinema, you stay because, well you bought a ticket and it would be a waste of money if you left. But the choice is based on an assumption that you must stay because of the sunk cost of the ticket.

In actual fact, the lost time of sitting in a cinema watching a film you’re not enjoying may be actually costing you more in terms of lost time, which you’ll never get back! So for the cost of a cinema ticket you’ll waste 2 hours watching something you’re not enjoying!

Sunk Cost Fallacy Examples – A Restaurant

Another example is over eating at a restaurant. You’ve paid for the food but are full. So you cram the food in and eat every morsel, even though you’re no longer hungry. The thinking behind this decision is based on getting value for money from your food, which you’ve paid for. By leaving it, you assume you’re wasting money. But in reality, you’d be better off leaving the food left over once you’ve had enough. The food offers a diminishing value for every bite once you’re full!

Stuck In A Career/Job

A common experience for many people is to get trapped by a job or a career. Despite it not giving you the life and/or income you want, you continue doing something which makes you unhappy for decades. This is often because the diminishing returns of a career are not felt as they gradually come about. Over years in a career, you come to depend on your job and would lose income if you changed. So you stay because of the convenience. The longer you stay in a job, the harder it becomes to transition out of it.

Relationships

Relationships too can be good examples of the sunk cost trap too. The longer you are in a relationship for, the more difficult it is to get out. Even if people are unhappy in a relationship, they stay for convenience and because, well, “we’ve been together for years”. The fear of the unknown becomes part of the reasoning and the longer you sustain the status quo, the more invested in it you are – whether through an investment of time money or energy.

Sunk Cost & Your Self Image

You have invested your whole life in your own personal identity. But is it really you? Your self image is a massive part of how you interact with the world and what you believe about yourself. Is your self image serving you and are you a victim of the sunk cost trap in terms of investment you’ve made in to the “who” “you” think you are? Read more on this in Maxwell Matlz’s Psycho-cybernetics.

The Sunk Cost Trap & Me

I fell for the sunk cost trap too spending several years training to become a stunt performer. Although I enjoyed work when it happened most of the time I was struggling to make ends meet. I had to chase a number of jobs to fill in the many gaps between stunt contracts.

Despite this being a “dream job”, over the years it produced diminishing returns and I became disillusioned with the business. But being trapped by the “dream job” status and freedom which it afforded me, I struggled to either get more work or transition out of the career to something else offering the same kinds of benefits; freedom and passion.

I imagine this is the same for people within many careers. They can’t escape the “golden handcuffs” of their well paid career and they’ve no time to look for an alternative anyway. The longer their career lasts, the more they get paid and the more liabilities they acquire.

Even if they could find something, it would mean a massive loss of pay, change in status or a blow to the self image/self esteem. So instead of changing they become entrenched in their career all the more as time passes.

Sunk Cost Trap – Transitioning Into The Digital Economy

I juggled various jobs such as driving HGV’s and working in offices but dropped the work when the stunt jobs came in. This was massively exhausting and meant I never had much continuity in my income. I wanted something which I could pick up and drop and work at in my own time. So I looked into working online in some capacity. I initially started out with eBay and bought and sold from the site using a strategy I found in a ebook purchase.

But the Ebay business just tied me to my house and computer and I found myself getting more and more drawn in by it. I transitioned into affiliate marketing which is a business model which allows anyone to sell other people’s products online. Originally this was to use as a convenient business model to work around the stunt industry. But as I persevered, I realised it offered more potential to give me more time and financial freedom than the stunt work did!

Sunk Cost Trap – Online Business

If you think you’ve invested too much time in a certain direction and want to change things around, access a free video series and start learning how you can leverage the internet to create more choice and more freedom. Escape the sunk cost trap and make some new choices for a new life!

Learn more about building your own online business. Click on the image below to get started.

The Sunk Cost Trap And Affiliate Marketing

The sunk cost trap can also apply to affiliate marketing too. I definitely fell for the trap of doing too much of a particular strategy, trying to prove that it worked! Blogging, in particular can be a great strategy but takes a lot of time and effort to generate results. You don’t realise how much time it can take to actually break through what James Clear refers to as the valley of disappointment in his book Atomic Habits. This is the gap between what you think should happen and what actually happens. See image below.

If you’ve sunk a lot of time and energy into blogging, or consistently doing a certain activity online, it becomes more difficult to abandon that activity because of the sunk cost trap. But also, with an activity like blogging, you know that if you keep going, you’ll probably get some results from it. But you don’t know how long time might be for! Hence you can stay in this trap for a long period of time without acknowledging it and moving on to a better strategy!

I like blogging, and still write., hence this article. But I also acknowledged that others were doing better with other strategies. So I switched and now also am working on a YouTube paid marketing campaign alongside the blogging I do!

Affiliate Marketing Loophole

For years I looked for an affiliate marketing loophole; that one “trick” which would set me free! While I spent time looking for black hat affiliate marketing “secrets“, I got more and more lost down the rabbit hole of the affiliate marketing “shiny object syndrome” trap!

You know what I mean. Each “shiny object” course you buy promises more than the last one. Each one claims you can be rich by clicking buttons and checking out your cart! I bought these kinds of courses for years striving to make a living online. But mostly I was disappointed; which is what I expect the vast majority of newbie affiliate marketers find too.

Affiliate Marketing Loophole

The problem with the idea of an affiliate marketing loophole somehow suggests that affiliate marketing is easy; that it’s somehow easy to “trick” the system and earn easy money. I bought into this idea back in the early 2000’s and went from course to course. I had some small successes too, selling my first affiliate product through a free blogging strategy I had learned. See my article get paid for advertising without a website for the strategy.

But, I thought, maybe there is something to an affiliate marketing loophole? Perhaps there’s a legitimate ‘loophole’ I could capitalise on.

Before I found affiliate marketing I knew there had to be a better strategy than the one I was attempting at the time. I was buying and selling on eBay using a little strategy I had found from an eBook purchase I had made on the auction site itself. You can read about this strategy in my article “How To Start A Profitable Ebay Business“. Click the image below to read about it.

Affiliate Marketing Loophole

Despite working hard at my eBay buying and selling strategy for several months, I realised there was a limit to it. I was constantly on the computer, tied to my laptop and my house. I had a room full of stock and was spending hours searching for products, listing them and answering questions from people. Despite all this, I was only making a small amount of money. It was effectively a job that I owned and I didn’t have a proper business as it wasn’t scalable.

There had to be something different, I thought, something better which had more automation and which could be scalable globally. I thought back to my original purchase of the ebook I had bought in the first place. This struck me as a far better business model – selling a digital product online.

So I abandoned the eBay business and looked into creating my own ebooks – with a view to selling them online.

Affiliate Marketing Loophole – Finding Affiliate Marketing

When I first found affiliate marketing, it was in a bid to sell my own ebooks. I had spent some time writing my ebooks, creating covers and building a website around them in order to sell them. But I knew nothing of how to market a website. So I put myself on a marketing course and this led me to affiliate marketing. I knew then that I had wasted so much time in creating my own products.

There were far better products which already existed which I couldn’t compete with. So I started selling other people’s products using the affiliate marketing model.

I looked for the “affiliate marketing loophole” which would mean I could relax and sit back, watching the money pouring in! But time and again it all went wrong!

Free Marketing – Blogging

One strategy I started using was building niche websites and flouting them to the top of Google. This had a limited success back in the early 2000’s but is much more difficult now. Having a keyword targeted domain name can help you rank on Google for certain keywords. But mostly it’s a difficult strategy with very limited results, especially now with all the competition out there and with Google having updated its algorithm constantly to reduce the appearance of the “spammers” in the search results.

You can create a free website and earn money using the niche website strategy. But it’s a tough one and I had many more failures using this idea than successes. But it can work and give you free traffic.

Affiliate Marketing Loophole – PPC

I struggled with the niche website building strategy for a long time and after purchasing another course from a guy called Peter Lexis (see my digital profit course review), I changed direction.

He suggested using PPC – pay per click direct response marketing. See I set up a landing page and email marketing campaign and sent targeted visitors to it through Google’s Adwords program using specific keyword searches typed into Google.

It worked too and I started getting leads and sales every day. Trouble was, Google shut me down about a day later. Back then (around 15 years ago), if you got shut down you didn’t get your account back. So, when I finished crying, it was back to the drawing board.

Back To Organic

So, without my Adwords account I went back to organic marketing after purchasing yet another course from what was called The Keyword Academy. You are probably seeing a trend here – from course to course. This is the fatal affiliate marketing trap to be avoided. It’s called “shiny object syndrome”. It’s easy to get stuck in learning mode because it feels like progress. But it isn’t progress unless you apply what you learn and start getting somewhere.

So I spent another 6 months to a year churning out content and doing keyword research in a bid to rank content on Google and earn money through Google’s Adsense program. Adsense lets you place adverts on your content and earn small amounts of advertising revenue from the people who place the adverts. If you look for the keyword academy now, you won’t find them.

The trouble with using only Adsense is that you need a huge amount of traffic to make any money. I made tiny amounts from Adsense but looked back to my best online wins and it was through selling affiliate products. So I decided to focus on that.

Affiliate Marketing Loopholes

Up to this point I had done loads of work on various strategies but made little progress. I had earned tiny amounts from Google’s Adsense program and some larger amounts through affiliate marketing.

My best win was through paid marketing, so really I should have stuck with that and affiliate marketing. But I had lost my Adwords account and didn’t know how else to do it. In hindsight, I could have used Bing which is a similar platform. But you don’t know what you don’t know.

And this is what it boils down to – knowledge. But knowledge online was hard to grasp when I began online. There were lots of scams doing the rounds and it was difficult to know who to trust.

High Ticket Items

I later discovered high ticket affiliate programs and also recurring commission affiliate programs.

I wish I could’ve gone back and told my younger self about these. Promoting an affiliate product which is “geared” is a whole lot easier than trying loads of methods and strategies when you don’t know what you’re doing.

Before discovering high ticket items I was spending huge amounts of time doing the wrong activities. I also was promoting products from Amazon which paid only tiny commissions.

High ticket items and recurring income commissions were definitely the “affiliate marketing loophole” I had been looking for. I just needed to learn how to sell them, over and over again.

Invest In Your Knowledge

I never thought investing in my own knowledge was so important either. I was just looking for the quick ways to fortune online. The “affiliate marketing loopholes” which I could capitalise on easily and quickly. I suspect this is a mistake made by many affiliates.

But investing in your knowledge can serve you many times over because everything you do as an affiliate is based on your knowledge and understanding of it.

I’ll say that again. Everything you do, (every action you take) as an affiliate is based on your understanding of it.

So it makes sense to invest in your knowledge using this thinking.

So before you purchase another course or start down a particular line of activity, think about what outcome you want first. It should save you all the years I’ve spent!

Black Hat Affiliate Marketing Secrets

If you’re looking for black hat affiliate marketing secrets, you’re probably down a rabbit hole which you need to escape. I was there too once; looking for the “quick ways to profit” from affiliate marketing.

Having done a quick search for this keyword on Google I found a number of dubious spammy looking results. The top result (below) was from a banned user who took the article they posted from Ezinearticles.com. This says two things about them: 1 they didn’t write the article themselves, 2 they were banned from the forum! It speaks volumes to both prospective customers of their affiliate products and to Google. If you want to succeed with affiliate marketing, this is entirely the wrong attitude to have. Quick and easy – doesn’t win the affiliate marketing race!

Black Hat Affiliate Marketing Secrets

“Black hat” refers to techniques which are frowned upon by Google. They are things like pop-ups, auto-posting articles, article spinning tools and the like. In my humble opinion they aren’t the way to go as an affiliate. If you want to be successful as an affiliate, it takes work. Yep, sorry to break it to you but that’s the truth.

Google has got very clever. 20 years ago you could throw up a website and be ranking on the very top of Google for it. But times have changed. Spammy 1 page websites no longer get a look in when it comes to getting traffic from Google.

You can still use keyword domains though, which can help you get some traction. But you’ll also need to create some content on it which gives some value. Building a niche website around a keyword domain doesn’t always work. At least it’s not as easy to rank on Google as it once was using this technique. It’s far better to build an authority site over time which actually gives value.

Black Hat Affiliate Marketing Secrets

There’s a few reasons not to go the “black hat” route and most of all it’s from a value standpoint. If you don’t offer value to your visitors (and potential customers), they’re unlikely to take any further action with you: become a lead, subscribe to your channel or purchase a product.

Think about the people you follow online. Who have you subscribed to? Do they offer value or do they spam you every day with affiliate links? Think about the sites which put you off. For me, and I may be a little hypocritical here, it’s those which have too many pop ups. I do use pop ups on my site, but it’s not technically a black hat technique to use pop ups. They can work, even if they effect your score with Google; so you have to balance out your strategies according to order of priority.

Affiliate Marketing – Taking Your Time

When I went into affiliate marketing I rushed. I was desperate to make money because I was broke. But think about reading a blog post from someone who is in this state of mind. Or watching a video made by someone who is absolutely desperate to make money. What does they body language say to you? Or what does their writing style say to you. Probably that this person is desperate to sell me something.

You’ve probably had a similar experience from being badgered in a store while browsing? I tend to lose the desire to buy in such circumstances and maybe you’re the same?

Well as you may have guessed it took a long time before I realised I was barking up the wrong tree.

Rushing to find the latest black hat affiliate marketing secret was my biggest mistake and I jumped from one course to another, without ever gaining any traction. I made a number of mistakes in affiliate marketing and wasted a lot of time.

Black Hat Affiliate Marketing Secrets – What I Tried

I found a number of black hat strategies over the years. Things like article spinning software and pop-ups which claim you’ve won something, when really you haven’t, for example! I never used the “spinners” although I knew some people that did. It boils down to where you get your information from and who you choose to believe! Everything for an affiliate comes from their education.

But there’s some value in some strategies which I do use, although they’re technically not black hat.

One of the first things I tried for several months is keyword domain names. With a keyword domain name, you purchase a domain which contains your “seed” keyword. This used to work wonders several years ago and I first learned it from a course I took online. Now, it’s much harder to rank a website based on only the domain name keyword, but it still stands as a ranking factor. So providing you also add some massive value in your blog posts, I think it stands up as a “white hat” technique which works.

Stick To The Plan

One of the biggest obstacles for affiliate marketers is finding a suitable direction which you can pursue, knowing that over the long term it will ultimately set you free financially.

For me this has been the biggest battle. Jumping from one “shiny object” to another can become exhausting. If you found this article searching for “Black hat affiliate marketing secrets”, maybe that’s where you are too.

Once you’re on a path which is working, it’s great. You can keep doing what you’ve proved to yourself has worked. You don’t have to trust, (or not trust) anyone else anymore when this happens.

But to get to this point for me took years. I struggled with finding direction as an affiliate after years of blogging, building niche websites, trying “get rich quick” schemes, running ads, over and over, failure after failure. Much of the time could have been put to better use if I had had the right education from the start.

Create Value – Deliver Useful Products

Creating value means something different to everyone. When I started out as a newbie affiliate, I just wanted the money. I just wanted to know how to get the money. There were lots of courses promising this too, and I bought them. So you could just promote one of these courses that promises something they can’t deliver! Get the money!

But this seldom works for the long term because there’s not much value in it. To give value and help people truly, means letting go of your own needs for a while and serving others.

A shift needs to take place if you’re going to be successful online. You need to shift away from getting to giving. And while giving to others you can also earn money if you do it in the right way.

When this shift happened for me, everything changed very quickly.

Use “White Hat” Not “Black Hat” Techniques

Be a good guy! Affiliate marketing gets a bad rap because of things like “black hat affiliate marketing secrets”. Learning to do affiliate marketing properly takes time and effort. But spending time on the fast “loopholes to make money online” quickly without putting any effort in is likely to end in disappointment.

There are things you can do to hasten your success online. But trying to get round Google and without doing the work won’t work! Google is too clever now so don’t try! Instead, give them what they want; a better experience for the end user. This means delivering value and writing/creating content which is focused for the person reading, not the Google bot which ranks you content.

Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp

In this affiliate marketing bootcamp training, you’ll meet two of my own personal mentors Stuart Ross and Jay Kubassek and they’ll discuss all aspects of online business. You’ll also be able to access a free account and module 1 of the back office.

The “back office” is a digital business training platform which contains everything you’ll need to build your own profitable stand alone online business. This business system can allow anyone to sell pre built digital products and work from anywhere in the world. You’ll also be able to access training and resources to help you get good at marketing products online.

You can also access other online business owners and digital resource tools and software. Access here.

Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp – Access The Back Office

Once inside the back office you’ll be able to access module 1 of this business system. This will give you a taste of what is involved in building an online business of your own.

You’ll also be able to get 7 videos delivered daily to your inbox. Here’s what’s in the videos:

Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp – 7 Day Video Series – Video 1

The 7 day video series is designed to answer any questions you might have around online business and what’s involved. Here’s what you’ll get in video 1:

You’ll meet my personal mentors Stuart and Jay and get to know how they got to be digital entrepreneurs and what they can do for you.

Video 2 – The “Digital Gold Rush”

The second video discusses how people are making very good livings directly from their laptop; and how you can do this too. There’s many business models which let you do this, and affiliate marketing is one of the most popular methods.

Bootcamp – Video 3

There’s many reasons why someone might hesitate in starting their own online business with little or no experience. One of the most common reasons is the technology involved.

In this video Stuart explains and demonstrates how much of the technology hurdle has been completely eliminated. 20 years ago it was a different story but today, anyone can use platforms and technology to massively accelerate their process. Building a profitable online business with no prior knowledge has never been easier.

BootCamp – Video 4

In video 4 Stuart talks about the importance of list building in an online business. With an email marketing list and range of digital products, anyone can build a scalable online business from scratch. This can be done by marketing to a global audience.

Bootcamp – Video 5

In this video Stuart talks about how you can build an online business simply by using a proven system with multiple earning strategies. I personally spent years online struggling as an affiliate selling the wrong kinds of products. The wrong kinds of actions produce mediocre and poor results. I can attest to the power of this business system – it works if you do!

Bootcamp – Video 6

In video 6 of the affiliate marketing bootcamp, you’ll meet two members of the SFM community who “went for it” with their online business and created the ultimate “laptop lifestyles”. Greg and Fiona have mentored me with my own online business through live webinars and I also met them at a live event in London.

Bootcamp – Video 7

affiliate marketing bootcamp - meet former students — In this interview you’re going to meet two former students turned DEA Experts, Guy and Ilan Ferdman. Bad-ass marketers, these guys are cool as hell. They are the epitome of being a “product-of-the-product”!

In video 7 you’ll meet two former students turned DEA (Digital Experts Academy) Mentors.

Access Bonus Webinar

Since the recent Covid-19 pandemic more and more people have been looking for alternatives to working in a job. Many roles have simply evaporated leaving people without a suitable earning alternative. The recent change as well as the ongoing transition to move towards more automation means many people will have to adapt or get left behind.

In this free webinar Stuart Ross discusses a number of strategies you can use today to bring in your first 10K online.

Click on the banner below and register a place for the webinar.

Access The Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp Video Series

You can access the video marketing bootcamp by clicking on the image below by Entering your name and email. You’ll receive an email to your inbox each day over 7 days and you’ll be able to work through the affiliate marketing bootcamp videos.

The Affiliate Marketing Business Model

The affiliate marketing business model is one of the most popular online business models. With affiliate marketing you don’t need any of your own products or services in order to make money online. It’s probably the most simple way to generate income online though selling.

Once you have chosen products and services you wish to sell, your main goal as an affiliate marketer is to find a marketing strategy which you can use to generate online sales. There’s several marketing strategies you can choose from according to your marketing budget and available time. Here’s some of the most popular methods:

Blogging or video blogging
Email marketing
PPC – pay per click (paid advertising)
Social media
SEO – search engine optimisation (goes with organic marketing from blogging/video)

Affiliate Marketing Promotion Methods

Are you wondering what affiliate marketing promotion methods you should be doing? When I started out doing affiliate marketing I jumped from one strategy to another. As a result, I didn’t really generate any traction with anything! The top affiliates tend to use paid marketing of course.

Paid marketing works well because you can start and stop and advert very quickly. You can also learn what works and what doesn’t very quickly too and of course scale up when you have a profitable advert. But paid ads aren’t for everyone.

What if you don’t have the funds to test and measure adverts which could potentially make zero sales and bomb? And what if your products don’t support using paid ads? With high ticket items and recurring commission affiliate programs it’s much more viable to do this. But with low value affiliate products it’s out of the question. You’ll lose money every time unless you know your ROI (return on investment) and average value of a customer.

Affiliate Marketing Promotion Methods – Niche Websites

So if you can’t do paid advertising for your affiliate marketing promotions, that leaves free strategies like blogging and YouTube’ing! These are slow and steady strategies which can work wonders over time. But you need to put in the work upfront and you’ll need a strong work ethic and belief in what you are doing.

One of my first affiliate marketing promotion methods was building niche websites to get free traffic from Google’s search engines. This is a tough method and if you’re going to approach it you’ll need to do your homework. Here’s an article on how to build a niche website and get free traffic.

My first few outings in this strategy were pretty unimpressive. I build several niche websites and linked them to affiliate products. Most of them didn’t even make it on to Google since I was just spamming my links which must have been a huge red flag for Google. You need to create a useful resource with sites like these. Using keyword targeted domains can still help you gain some traction though, even with a small amount of work. Here’s a site I built around a specific keyword to get some free traffic.

Affiliate Marketing Promotion Methods – Blogging

Blogging is one of my favourite methods of getting eyes on my affiliate products. It’s slow and can take months or years before you see any traction. But if you stick at it and keep sharing your content and creating new content, you should, over time, see your traffic grow.

There’s various strategies for blogging but the main thing should always be to create valuable content which is sharable. If you write crap nobody will share it, Google definitely won’t rank it and you’ll be giving zero value to anyone. When I first started blogging, it was to sell affiliate products.

I wanted maximum exposure from minimum output. But that was a flawed strategy for a couple of reasons. Firstly Google knows when your content is thin and your affiliate links are plentiful. It’s just too clever to throw up some thin content and loads of affiliate links. You just won’t get anywhere! Instead, aim to provide value and help people instead of having the end goal as financial reward.

A few blogging tips:

Put quality first – Write a minimum of 1000 words for an article
Share your content – Use an automated social share plugin
Use an SEO plugin – I use Yoast SEO
Put social share buttons on your site
Aim to write every week or day if you can
Learn about SEO and never stop learning and improving

Social Media Marketing

There’s a few social media marketing platforms you can use too. Facebook is one I’ve used with some success. Paid marketing is best of course because you can reach a larger number of people more quickly with it. But it’s costly and it can burn cash like nobodies business if you’re not careful.

But social media platforms can be used for free too. Facebook for example can be used to generate leads and sales by joining groups and connecting with people who might find your products useful. Tweak your profile so people can see your offer on it and create an enticing picture which leads them to a landing page, where you can collect their email. More on this in this article: promote clickbank products for free.

Affiliate marketing on Quora is an option for marketing too. Quora is a question and answer website but you can answer questions and lead people to your content; either through links in your answers or through you bio.

Belief and Affiliate Marketing

At first when you start out as an affiliate, you’ll probably fall into the trap of jumping from one strategy to another. There’s many affiliate marketing promotion methods to choose from and the danger is to get lost finding one which suits you. For years I was stressed, frustrated and procrastinating while jumping around without direction to apply myself to affiliate marketing.

The best advice is to pick a strategy which suits you and stick with it until you have mastered it. But this can be very difficult; especially if you don’t fully believe in what you’re doing. If you’ve been blogging for months and have nothing to show for it, you can easily lose hope. But keep going because once you start seeing results from any given strategy, you can hone in on it. Or try another strategy if you’ve given it a good amount of time – several months of consistent work.

Expect blogging to be a lengthy process though, and if you don’t have the patience for it, start with another strategy.

Pareto’s Principle Applies

Pareto’s principle states that 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. This is very true for affiliate marketers. In the first instance you will likely find you are doing a lot of work with no results. But once you find the one activity which makes the largest difference to your affiliate business, you can focus in on it. As you progress, you’ll find that you are doing less and less but still keep making money through affiliate commissions.

Ask yourself important questions about your actions and your outcomes. You are always the cause of your effects. So if you have a bad outcome, it’s because your actions aren’t creating those outcomes. How can you change your behaviour to create the outcomes you want in life? Clue, it starts with your thinking and taking responsibility for your outcomes.

Once you start earning from affiliate marketing, and know which affiliate marketing promotion methods are bringing your the result, you can focus on it with more belief and more confidence that you’re doing the right work. Until that point you need to keep learning and “failing forwards“.

If you’re struggling with your affiliate marketing business or are interested in starting one from scratch, join an online business community and get the help you need. Access a webinar by clicking the image below and meet one of my mentors Stuart who will share his huge experience of earning online.

Affiliate Marketing On Quora

Affiliate marketing on Quora can be done; although you should tread carefully. I’ve used Quora to earn through answering questions which have linked to my affiliate websites. There’s an important difference between spamming Quora with your affiliate links, and sending them to useful content on a website – which may also contain affiliate links.

Sadly though I’ve had a number of my answers deleted by Quora. I’ve read their terms a conditions but it seems they really don’t like affiliates, no matter how much value they give. Here’s an example of an answer I’ve given on Quora:

The link at the bottom of my answer was to an article I’d written “Why I Do Affiliate Marketing And Why You Should Too“. There are affiliate links in my articles, which I’m guessing is what Quora don’t like.

Sadly I have had many of my answers deleted by Quora. If I appeal the decision, many of the answers have been “uncollapsed” though. However, at one point I was using Quora a lot, answering questions and dropping my links. Old questions would get flagged up much later and it became a bit of a pain appealing to all the answers which were disallowed.

Affiliate Marketing On Quora – Affiliate Links

As you can see Quora’s official stance on affiliate links is they’re not allowed. So if you’re an affiliate and don’t have a website, your answers with affiliate links in them will most definitely be deleted. And on the whole this is a good idea. It’s clear that without such a policy Quora will fall into a spam site with no inherent value of its own.

Quora wants people to stay on the site, like most interactive platforms. There’s a fine line between dropping a link to useful content and deliberately answering questions to send people to your affiliate links. That’s the line you must tread!

Many of my answers have been allowed. But it’s frustrating when they get disapproved, especially if you’ve spent some on it.

Quora – Partner Program

The other way to earn from Quora is through their partner program. After finding Quora was allowing my links to my website content, I spent some time posting answers and dropping links.

I then got an invite to their partner program. The partner program allows users to ask questions and get paid on advertising revenue generated from them. Top earners can make a lot of income using this program but they’ll need to post hundreds of questions each day. I got a little fed up of coming up with new questions and found it a little disingenuous to ask questions for the sake of commissions!! However I gave it a go for a short time. I’m sure if I’d kept at it I would have done better. Those who earn a lot from the program ask thousands of questions.

Using Quora For Affiliate Marketing

Most of the answers I wrote on Quora which got deleted had links to my websites in them. And although I was linking to suitable and appropriate content, my content does have affiliate links.

I’m sure much of what happens at Quora is automated anyway, so I guess it’s not personal. But I got a bit fed up with it after all the amazing gems of wisdom I was sharing on the site! (joking). If you spend a lot of time on an answer, I don’t see why a link at the bottom to more content which answers the question in more depth is so bad. But it seems that Quora does.

Suggesting in your answer a visit to your profile for more information seems to be much more accepted. So I guess that’s what they are much more happy with. So I’ve come round to the view of doing this, rather than risking getting lengthy answers deleted and getting annoyed about it!

Better Ways To Use Quora

I know there’s better ways to used Quora than I’ve described here. I reckon the best way is to answer questions without monetary gain in mind and as fully and in-depth as possible. Over time, your answers will get more views and people will naturally share them too.

Your profile will get more exposure and you can put a link to your website in it. This is probably the best way to use the platform. What are your experiences with Quora and do you have anything you can share in the comments below?

And if you’re looking for an affiliate marketing mentor, drop me an email or sign up to my site! Best wishes.

1 On 1 Affiliate Marketing Coaching

I found 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching after a lot of struggle working by myself. The trouble with affiliate marketing is that you can easily get stuck down a rabbit hole and make no progress; repeating patterns which don’t serve you or grow your business.

The main problem with trying to do everything yourself is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Success always lies in the future at some unknown time and you never know whether the actions you are taking are leading you to the life you ultimately want from your affiliate business.

1 and 1 affiliate marketing coaching can change all that. With a personal coach or mentor, you can be held accountable and study the actions which have already made people successful online.

1 On 1 Affiliate Marketing Coaching – My Story

I struggled for years working online trying to make money as an affiliate marketer. Before I found affiliate marketing I tried Forex trading and an eBay business. I even made my own ebooks and attempted to sell them online with no success. I went from one frustrating experience to another and would have given up completely if it wasn’t for 1 on 1 affiliate marketing coaching.

I found this affiliate coaching program and had my first high ticket sale within a few months of joining. Unfortunately I still didn’t understand the business model and didn’t reinvest my commission back into the business. It wasn’t until I starting getting more involved in the coaching calls, 1 on 1 mentorship process and live Q and A calls that I really started understanding how the business really worked for the top earners.

This process took some time and I was still trapped in my old ways of thinking. The coaching calls I was able to access held me more accountable and gave me some direct feedback. I was dedicated to the process because I was desperately unhappy in my life and needed some direction and purpose, not to mention the ability to earn money without having to do the series of low paid jobs I was then having to do.

1 On 1 Affiliate Marketing Coaching – Why Behaviour Doesn’t Change

Most behaviour doesn’t change because we are largely creatures of habit. We do the same things because we think the same things, over and over. Unless you can change the way you think, your results will typically remain the same.

“Unless you make the unconscious conscious, it will control your life and you will call it fate” – Carl Jung

Most people are carrying around a heap of baggage which controls their thinking. Their thoughts are the undercurrent of their outcomes (cause and effect). With affiliate marketing, you can spend a heap of time working on the same actions over and over again, believing they will eventually pay off!

Changing Your Thinking

Most people don’t really think. They think they do but mostly their thinking is habitual. To change your thinking you need to think into your beliefs which drive behaviour. It’s difficult to do this alone since you largely talk to yourself in the same way you always have. Habitual thought is rarely aware of its own limitations.

This is why a coach is such an important thing for a business owner. Unless you grow personally and think into your unconscious behaviours and habits, your thoughts will limit your life. A business can’t outgrow the quality of thinking which its owner brings to it. This is often a mistake made by business owners and affiliates. They work “in” their business but don’t consider themselves to be the limiting “glass ceiling” of their business.

Join The Community And Get The Help You Need

If you want to grow and develop as an affiliate marketer, you can join an online community and get personal 1 to 1 help. You’ll have access to a growing community of like minded entrepreneurs, all the software and products you need to build an online business from scratch, and a resource of personal mentors and live Q and A webinars. Plus there’s also events run around the globe to help and advise entrepreneurs on building their businesses.

You can access this community plus a heap of training and resources by clicking the banner below. I also offer personal coaching on a limited basis. See this page for more information and to apply.