$100K Affiliate Marketing
Yesterday, as I drove my rented Mazda-3 from Toronto to my house in the country, I listened to a CD interview between marketing experts, Bill Glazer and Matt Bacak.
They covered affiliate marketing, and focused on the benefits, such as that you don’t need to create any products or pay for fulfillment, but you can still make lots of money.
And that’s true.
Affiliate marketing can be very lucrative, without the headaches of a traditional info product business.
In fact, affiliate marketing is a significant part of my business, and lots of Internet Independence readers have been asking how to adapt my $100K in 12 Months plan to affiliates.
So I’m going to show you that today.
Now in my business, I’m very picky with who and what I promote (I recommend only about 6 products), but it’s still possible to make $100K in 12 Months by doing ONLY affiliate marketing.
In fact, if I ever wanted to “retire” from the work of creating my own fitness products, I know that I could slip away to a beach in Thailand, work only 4-5 hours per WEEK, and make a “King’s ransom” through affiliate marketing.
You can too, if you use a system. Fortunately, the $100K affiliate formula is not much different than what I outlined last week.
So just follow these steps and you’ll succeed:
1) Know Your Potential Customer
This is the exact same first step that you’d do if you were creating your own product. In both cases, you MUST know the hopes and fears of your prospect. Just in case you missed it, here’s the link to that avatar exercise from last week.
2) Promote the Right Product
You still need to promote an excellent product, the only difference is that you don’t have to create it. But it still needs to be a great product, one that sells well and has a low refund rate.
And here’s a BIG tip:
I recommend that you start with a product that has changed YOUR life. That way, it is easy for you to honestly recommend the product from the bottom of your heart.
After all, if you try and recommend something that you don’t believe in, just so you can make some money, you are DOOMED from the start. Of course, you already knew that.
Also, if you can find a product that offers “recurring billing”, and therefore recurring commissions, go for it!
With each subsequent billing, it will give you more money without requiring any extra work.
3) Get Traffic
Being an affiliate has positives and negatives.
On the bright side, you don’t have to worry about recruiting other affiliates.
But on the down side, that means you have to get ALL of your traffic yourself.
So you’ll need to spend extra time developing your skills in paid advertising or Search Engine Optimization.
If you aren’t generating traffic, you can’t be an affiliate.
4) Build a List
Building a list is not mandatory, because you can buy Facebook ads or banner ads and send traffic directly to an offer.
But if your plan is to create an affiliate review site or blog, you should not only try to sell products to your visitors, but you must also capture their email information so you can follow up via email.
5) Write Great Sales Emails
An affiliate with excellent copy-writing skills is going to make more money than other affiliates. Pretty simple truth.
6) Test and Track
You’ll probably need to spend MORE time testing and tracking your results as an affiliate, because you’ll likely be running several offers at once to find out which offers work best.
7) Network
You will also need to stay in constant contact with vendors who have top selling products. You’ll want to know when they are planning product launches so you can time your efforts to work with them for maximal sales. Fortunately, a good vendor will also contact you.
8] Time Management/Customer Service
Expect customers to come to you with refund requests, even though you don’t sell the product. You’ll need someone in place to handle this tech support. Plus, like everyone else, you’ll have to find your best working schedule.
As I alluded to at the start, eventually you’ll be able to make a CEO’s salary with affiliate marketing, but first you have to have a list and email writing skills, and someone to do the tech support.
Eventually, you’ll have the system in place so your only tasks will be to promote the offers and cash the checks.
9) The Right Attitude
You have to accept that the road to the no-shoe wearing, beach-bum affiliate lifestyle is paved with jagged rocks, stinging jellyfish, sharp coral reef, and possibly even a broken bottle or two.
There will be good days, great days, bad days, and horrific days.
BUT…
…if you have the right attitude, outlined in my original series, you’ll smile no matter what kind of day it is, because you accept that you are 100% “in”, and you’re going to achieve the affiliate lifestyle dream no matter what.
Just remember to “Never, ever, EVER give up.”
10) Consider Creating Your Own Product
Along the way, you will probably find that people will be asking YOU to create a product. After all, being an affiliate also shows you what sells and what doesn’t, so it’s great “market research” for future product creation.
Weigh the pro’s and con’s. It might be worth your effort.
11) Create a Movement
Even as an affiliate, you can create your own “Movement” and promote a mission. As I showed you yesterday, you can become a leader simply by doing “The Blog Post of a Lifetime”.
So if you’re going to be an affiliate who builds a list and writes emails, I highly recommend making your mark with a “flagship article”.
Build trust with your prospects by becoming known as an honest, no-BS authority figure, and you can achieve financial independence and freedom with affiliate marketing.
Back to work,
Craig Ballantyne
“Take a look at your goals. Are you truly serious about them? If not, either delete them and save yourself the headache and heartache, or get serious about them and spend two hours this weekend planning out how you’ll achieve them. If you’re not willing to spend two hours working on your goals, then see question one above.”