07-01-2014, 06:52 AM
Please keep in mind that this is just my recommended plan of action if I just started out with affiliate marketing today. This will be the demonstration of a paid method and by no means am I saying that you will succeed with this method. Please keep that in mind. We’re all adults here so please act as such an understand that my views on various topics are MY views.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s continue shall we?
Below I will list each step in a chronological order in which I’d progress.
The paid method will include very highly recommended products that would end you up under $60/month (Approx.)
Step 1. Set a clear goal!
Now, please keep in mind that it should be somewhat realistic. I mean, go aim for the stars and even if you miss, you’ll be out there in space somewhere. There is nothing wrong with dreaming big, but don’t expect to make $100,000 in your first month.
Keep in mind that the beginning is hard, but once you build momentum and reinvest all your money every time you get paid, you will scale up automatically.
So I’d recommend perhaps aiming for +$500 in your first month, even if you have money to invest you’ll most likely not know how to efficiently use that money. Therefore I’d try some free marketing until you feel comfortable enough to spend more money on traffic.
Your entire system will have to work in order for paid marketing to even work efficiently. With “system” I am referring to your squeeze page (Can also be referred to as a “landing page”) and your email funnel. We’ll talk more about that in a bit!
Step 2. Finding a niche!
Finding a niche is super, super important! Your entire marketing life will literally revolve around it. Niches are simply just broad categories of products you’ll focus on.
For instance, if you wanted to sell “Weight-loss” products, that would be the “Health and Fitness” niche. If you wanted to sell training on “How to make money online”, that would be the “Internet Marketing” niche. I don’t think you’d pick the second one considering you’re new to all of this, but the “Internet Marketing” niche is one of the most popular, but also crowded niches.
I’d recommend picking something that you’re truly passionate about and then stick with it. If you like fashion and clothing styles, you could setup an online clothing store. That’s just an example of course, but you’re catching my drift, correct? Yes? Great!
Step 3. Finding a product!
As mentioned above, your “product” should be something you’re truly passionate about. Luckily for you that in Affiliate Marketing, you don’t even need to create your own product! You can just sell other products that marketers have spent thousands of dollars on!
Now most of us have heard about “Clickbank”, “JvZoo” or even “Clicksure”. Those are just marketplaces on which affiliates can sell products through.
Sounds like a sugarcoated fantasy land, right? Not at all! Every single person can advertise every single product on those sites. That will raise competition to the roof and won’t give you any return on your investment! Well, maybe a bit, but not as much as you’d hope you would get.
Luckily for you, that you’re reading this, because I will link you to an exclusive, privately owned CPA Network that has access to some of the most badass products online and the best thing? There is barely any competition on any of them!
Let me introduce to you… NamOffers!
NamOffers is one of the greatest CPA Networks ever created and the owners are as awesome as the Network itself. I had a chance to speak with both of them and they truly care about your success. I suppose that one analogy that could be used is, that they are like your online family. They really do watch after you and have the knowledge and community to back it up as well!
It will maybe take you 5 minutes to sign up and then maybe 1 or 2 days to get approved.
I personally believe that the success rates on there are much higher then on any other marketplace I have ever been on.
->> Check it out here
Step 4. Training, Training, Training!
As I mentioned in the beginning, you shouldn’t use paid traffic right on Day 1. There is a very particular reason for that, most people get blinded by greed wanting the best results in the fastest period of time and think that paid marketing is their answer.
I don’t mean to brag, but I made more money in my 1st month without any investment, then many people that invest $500. I have no skill that you can’t achieve, but rather I understood the complexity of this peculiar way our mind perceives wealth and income.
Abundance is very important. A lot of new marketers think “I have to start now or else I won’t make any money!”. That is an ignorant assumption, but understandable considering you may be new.
You have to get better mindset as opposed to a better financial independence from your bank.
That’s the reason so many marketers create “training” products, because they know that a lot of newcomers will need proper training.
The only downside? They are all leeches. They only suck you for money and leave you in the dirt if your lost.
Don’t believe me? Read a review on “Training Courses” and 99% will be overpriced junk.
You will need proper training on your mindset as well proper training on how to structure a sales funnel and various other marketing techniques.
Now, how great would it be if there was such site, but only for free?
Well, let me introduce you to something super special!
Drumroll, please!…
The “Affiliate Expert Academy” or (AEA) in short.
It’s probably (What I consider), one of the best free training sites ever created, in addition it is owned by the same guys that also own NamOffers so you’re sure to get the best knowledge for free. The training could seamlessly transition from AEA where you learn to NamOffers where you promote your product of your liking.
It is free for the public and I highly recommend you sign up for a free membership on there as well. Even if you signed up for NamOffers previously or are pending verification, still sign up since both of them use different login systems.
->> Check it out here
Step 5. The power of blogging
Blogging is without a doubt, one of the best ways to connect with future customers by giving them an insight on your life. Connection is key in any business, people want a situation or a person to relate to. If you can make people understand why you do the things you do and move them with your words, you will have great chances of making sales.
They are similar to email funnels in a sense that they connect with a person on a more friendly level.
Now setting up a blog is super easy.
The main things that will be needed are, a domain, website hosting, WordPress.
Purchasing a domain…
Is actually super easy. Just head on over to GoDaddy.com and register your own domain through their very simple registration process.
I’d highly recommend purchasing a “.com” domain considering they’re the most professional and most common around the web.
Make your domain relate either to your business or just you in general.
For example, you could purchase [FirstName][LastName].com if available or something that involves your niche.
Let’s assume you were in the “Fitness” niche, you could purchase WorkoutWith[FirstName].com.
I hope that makes sense!
Now for the hosting aspect,
You want to get the actual website hosting from HostGator.com considering their infrastructure is a lot faster and robust in my opinion.
HostGators signup process is super simple, but keep in mind that during the registration don’t purchase a new domain. Pick the domain name you recently purchased on GoDaddy.com. Else it won’t work at all!
After your purchase you want to point your domain to your hosting account. There is an easy guide on how to do this located here.
Be sure to not visit your website during this process, else it may take up to 24 hours for your cache to be cleared!
“Great, I finished that. What now?”
Great question!
Now you want to install WordPress. WordPress is just a content manager which also has its own blogging platform. It’s completely free and you should find it on your HostGator cPanel.
Here’s a great tutorial on how to install it.
Now you should have a complete website with a working blogging platform!
Step 6. Turn visitors into subscribers
Now that you have a blog and wrote some super awesome blog posts and you have a steady rate of visitors coming in each day. Why not capture those visitors and market to them? You could also inform them of new blog posts for maximum exposure!
This is where email marketing comes into play. It is quite essential to build an email list of raving fans that are willing to purchase from you.
It is also one of the main reason new marketers fail online. Just view the chart below.
I hope the image speaks for itself. Just look at the average return a marketers gets when spending $1! A whooping $40 on average!
Now, for email marketing I’d recommend GetResponse.com! GetResponse is one of the leading services that lets you capture emails as well as mail to them on a daily basis. Their proven system shows time after time how reliable it is in the conversion of visitors to subscribers to customers.
You can create web-forms and then embed them into your sidebar of your blog which will in return give visitors the opportunity to sign up to your mailing list.
You can also create an autoresponder which can automatically send emails to your prospects on a day-to-day basis. This is super exciting stuff and I hope you realize all the value behind this!
->> Check it out here
Email lists are so powerful! They make your following actually “care” about you. I highly recommend you to make this small investment as well.
Step 7. Creating a proper Squeeze Page/Landing Page
Although you have a blog now in combination with an email marketing service, you still can’t purchase traffic nor consider advertising it and expect a huge crowd of people to subscribe to your email list.
Embedding a web form into a blog is great and all, but do you really think people will opt in while seeing all this other content taking up 99% of the page? Probably not, right?
Well, that’s why we need a squeeze page! A page dedicated to get a visitors email and optionally other information such as their name! They don’t really need much explanation, but I highly recommend that you give the visitors a reason to opt-in. Maybe a free report, eBook, whatever really. If you don’t feel like writing such, you can always find free PLR (Private Label Rights) eBooks around.
Now to the actual design of the squeeze page. Making them can be really difficult since 99% of marketers have no idea how to code. Well, lucky for you that you have me since I will link you to an awesome website called Leadpages.net. They are one of the best squeeze page creation websites. There are other methods of getting one as well, but this is the easiest for newcomers!
They have beautiful designs and the quality is just amazing. Just go to their site and get a better image for yourself!
Step 8. Creating a “funnel”
Creating a funnel is super easy in combination with GetResponse.com. Here is a quick tutorial to get you started.
Sales funnels are just needed to build a connection with your readers automatically without you having to worry about when emails get mailed out. GetResponse takes care of all that for you!
Here is an example 5-Day sales funnel:
Day 1. Free Gift + Introduction
Day 2. Informational Product [Free]
Day 3. Sell them a product here
Day 4. Informational product [Free]
Day 5. Sell them a more expensive product here
See how I didn’t try selling them something each day? Well, we don’t want to be spammy correct? It is vital that you give them more information then paid products! Trust me, it’ll be worth it!
Sales funnels can work really, really great as long as you don’t try to push your luck!
Step 9. Receiving traffic and tracking it
Now that you have all that setup, you should finally be ready to give paid traffic a try!
You have various options here, you can decide to to try Solo Ads, PPC, PPV, Banner Ads or whatever suits your fancy really. Although I highly recommend Solo Ads at the beginning since they’re quite cheap. However, once you scale up you should try different methods since a lot of vendors share email addresses!
Feel free to check out all your traffic options and recommended networks here.
Now to tracking, tracking is super, super important since you always want to know from where, who and when a person subscribed to you as well as if they purchased something. For that you should definitely check out click.org. Now fair warning, I didn’t give them a try yet, but I have heard great things about them. They are one of the best tracking platforms currently out there. They start at $9/month so they are (I think) worth checking out.
It is all about tracking, be sure to find the best sources of traffic as well as the best squeeze pages. It’s all about optimization!
Step 10. Connecting with your customers
Although you have a funnel that takes care of a lot of interactions with your customers, you should always broadcast emails of new events and also new blog posts. Just keep them engaged with everything you do from a marketing perspective and they should start to trust you more. Just don’t collect emails and never message them!
Step 11. Your first purchase!
Got your first sale? Well congrats!
Now just keep repeating what you’ve done and you’ll hopefully be up at the top of the “Internet Marketing Food Chain” in no time!
I hope you enjoyed this very in-depth tutorial on how to get started with affiliate marketing.
As always, if you have any questions, email me to the email provided at the top of this page!
Disclaimer: I don’t guarantee any success with the method I recommend. This is only what I’d do if I had to start again from the beginning.
Please Note: This is a friends method and I asked if I can post it for him. If you want to support him, please use his affiliates links. Your experience with the service won't be any less and you will encourage him to share more things with us. Thank you for understanding!
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s continue shall we?
Below I will list each step in a chronological order in which I’d progress.
The paid method will include very highly recommended products that would end you up under $60/month (Approx.)
Step 1. Set a clear goal!
Now, please keep in mind that it should be somewhat realistic. I mean, go aim for the stars and even if you miss, you’ll be out there in space somewhere. There is nothing wrong with dreaming big, but don’t expect to make $100,000 in your first month.
Keep in mind that the beginning is hard, but once you build momentum and reinvest all your money every time you get paid, you will scale up automatically.
So I’d recommend perhaps aiming for +$500 in your first month, even if you have money to invest you’ll most likely not know how to efficiently use that money. Therefore I’d try some free marketing until you feel comfortable enough to spend more money on traffic.
Your entire system will have to work in order for paid marketing to even work efficiently. With “system” I am referring to your squeeze page (Can also be referred to as a “landing page”) and your email funnel. We’ll talk more about that in a bit!
Step 2. Finding a niche!
Finding a niche is super, super important! Your entire marketing life will literally revolve around it. Niches are simply just broad categories of products you’ll focus on.
For instance, if you wanted to sell “Weight-loss” products, that would be the “Health and Fitness” niche. If you wanted to sell training on “How to make money online”, that would be the “Internet Marketing” niche. I don’t think you’d pick the second one considering you’re new to all of this, but the “Internet Marketing” niche is one of the most popular, but also crowded niches.
I’d recommend picking something that you’re truly passionate about and then stick with it. If you like fashion and clothing styles, you could setup an online clothing store. That’s just an example of course, but you’re catching my drift, correct? Yes? Great!
Step 3. Finding a product!
As mentioned above, your “product” should be something you’re truly passionate about. Luckily for you that in Affiliate Marketing, you don’t even need to create your own product! You can just sell other products that marketers have spent thousands of dollars on!
Now most of us have heard about “Clickbank”, “JvZoo” or even “Clicksure”. Those are just marketplaces on which affiliates can sell products through.
Sounds like a sugarcoated fantasy land, right? Not at all! Every single person can advertise every single product on those sites. That will raise competition to the roof and won’t give you any return on your investment! Well, maybe a bit, but not as much as you’d hope you would get.
Luckily for you, that you’re reading this, because I will link you to an exclusive, privately owned CPA Network that has access to some of the most badass products online and the best thing? There is barely any competition on any of them!
Let me introduce to you… NamOffers!
NamOffers is one of the greatest CPA Networks ever created and the owners are as awesome as the Network itself. I had a chance to speak with both of them and they truly care about your success. I suppose that one analogy that could be used is, that they are like your online family. They really do watch after you and have the knowledge and community to back it up as well!
It will maybe take you 5 minutes to sign up and then maybe 1 or 2 days to get approved.
I personally believe that the success rates on there are much higher then on any other marketplace I have ever been on.
->> Check it out here
Step 4. Training, Training, Training!
As I mentioned in the beginning, you shouldn’t use paid traffic right on Day 1. There is a very particular reason for that, most people get blinded by greed wanting the best results in the fastest period of time and think that paid marketing is their answer.
I don’t mean to brag, but I made more money in my 1st month without any investment, then many people that invest $500. I have no skill that you can’t achieve, but rather I understood the complexity of this peculiar way our mind perceives wealth and income.
Abundance is very important. A lot of new marketers think “I have to start now or else I won’t make any money!”. That is an ignorant assumption, but understandable considering you may be new.
You have to get better mindset as opposed to a better financial independence from your bank.
That’s the reason so many marketers create “training” products, because they know that a lot of newcomers will need proper training.
The only downside? They are all leeches. They only suck you for money and leave you in the dirt if your lost.
Don’t believe me? Read a review on “Training Courses” and 99% will be overpriced junk.
You will need proper training on your mindset as well proper training on how to structure a sales funnel and various other marketing techniques.
Now, how great would it be if there was such site, but only for free?
Well, let me introduce you to something super special!
Drumroll, please!…
The “Affiliate Expert Academy” or (AEA) in short.
It’s probably (What I consider), one of the best free training sites ever created, in addition it is owned by the same guys that also own NamOffers so you’re sure to get the best knowledge for free. The training could seamlessly transition from AEA where you learn to NamOffers where you promote your product of your liking.
It is free for the public and I highly recommend you sign up for a free membership on there as well. Even if you signed up for NamOffers previously or are pending verification, still sign up since both of them use different login systems.
->> Check it out here
Step 5. The power of blogging
Blogging is without a doubt, one of the best ways to connect with future customers by giving them an insight on your life. Connection is key in any business, people want a situation or a person to relate to. If you can make people understand why you do the things you do and move them with your words, you will have great chances of making sales.
They are similar to email funnels in a sense that they connect with a person on a more friendly level.
Now setting up a blog is super easy.
The main things that will be needed are, a domain, website hosting, WordPress.
Purchasing a domain…
Is actually super easy. Just head on over to GoDaddy.com and register your own domain through their very simple registration process.
I’d highly recommend purchasing a “.com” domain considering they’re the most professional and most common around the web.
Make your domain relate either to your business or just you in general.
For example, you could purchase [FirstName][LastName].com if available or something that involves your niche.
Let’s assume you were in the “Fitness” niche, you could purchase WorkoutWith[FirstName].com.
I hope that makes sense!
Now for the hosting aspect,
You want to get the actual website hosting from HostGator.com considering their infrastructure is a lot faster and robust in my opinion.
HostGators signup process is super simple, but keep in mind that during the registration don’t purchase a new domain. Pick the domain name you recently purchased on GoDaddy.com. Else it won’t work at all!
After your purchase you want to point your domain to your hosting account. There is an easy guide on how to do this located here.
Be sure to not visit your website during this process, else it may take up to 24 hours for your cache to be cleared!
“Great, I finished that. What now?”
Great question!
Now you want to install WordPress. WordPress is just a content manager which also has its own blogging platform. It’s completely free and you should find it on your HostGator cPanel.
Here’s a great tutorial on how to install it.
Now you should have a complete website with a working blogging platform!
Step 6. Turn visitors into subscribers
Now that you have a blog and wrote some super awesome blog posts and you have a steady rate of visitors coming in each day. Why not capture those visitors and market to them? You could also inform them of new blog posts for maximum exposure!
This is where email marketing comes into play. It is quite essential to build an email list of raving fans that are willing to purchase from you.
It is also one of the main reason new marketers fail online. Just view the chart below.
I hope the image speaks for itself. Just look at the average return a marketers gets when spending $1! A whooping $40 on average!
Now, for email marketing I’d recommend GetResponse.com! GetResponse is one of the leading services that lets you capture emails as well as mail to them on a daily basis. Their proven system shows time after time how reliable it is in the conversion of visitors to subscribers to customers.
You can create web-forms and then embed them into your sidebar of your blog which will in return give visitors the opportunity to sign up to your mailing list.
You can also create an autoresponder which can automatically send emails to your prospects on a day-to-day basis. This is super exciting stuff and I hope you realize all the value behind this!
->> Check it out here
Email lists are so powerful! They make your following actually “care” about you. I highly recommend you to make this small investment as well.
Step 7. Creating a proper Squeeze Page/Landing Page
Although you have a blog now in combination with an email marketing service, you still can’t purchase traffic nor consider advertising it and expect a huge crowd of people to subscribe to your email list.
Embedding a web form into a blog is great and all, but do you really think people will opt in while seeing all this other content taking up 99% of the page? Probably not, right?
Well, that’s why we need a squeeze page! A page dedicated to get a visitors email and optionally other information such as their name! They don’t really need much explanation, but I highly recommend that you give the visitors a reason to opt-in. Maybe a free report, eBook, whatever really. If you don’t feel like writing such, you can always find free PLR (Private Label Rights) eBooks around.
Now to the actual design of the squeeze page. Making them can be really difficult since 99% of marketers have no idea how to code. Well, lucky for you that you have me since I will link you to an awesome website called Leadpages.net. They are one of the best squeeze page creation websites. There are other methods of getting one as well, but this is the easiest for newcomers!
They have beautiful designs and the quality is just amazing. Just go to their site and get a better image for yourself!
Step 8. Creating a “funnel”
Creating a funnel is super easy in combination with GetResponse.com. Here is a quick tutorial to get you started.
Sales funnels are just needed to build a connection with your readers automatically without you having to worry about when emails get mailed out. GetResponse takes care of all that for you!
Here is an example 5-Day sales funnel:
Day 1. Free Gift + Introduction
Day 2. Informational Product [Free]
Day 3. Sell them a product here
Day 4. Informational product [Free]
Day 5. Sell them a more expensive product here
See how I didn’t try selling them something each day? Well, we don’t want to be spammy correct? It is vital that you give them more information then paid products! Trust me, it’ll be worth it!
Sales funnels can work really, really great as long as you don’t try to push your luck!
Step 9. Receiving traffic and tracking it
Now that you have all that setup, you should finally be ready to give paid traffic a try!
You have various options here, you can decide to to try Solo Ads, PPC, PPV, Banner Ads or whatever suits your fancy really. Although I highly recommend Solo Ads at the beginning since they’re quite cheap. However, once you scale up you should try different methods since a lot of vendors share email addresses!
Feel free to check out all your traffic options and recommended networks here.
Now to tracking, tracking is super, super important since you always want to know from where, who and when a person subscribed to you as well as if they purchased something. For that you should definitely check out click.org. Now fair warning, I didn’t give them a try yet, but I have heard great things about them. They are one of the best tracking platforms currently out there. They start at $9/month so they are (I think) worth checking out.
It is all about tracking, be sure to find the best sources of traffic as well as the best squeeze pages. It’s all about optimization!
Step 10. Connecting with your customers
Although you have a funnel that takes care of a lot of interactions with your customers, you should always broadcast emails of new events and also new blog posts. Just keep them engaged with everything you do from a marketing perspective and they should start to trust you more. Just don’t collect emails and never message them!
Step 11. Your first purchase!
Got your first sale? Well congrats!
Now just keep repeating what you’ve done and you’ll hopefully be up at the top of the “Internet Marketing Food Chain” in no time!
I hope you enjoyed this very in-depth tutorial on how to get started with affiliate marketing.
As always, if you have any questions, email me to the email provided at the top of this page!
Disclaimer: I don’t guarantee any success with the method I recommend. This is only what I’d do if I had to start again from the beginning.
Please Note: This is a friends method and I asked if I can post it for him. If you want to support him, please use his affiliates links. Your experience with the service won't be any less and you will encourage him to share more things with us. Thank you for understanding!