Do You Know Me?
"You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want."
- Zig Ziglar
I should point out right from the outset that if you are looking to make a million dollars in the next few months that I am not your guy. I am willing to do the hard work and make a living honestly and that is how I advise others.
Still, If you're reading this you probably have some interest in affiliate marketing or marketing in general. I can appreciate that because I have the same interest and I have been involved with affiliate and digital marketing since the mid-90s.
It was considerably easier back then. Much less competition, a keyword on Adwords was usually around .05 per click and Google's guidelines for what was an acceptable website or business were considerably less stringent.
Now Facebook, of course, and many long-time marketers will debate as to whether that's a blessing or a curse. And there are also platforms like YouTube, which is a wonderful resource but many an old dog has had to master some new tricks.
If you are new and inexperienced, you may be enticed by some mouth-watering headlines like make 1000s in minutes or how I became a millionaire working in my mother's basement with only an iphone and a free ebook.
I say 'mouthwatering' because the rest of the story suggests you, too, can make a small fortune by investing in the same method and following some step-by-step advice. You'll find hundreds of these come-ons on the internet today. That's certainly one thing that hasn't changed even as the internet has matured and the level of sophistication of the average surfer has grown with each generation.
While that's the good news, you might also want too consider the downside. Folks have become much too cynical and many legitimate opportunities are dismissed out-of-hand.
Yes, you read that correctly. A few – a very few – of these rags to riches stories have some basis in fact. And while I am not suggesting you go out and find one, I am suggesting that you keep an open mind.
If you are new you will run into many, many cynics who claim to have been duped or swindled or hoodwinked, etc. You will see these comments on Facebook or the Warrior Forum. And, while I am not disputing the legitimacy of these critiques, there can often be an other side of the story.
Some, but not all of course, are not willing to put in the work required to have some success. Others are simply too inexperienced and impatient to master the fundamentals. Still others, suffering from the bright, shiny object syndrome, jump around from opportunity to opportunity without sticking to one primary objective. The solution? Blame the guru or the business or the cousin who got you into the situation to begin with.
My early online marketing years were hassle free in this regard. I came across these critiques and believed them. In fact, the public at large has embraced this generalization wholeheartedly. You will find this opinion most frequently when it comes to MLM (multilevel marketing). True, many are bogus operations, but not all by any means.
My early affiliate marketing experience was selling personalized t-shirts and mugs, stop snoring devices, vitamins, some general merchandise drop-shipping and hosting contracts. I also did a brief stint selling Viagra. I'm not proud of that fact, but I'm not exactly hanging my head in shame either.
What all of these early forays into affiliate marketing had in common was that commissions were relatively low. This was not an issue for me because I had a full-time job. Also, the skills needed were very basic: How to post a product on Ebay or create an ad on Yahoo! or Google while the supplier handled the rest.
Affiliate marketing has some advantages that many will appreciate. While no one will ever confuse you with Elon Musk, you will have fewer headaches and a considerably simpler mandate. You don't have to create a product, handle returns, train new employees, hire, fire or alienate you wife and kids because you're staying too late at the office.
In fact, you don't even have to leave your house and even have the guy in with the iphone in his mother's basement as your role model.
The real challenge for anyone new to affiliate marketing is too choose the right product to sell. If you are not particularly concerned about large profits then Clickbank or JVZoo might be your best bet. They are newbie friendly and have an assortment of products to choose from. Keep in mind that with the more popular products you will find a lot of competition.
On the other hand, if you want to transcend the affiliate label for something more substantial – something that will provide you with expert training in all facets of digital marketing, then you might want to consider selling online marketing courses.
You will learn how to advertise on all the major social media platforms, master lead generation, have weekly live training sessions, your own landing pages, several potential lucrative opportunities to promote and the possibility of equally lucrative commissions.
Even if you decide to move on, the skills you will learn will be invaluable to all future endeavors as an online marketer. You will even have the opportunity to brand this platform as your own.
There are several helpful posts throughout this site and links that will introduce you to this opportunity. Here's a book I can recommend...
Want to get started right away? Check out this Webinar Replay...
