Getting discouraged & frustrated trying to start email/affiliate marketing

Hi GaiaGoddess...
I feel for you my friend.. I have been in your shoes, got the tea-shirt and baseball cap...

When I first started in 2006 I spent over $2000 trying to get started in affiliate marketing and has cost me a bit more over the years, but I never gave up and you shouldn't either, it's good to see you havent...

In 2008 I found one that was free to join and would be as long as you wanted, but the problem with that was anything that's free means it could take years to make any kind of good income...

It was only until I found a program in 2015 that showed me I was going about affiliate marketing all wrong.
The programs step-by-step training videos plus a done-for-you system and a great mentor, showed me how to start making the kind of money I wanted, though it is a monthly payment program it is worth every penny because all I need to do is drive traffic to my link...

So my friend don't get disheartened, you have shown great commitment and I am sure you will succeed in the end...

Have a great day...

I don't know what's going on but I keep getting notifications that a bunch of people replied to this but I only see Stewie's post. I replied to another one yesterday that is gone now. Are they being deleted?

What was the program you bought and how long ago did you buy it? Someone here might be familiar with it and be able to provide specific advice.

There is a lot of free PLR on the internet, so you don't have to pay for it. You could create a free report using PLR articles then use it as a free gift. That would be more unique than a giving away a PLR ebook because it would be created by you.

What programs do you need to use that require a monthly fee? The only essentials required are a domain, hosting and an auto responder. Even a landing page builder, you can get for a one time fee.

When they said free ads will go out to a million viewers, they must have been talking about the potential reach, not the amount of viewers that an ad typically gets. That would explain the huge difference.

Hi Gaia!

I can honestly relate to your situation... I also do have my ups and downs and a couple of monthly costs that I have to pay. And there are days where I feel like not doing this anymore, but those are the days where you simply have to remind yourself why you started this whole journey all along.

I personally have written a whole page with reasons why I want to have a successful online business. This list is hanging on a wall where I can see it every single day, to remind myself to keep working and improving in my online business.

I am very sorry that you have lost $200 for that PLR site... The good news tho is that there are many alternatives! And you don't have to spend for a complete membership, but could buy only the PLR that you want to buy! 'Idplr.com' or 'plrassassin.com' each give you 500 free products for signing up for free. (I personally have a lifetime membership at plrassassin, but you don't have to). A site where you can buy single plr products would be 'buyqualityplr.com'.

I know that creating a leadmagnet yourself is rather exhausting and you said you are not a good writer, but honestly as I see, you CAN write! So depending on the niche you are in, research a little in google and rewrite what they are writing! Take a leadmagnet from someone else and rewrite it in your own words!

So now we got the PLR problem out of the way. The reason why you can't use the complete Google Keyword tool, is that they have limited the exact search volumes only for those people that actually spend money there. Good news: you only need to spend $1 to be able to see the exact search volumes.

Now that the google problem is solved, let's cut the monthly fees you have to pay. To be honest, an autoresponder is enough to get started. You can build a simple (which usually converts best) opt in page with them. And they are even hosting it for you. If you don't like the hosting domain they give you for your opt in page, you can link your existing domain to that opt in page or buy a new one.

If you have money to spend and also already have hosting in place (and wordpress), I can HIGHLY suggest getting Optimize Press. You are paying $99 (I think) one time, but can build pretty much ANYTHING you want.

Try to focus and what you actually need to do. Which is:
1. Get traffic to your opt in page (https://sumome.com/stories/get-more-traffic here are 130 ways)
2. Once they opt in, either redirect them immediately to an affiliate offer or create a thank you page which is also called a 'bridge page', where you presell them on the offer.
3. Write good email copy. My personal IM coach taught me three things that I ALWAYS should include in my email copy.

1. Engagement
Try to make them reply to your email. A good way to do that is to tell them to reply to your email once they were able to download your freebie with a simple 'I got it'.

2. Story
Tell them a story. People love stories. Either one from your personal life, how you were struggling, how you got started, what has helped you etc. and combine that with an offer.

3. Reason why
Give them a reason to make them do whatever you want them to do. Should they click the link and buy the offer on the other side? Then give them a reason to do so. Don't sell them the features of the product, but sell the results they could potentially have.

If you include those three things in your email copy, you should be good to go.

If you want a template and an example, you could click the link in my signature, where I am giving away a template which is showing you how to structure your email.

Don't give up. We both know that you can do it!

I hope that helps a little.

I wish you all the best.
-Robert Herdt

In terms of starting costs - you really only need an autoresponder, hosting and domain name to start Email marketing.

If you're too broke to afford these things, without meaning to sound disrespectful, I'd honestly suggest getting a job stacking shelves, delivering, driving a taxi or anything that gives you a base of money and a relatively flexible time frame so you can do some IM around the job. From my experience, those who do best in IM are relaxed people who aren't desperate for cash. That way you're far more comfortable about providing value rather than just selling - and eventually that leads to better results.

The PLR site incident is unfortunate, but it's feasible the owner is trying to fix it or at least should have the materials stored elsewhere for you to use. Have you tried contacting the support? It doesn't seem right that you've just lost $200 and that's it...

The key in this industry is to learn from everything, but try to position yourself in a position when you're starting out that you're not desperate. You will be taught some methods that frankly don't deliver such as the classified ad site; but the idea is to learn from all experiences and come out stronger!

Best,

Nick

Yes I had the same pain But after spending 10K over a period of time and not making a lot of money I decided to go into Affiliate marketing and it failed because of the same problems you had. But i used video marketing and made small amounts of money then got back into affiliate marketing.Then I started to make sales. Using the free bonus method giving more products and more value then the product I was selling. But then a light went on when I started to make more videos and to help with the cost I decided to use my own photos and then sold them and made my first $400 selling my own products I now do video marketing and also affiliate marketing and make my own products. Hope it helps just take your time stop jumping around and stick to one section of your business until it works then move to the next section. Hope it helps. Robert

There are a lot of mail, but I did not realize things will sell. Email is required if someone can tell me. If you will forgive any mistakes.

I notice you are on Fiverr If you use it correctly As you can generate a lot of extra revenue. I am a level 2 seller and I do like fiverr I do work for the offline market Robert

Fiverr is a good place to get work I have been on fiver from August 2014 but only started to sell about a year ago. I am a level 2 seller. I do get work from fiverr and you can use fiver to make even more money. It is no more $5 a gig The answer is service Yes you have to set up what you are going to do and then search the same people on Fiver that are doing the same service. Look at the top sellers in that service and find out why people purchase from them. Then give a bit more and you will take the work away from them. I am not asking you to work for nothing because if you look at the service charges now you will see that a lot of people charge a lot more then $5 the $5 buck a gig is going fast. Do your research and you will find making money will become easy for you on fiverr. Robert

OMG First never pay for a program to sell as your own. It is far better to have your own product no matter how bad it is you will be far better. I am building my list making my own products. The first one I made was how I solved a problem I had then put the answer to the forum and made $400
It is the truth and it works I have had products made for me and out out a video that I had this product made to solve a problem and it worked.

I am now working on another problem people have in affiliate marketing on how I a doing affiliate marketing. This will also work I am sure.

Start making your own advise solving videos or ebooks
It will build your business.

Robert

The best advice I got when I started (about 3 years ago now) was "Learn what sells, and how to sell it before creating your own".

I didn't listen and ended up creating a course that I didn't know how to sell. I eventually took to media buying (google and fb) to sell other peoples products and build lists where I would sell other peoples products.

That experience really taught me how to "sell online" - it was only in my second year of AM that I made my own product which I sold with no issue because I already know how.

My point is - TEST lots of different products in different ways and find out what works. Ebooks and course will never give you better information than your own data.

Just my 2 cents.

K

We are in the same boat, so I can help you with some of your road-blocks. That's what this forum is for.

Easy one, use Bing Search Tool, just, as a rule of thumb, multiply each number by x3. Bing has 25% of the search market, Google 75%. 3 x 25% = 75%

There is lots and lots of free PLRs. You just need to spend few evening googling about. I understand you don't like writing, but you can easily rewrite some of the existing ones.

Another important thing is subscribe to as many email lists in your niche that you can. Most of them are really well written and can be used as great source of inspiration. But don't just copy them.

Well, lets try exchanging ideas and search, here in this thread. Collectively, through research, we actually know everything gurus do.

Maybe he oversold you on that. Marketing people do that on a regular basis.

Think about developing relationship, with YouTube videos and FB group. That works so well for so many emailers that I stopped counting them. It just works.

I posted the following about a week ago when someone was asking about CPA(affiliate) marketing. It may be of interest, as it provides a totally different perspective to how most do things.

I've been promoting CPA offers for over 16 years.

I mainly promote PPL (pay per lead...lead generation) offers, this is because there is no credit card or purchase required to complete an offer. All a user has to do is fill out a form, so conversion rates are typically much higher than offers that require a sale to be made.

I favor offers that have a make, get or save money benefit to them, as they have overall performed the best. Plus they tend to have greatest mass appeal (will be of interest to a large general audience). So the potential exists to produce high volume and they are fairly easy to cross promote.

The bulk of the offers I promote pay $20-$40 per lead, but I also promote offers that pay more and less. However, what an offer pays out is not the sole key factor. How well it converts is just as important, if not more. For example, you could have an offer that pays $9 and if it is converting at 2X+ of a $20 offers, it will perform about the same or possibly better. At the same time, you could have an offer that pays $90 and if it converts poorly, it may not even be worth running it.

Some of the verticals that I have done extremely well with are: insurance, education, credit, loans, debt, mortgage, assistance, homeowner offers, etc...

Bottom line, it's just simply far easier to get someone to fill out a short form than it is to get them to take out their credit card and make a purchase. So why beat your head against the wall trying to convince users to buy this or that, when you can just provide them with free info for something they actually need and get paid well doing it.

To generate traffic, I do things differently than most here. I buy fresh / targeted data (email) in that I know what the users are interested in and that a PPL offer exists that matches their interest. So if I'm getting life insurance data then I send a life insurance offer. If I'm getting education data, then I'm sending an education offer., etc... I'm just matching the target to a relevant offer.

I also get rev-share data, which is the same as the above, except I don't have to pay any money upfront for it and I split the revenue generated from sending it with the data providers. I also generate real-time co-reg data that I target specific PPL offers. Lastly, I buy aged/ domain targeted data, but this is more involved and requires additional tools / resources to do profitably.

By acquiring data, I'm building assets that I then own and can market to them over and over at low cost. Compared to what most marketers do, which is to pay for traffic or use some free method in which they often fail to turn a profit or wasn't worth the time implementing.

In case you are wondering, none of this has anything to do with spamming. All the data is what is referred to as third party data. Which the users have all provided permission to receive messages from third parties and is 100% can-spam compliant.

Third party data is always going to be lower quality and not as responsive as a highly targeted opt-in list you develop yourself. However, this is not an issue, because it is also much cheaper and scalable compared to building a list. The key to making it work is to always be segmenting the openers/clickers and removing the unresponsive users. That way you are building smaller, but more response list from the initial data you acquire. Which you will eventually be able to send less and make more with each mailing. Basically, I'm converting the data from quantity to quality.

One last important note. Don't just buy data blindly. You want to always test a small, but adequate size sample and see how it performs. Then based on your test you will have a much better idea how quickly it will take to get break-even and what it is really worth to you. This is where rev-share has an advantage because you're not paying anything upfront, so all your tests are free.

Essentially I'm monetizing data using PPL offers because they offer the path of least resistance to generating conversions and convert the data into cash producing assets.

Obviously, there is a far more that goes into it, but it really does work. Everyone that I know that is in the business and knows what they are doing, for the most part, does 6-7 figures. While that may be a huge range, much of it really comes down to one's ability to scale, and effectively build/manage the infrastructure required to scale.

It's not for everyone, but it's certainly something to think about.

When I launch a site the starting costs are naff all and i mean literally pennies.

You can get a low rate host while you start for $1 a month your domain can be pennies as well... In the UK I can buy domains for the first year for 1 a year... Bargain and great for testing and just mucking about.

With content you can buy PLR cheaply, there is free plr about which is great but I also sell plr (link in sig) but content is and will always be king and in an ideal world you would hire a writer but that gets costly.

Every one of my successful projects was started on a shoestring and even now I love the challenge on seeing how much I can make by spending the least