My beginners guide to Affiliate Marketing
Posted 20th July 2015 at 05:29 AM by kcraighead
So on my travels around the internet I constantly heard that one of the best ways to earn a good income is via Affiliate Marketing.
Some of the figures thrown around are impressive, especially if you believe some of the income reports that have been published. For example did you know that Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income regularly earns over $100,000 per month mostly from affiliate income? Don't take my word for it though, check his income reports for yourself:
My Income Reports
So I hear you say "but that is the exception, not the rule!" and I would probably agree. But then if you do a little more digging you find other people with similar income reports showing affiliate income as the main source of earning. For example Matthew Woodward earns around $20,000 per month from his blog all of which is via affiliate income. Again, you can check his reports out here:
My Income Reports - Join Me On My Journey
So now that I believe it is possible the next thing to do is to figure out how to do it.
I have come across many different 'gurus' online and one of the guys I always turn to for SEO advice and trends is Becker at SEO Wave. Love or hate him you can't argue over the fact he has built himself a pretty income and lifestyle online. Recently he posted a new training video that described how he made a couple of hundred bucks a day in affiliate sales from one of his websites.
I thought this sounded perfect - a great way for me to try stuff out and see if 'really' works. You can see the video here:
$200 A Day Site Broken Down Step By Step
So after a bit of research I had proof it works and some training on how I might go about doing it.
Next up I had to come up with what I should sell. I also had to find affiliate programs to join so whatever I sold made me money. This all sounded like too much hard work to prove a concept. So how could I build something worthwhile... I then remembered another video I saw over at Source Wave. In it some business owners were claiming to earn over $100,000 per month in affiliate sales selling eCigarettes. What they did is took an old expired domain and created a new site on it. You can see their video here:
100k+ Per Month LIVE Affiliate Sites
So this is the first thing I did - recycled an old domain. Luckily a friend of mine had a domain name that he had used for several years to promote his business. It had a decent, if not great, track record. He had no problems giving me the domain name as he was going to let is expire anyway. So the first step was completed. However I still had no idea what to sell!
I then had a brainwave. According to all these affiliate reports, which many people dispute or find hard to believe, online entrepreneurs were earning large amounts online. I wanted to see if it was believable so rather than come up with my own niche why don't I just replicate what they had done. If I copied them then I should end up with similar results, right? Often people say not but here was my logic. If I build a website that is similar to the successful one using the same structure, links, and rewritten content and rank it then it should provide me with the similar results.
Now I know enough to avoid duplicate content so I knew I would need to rewrite stuff. This meant that the site I copied couldn't be too big with loads of pages. I also knew that I wanted to start small to prove my concept. Based on these factors I decided to copy the Source Wave Guitar Training Website. It only had a handful of pages and I thought that I could make a more attractive version of the same thing as the original was ugly. You can see the site I decide to clone here:
Learn How To Play Guitar With Shred Source
Luckily I have a bit of experience with web design so creating the website wasn't too much of an issue. I decide to go with WordPress as I could build something fast. Secondly I decided to use the Genesis theme as it is quick and well coded. So over the course of a day I built a website on my friends disregarded domain name. When I renewed it I made sure that I bought domain privacy so that it was difficult for Google to track the owner. I thought this might be important once I got into link building later on.
I paid particular attention to the internal linking and the use of the silo structure on the original. I copied this exactly. I rewrote the content as I went and added better pictures and more relevant video. I also added more background content as I knew I would have to persuade affiliates the site was worth adding to their programmes.
Next I created a facebook page. I knew that social triggers were important for Google so having a facebook page would be vital. I spent a bit of time making the website and facebook page look like they were part of a brand. So they both had the same logo, colour scheme and pictures. I then added a plugin to my website that showed all the members. I blasted my friends on facebook and asked them to like the page so I had something on the page. 10 or so did this.
Once the site was finished I then tracked down the affiliates that Source Wave used and applied to their programme. The affiliates were:
1. Guitar Tricks
2. Jam Play
I applied and after a few days was accepted. This meant I could add the affiliate banner ads to my website and get aid if anyone signed up. I chose the same position and size of ad as was used on the original site.
I was almost there. I had a website, a facebook page, and affiliate links. Now I needed traffic. I know my site wouldn't rank
as I hadn't built any links but I wondered if I could get it to rank purely sing social signals. So I went over to fiverr and bought a couple of social signal packages from reputable sellers. I then sat back and waited.
At this point I had spent a few dollars on the domain name, hosting and fiverr ads but that was it.
Life went on and I got drawn into other projects and for a few weeks I completely forgot about my experiment. Until I got an email from Guitar Licks which said:
Hope you are well! Can you please provide you PayPal email so we can pay your July commissions? Thanks!
I was stunned. I had affiliate income! I went and logged into my account and sure enough there was $30 affiliate income in my account. I then did a quick check using Market Samurai to see what the Google rank was for some of keywords. I was surprised to see that I ranked as follows:
Best Guitar Lessons Online : 52
Online Guitar Training : 103
This was without any backlinks, or any SEO.
So I had proved that Affiliate Sales do happen, do work and can earn you money. My next test is to see how much money. I plan to add further social signals and start work on creating backlinks to see if that makes any difference to my rank. If I get higher in the rankings I am confident that affiliate sales will follow.
I also know that I have to take the original website and improve on it. If I do, then I think I can push sales higher. All of this is for a future post.
Finally, if you are curious about the site I built you can find it here:
The Very Best Online Electric Guitar Lessons - Low Services
Some of the figures thrown around are impressive, especially if you believe some of the income reports that have been published. For example did you know that Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income regularly earns over $100,000 per month mostly from affiliate income? Don't take my word for it though, check his income reports for yourself:
My Income Reports
So I hear you say "but that is the exception, not the rule!" and I would probably agree. But then if you do a little more digging you find other people with similar income reports showing affiliate income as the main source of earning. For example Matthew Woodward earns around $20,000 per month from his blog all of which is via affiliate income. Again, you can check his reports out here:
My Income Reports - Join Me On My Journey
So now that I believe it is possible the next thing to do is to figure out how to do it.
I have come across many different 'gurus' online and one of the guys I always turn to for SEO advice and trends is Becker at SEO Wave. Love or hate him you can't argue over the fact he has built himself a pretty income and lifestyle online. Recently he posted a new training video that described how he made a couple of hundred bucks a day in affiliate sales from one of his websites.
I thought this sounded perfect - a great way for me to try stuff out and see if 'really' works. You can see the video here:
$200 A Day Site Broken Down Step By Step
So after a bit of research I had proof it works and some training on how I might go about doing it.
Next up I had to come up with what I should sell. I also had to find affiliate programs to join so whatever I sold made me money. This all sounded like too much hard work to prove a concept. So how could I build something worthwhile... I then remembered another video I saw over at Source Wave. In it some business owners were claiming to earn over $100,000 per month in affiliate sales selling eCigarettes. What they did is took an old expired domain and created a new site on it. You can see their video here:
100k+ Per Month LIVE Affiliate Sites
So this is the first thing I did - recycled an old domain. Luckily a friend of mine had a domain name that he had used for several years to promote his business. It had a decent, if not great, track record. He had no problems giving me the domain name as he was going to let is expire anyway. So the first step was completed. However I still had no idea what to sell!
I then had a brainwave. According to all these affiliate reports, which many people dispute or find hard to believe, online entrepreneurs were earning large amounts online. I wanted to see if it was believable so rather than come up with my own niche why don't I just replicate what they had done. If I copied them then I should end up with similar results, right? Often people say not but here was my logic. If I build a website that is similar to the successful one using the same structure, links, and rewritten content and rank it then it should provide me with the similar results.
Now I know enough to avoid duplicate content so I knew I would need to rewrite stuff. This meant that the site I copied couldn't be too big with loads of pages. I also knew that I wanted to start small to prove my concept. Based on these factors I decided to copy the Source Wave Guitar Training Website. It only had a handful of pages and I thought that I could make a more attractive version of the same thing as the original was ugly. You can see the site I decide to clone here:
Learn How To Play Guitar With Shred Source
Luckily I have a bit of experience with web design so creating the website wasn't too much of an issue. I decide to go with WordPress as I could build something fast. Secondly I decided to use the Genesis theme as it is quick and well coded. So over the course of a day I built a website on my friends disregarded domain name. When I renewed it I made sure that I bought domain privacy so that it was difficult for Google to track the owner. I thought this might be important once I got into link building later on.
I paid particular attention to the internal linking and the use of the silo structure on the original. I copied this exactly. I rewrote the content as I went and added better pictures and more relevant video. I also added more background content as I knew I would have to persuade affiliates the site was worth adding to their programmes.
Next I created a facebook page. I knew that social triggers were important for Google so having a facebook page would be vital. I spent a bit of time making the website and facebook page look like they were part of a brand. So they both had the same logo, colour scheme and pictures. I then added a plugin to my website that showed all the members. I blasted my friends on facebook and asked them to like the page so I had something on the page. 10 or so did this.
Once the site was finished I then tracked down the affiliates that Source Wave used and applied to their programme. The affiliates were:
1. Guitar Tricks
2. Jam Play
I applied and after a few days was accepted. This meant I could add the affiliate banner ads to my website and get aid if anyone signed up. I chose the same position and size of ad as was used on the original site.
I was almost there. I had a website, a facebook page, and affiliate links. Now I needed traffic. I know my site wouldn't rank
as I hadn't built any links but I wondered if I could get it to rank purely sing social signals. So I went over to fiverr and bought a couple of social signal packages from reputable sellers. I then sat back and waited.
At this point I had spent a few dollars on the domain name, hosting and fiverr ads but that was it.
Life went on and I got drawn into other projects and for a few weeks I completely forgot about my experiment. Until I got an email from Guitar Licks which said:
Hope you are well! Can you please provide you PayPal email so we can pay your July commissions? Thanks!
I was stunned. I had affiliate income! I went and logged into my account and sure enough there was $30 affiliate income in my account. I then did a quick check using Market Samurai to see what the Google rank was for some of keywords. I was surprised to see that I ranked as follows:
Best Guitar Lessons Online : 52
Online Guitar Training : 103
This was without any backlinks, or any SEO.
So I had proved that Affiliate Sales do happen, do work and can earn you money. My next test is to see how much money. I plan to add further social signals and start work on creating backlinks to see if that makes any difference to my rank. If I get higher in the rankings I am confident that affiliate sales will follow.
I also know that I have to take the original website and improve on it. If I do, then I think I can push sales higher. All of this is for a future post.
Finally, if you are curious about the site I built you can find it here:
The Very Best Online Electric Guitar Lessons - Low Services
Total Comments 0
