The Power of Affiliate Marketing
I’m no genius but somehow my efforts have allowed me to earn a six-figure income as an affiliate marketer. I’ll share the basics of what I know so you can do the same.
When it comes to affiliate marketing, in my mind, there are 6 things you’ll need to do in order to become successful… or fail; one of those two things will happen.
I’ve experienced both.
My Experience
I’ve been trying to make money online since the age of 16.
In the early days of Google, you could add hundreds or even thousands of keywords on your website and Google would rank you on the 1st page.
I wish it was that easy these days. Unfortunately, it’s not.
I had a few different websites.
One was about air mattresses, another about cheap airline flights, and another about dentures.
I didn’t care about these topics and it was the main reason I stopped building websites as a teenager even though the money was good.
I remember making $1,000 in a month after using Adobe Dreamweaver to spin out hundreds of spammy-as-hell pages in order to make money with Google Adsense.
I remember my dad making $30,000 in a month using the same techniques. We were some of the first “Internet spam pioneers” and we were making really good money (and I’m sure there were thousands of people doing the same).
But then, after months of success, Google cracked down. I was making pennies a month and eventually lost interest.
1. Have a reason
After having gone through that as a teenager, had I picked websites I cared about I may have learned to fix my content and who knows? Maybe I could have a 7 or 8-figure website selling air mattresses today?
It took me roughly 8 years from that time to get back into building websites for money.
I bought a few domain names, used any techniques I remembered about organizing my website structure, and gave it another go.
I failed.
I spent a year trying everything I could to make money but nothing worked. And because nothing I did worked, I lost interest again.
Fast forward, to 2021… I got married and my wife and I wanted to build a family.
However, early on in our relationship, we found out I was born with a condition that prevented us from getting pregnant naturally. Yet, my wife had always dreamed of getting pregnant so we went the IVF route.
As some of you may not know, IVF can be quite expensive. And back in 2021, starting IVF, we needed a way to pay for everything.
At that time, I was making $47,000 working remotely for a local company. $47,000 is NOT enough to really pay for anything these days and we needed to somehow come up with a ridiculously high amount of money in a relatively short amount of time.
The money we needed to raise was more than just for IVF so even if we had gotten a job at Starbucks and allowed them to pay for everything IVF-related, we would have still needed another $75,000 to pay for vital pre-pregnancy surgeries, costly prescriptions, and more.
Plus, I doubt Starbucks (or another company) would have given me or my wife time off to actually go to doctor’s appointments, travel out of the state to get the best treatment, etc.
So I opted to get back into affiliate marketing. I could work from home (since I already had a remote full-time job) and it would allow me to take time off for out-of-state doctor visits and such.
Long story short, my reason for getting back into building SEO-focused websites was all about trying to build a family with my wife.
What is your reason?
2. Know something about something
I really don’t know much about anything but I know some things about some things. Find a topic/hobby you enjoy and build a website on that.
For me, I know enough about eating a vegan diet (though I’m not vegan anymore — for health reasons, surprisingly) and can write a lot of decent content on that topic.
I built a website that talks all about vegan products and it was this website that led me to finding a brand I’ve been working with since 2021.
This brand has allowed me to earn over $100,000 since 2021.
3. Find products/brands to work with
There are thousands of companies looking to partner with you; you just need to find them.
For me, I found a particular brand after wanting to buy one of their products. After receiving this product as a wedding gift, I reached out and asked if they had an affiliate program.
After 1 month of waiting, they accepted me into the program and we’ve been promoting their products ever since.
And let me tell you, this brand is AMAZING. They sell main products priced high enough that each sale earns us $40-$72 in commission. They have other products that give us $3-$15 in commission but we don’t focus our efforts on those as much.
The goal here is to find brands you’re already using so you can share your knowledge and insights on something you love using.
If you try to go the route and promote something that has a high commission, but you have never used that product OR never will, it’s going to be very difficult to make money with it (in the long run) — like air mattresses or dentures, so I’ve found.
Also, if you find a brand you want to work with but their product will only give you $1 commission, you’ll have to sell thousands to make thousands and that might not be doable.
The key here is to look through what you are currently using (whether physical or digital products) and reach out to the companies of those products to see if they have a referral/affiliate program.
Some might and those are the ones you’ll want to go after.
4. Build a website or promote on social media
I’ll be honest, the followers I have on one of my Instagram accounts were accumulated using a sketchy service that doesn’t exist anymore.
This service allowed me to automatically follow people based on the accounts they were already following and then once they followed me, after a certain amount of time, my account unfollowed them.
I know, I know. That isn’t a great way to build an audience but at the time (probably 15 years ago) it was all I knew how to do. The manual approach was too time consuming.
I have since gone through and tried to build my page out with good content and while I don’t have millions of followers, I have enough to make good money with this one brand.
If you don’t want to put your face on a social media site, you’ll want to build a website and there are thousands of good website-making tutorials on YouTube.
If you want to build a website AND social media accounts, I recommend starting one and once you’ve gotten a good content-posting schedule down, add another platform. I’ve tried doing them all at the same time and you’ll burn out really, really quickly.
5. Write LOTS and LOTS of content
The hardest thing for most people is creating content. And lots of it.
I’ve read that new websites should aim to publish 15 to 25 articles each month for the first 6 months before thinking they’re going to rank in search engines.
Let me give an example…
In August 2024, I started yet another website in hopes to make money without the need for Instagram/Facebook and it has proven very difficult.
I’ve published 45 articles to-date which include custom images, internal linking (linking a page to another page on my site), and more.
As of today, October 7, 2024, the average page I’m ranking on in Google is the 8th page.
That’s not good and I’m not getting much traffic. I’m also making $0/mo.
6. Wait, then watch profits roll in
The trick is to be patient. If you chose to build a website, keep writing good content, and then wait. If you want to build an audience using social media, that’s great too.
Whichever direction you choose to go, keep at it. This stuff takes time.
Back in 2021 when I started making money with this particular brand, I mainly used Instagram to promote their products.
In my 2nd month at it, I made $577.82. That was a big month that showed my efforts were paying off.
At the end of the year (I started with this brand in September), I had made $4,748.65.
Final Thoughts
No matter if you choose to build a social media empire or a website, or both, you need to have an idea and then go after it. Some of the time you’ll succeed, while other times, you’ll fail.
Failure IS an option but with enough failures you’re bound to find success.
Good luck!
