Any successful affiliate marketers out there?

[trekr5]

Hi,

I have been ummming and ahhring(pondering) for the last year over getting into affiliate marketing.

I'd like to know if there are any successful affiliates on this forum? if so what has been your experience? and more importantly have you consistently made monthly sales? if so are there any online resources/programs you can recommend for me to start. Tips please!!!

I certainly do not want to ask this question next year!

[TheBull]

I've made a few bucks (litterally) with Amazon and 11 cents with AdSense. I don't have a lot of traffic however, and it seems to be the common theme that with adsense anyway, it doesn't start really happening for 6 months or so; assuming you are getting traffic anyway.

I've tried signing up with some of the seemingly more lucrative services like Chitika and TextLink, but got rejected for lack of traffic. I'm not giving up though and I have a couple blogs working for me so we'll see what happens.

Oh yea, I did sign up with CafePress for doing t-shirts. I think they would appeal more to one of my blogs (geared towards techies) than adsense. No sales yet but I've only been with them for just over a week.

[thadroe]

Originally Posted by trekr5

Hi,

I have been ummming and ahhring(pondering) for the last year over getting into affiliate marketing.

I'd like to know if there are any successful affiliates on this forum? if so what has been your experience? and more importantly have you consistently made monthly sales? if so are there any online resources/programs you can recommend for me to start. Tips please!!!

I certainly do not want to ask this question next year!

Hi Trekr. My main focus right now is affiliate marketing. I'm not an expert and haven't quit my day job yet but I finally have started making money at it and feel I'm definitely at a point where I have a very repeatable process...my main issue is just having enough hours in the day right now to execute, but it's growing steadily.

As far as online resources/programs....there's a lot of crappy ebooks and so called gurus out there. The best thing I did that got me going and still keeps me going was joining Wealthy Affiliate. I won't write about it again here, but I made some posts on this thread which you can read....
how can one generate income in their collage years?

Give me a shout via PM anytime...I'll be happy to help and share in any way I can.

Thad

[MattUK]

Originally Posted by thadroe

Hi Trekr. My main focus right now is affiliate marketing. I'm not an expert and haven't quit my day job yet but I finally have started making money at it and feel I'm definitely at a point where I have a very repeatable process...my main issue is just having enough hours in the day right now to execute, but it's growing steadily.

As far as online resources/programs....there's a lot of crappy ebooks and so called gurus out there. The best thing I did that got me going and still keeps me going was joining Wealthy Affiliate. I won't write about it again here, but I made some posts on this thread which you can read....
how can one generate income in their collage years?

Give me a shout via PM anytime...I'll be happy to help and share in any way I can.

Thad

hi thadore, so by being an affiliate does it take up a lot of your time? the reason i joine WA was to initially put time in to educate myself about it but it was the thought of passive income while have a lot of free time that got me to join

[thadroe]

Originally Posted by MattUK

hi thadore, so by being an affiliate does it take up a lot of your time? the reason i joine WA was to initially put time in to educate myself about it but it was the thought of passive income while have a lot of free time that got me to join

Hi Matt,

Yes and no. It's just like anything else...you aren't going to be able to just turn on a passive income stream instantly with no time and effort.

Just like Steve has mentioned, doing things to make passive income requires more work on the front end to set it in motion, but then far less on the back end to maintain it and keep it going.

When I look at the progression I've gone through. Most of the work initially was the foundational learning, reading, building technical skills, etc, but making no money yet. That led to the excecution and experimentation phase, but still a lot of work tweaking and learning from mistakes. Then, once I would find something profitable, the time I spent at that point was expanding it and building up that particular ad campaign.

At this point, I feel that even though I'm still learning affiliate marketing, I have a very repeatable process and now most of my time spent is building it up and setting new streams in motion, with tweaks along the way.

If I just stopped with what I've done so far, it would be just fine and continue to generate income with a small amount of maintenance on my part.

So ultimately, I will continue to build it until I'm at a passive income level I'm happy with, then I will focus on more important things in my life. Being an affiliate marketer is not my purpose in life...but putting a lot of time in on the front end will get me to a point where I can just maintain it with a small amount of effort.

So yeah, you're going to have to spend a lot of time at the beginning building it up. There's not an easy way around that no matter what you do. But that time spent up front will free up much more time later vs. just trading your time for money like with a job.

Also, I'm learning broader marketing skills that will help me generate passive income for the rest of my life, regardless of what else I do and how I choose to monetize it.

Thad

[thadroe]

I don't mean to be longwinded but I just thought of a good analogy here for building passive income vs. having a job and trading your time for money.

It's kind of like building an entire house for yourself vs. just getting paid contract work to build other people's homes.

Building your own house will take a lot of time and effort initally, especially if you've never built one before. There's a lot of things to learn and figure out. But you know once it's done, you can move in and enjoy it and spend your time doing other things.

After you've moved in, you'll just need to spend small amounts of time here and there maintaining the house and keeping it in good shape. Then every so often things come along that require a little more work, like replacing the roof. But ultimately, most of your time is spent living in the house and enjoying it.

Now, there's a chance that at some point the house may be beyond repair or is wiped out by a tornado. However, since you built a house before, you know how to do it again in a much faster way...maybe you even have the money at that point to hire someone else to build it.

Either way, taking the extra time out to figure out how to build your own house will leave you with much more free time.

Thad

[Andrew Lwe]

trekr5,

I'm going to build a passive affiliate marketing income and I describe it step by step in my blog (see sig), so you may want to have a look if you're interested

[DmitryDavydov]

I make a few grand each month as an affiliate. It's a very simple business, AFTER you find a niche that works.

[thef0x]

Excuse my general ignorance.


What exactly is affiliate marketing and how does it generate income?

[thadroe]

Originally Posted by DmitryDavydov

I make a few grand each month as an affiliate. It's a very simple business, AFTER you find a niche that works.

That's awesome Dmitry!

Very true...I scrapped quite a few before finding a couple niches that worked. It gets easier though after you learn how to do the proper research and testing. The first profitable one is the hardest.

Thad

[thadroe]

Originally Posted by thef0x

Excuse my general ignorance.


What exactly is affiliate marketing and how does it generate income?

Hi Fox,

It's really just the modern day version of a finders fee. Basically, you get paid a commission or ongoing revenue when you drive traffic to a merchant site and they make a purchase.

A simple example would be if you set up a website reviewing software...if a person visits your site, then clicks through and buys the software, you get a commission.

There are affiliate links all over the web...a good portion of the time that you visit a site, then click through to another and buy something, someone along the way is getting paid a commission.

Thad

[Brutha]

hi thadore, so by being an affiliate does it take up a lot of your time? the reason i joine WA was to initially put time in to educate myself about it but it was the thought of passive income while have a lot of free time that got me to join

Most affiliate marketer work spend a lot of their time for it. See this Google Video from Rich Schefren for some perspective.

[thadroe]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Most affiliate marketer work spend a lot of their time for it. See this Google Video from Rich Schefren for some perspective.

I think it depends HOW you do affiliate marketing. There are approximately 13.5 gazillion ways to do affiliate marketing. Some require a lot of ongoing effort, some don't.

If your goal is passive income, which mine is, you just have to focus your energy on marketing methods that don't take a lot of maintenance once it's set up. Also, it's best to focus on industries with long term stable niches.

There are some industries that are in a constant state of flux, and I avoid those because they will require constant attention.

One particular campaign I have not touched in almost 2 months and it is generating some decent income every day. I don't really see that changing any time soon. I know some marketers who have campaigns they have been running for 2 or 3 years and only spend a very small amount of time maintaining them.

....it all just depends how you choose to structure it.

Thad

[Leonard]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Most affiliate marketer work spend a lot of their time for it. See this Google Video from Rich Schefren for some perspective.

great video brutha!

[trekr5]

Originally Posted by thadroe

I think it depends HOW you do affiliate marketing. There are approximately 13.5 gazillion ways to do affiliate marketing. Some require a lot of ongoing effort, some don't.

If your goal is passive income, which mine is, you just have to focus your energy on marketing methods that don't take a lot of maintenance once it's set up. Also, it's best to focus on industries with long term stable niches.

There are some industries that are in a constant state of flux, and I avoid those because they will require constant attention.

One particular campaign I have not touched in almost 2 months and it is generating some decent income every day. I don't really see that changing any time soon. I know some marketers who have campaigns they have been running for 2 or 3 years and only spend a very small amount of time maintaining them.

....it all just depends how you choose to structure it.

Thad

Hi Thadroe

What sort of tools do you advise I use to find the niches in the first place? Can you recommend any good affiliate forums?

[thadroe]

Originally Posted by trekr5

Hi Thadroe

What sort of tools do you advise I use to find the niches in the first place? Can you recommend any good affiliate forums?

Hi Trekr,

I pretty much stick to using the member forum on Wealthy Affiliate....it's where I feel I get all the best info. Plus, since it's not public, people are a little more open about their strategies. There's also the Warrior Forum, which is also good and very active, but it can be a bit "spammy", with a lot of affiliates just trying to sell crap to other affiliates.

As far as doing some initial niche research...I've done it a lot of different ways but as far as a good starting point or "process"...this is a good way to go about it. It's a short summary of a thread from a successful affiliate on the wealthy affiliate forum:

1. Magazines are a great place to start....look for some nichy magazines. Chances are, if there's a niche market hungry enough to support a whole magazine...it's probably something you could make profitable as long as there are affiliate programs for it.

2. Take a handful of niches and check out things like Google trends, technoriati, forums, etc. to see what's going on with those niches and if there is a decent trend.

3. Dig down to see if there is an active community of people passionate about a certain aspect of that niche. Narrow it down to a subniche, and try to find out what these people are just dying to know about or problems they are dying to solve.

....that's just kind of a quick summary to give you an idea.

I also have a free PDF guide I can give you called "Finding Hot Markets and Keywords"....it's written by Carson and Kyle from Wealthy affiliate. I have permission to give it away for free. You or anyone else can PM me if you want me to email you a copy.

Researching a niche thoroughly is really key to making profits as an affiliate. That's one recurring theme I've learned myself and hear over and over again from successful affiliate marketers.

Thad

[Scott Bird]

Originally Posted by DmitryDavydov

I make a few grand each month as an affiliate. It's a very simple business, AFTER you find a niche that works.

That's great - congrats. How long did it take you to get that far?

[thadroe]

Hi Trekr,

Here's the guide I mentioned that might help you with finding niches...I just uploaded it to my domain so no need to PM me if you want to read it.

http://www.thadroe.com/Hot_Markets_and_Keywords.html

Hopefully that will help give you a better idea of how to start researching for a good niche.

Thad

[Ali]

Hi Trekr5

How about you try business with personal development

check out my sig

Thanks

Ali

[trekr5]

thx thad

you're a star

[cultivategreatness]

Through AdSense and CJ.com I made 599.60 last month, October...

Im on par to make about $1000-1100 this month.

Next month, a Bagillionty Dollars.