I have created a new and improved version of K Money Mastery which is called, Mastering Book Publishing!
In the previous parts of this video blog series, I shared how I make money with Kindle Publishing and Blogging, which are the two methods I've used to be the core of attracting visitors and building a following of people. With a lot of visitors and a following of people, one of the easiest ways to make money is through affiliate marketing.
Affiliate marketing is when you get paid a commission for referring customers to purchase someone else's product or service. It's a very easy way of making money, simply because you don't have to do any of the work in creating the product or service. The only thing that you have to do is provide the visitors and traffic to someone else's website and then they do the rest. The vendor that you're promoting will have the website, sales page, product, customer support, etc… and basically just pay you a commission for every sale that you generate for them. Everything is tracked through a unique link that the vendor will give you, so you get credit for every sale you generate for the vendor.
Basically, you get rewarded for referring customers to someone else. How cool is that?
This has been a very powerful and effective way for me to making money online, simply because I've been able to build a large following of people through my Kindle e-books and blog. A big part of my success online has been my transparency and openness. I authentically share with others what I'm doing in my life, as well as the resources and tools that have benefitted me to become successful. If there's a great course or program that I've been through that has helped me and that I'm passionate about, I naturally want to share that with others. By sharing it with others, it's an opportunity to help someone else with something that I believe in, while getting paid a commission for the referral.
In this video blog, I share more ways of how I make money through affiliate marketing and how you can get started as well.
(Click here to watch on YouTube)
This page contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of them, I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you). I only ever endorse products that I have personally used and benefitted from personally. Thank you for your support!
4 Simple Ways I Make Money As An Affiliate Revealed
There's several methods or ways that I make money as an affiliate and I'm going to reveal them below.
1. Creating A Blog Or YouTube Video Reviewing A Product
The initial way that I got into affiliate marketing was through a course called Bring The Fresh (which I still recommend today).
Side Note: Did you see what I just did there? I just mentioned the product, Bring The Fresh, that helped me get started with affiliate marketing. If you or someone just so happens to click on that link and purchase the program, I get paid a commission for it. THAT is an example of affiliate marketing right there!
Anyways, in this Bring The Fresh program, I learned how to set up a blog around a specific product and rank it in Google and the other search engines for the products keywords. The blogs I created would be providing reviews about the product or service. When a potential customer would search for the product they are interested in buying, they'd find my blog that would have reviews on it, and if they purchase the product through the links in my blog, I'd get a commission for it.
To give you some examples, here are some of the websites that I set up years ago (and still make money from) that promote other products and I make money from as an affiliate:
As you can see, these blogs provide useful articles reviewing products like Vitamix, Blendtec and Fitbit. All of these products are great and I've personally used them myself, so I feel comfortable recommending them to others. When people find these websites while searching in Google about the product, it will not only help them decide on purchasing it, but if they purchase it through my blog then I get paid a commission for it.
The only challenge that I've found with creating these little blogs is that it's become increasingly difficult to rank a website or blog in Google. It can sometimes take several months of effort and you're required to publish high quality content that helps people (see my previous post on blogging), so it is method that you have to be committed to in the long-term. It isn't like Kindle publishing where you can expect to make money within a month. I've had blogs that have taken me at least 3 months of effort before I started to see a return on investment on.
However, there is a much easier way to rank on Google, which would be to create a YouTube video that reviews a product and has an affiliate link in it. The reason why YouTube is easier to rank in Google than a blog, is because YouTube (which is owned by Google) is a website that has higher authority than a new blog does. Google loves YouTube and always ranks videos high up in their search engine, which is why it's a powerful tool to take advantage of.
To give you an example of this, go to Google.com and search for the keyword “Vitamix Review” and look at all the YouTube videos that show up on the first and second page. As you can see on the 2nd page, the third video down is a video of me reviewing the Vitamix blender.
If you click on the link to the video (you can check it out here), you'll see that the video basically shares my experience with the blender and the benefits of it. I also include an affiliate link to it on the description of the video, so if anyone clicks on it and purchases a Vitamix, then I get paid a commission.
You're required to learn a bit about search engine optimization (SEO) in order to rank a blog or YouTube video in Google, but there's a lot of good courses that can teach you how to do that. Once you get the hang of it, you can easily put out as many blogs or videos as you want, and each of them can generate you a passive income every month on autopilot.
2. Reviewing Or Promoting Products On My Blog
The other way that I make money through affiliate marketing is through reviewing or promoting products on my blog. The reason why I've now chosen to use my blog, Project Life Mastery, as a way of reviewing products is simply because it's much easier than creating new blogs from scratch. I've been able to build the authority of my blog in Google, which makes it much easier for me to rank new blog posts in the search engine. Every new blog post that I publish on my blog also helps me build up the authority of my blog in the eyes of Google, which in turn drives even more traffic to my blog.
To give you some examples, here is a long list of blog posts that I have that review other products and rank in Google for, while making money from:
Book Reviews:
Jairek Robbins – Rapid Results Formula Review
Not all of these blog posts make me money, but most do. As you can see, many of them I'm just promoting a book on Amazon that I enjoyed and sharing what I learned from it. Others I'm sharing a product, program or seminar that I attended. All of these blog posts rank in Google for various keywords and drive traffic back to my blog. They all include affiliate links in them and make me money if someone decides to purchase through them.
3. Promoting Products From My Kindle Books
Another way that I make money through affiliate marketing is using the traffic and visitors that my Kindle books provide. One of the reasons why I love Kindle publishing is because it's an easy way to get in front of hundreds or thousands of people in a specific niche.
For example, if I publish a Kindle book on the raw food diet or cleansing and it gets hundreds or thousands of downloads (easy to do using a Free Promotion), then I now am able to make money from all of these people that are now going to go through my book. These people that would be reading my Kindle book on the raw food diet, don't you think they might be interested in the Vitamix blender? Absolutely!
In my Kindle book, I'm then able to link them to my YouTube video on my Vitamix review, or to my blog post reviewing Vitamix, or even insert a link back to Amazon to purchase the Vitamix on their website. With this strategy, I'm not only making money from Kindle with my royalties, but also on the back-end as well as an affiliate. Cool, right?
I also use my Kindle books to build an e-mail list, which I go into in more detail below. With an e-mail list, I'm able to communicate with my customers frequently through e-mail and recommend even more products or services to them that I can earn a commission on. I'm essentially meeting their needs and helping them out. I'm adding value to them, while receiving a commission for each referral I send.
4. Promoting Products To My E-Mail List
When they visit my blog and read my blog posts, many people will end up clicking on some of the affiliate links of products or services that I might recommend, which makes me money. I think this is pretty fair, since I am investing so much time and energy to putting out free content to help people (that I don't get paid for, unless someone clicks my links and buys something).
If there's a specific product or service that I want to promote or share with my followers, then I'm easily able to do that by sending out an e-mail to them to tell them about something or recommend something to them. I've done this many times and been able to make a lot of money simply by sending out a short e-mail that requires only 10 minutes of my time!
When it comes to promoting products to your e-mail list, there are two very important rules that I follow that has helped make me successful at affiliate marketing. They are the following:
- NEVER, EVER promote or recommend a product that you haven't personally used or feel comfortable recommending. You must always put your visitors and followers first and be focused on helping them, instead of just making money. If you promote or recommend a product that sucks, then you will lose trust with your followers and they will never believe what you have to say again. The key to success with affiliate marketing through your e-mail list is developing a powerful trust and relationship with your followers. They will trust you if they can sense that you are genuinely trying to help them and see them be successful. You must always nourish this relationship and maintain their trust, which is why it's important to only recommend products that are high quality.
- Maintain a balance of adding value and promoting. This is important, since if you promote too much and are always sending out e-mails just promoting products, then people will get annoyed and unsubscribe from your e-mail list. They will also begin to open your e-mails a lot less, affecting your open rate. That's why you want to focus first and foremost on adding as much value as you can. Then every once in awhile, perhaps promote a product or service that can be worthwhile in helping them.
These are the rules that have served me and what I continue to follow today. The trust and relationship that I have with my followers is the most important thing to me and I look out for their interests just as much as my own. With this mindset, I've been able to build a fantastic following of people that continue to receive value from me.
How Do You Find These Affiliate Programs?
You might be wondering how to find these affiliate programs so that you can receive commissions promoting other products. The good news is, there's many of them, and they are all fairly easy and straightforward to use. Here are some of my favourites:
Clickbank: They have a large marketplace of information products that you can sell and be an affiliate for.
JVZoo: Another large marketplace of information products that you can be an affiliate for.
Amazon Associates: Allows you to promote and make a commission on ANY product that is on Amazon.
Commission Junction: A popular affiliate network where you can find all types of physical products and services to promote.
ShareASale: Another popular affiliate network where you can find all types of physical products and services to promote
These are the top affiliate networks that I use that has allowed me to find a lot of great products or services to promote. They're all reliable and easy to use. To promote a product or service on there, you just get a unique affiliate link that you can use to send your visitors to. Of course, there's many more out there too. If there's a specific product or service you want to promote and see if they have an affiliate program for, you can usually find it on their website or do a simple Google search for it (not all products have affiliate programs available).
The Best Way To Get Started With Affiliate Marketing
Here's a few other courses that can help you get started:
I've personally been through all of these courses and they're all great. They will teach you general internet marketing and go into affiliate marketing as well – but you don't need to go through all of them like me. Instead, I'd recommend to just pick one and follow it. If you want to specifically start with affiliate marketing, then Bring The Fresh is a good place to start.
Of course, you could always try to learn things on your own, but I don't recommend it. It will save you so much time if you just invest a bit of money to learn how to do things the right way and you won't have to go through the many failures that I personally went through, because I was too stubborn to invest in myself.
However, understand there are some investment costs in affiliate marketing and some softwares/tools that you'll require. Below, you'll find a list of the resources that I recommend that I personally use to set up my blogs and make money with affiliate marketing.
Here's a list of the resources I use for affiliate marketing:
- GoDaddy – The #1 domain name registration service. All of my domains are purchased through them. Domains as low as $9.99/year.
- BlueHost – Most of my websites are hosted on Bluehost. Hosting starts at $4.95/month. Easy to use, 1-click automatic WordPress installation, and amazing customer support. (See my blog post on how to create a blog and get a free domain name with Bluehost)
- WordPress – Free blogging platform that is easily customizable with wonderful support. All of my blogs and websites (including this one) use WordPress.
- Market Samurai – The best keyword research tool available. This software will help you be able to discover what niche or website to get into and do all the research required to be successful. They have free video tutorials on their website.
- Google Adwords Keyword Research Tool – A free tool that will help you to do basic keyword research and find out the popularity for certain keywords, as well as the competition.
- Unique Article Wizard – The best article marketing and article submission service that creates backlinks to your website to increase Google and search engine rankings.
- AWeber – The top email opt-in service and email marketing/broadcasting tool. This is what I use to build my e-mail list and newsletter.
- Google Analytics – Google’s free website tracking and analytics tool. Allows you to track all the stats and activity going on in your website.
- Odesk – You can hire web designers, programmers, graphic designers, or anyone to do any virtual work for you abroad really inexpensively.
- Fiverr – Get work done for only $5.
For a more complete list of resources that I recommend, click here.
To view the other video blogs of this series on Exactly How I Make Over $40,000 Per Month Online, click below: