How We Make Money: Understanding The Process#

Before we dive in, let's quickly talk about the name for this course...

The Affiliate Marketing Process - Video#

Why "Lazy" Commissions?#

"lazy" forces us to focus on core, profitable, automated activities
most straight forward to not waste any time or money
understand the big picture, identify the absolute core activities, processes, and necessary steps to get to $100/day with affiliate marketing in the fastest possible way
once the initial work and automation is done, you can indeed become lazy... 😉

Why Affiliate Marketing#

Get paid to promote somebody elses products/services
The affiliate (you) gets paid to promote/market a third party company's product or service (aka "advertiser" in CPA marketing)
CPA marketing: Cost per acquisition. Often: Lead generation.
We focus on CPS affiliate marketing for now: Cost per sale. ("get paid when you generate a sale")
Also known as performance marketing
Sometimes "referral marketing"

Advantages Of Affiliate Marketing#

Trackable and measurable form of marketing (3rd party tracking of sales)
No need for product creation
Focus on marketing process & traffic generation
Become an expert at online marketing: Traffic & lead generation and email marketing
Extremely valuable skill
Will only grow from here (epic, performance based business model)
No customer support, no dealing with inventory, refunds, charge backs, complaints, etc.
Proven niche/market
Proven product

Disadvantages Of Affiliate Marketing#

Being reliant on the vendor (for support, handling customer issues, maintenance/updates, follow-up/backend, ...)
Limited to available products
Often getting paid only on the front-end only (problem)
Not getting 100% of the entire sale (incl up/cross sales) & especially follow-up sales (big problem!)
Not getting the customer's/buyer's data (most critical disadvantage by far!)

Don't worry, we'll show you ways to overcome the biggest problems later...

Why List Building (Lead Generation) & Email Marketing#

99% of ppl don't buy the first time (need 7 or more touch points / follow up)
Your automated, primary audience building & conversion mechanism/monetization process
Traffic you own (huge! "Traffic on demand / on tap")
Direct feedback and communication with your audience
Makes sales often requires multiple angles (emotional, logical, different people, different levels of trust) - which requires again: being able to follow up
The most reliable, sustainable method (and most future-proof!)
Automation options (becoming a "lazy" affiliate, "making money in your sleep", etc.)
Traffic you own!!

If you take nothing else from this course but one thing, it should be this:

Consistently build/grow your email list.

This list - if treated right - will servce you for years and allows you to make "lazy & true push-button commissions" by sending out a simple email to your list.

And in order to get there, you must first build your list.

This is how the "traffic flow" looks like in the big picture:

Affiliate Marketing Process With Email Marketing

Marketing Starts With Finding Problems To Solve#

It's called market-ing for a reason...

Bottom line:

We help specific people (audience) with similar, specific problems by offering our help and solutions (offers).

Let's go a little deeper...

Step 1: Market Research / Niche Selection#

choosing your niche
knowledge & skills
passions
huge problem(s)

Important: buyer friendly market (profitable)

lots of (new) buyers
lots of repeat buyers
lots of products
Identify big problems, then create & market solutions to these problems

Find a hungry market.

Then:

Step 2: Build Your Website / "Hub"#

Zero budget / Free beginner options:

you have to bootstrap it and make compromises! There are several options...
free WordPress account - forced ads, no plugins, no control, forced environment
free website builders and 3rd party platforms - like this one
If you're really good with tech: Jamstack

Recommended beginner option: This platform.

More on this in the traffic part of the training.

Step 3: Choose A Core-Offer Or Offers To Promote#

Physical vs digital
Amazon vs other affiliate networks (W+, JVZoo, Clickbank, MaxBounty)
Affiliate product vs affiliate funnel
Congruent with niche & message (lead magnet)
Solid EPC (earnings per click)
High perceived value / highly desirable / high demand (see step 1)
Low threshold resistance (easy to say "yes" to)
High conversion rate

More on this in the "core offer selection" module.

Step 4: Drive Traffic#

"Free" / Organic:

Content creation & publishing on your website (reviews, tutorials (how to), case studies, keyword-driven articles and listicles)
Content creation & publishing on third-party websites and social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Medium, podcasts, guest posts, ...)

Four Content Approaches#

Tutorial / helpful article to lead capture
Review to lead capture
Tutorial / helpful content to affiliate products (think about the customer/buyer' data!)
Reviews to products (think about the customer/buyer' data!)

Best / most targeted / deep in the customer purchase process: Reviews

Biggest problem: Not getting the client's data!

Traffic & Conversion#

Eyeballs (traffic / leads)
Something to sell (offer)
A way to sell it (for example via email marketing)

In other words:

Traffic
Offer
A conversion process

The "conversion process" has one purpose only:

To make the right people (1) buy the right offers (2) in a reliable and consistent way.

Marketing Systems#

Let's quickly clarify what we need marketing systems for:

systemize (and potentially automate and/or outsource) the traffic & lead generation (more on that later)
systemize (and potentially automate and/or outsource) the offer creation (or offer selection process for affiliate marketers, more on that later)
systemize and automate the follow-up and conversion process (through lead generation & email marketing, more on that later)

Bottom line:

The systemization of clearly defined processes allows us to get consistency and reliability into our marketing efforts and results.

That's why it's best to follow this training in order...

On Providing Value#

We have to talk about it again, because it's of utmost importance:

We're dealing with honest help & real solutions for real people and their problems.

By providing real value.

This is the most important ingredient and the key to everything else.

If you take care of this, everything else will become easy.

A Quick Word About Google & Facebook#

We often hear or read "Google (or Facebook) hate affiliate markters".

Another account lost...

Why?

Comes back to providing value.

Facebook and Google - believe it or not - want our money...

If we treat this like a real business.

Mindset: This Is A Real Business#

We already talked about this in the last two parts of this module.

If you treat this like a business, it'll serve you like a business.

And you'll earn like a business owner.

Let's take a look at "the big picture" of our business again...

Here's the complete process of what we're trying to achieve and focus on in the most direct, automatable way (in order to become a lazy affiliate later):

Direct Response Marketing Process

You'll notice that:

Every Step In The Process Has One(!) Specific Purpose#

Website: Attract organic traffic (SEO) & lead traffic to your opt-in/squeeze page
Squeeze page: Get people to submit their contact details/email
TY page: Set the stage, get them to check their emails & what to expect in the inbox, lead to your core offer
Email "from" field: "Oh, I know that guy/girl!"
Email subject line: "Oh, that sounds interesting. Let me see what this is about..." (sell the "open")
Email body: "That sounds cool, let me check it out..." (sell the click)
Sales page: "I need to have this!" ($$$ - nothing else)
Product: Deliver on promise, ideally overdeliver/wow the buyer, ideally make the buyer "want more", ideally make him/her a brand advocate/fan