AFFILIATE MARKETING FROM ZERO! Learn everything you need to make money with affiliate marketing EXCITING ADVENTURE
MAKE YOUR FIRST MONEY WITH AFFILIATE MARKETING As promised in this ebook you are going to get a step by step guide to getting started with Affiliate Marketing. We are going to show you how we do it and the steps that we follow. But first, we are going to give you a little inside on what we do. We are Oliver and Carla and together as you know, we are Exciting Adventure. We run a blog, where we share our journey of becoming digital nomads as well as our travel tips and stories. We left Berlin and everything we had there at the end of 2017 to go to Ecuador. We had the dream to travel the world and making a living online so we could keep doing it. But we didn t want to wait around in Berlin until we made it. So we sold everything we had, took all our savings and left. We wanted to travel and become digital nomads. But to be honest, we started with the nomads part first. Hopping digital adds along the way. What is Affiliate Marketing? Before we really get started on how to earn money through affiliate marketing, we are going to quickly explain what it actually is. Affiliate marketing is when you promote other peoples products and get a commission for every sale you make. This means that you find a product you like and promote it on your website or blog. For every sale that comes from you, you get a commission. It sounds simple? Affiliate marketing is not hard to apply, but you need to find the right strategy to make it work. 2
Why affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is a great way to start earning money online and create a passive income. That is why 99% of people that want to jump into the making money online world start with affiliate marketing. The benefits of affiliate marketing are that it is very easy and cheap to start. Signing up for affiliate marketing is most of the times free. Creating a website is a small investment compared to other kinds of businesses, therefore very affordable for everyone. Affiliate marketing gives you a great inside into what a business is without having to worry about all the big things about a business such as a customer service, employees or shipping. All that is done for you, you only need to promote the products and get a commission for every sale. That s why affiliate marketing is so popular. So before we start talking about how to do it, we are going to talk about the steps you need to take to get started. We are going to focus on how to earn money through affiliate marketing with a blog or website. At the very end, you will also find a bonus which is an advanced affiliate marketing strategy. So let s get started! 1. Find your passion The first thing you need to do is to find something you are passionate about. Something you can picture yourself talking the whole day long about without getting tired. Something you know a lot about. 3
When you find this passion is when we are going to start turning it into a business. Because you want to find something you like. Something that won t feel like work for you. You need that one thing that you have fun doing and that you will want to work hard for it so it works out. A lot of people choose their hobby. So if you love to play golf, go for it. It has to be something that you also know a lot about. If you know a lot about something you probably know more than 99% of the people, so you are able to teach them something about it. We love traveling, experiencing new cultures and helping people. That is why we went with traveling. But we want to help you reach your goals and dreams, and that is why we are sharing how we build up our business with you. So that you see that if we can make it, starting from nothing, you can too. Some niches for sure will make money faster than others, but you can make money with anything. Especially if it is your passion, money will come eventually. 2. Know more than 99% of the people You have to know a lot about the topic you decide to go with. If you are a chess lover than go with chess. You will know more about it than most people around you. If there is something you are really passionate about, but you feel that you don t know that much yet to be able to talk about it to other people, then educate yourself first. Read books about that topic, take courses, watch tutorials After doing some studying you will know more than 99% of the people. So you will be able to talk about it to other people giving them a great value. 4
3. Start a blog So now that we have chosen our topic in which we are experts in we have to start a blog. In order to start a blog, there are few steps to follow. 3.1. Choose your blogging platform One of the first things you will need is a blogging platform. There are many options such as Wordpress, Blogger, Squarespace to name a few. We use Wordpress. It is the most popular one platform, and we really like it. It is very easy to use and has a lot of themes you can choose from. Since it is so big it has a large community of users sharing tools and ideas. In Wordpress, there are two options, a self-hosted site or a Wordpresshosted site. Wordpress hosted sites are free, but they are limited and your domain will like this: yourblog.wordpress.com. If you choose a self-hosted site it will cost you a bit but you will be much more in control and you will be able to have a normal domain: yourblog.com. 3.2. Choose your host Now that you have decided to go with Wordpress you will need a host. A host provides you with server space so that your site can be found on the internet. We chose Bluehost for our site and we are very happy with it. It is one of the most affordable hosts around and with great features. With Bluehost, you don t even need to install Wordpress since they have everything ready for you to start creating your website with Wordpress right away. If you don't want to take Bluehost there are many more hosts. If you want 5
to use another one, make sure it has one-click Wordpress install though. Another very popular one is Siteground, which offers great customer service. - If you want to go with Bluehost and want a step by step guide to get your blog started with Bluehost then check out our How to start a Blog post. Here you can just follow our guide to getting started. - 3.3. Choose your domain name Once you decided on your host, create an account. Here you will be able to transfer a domain if you already have one or create your domain. A domain is the web address under which your site will be found. Ours is exciting-adventure.com If you don t have one yet it s time to decide on your domain name. If you are creating a personal blog maybe go with your name. If not, think of something short and catchy. Depending on what your niche is maybe put a word in that will let the visitor know what your site is about even before visiting it. You want a name that is brandable and intuitive. 3.4. Install Wordpress and choose your theme Go into your Bluehost account (or your preferred host) and install Wordpress. If you went with Wordpress you will see that it is already installed. Once installed you will be able to choose a theme and start designing and filling out your blog. Wordpress is very intuitive, so even with no idea about web design, you will be able to make a pretty nice website. At the beginning you might be a little confused, I was too. But you will soon get to know how it works. If not, do as I did and get help with youtube tutorials. 6
3.5. Create your first post Once your website has the basics: a home page, an about page and a contact page, start creating content. Write your first post and publish it. You might feel a bit weird at first because you think no one will be reading it, but it is the first step. Shortly you will have people going into your blog and reading what you have to say. If you don t want to start your blog with only one post, get 5 posts ready before you launch your blog. Write interesting content so that the people will come back for more. Find your own style, your own stories so that it sticks in your visitors. So that they think, this is great, I want more! Now that you have created your blog it is going to be like your little baby. You will have to take care of it and feed it. At least once a week you will have to feed it with a new post. You have to keep your blog active so that the visitors will go back for more. 4. Drive traffic to your website Now it s time to drive traffic to your blog. Because, what is a blog without visitors? There are many ways to drive traffic to your blog and we are going to go through some of them: 4.1. Guest posting This is probably the biggest and most common one. Guest posting is so good because it shows your content to a new audience. People that otherwise might have never gotten to your blog. 7
And if you get a guest post in a page with high traffic it is not only good because you might get a lot of new visitors, but also great for your SEO. - Check our Complete Guide to Guest Posting to learn how to ask for guest posts so that they get accepted. - 4.2. Social Media Be active on social media. Let the world know that you are there and what you are doing. But always adapt your content to the platform you are working with. Don t share the whole content posted on the blog on other sites. What you have to do is promote your blog on this sites and drive people to it. Figure out which your target audience is and what they do on social media. Then do the same, hang out where they do, publish content they like and never miss a chance to link back to your blog. 4.3. Forums Join forums in your niche. Be active in them. At first, just participate, answer questions Once you are in you can start linking to your site. If you are allowed to a costume signature, then always link to your blog. Don t start linking back to your blog in a spammy way because you will get kicked out. Bring value to people with your answers and link to your blog when it fits and helps answer their questions. 4.4. Leave comments on blogs and social media Leave meaningful comments in places where your target audience also hang out. Don t comment things like Great post. Instead, leave useful information. So that when other readers see your comment they will want 8
to know who left it and maybe click-through to your site. In this comments, you shouldn t link back to your site, only if there is a really good reason to do so. Otherwise, it could look spammy. Neither the owner of the blog or the other users are going to like that. 4.5. Build relationships and attend events Relationships are very important. It s much more likely to get help from a friend than from a complete stranger. So get in touch with other people from your niche and get in conversations with them. Get to know them before asking them for a favor. To join a community of like-minded people we invite you to join our Facebook Group. 4.6. Create great content I will say this again because even if you do all the above and drive as much traffic to your website as you can, it will be nothing worth if you don t have great content on your site. Content is what people go the blogs for. To answer their questions about things they don t know about. To get to know more about something. But if they can t find that in your blog, they will leave immediately and won t come back. So make sure that what your share is what your readers want to read. 5. Create a lead magnet or freebie With your website set and traffic starting to flow to your site you now need a way to monetize it. 9
That is why the first step you need to take is to create a freebie. A freebie is a free giveaway for the users that come to your site. They will get this freebie in exchange for their email address. The email address is what will allow you to make money out of your visitors. But first, how do I create a freebie? There are many things that can serve as a freebie and that will cost you 0$ to produce. CHECKLIST Checklists are a very popular lead magnet and convert very well. It makes life easier for your readers. Everybody likes to know exactly what they have to do, and checklists are great for that. TEMPLATE A template is anything that provides some sort of starting point or something where the users just have to fill in the blanks. For example, Email templates or Add templates. EBOOK Write a small ebook that gives great value to your readers. Choose a topic that you think your readers want to know more about and share it in form of an ebook. RESOURCE LIST This is great because you are saving the user a lot of time by putting all the resources they need in a single document. PLANNER OR CALENDAR Create a planner or calendar that your users can download and print or use at home on their computers. Make their life easy. WEBINAR OR TUTORIAL They give extra value to what you are already showing on your page. You are giving them extra tips to you live content. This is a great lead magnet. 10
Webinars are good because they give a feeling of urgency that they might fill up. CHALLENGE As the webinar, challenges are great because they give a feeling of urgency because they are a starting and finishing date. They also give a feeling of a community since many people are doing one thing together that otherwise they might not do. Due to the new GDPR law that applies to all citizens that are part of the European Union, you need to make sure to let people know that they will also subscribe to your email list, and they need to give active consent. To know more about it read here. 6. Get an Autoresponder and create your email list Now that you have your freebie with which you will attract people to join your list you need an Autoresponder. This is the one that will collect your emails and will send automated emails to your contacts. This way you only have to write the email once and the autoresponder will make sure that all your contacts get it when they are supposed to. 6.1 Choose an autoresponder As with hosts, there are also many different autoresponders. We have tried a couple and we have to say that ConvertKit, now named Seva, is our favorite. Seva was created from blogger for bloggers, and their mission is to help others make a living out of their passion. 11
Seva also allows you to do affiliate marketing without problems. Some other email responders like MailChimp are free for up to 2,000 subscribers and you can send 12,000 a month. This sounds great, especially for beginners. The only problem with this is that as soon as you start including affiliate links into your emails they are going to block your account. 6.2. Sign up and set up emails Now that you have decided which autoresponder you want is time to start making your first automatization. So, when your visitors sign up, what is the first thing they are going to get? You should make at least 5-10 welcome emails. These are the first emails that are going to be sent to your visitors. In the first one, they are going to get their freebie, or access to it in order to be able to download it. You are going to welcome them and tell them why it is awesome that they signed up to your email list and why they should stick around. From that moment on you are going to send great content to them. You are going to build a relationship with them. 7. Create a landing page You have to create a landing page. This is where your visitors are going to sign up for your email list. In the landing page, you have to show your freebie and what benefits they get when they download it. You need a call to action and a catchy title with what it is and why it is so important that they download it. Let them know how it is going to help them and the benefits they are going to have from reading it. 12
To create landing pages we recommend Clickfunnels. It has a very simple drag and drop system and lets you create optimized landing pages in no time. It also has proven to work sales funnels, which will make it easier for you, especially at the beginning. If you want to take a look at it click here. They also offer a two week trial period. 8. Sign in for affiliate programs There are many different sites that offer affiliate programs. You have to see which ones fit your niche best and offer you the best commissions. One of the most common ones is Amazon Affiliate. Here you can promote products from Amazon, and for every sale made through your affiliate link, you get a commission. Here commissions are not very high, but it s a good way to start. Another one we have joined is Commission Junction (CJ Affiliate). Through this affiliate network, you can join different affiliate programs from different companies. Another very popular one is ShareASale, which we also recently joined. Here you can find all types of merchants and can join the different programs. You can also join Clickbank, where you can find a lot of online products such as business courses that you can promote. Another way to find affiliate programs is by just looking at the things you use and love. Then go to google and type the name of the product + affiliate program. You will see that a lot have affiliate programs. Just request to join and start promoting. The goal of affiliate marketing is that you recommend products to your 13
readers that you are convinced about. Products that you use and love. Your visitors love you and trust you by the time you start recommending them things. So you don t want to come over spammy. As if you would just send them links to make money. You want them to buy your recommendations. 9. Let everybody know about your Ebook Promote your Ebook in your social networks and on your blog. Make sure you have a sign in box in your homepage and anywhere your visitors can see it. Now it s the time to make sure it reaches your audience on all possible platforms. You want as many people signing up to your email list because this is where the money is. A great way to get subscribers is also through youtube. So if you are confident to do videos, create a youtube channel. Youtube subscribers are the highest converting. Get a lot of visitors to your blog and your youtube channel and drive them to your landing page. Once they are subscribers keep them up to date with your newest content. This will make your newest content have a lot of traffic from the beginning, which will tell Google that it must be good. In consequence, google or youtube will rank you higher and you will get more visitors to your blog and videos, which you will drive again to your landing page. Keep doing this, and you will not only grow your blog and your youtube but also your email list. 14
Your turn to get started! Follow this 9 steps and you will see that you will start making money. The hardest part is to get people to sign up to your list. But once you have conquered that, you will be growing and growing. Affiliate marketing takes time, but with the right strategy you will make money, and you will be able to scale it. If you have any questions about the process just send us an email at excitingadventure@exciting-adventure.com But before we finish, as promised, we are going to tell you also about an advanced affiliate marketing strategy. This strategy involves Facebook Ads. We recommend starting using this strategy once you already know how affiliate marketing works. Keep reading to find out more! 15
Advanced Facebook Ads Strategy for Affiliate Marketing The first thing, as we just said, is that this Facebook Ads strategy will require some trial and error, which means some learning. The other thing that you need to consider is that this Facebook Ads strategy for affiliate marketing that I am going to show you is not for complete beginners. 1. What is this strategy all about? What we are going to do is promote high converting affiliate products for big niches with Facebook ads. This means that we are going to use Facebook Ads to sell our affiliate products. First, you will need to make some ad tests. Through trial and error we will find the right ad and then we will scale it. What we are going to do with this strategy is basically turning every dollar we invest into 2, 3, 4 or 5 dollars. At least at the beginning. With time you might be able to make, like a friend of mine, 27$ out of every 1$ that he invests. Now, let me ask you a question. How much money would you put into a money-making machine like that? I would love to recommend you a product or course with more in-depth information about this strategy than the one I can give you in this post, but unfortunately, I didn t find any. 16
Anyways you might be asking yourself right now how do I create a good converting offer and how do I find the right money-making ad? 2. Find the right niche So before you can start making money you need to find a niche. The niche needs to be as big as possible because you need room to scale your offer after you have found the right add. This means that once you ve found an add that is working well you want to promote it as much as possible and reach as many people as possible. If your niche doesn t have a big audience you won t be able to do this. That s why there are only 3 niches which seem to fit the criteria: Health, Wealth and relationships. These are 3 huge niches that affect everybody and where there is always room for more. So choose one of them, the one you feel the most attracted to in order to start applying the strategy. You can make money in all 3 of them. 3. Find the right Product Once you ve decided on a niche you need to choose a product. For that, we recommend Clickbank because it has most online products and those are the ones that are going to give you higher commissions. Since you will be also spending money on Facebook ads these are the best products to promote. Of course, you could also choose other affiliate networks if you wish, such as ShareASale or CJ, or the many more existing out there. Now head to Clickbank and search for a good product in the niche you just chose. You should search for a product with gravity 15 or more. Gravity is a Clickbank s indicator to show how good the product is 17
converting and how many people are selling the product right now. The more people are selling the product the more money is flowing into the niche. The product you choose should give you at least 25$ or more per sale. It needs to have a high commission since you will also be spending money on ads, and you want to make a profit. Try to find one with upsells. That means that after a customer buys the initial product, which might have a lower price, he could choose to buy something else, a more complete course, a coaching This is good because after a customer buys the first thing they will be marked so that they know that the sale was brought by you. If they decide to buy more products from the same vendor you will also get the commission for those other products they buy. Last but not least, try to find a vendor who actually cares for their affiliates. That means vendors that provide good tools for the affiliate such as sales letters, videos or banners. This is not only important for this strategy, but also for any affiliate marketing product you choose. 4. Create an attention-grabbing Ad Now you are going to create an attention-grabbing ad. You could call it click-bait because you want to have as many clicks as possible on the ad. A good way to find good click-bait titles it to go to youtube and take a look at the most popular videos. See which ones you would click based on the picture and title and save them. This will serve you as inspiration for your own click-bait titles for your 18
Facebook ads. Afterward, you will take your offer and brainstorm in order to come up with a short attention-grabbing sentence. This sentence will be used to place it on a picture for your add. Your facebook add is going to be an attention-grabbing picture with a clickbait title. People scroll through Facebook and your picture has to get their attention while they do and make them want to click, all in just a couple of seconds. 5. Create a landing page. The next step in this affiliate marketing strategy is creating a landing page. You want to do that because no one will ever buy something from your ads if you link directly to the offer. That s because people that are in Facebook are in a Social media mindset. What you want to do is change their mindset form a social media mindset to a buyer mindset before you bring them to the offer. The best way to create a landing page, as we said before, is with Clickfunnels. What you want to have on your landing page is a sales text or video. You want to tell the people why this product is good, how it will help them and why they need it. It has to be something that makes them want to buy it. Something that makes them forget that they were scrolling through Facebook and changes their mindset into a buyer mindset. 19
6. The 3 keys to succeeding with that strategy #1. Only promote offers that are converting like crazy. Don t think you are smart if you are going into small niches because you will have no competition. You can t scale your ads in small niches so its a waste of time. You don t want to spend $1 to get $1, you want the money you invest to actually multiply. #2. The higher the Click through rate (CTR) is the cheaper is the click. In most Affiliate courses you will learn that a CPR of 1-2 % is normal. With this strategy, we are aiming for 8-15% CTR. You will be able to reach that CTR if you follow the next step. #3. Images are the key to get as high CTR. Try to create the most clickbait photos ever but don t lie. If people click on your add they want to learn more about what they saw on the picture. If you lie, they won t get what they expect and will leave as fast as they got there. That s the hardest part. If you figure out the strategy that works best for you it is easy to scale it. I already have templates that I use to do it and it just takes me a few minutes to create a foto. 7. The magic number After you ve created your add is time to check how good it is running. This is important because you don t want to throw all your money away in an ad that is not converting. That is why now we are going to talk about how to know if your add is making you money or not. Once you ve spent some money on adds and made your first sales you are going to be able to identify your magic number. We call the magic number the number which represents the average of the 20
earning that a lead is making. That means that you divide how much money you made between the number of leads you got. For example, you got 100 leads and made 1000$. This means that every lead is making you 10$. So for you, the magic number will be 10$. That means that you shouldn t spend more than 10$ to get a lead because if not you will only be losing money instead of making some. 8. Traffic light checklist There are three options when it comes to how good your add is converting. We will follow the example with 10$ as your magic number: You are paying less than $10 per lead we will consider it Greenlight. That means your ad is running great. If you are paying $10 per lead we will consider it Yellow light. That means you should do some adjustments on the add so that it either becomes green light. If you are paying more $10 lead it is a Red light. That means you stop the ad immediately!!! It is only burning your money but not bringing any results. If you made some adjustments on a yellow add and it turned red then you should stop it too. It is not about waiting and hopes that it eventually turns green. Make some changes and try again. It is all about trial and error at the beginning. But once you found the one, you can start making a lot of money with one single add. 21
That is why this Facebook ads strategy is so great. Once you have figured out what works for you, you can just scale it and do it all over again with other products. 9. Which adjustments can I make? If you have a low CTR it results in high costs per click (CPC). This means that now many people are clicking on your add and that is why the cost per click will be high. The cause for this is usually a bad image or that you are targeting the wrong audience. If you have low earnings per click (EPC) it can mean that you either target the wrong audience, promote the wrong offer (bad conversion) or you have a bad sales page (landing page). So try to make some changes to those things. Maybe run two or three adds adjusting a different thing on each and see which one runs better. That way you will be able to identify what was what you were doing wrong. 10. Last tip Once it is running try to contact the vendor of the product you are selling and ask for higher commissions. A lot of vendors are really great and appreciate that you promote and sell their products. Most might raise your commissions if you ask them. They want you to keep selling their product since it results also in more money for them. This is something that you can also can apply for your Blog or website. If you have on product that is perfoming extremly good you can talk to your merchant to discuss your comission. 22
If you guys enjoyed this ebook, please let us know and share it with your friends. We want to help you create a passive income so that you can enjoy the things in life that are important to you! To follow our journey and get to know more about our adventures follow us on our Instagram Account. If you want to connect with like-minded people join our Facebook Group. And for more tips on becoming a Digital Nomad and the Digital nomad lifestyle keep reading our Blog. We post regularly the best tips and strategies for you! Carla & Oli 23