Ask Shawn Collins: Advice for New Affiliates

Posted by shawn on February 19th, 2007 | 9 Comments

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How do I make money as an affiliate marketer?

I received this question from Mark of 45n5.com via a video on YouTube.

He went on to elaborate on his question with a scenario for a typical affiliate marketer. He poses the question from an affiliate described as the following:

He’s a forklift driver worked eight to ten hours a day
In a little bit of debt
Has limited time on the weekends and evenings
Lots of passion to make an affiliate marketing business work

He also has a general understanding of Web site, as he has put up a couple sites, but hasn’t been able to figure out how to convert visitors to buyers through affiliate links.

So if I was starting fresh tomorrow, how would I do it?

First of all, the most important commodity is passion, and that doesn’t cost a thing.

But there is a minimal amount of money I would suggest spending to get things started. You will need a domain and Web hosting, and you should also get an account with an e-mail service provider.

Check out 1&1 Internet for hosting. Their 1&1 Business account is $9.99 a month and it includes the registration of three domain names.

And for e-mail, get an account with AWeber. This will run you $14.95 a month (if you pay a year in advance).

Next up, 1&1 includes a lot of cool tools, one of which is a WordPress blog that’s really easy to set up for your account. I set one up at http://www.blogaff.com via 1&1 in less than five minutes.

This blog will be your Web site, and the home base for your affiliate earnings. Now you’ve got to brainstorm about the subject.

Write down a list of three or four things you really care about – sports team, book, make of car, movie, etc. Decide on one that is your true passion and commit to make this your focus.

Then search for the shortest domain name that evokes your passion, but doesn’t violate any trademarks. Don’t dwell on this too long – find something decent in ten minutes and go with it.

When you’ve got a topic and domain name, then it’s time to start writing. Don’t try to write like a scholar – write in your voice like you’re talking to friends.

I know your schedule is tight, and you can’t afford to sit around your computer on nights and weekends brainstorming about what to write in your blog.

Take advantage of other times. As a forklift driver, use time at work and during your commute to think about things for your blog. It will make your work and drive time go faster and save your precious time at home when you want to be productive.

One thing I do when I have an idea is to call myself on my cell phone and leave myself a message. No fussing with scraps of paper. Then go home, listen to your message and pump out some words.

Your blog posts don’t have to be articles – be consistent and short. Better to provide two to three paragraphs and new information daily than a long weekly post.

After you’ve posted five to ten times to your blog, check out the affiliate networks for some relevant offers to promote. Don’t fixate on the EPCs – rather look for what is most relevant to you.

Pick two to three merchants that you like and would endorse that relate to your topic and join their affiliate programs. Put up a couple or three ads on the blog and monitor which ones are getting clicks and sales. Test everything and if it’s not working out, try something else.

In addition to some banners and text links as ads, work an affiliate link into your posts if it comes natural – don’t force it.

When you’ve followed all of these steps, add your AWeber account into the mix. There are three things you should try out with AWeber: follow-up e-mails, broadcast e-mails and feed broadcast e-mails (the AWeber site details how to use these).

Also, two free resources to sign on with to help promote your blog and monitor the performance are FeedBurner (RSS feed distribution tool) and Openads (free ad server).

The key to all of this is to be patient and passionate. Don’t be discouraged if the checks don’t roll in right away. It takes some time to get traction for your site and build in audience.

In time, you’ll start getting noticed, and those past posts will get indexed in search engines. One last thing to do within your 1&1 account to help with this process – go into your control panel and click on Google Webmaster Tools and set up a Google Sitemap.

Give this all a couple months – if you don’t see some progress in your bank account, you’ve still got two domains available in your hosting account. Consider starting from scratch with a new idea or changing the angle of your existing blog.

Good luck.

Posted in Ask Shawn Collins

On February 19 @ 4:21 pm Martin Edic said

I’d add another essential aspect: persistence. You are going to need a fairly large amount of content on your blog before you see a lot of traffic and the content must appear on a regular basis, at least daily. If you don’t have time during the week, ’save up’ ideas and do a bunch on the weekend. Then either post one each morning or tell your blog software when to post it (Typepad can do this- I assume Wordpress has something similar).
Oh, and pick a subject that involves buying stuff: My kitchen design blog gets a lot more clicks than my climate change blog- kitchens are full of stuff that people buy all the time. I haven’t found any affiliate programs for electric cars!
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On February 19 @ 4:51 pm Shawn Collins said

Agreed, Martin. I mentioned being persistent towards the end initially, but I had to edit the video down to fit on YouTube.
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On February 19 @ 6:31 pm 45n5 said

Thanks Shawn! Personally I’m most passionate about making money online/building websites/etc so I think I already have a blog for that, or maybe not, or I may see what else i could start, or who I can help start around me.

aweber, openads are both new to me. i’ll be signing up with aweber in a bit, I think it’s exciting just to offer 45n5 as emails so everything else they do is gravy on top.

thanks again,
mark
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On February 20 @ 10:17 am Mark said

What a great, “down-to-earth” video. I found the advise valuable, did not detect any sort of snake oil there, just a concern that folks follow the basic steps.

I would love to hear more comments about how to promote your site without using AdWords type services, so that you begin to have the traffic to send your Aweber newsletters to. How do you promote your RSS feeds, etc?

Thank you for taking the time to put that together Shawn.
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On February 21 @ 5:07 am Hakukoneoptimointia said

If your topic is specific enough I would also try adwords marketing together with affiliate offers related to your topic.
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On February 21 @ 10:19 pm Brian said

I totally disagree with having to pay for email. The free solution: gmail. Most hosts allow you to create email accounts and forward the email to another email address. Setup your domain email (like me@smydomain.com) to forward to your gmail account (like me@gmail.com).

Then, you setup gmail to allow you to send email as me@mydomain.com. Now you get the benefit of the excellent spam prevention in gmail, it’s huge storage space, and it’s great interface without paying any more $$ per month.

Brian
http://candyaddict.com
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On February 21 @ 10:41 pm Shawn Collins said

> I totally disagree with having to pay for email.

I’m talking about a service to manage a mail list, send newsletters, handle unsubscribes, provide reporting, etc.
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On March 2 @ 12:18 am andrew wee said

Regarding the email issue, I’d suggest using emails sent from your domain (eg. adam@affblog.com) rather than adam@gmail.com.

1) You create better branding for your business
2) You get some traffic from people who might otherwise see the domain name in your email address and decide to visit your website.

—
ditto on the aweber autoresponder recommendation.
the power is very much in the list.
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On March 2 @ 5:32 am Max said

Another very important thing is support and encouragement from others just like yourself along with stories of success and more tips like Shawn’s. I can’t count the times I’ve run out of inspiration to keep going toward my dreams only to be picked back up again from the great people in the Affiliate community I hang with. In less than a year I’m up to $1000/month. Haven’t quit the day job yet but every success gets me that much closer. Don’t give up! There’s plenty of room for you to succeed too!
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