Affiliate marketing is a scam! It’s just a bunch of worthless middlemen peddling detox tea and get rich quick scams on social media!

I’m seeing a lot of these statements recently. And I think it’s due to all the Twitter and Instagram “influencers” desperately trying to monetize their accounts. In reality, affiliate marketing is much greater than this.

And in today’s article we’ll look at two ways to profit off affiliate links, and several programs worth using.

Enjoy!

The Type Of Affiliate Marketing Most People Know (Your Worst Option)

When most people think of affiliate marketing, they picture a small group of bloggers or social media influencers all plugging the same 2 – 3 eBooks and health supplements.

To them affiliate marketing looks more like a pyramid scheme than an actual sales profession.

This is especially common on social media. You’ll often see accounts who join someone’s “make money online” program, and then spend all day spamming affiliate links in hopes that others will sign up too.

Until mid-2015, I actually thought affiliate marketing was a scam because this was the only visible form of it I noticed.

In reality, this is the tip of the iceberg. And one of the least profitable forms of affiliate marketing. Why? Because you’re selling the same products as everyone else, to the same over-saturated market.

You’re better off aiming for different buyers instead.

Targeting Low-End Customers

(Cheapskates Bring In The Big Bucks)

There’s a lot of money to be made in this niche. Aside from the usual suspects, like diet pills or “male enhancement” products, there are many additional ways to profit off these folks.

Coupon sites are a great example of this. Someone searches “X Item Promo Code” and they end up on some discount site. Here they’re bombarded by ads (instantly monetizing each pageview) before finding their coupon code. The crazy part? Many of those “special discounts” are really affiliate deals put out by the actual company.

So people running these sites get paid twice per customer. Once in ad revenue, and once in commission sales.

High-End Affiliate Marketing

(Some High-End ShareASale Programs Paying Out Hundreds Of Dollars Per Sale)

Whenever you read about some millionaire blogger or niche site doing hundreds of thousands in revenue, think about what they’re selling. It’s almost always because they’re targeting high-end customers.

A few examples of this are sites like: BankRate, Million Mile Secrets, and The Wizard Of Odds.

Banks, credit card companies, jewelers, art galleries, and hotels all offer their own affiliate programs. And many of these are quite lucrative.

Earning 4% commission on an Amazon eBook pays pennies. Earning 4% commission on $19,000 worth of Saint-Gaudens coins is a different story. Likewise, many of these products sell themselves since they’re “aspirational” and buyers want to own them.

Additionally, many of these programs offer very generous payouts. Sometimes providing 100% commission on first time sales.

This is because the customer’s lifetime value is worth a lot to them.

If I run an investment fund and you bring me a client, I’ll happily pay you hundreds of dollars on the spot. Because that new customer will potentially give me millions in the future (if they deposit $35,000 a year for 30 years, that’s $1,050,000).

Lastly, high-end affiliate marketing often has a greater reach than selling information products or running a generic self-help blog.

Investment website Seeking Alpha gets more traffic than the top five entrepreneurial websites (Tim Ferriss, Smart Passive Income, etc) combined.

It’s a huge market with massive profit margins.

Closing Thoughts

By now you’re probably curious about high and low-end affiliate programs. So, I’ll share a few examples with you. Some of these programs are referral links, some aren’t. But I have accounts with all these services.

• AdSense

The world’s most popular ad platform and good for running on mainstream sites. If you’re doing something with coupons, or an aggregation, you can throw some ads on for extra revenue.

Generally speaking, you get somewhere between $1 – $6 per 1,000 impressions. So getting 5,000+ pageviews a day puts a couple hundred bucks in your pocket each month.

• ExoClick

Another ad network, but this one allows “adult content.” Good for gambling, crypto, or good old fashion pornography.

• Commission Junction

A massive affiliate network covering all kinds of mainstream brands and products. I use them for my HostGator links, as well as other stuff.

Commission Junction is also great for high-end affiliate marketing as well as selling household brands. You’ll find offers for everything. From 24 Hour Fitness to Zappos.

• FlexOffers

Somewhat outdated design. But you’ll find a good number of finance programs here. They also have deals with Kohl’s, Skillshare, and a bunch of other sites or stores you know.

• ClickBank

This is the platform all those copywriting gurus recommend. It’s basically information products only, and I personally don’t like a lot of the “hard sell” landing pages.

That said, some of their courses and books payout really well.

• ShareASale

Another good platform, this one offers a whole slew of offers from clothing to digital services. I personally use them for their StudioPress affiliate program.

Anyway, those are some starting places if you’re interested in real affiliate marketing. I’d suggest picking a customer base (low or high-end), then joining a few affiliate platforms to see what offers match your customer’s interests.

It’s the end of the month, a time when I tally my online earnings and figure out how much I made.

Traditionally, July sucks for sales (at least in my opinion), but this year turned out different. The last 30 days have actually been my most profitable of all time.

Because of this, I thought I’d write-up a short post on 5 rules for building a web business.

Here’s my advice.

1. Sell To The Broadest Audience Possible

In the age of memes, Internet communities, and niche interests, it’s easy to over-inflate the scope of some tiny, obscure movement.

Hang out on a conspiracy forum all day, and you’ll start to think that every American knows about flat Earth theory or reptilians. The echo-chamber of Internet culture makes it easy to distort how important a topic really is.

As such, you see a lot of people who get into a small Internet community and then try building their business around it.

The results are rarely successful.

Avoid this issue, by simply creating a venture that appeals to the widest audience possible.

One of the first websites I ever made completely violated this law. I built a site aimed at people who enjoyed Spry chewing gum, but didn’t live near a store that sold it.

I was 19 at the time, and apparently dumb enough to think that was an untapped market.

As you can guess, that site got tens of pageviews over the course of its lifetime.

When you’re just starting out, it’s better to focus on a mass market field with “built-in buyers.”

These are subjects the general public is already interested in. Things like weight loss, fitness, dating, how to make money, home appliances, technological gadgets, and so on.

It’s easier to profit off an already successful niche than it is to cater to some small minority of obscure prospects.

2. Learn Some Basic Math

All business runs on math.

If you want to be successful, you’d better learn some basic calculations.

At the very least, you should understand Expectation Value. This is something I learned about from the book Small Stakes Hold ’em, by Ed Miller.

Basically, this allows you to determine how much you win or lose (on average), by performing a certain action.

Here’s an example.

Suppose you earn $100 for every 1,000 pageviews your website gets.

This means that your Expectation Value (per pageview) is +$0.10.

If you want to make $1,000, you need 10,000 pageviews. It’s simple math, but most people never think like this. Instead, they flounder around, failing to recognize what actually impacts their earnings.

3. Read More

The great marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather won’t take on a project for less than $50,000. If you want their help with your ad campaign, you’d better have lots of cash.

Of course, you can also get all the information you need to write your own ads (from Ogilvy & Mather’s founder), in paperback for $15.95.

Books are a wonderful thing.

Every business idea I’ve ever had came from reading about something and then implementing what I learned.

Back in the spring, I picked up a book called The Millionaire Real Estate Agent. In the first hundred pages, the author talks about finding your “why” or figuring out the subconscious reason you desire more money.

Sounds hokey, but I did the books little exercise, figured out how much extra I wanted to earn (plus the “why” behind this), and had that money within the next 45 days.

The right books open up new doors to places you never thought possible.

4. Think For Yourself

To quote a character from Starship Troopers, “Figuring things out for yourself is the only real freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom.”

Sadly, most people subscribe to the “communal brain” model of thinking. They want someone else to plan everything for them and provide them an exact blueprint for success. Unless they’re given step-by-step instructions on everything, these folks will never take action.

This is pretty dumb in most situations, but it’s especially stupid if you’re interested in building your own business or achieving any sort of self-determination.

Most public advice is made to sound feel-good and reassuring.

Likewise, many big earners (especially in non-tangible fields like finance or Internet stuff), make their money through questionable gray-area practices.

If you’ve read the book Efficiency (it’s really good, I highly recommend it), you’ll know that most of the huge affiliate marketers use unethical – and sometimes illegal – sales tactics. This is stuff like making impossible claims, re-billing customers without their knowledge, or manipulating technical glitches for massive profit.

Trying to compare your success to a guy with hundreds of thousands of dollars in paid traffic, massive botnets, and dozens of employees is like buying a few stocks and then wondering why you aren’t getting Bernie Madoff style returns.

Reading and studying others is important. But, if that’s all you do, you’re getting left in the dark.

Go test things for yourself, and see what happens.

10 hours of action teaches you infinity more than any amount of books, YouTube videos, or blog posts ever could.

5. Put Things Into Perspective

In the summer of 2016, I decided to build as many niche sites as possible.

I’d just gotten the hang of creating good SEO content, and I wanted to hone my skills while earning some extra money on the side.

I think I made about 10 sites in total, seven of which were profitable.

However, none of them were ever big earners. All were hastily made, had bare-bones content, and were plagued by rookie mistakes in terms of finding products to sell and picking successful affiliate offers.

Pro-tip: Never sell “premium” website subscriptions when a standard membership comes fully functional and without any handicapped features. (Think Plenty Of Fish vs. Plenty Of Fish Upgraded).

Anyway, by most metrics, these sites were kind of disappointing. Each one generates less than $200 a month. And, in terms of traffic, they all average around 1,200 – 3,000 pageviews per 30 days. Nothing to write home about.

(Cue The Price is Right losing horn)

Paltry traffic aside, each site brings in roughly $100 a month (July’s lowest earner was $90, while the highest earner brought in $151.97).

That’s $1,200 a year.

Each site’s total upkeep is an annual $25 domain renewal, and maintenance takes 10 minutes a month.

In terms of passive income, every one of those hastily made sites is the same as having a $25,000 mutual fund with 4.5% returns.

Not too bad when you put things in perspective.

Always look at how much time and effort you’re pouring into a project versus how much it’s paying you.

In most cases, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If you have an hour of free time per day, you can make a million dollars blogging.

And in this post, I’ll show you how.

Below is a five-step blueprint for creating profitable websites.

1. Write Every Day For The First Year

When you first start writing online, you’re going to make mistakes. Lots of them. Additionally, won’t be able to rely on help from anyone else. Google doesn’t index sites right away (meaning no SEO traffic), and big name writers don’t link to “nobodies.”

In other words, you’ve got to start from the bottom and work your way up from there.

Luckily, there’s an easy way to do this. Write and publish new content every single day.

I started 30 Days To X in December of 2012. Only 12 people visited my site that month. In January, I wrote a new blog post every day. Traffic started to climb. And by February I was getting 800 visitors a day.

You can overcome most “traffic problems” by simply publishing more content.

A guy named Dan Norris did this, and he built a million-dollar business all off blog posts. With no money spent on advertising or paid traffic.

Writing an article a day (plus some light self-promotion on social media or forums) will grow your audience faster than any “SEO hack” or “Guru shout-out” every could.

2. Read More Fiction

Writing for the web is very different from penning school papers or corporate memos.

While I was always an “A” student in English class, I’ve always struggled with engaging readers online. This is because blogging, copywriting, and Internet articles all require an extra ingredient for success: entertainment value.

“Plain Jane,” “Just the facts ma’am” how-to articles bore people.

Unfortunately, this is the writing style most people were taught in school. English 101 tells us that you should never use words like “you” or “we,” and that we aren’t allowed to inject personal opinion into an essay.

Screw that.

Un-learning formal rules is a big part of becoming a better writer.

And the easiest way to do this is by reading lots and lots of bestselling novels.

Go to a thrift store and buy 20 – 30 mass-market paperbacks. Make sure to pick titles from every genre. Then go home and read them all. You’ll be exposed to a variety of storytelling techniques, all of which will help you to keep your own audience engaged.

While I’d suggest picking up whichever titles catch your eye, I do have a few specific fiction recommendations as well. These are fun reads and filled with powerful writing lessons:

• The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton – Both a suspenseful page-turner and an excellent example of how smart writers (Crichton was a Harvard Med School Graduate) can take complex concepts and make them enjoyable and interesting for the average reader.
• ‘Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King – This book is a masterclass on how to add details to your writing. Every person, object, and event is accompanied by vivid (multi-page) descriptions.
• The Old Man And The Sea, by Ernest Hemingway – This is the best example of clear, concise storytelling that you’ll ever see. Despite being a straightforward tale written in plain English, this book resonated with readers and critics alike. It was both a bestseller and won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

3. Have Something To Sell

You can’t make money online unless you have a product or service to sell.

Sounds simple, yet most people who complain that “you can’t make money on the Internet” do not have any way to monetize their sites.

You’ll see this a lot with “thought leader” blogs. Some writer will crank out thousands of words on politics or personal opinions, and then get mad that his long-winded think piece isn’t generating money.

The truth is: content alone earns nothing.

If you want to make money as a writer, you have to monetize your work.

Stephen King makes money whenever someone buys one of his books. BuzzFeed gets paid by selling ad space on their site. And “talking head” pundits (like Jim Rome or Rush Limbaugh) earn top-dollar through a combination of advertising contracts, product endorsements, and book deals.

If you want to profit in a particular niche, sit down and ask yourself this question:

How does the top person in my field make their money?

Write down every answer you come up with and try emulating them.

4. Study “How-To” Books

Anything you want to do has been done already. And there’s a good chance someone’s written a book on it.

Your public library will have all the technical books for building a profitable website. You’ll find titles like The Art of Social Media and Search Engine Optimization For Dummies. Check these out and read them.

You’ll learn more from reading an actual book than you ever will from joining a forum or listening to “guru” podcasts.

While at the library, I’d also suggest checking out books on writing and storytelling. Books like How To Write A Damn Good Novel or Building Great Sentences will help you with all the technical aspects of creating a sales letter or penning an article.

Lastly, I’d suggest getting a few sales books.

You can’t go wrong with the following titles:

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini.
• Selling 101, by Zig Ziglar.
• Ogilvy On Advertising, by David Ogilvy.

These are genre classics, and they’ll help you immensely.

5. Re-Invest Your Earnings

(24 Year-Old Millionaire)

What is the biggest financial struggle most Americans face?

Retirement planning.

Most people don’t save up enough, leading to all kinds of problems in their old age.

The average Social Security check is $1,360 a month. That’s not enough to live on. Unless you’re going to work forever, you need to save for the future.

And the easiest way to do this is by taking passive income and reinvesting it into another revenue stream. In other words, you take the money you earn from running a blog and put it into another venture.

Case in point, I have several “penny ante” businesses (Amazon Affiliates niche sites, self-published books, etc…). These don’t pay great, but they constantly generate an extra $20 to $30 a day.

That’s more than enough to fully fund a Roth Ira account. And at 6% annual interest, my $15 a day contribution blossoms into $1.2 million dollars by the time I’m 65. That’s over a million bucks, all from “free money” that I got while writing articles online.

Blogging, copywriting, and building websites are not “all or nothing games.” An hour a day spent writing (and an hour or two invested in reading books), still creates a nice supplementary income.

A couple bucks put into an IRA or index fund is a great way to plan for your future. And even if you never have a “smash hit” site, you can still earn enough build up a million-dollar retirement account. All from your part-time writing hobby.