Well, yeah… me too.

I thought I might do something about that recently. Maybe I could get some nice quick content on here.

Here’s the story.

Free – Arun Chandran Gift

Arun Chandran runs the Flaming Hot PLR site. Calls himself “His Excellency. He’s a great PLR provider. I’d link to his site, but he’s doing a redesign, and he’s got the site shut down right now. Thanks for blowing my affiliate commissions there buddy. Maybe someone should tell him about staging sites.

Anyway, I’m on his list. He’s not one of those everyday mailers. Sometime he goes so long between mailings you can almost forget him. Well, truly no one forgets His Excellency.

Arun will often send out gifts in his emails. Pays to be a subscriber.

He sent out a gift article the other day called, Discover 5 Proven Ways to Monetize Your Blog. He included a DWHYW license with his article. Yeah, I never heard of it either. Here’s how he explains it:

Hello!

What’s a DWHYW license? Simple… it’s a ‘Do Whatever the Hell You Want’ license. Usually referred to as unrestricted rights.

Do note that if you’re giving it away or reselling it, you may NOT pass on the giveaway rights or resell rights to your customers.

There must be a benefit to being on my list/FB group and this little rule ensures it.

Pretty sweet.

So that’s the free.
I used it to publish the article called 5 Proven Ways to Make Money With Your Blog

I did a quick copy/paste of the article to this site. I changed the title a little, created level 2 headers where the original had a numbered list and where Arun’s article talked about some resource or tool, I linked out to them.

That’s pretty lazy right there. I didn’t even get affiliate links for those items.

Cheap – Steve Chase Voiceover

Steve Chase runs Everything PLR. He’s also on Arun’s list. He got the same free article I did.

Steve is fairly new on the PLR creator scene, but he’s been doing voice-over work for years. He took the free article and voiced it. He then packaged the script, which was just the original article and an mp3 file of his audio version of the article and sold them together.

I bought a copy. It cost me $4.99.

That’s the cheap.

Lazy – Vidnami Hands Off Video

I signed up for Vidnami many months ago. It’s a cloud based video production software. The main sales point is that you provide the script, and the Vidnami program can take it from there.

I have never used it. Yes, I’m a shameful slug and I embarrass even myself. Maybe I should try it out.

I took my script and mp3 audio file and logged in to Vidnami. I clicked create a new video.

I uploaded the script. Vidnami can provide the audio for the video with a robot voice. But I had the silky tones of Mr. Steve Chase to use for my audio, so I uploaded my mp3 file.

I let it chew on that for a while and it came back with the images it picked out to use during the video.

At this point, the Vidnami user is supposed to go through the individual slides and decide if the picture matches the message. You can make any changes you want.

The video that came back was just a shade over nine and a half minutes long. That’s a lot of slides to look at. There were certainly images that didn’t match the script and should have been changed for a more appropriate choice.

I picked lazy, and accepted what their creator software picked. I now had an HD video file after doing almost no actual work.

Extra Credit With a Little Work

I decided to go the extra mile on this one, so I took another step. I decided to make a PDF version of the article available.

I did this with another cloud-based program I bought and never used. It’s called Designrr. I ever upgraded to the pro version on this one, and still haven’t put it to use.

I chose to create an eBook. I picked out one of the cover templates they had available (there were a bunch to choose from). I then copied in my free article.

I then fiddled around with it a little. Mostly getting my title onto the book cover and my web site address on page footers. It was pretty easy.

I had it spit out the eBook and uploaded it to the site, then linked to it in the article.

Though not completely lazy, that was all pretty easy. I think it turned out right nice too.

Get the story of Affiliate Triad from the inside.

One of the first areas of internet marketing most people are attracted to is affiliate marketing. And honestly, what’s not to love about affiliate marketing? Someone else provides the product, the sales funnel and the money collection and they handle all the support. You just promote the product and collect a commission on the sales you generate.

The vendor does most of the work, and you get paid? You just gotta love that.

One of the first, and biggest affiliate program is the Amazon Associates program. Everyone shops at Amazon. I’m an Amazon Prime member, and I go to Amazon first for most things, just for the super fast free shipping. And lot’s of Amazon customers go to the site to buy one item, and end up adding others to the cart before they leave. Amazon pays you a commission for those added items too.

There’s a big problem with the Amazon Associates program. Amazon is huge, but their commissions are small.

And they’ve been getting smaller. They recently announced rate cuts in the payout schedule. Most items are now 3% of less. You have to sell a lot of books to make real money when you get pennies per book sold.

Wouldn’t it be great to sell a high priced product, and get a nice fat commission for it?

Of course it would, and that’s where Affiliate Triad comes in. Their mission is to provide ordinary affiliate marketers, people without industry connections, access to high dollar products (some costing more than $2000), and paying them generous commissions.

So, what is this Affiliate Triad thing?

Affiliate Triad Overview

Rapid Crush owners Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos

The Affiliate Triad monthly membership program is run by business partners Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos through their company Rapid Crush. Together they have more than 40 years of business experience, and started their company 10 years ago. They claim to have “generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for our company, as well as our clients.”

Back in my working days, I had an hour commute to work, and another hour back home. I used to have what Zig Ziglar called “Automobile University” during my drive time, mostly by listening to business podcasts. Nicole Dean did one of my favorites. She usually brought in a guest and interviewed them. One episode she had Dennis Becker as a guest.

I liked Dennis. He was a former engineer and successful online business owner. I’m an engineering school dropout and I’ve made a little bit of money online. He seemed like the perfect mentor to lead me to higher levels of success. I got on his list, bought some of his products and joined a couple of his membership sites.

Recently he promoted Affiliate Triad to his list. That’s how I learned about it.

Here’s how it works…

Jason and Wil find high ticket products and negotiate deals for us to promote during a special launch. These are high value, and high priced training programs in some area of the internet marketing world. I think they look for people that have great products and not so great marketing. We aren’t going to use the vendor’s marketing.

Next they put together a marketing package for the product. Jason is a webinar wonder child, so it almost always includes a free webinar by Jason. They also write up email sequences and build an attractive bonus package for the specific product. They build an entire high level marketing campaign – all the signup forms, landing pages etc.

As a member, you have the opportunity to earn nice commissions, and also capture email leads. You also get access to the product during the launch so you can learn from it too.

Kartra

The powerful Kartra platform.

As a member of Affiliate Triad you are asked to join Kartra. It isn’t mandatory, but you can only use the done-for-you campaigns by having an account there.

Kartra is an all-in-one business platform. Here’s a list of all the platforms and services it replaces:

• Email marketing campaign platform
• Marketing automation platform (letting you build and automate your sales funnels)
• Marketing page builders (landing pages, squeeze pages, sales pages, thank you pages, product launch pages, checkout pages, video sales letter pages, and more)
• Membership portal builders
• Shopping carts
• Online form builders
• Split testing and link tracking software
• Calendar and appointment scheduling software
• Helpdesk ticketing systems, including live chat
• Video hosting (with advanced marketing features)
• Affiliate management system
• Campaign analytics platform
• Custom programming to integrate your various marketing software platforms — Kartra seamlessly integrates all of the above already
• Graphic designers — Kartra’s professional, stunning templates designed to convert — for pages, emails, forms, and more — take care of that for you

These are robust, full featured platforms.

Your Kartra account isn’t limited to Affiliate Triad activities. You can use it for any product or service you want to sell.

Kartra isn’t included in your membership fee for Affiliate Traid. You must buy it separately.

The cheapest Kartra plan is $99 per month. If you jump through a couple of easy hoops, Rapid Crush will refund your Kartra fees for the first 12 months of your membership. They issue refunds twice per year, in July and January, each for any fees you had in the proceeding 6 months. What are those hoops?

• You must purchase Kartra using the Rapid Crush affiliate link.
• You have to stay a member of Affiliate Triad during the refund period. If you join in July and quit in November, you won’t get a refund in the January refund period. I joined in May and got a two month refund in July. I got a full six month refund this Jan.
• You have to apply for the refund by filling out a form they provide, with documentation, during a short refund request window. It isn’t automatic.

You probably think they make it really tough to get the money back. They don’t. They email you when the time is right, with instructions. The Rapid Crush support team is one of the best if you need help. You do have to meet the deadline. The refund period lasts a couple of weeks, but the deadline is for real. The refund is timely after you submit your proper request.

I was very pleasantly surprised how smooth the refund process went.

Community

When you join Affiliate Triad you not only get Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos, you also become part of a vigorous, friendly and supportive community. Many of your fellow members have been around the internet marketing block a few times and are successful. They all seem eager to help others.

Slack Group

Affiliate Triad’s Slack group is the powerful communication hub for the program.

I bet you’ve seen marketers that have a bonus for their customers in the form of a private Facebook group. I’m a member of a bunch of them.  They’re like flies on a cow turd, because they’re free for the marketer.

Let’s all just admit something – Facebook is a pain in the butt.

Your FB group may have lots of activity, but you may not get notified about it because it doesn’t fit into the algorithm of what Facebook wants you to see. And there are distractions everywhere.

Affiliate Triad uses a Slack group to run their program. They communicate everything through Slack. They have to pay for this. I believe it’s very expensive.

I really like Slack. You won’t find any cute cat videos, political flame wars, or a million memes on the Affiliate Triad Slack group. No distractions. Just important info, organized in several different channels.

Everything is in Slack.

Mentors

Another part of the Affiliate Triad community are the mentors.

For someone that has a big list, or lots of experience buying traffic, Triad is great. But lots of us don’t have those. Jason and Wil have taken note of this and have started building resources to help out.

One of the things they’ve come up with is the mentor program. They reached out to several members that have specific talents and expertise and got them to become mentors.  I think there are currently five of them. They have their own channel in Slack so they’re easy to find.

Each mentor has a weekly office hour. I think these are live Zoom meetings. They go over training and have question and answer periods. I don’t have good internet out in the tall weeds where I live, so I’ve had almost no luck with Zoom . That’s OK though, because like everything else Affiliate Triad produces, the sessions are recorded and made available in the mentor channel in Slack.

Everything is in Slack.

Support

There is a support channel in the Slack group. There are also Rapid Crush support team members that seem to patrol the various channels ready to offer help.

Wilson Mattos seems to be on Slack all the time to provide help.

Training and Resources

Over the months of the Affiliate Triad’s existence there have been many additions to the program. There have been several training programs added. Members with no previous list feel intimidated trying to promote a product that costs more than $2000, so products of lower price points have been added. Lead generation products have been made available.

Member Area Trainings

The Affiliate Triad member site contains loads of training and resources.

I may have mentioned this earlier… everything is in Slack. This is great, and it isn’t. It’s nice to have one central location to get all your information. It isn’t so great after there are months of info, because it gets hard to find stuff.  Once again, the Rapid Crush team responded.

We now have an Affiliate Triad members only website. The member’s site makes it easy to locate available resources. There are a lot of them.

There is a “Start here” area with instructions and links for the new members. There are a lot of parts to this membership, and it can be overwhelming to the new member. This provides early guidance.

There are also the following areas:

Tutorials and Guides

Here you’ll find help to get the Kartra system setup and a few other tips and tech tricks.

Member Spotlights

One of the mentors does Member Spotlights. She interviews one of the members that has been successful with the Afflitiate Triad program and finds out how they did it. Some of them have special marketing knowledge they share in these spotlights and are great learning and inspiration tools. There are currently 17 of these.

Email Swipes

Affiliate Triad gives us email swipes to send out in between promo periods. They are released periodically and are intended to help us keep our list “warm.” There are 17 volumes at this time. Each volume has 4 or 5 emails in it. The material could also be repurposed into blog content.

Bonus Courses

There are a growing group of training courses. Some were produced as Affiliate Triad products, that can be promoted for lead generation and commissions. They are placed here for our personal training. Others are products belonging to members, that Rapid Crush has contracted with to make available to us for training.

Organic Reach

Member Anna Dornier’s Organic Reach program teaches her method of Facebook priming to build Know, Like & Trust with her audience.

Leads Faucet

Member Jonathan Green’s Leads Faucet is an in depth course on creating a book, and using it to generate high quality leads to promote Affiliate Triad products and your other products too.

Prosperity Algorithm

This is Jason Fladien’s latest program. It’s all about building the mindset for prosperity. It is a mid-level priced product in the Affiliate Triad catalog, and made available here for learning.

Unite Challenge 2.0

This is another lead generation product placed here for member training.

Promo Materials

There are promotion guides for each product promoted in Affiliate Triad. There are a lot of parts involved in the full promotion funnel. These guides give detailed step-by-step instructions on getting everything setup.

Product Promotions

There are a lot of community and training assets in the Affiliate Triade membership, but still at the core, Affiliate Triad is about making affiliate commissions. You get to be on the inside for some big product launches.

Jason and Wil build all the pieces and put them together and you get to learn from that. Jason often makes videos where he shares his thought process as he builds the marketing funnel.

We members also get access to the products, usually a bit before the launch and lasting  through the launch. This helps us

1. Preview the product to get familiar with it before the launch.
2. Learn from a high priced product, without paying for it.

Two Ways to Promote Affiliate Triad Sponsored Products

When there is a product to promote, you have a couple of ways to do it.

“Easy Button” Method

The method they call the “Easy Button” method doesn’t require a Kartra account. It’s much simpler than the other method, but it has one big problem. With the easy button method you just use an affiliate link to go straight to the offer page. You don’t get to build a list.

Full Lead Capture “Optimized” Method

You can also use the full scale lead capture method. This uses the product campaigns developed by Jason and Wil. It is pushed into your Kartra account and you deploy it.

After that there are several steps to set the campaign up with your links. You have to edit forms, pages and emails. There are very detailed instructions provided to help you with the process. There are also videos showing each step of the guide.

There are detailed launch setup videos on Youtube.

You can always ask for help in the Slack group also.

These full scale launch campaigns can be intimidating and a bit scary. You have to be ready to roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty and do some work. It is very doable and help is there for the asking. I think they’ve made it as easy as possible.

Evergreen Products

Running launches for new products gets exhausting. When the launch ends, your income opportunity does too. The Rapid Crush folks responded to this issue by providing some evergreen products. We can promote these any time. Some of them are just for list building and others give you a lower priced alternative to the high ticket launches.

Here is the current list:

Affiliate Triad

Affiliate Triad membership is a semi-evergreen product. They open it for new members for a short period of a few days duration each month. We can promote it with our affiliate link.

I’m not sure if they plan to keep that schedule in the future, but that’s how it’s worked while I’ve been a member.

Product eClass

Product eClass is a detailed course by Jason Fladien. It’s normally been offered only in limited launches.

This course has now been made evergreen for Affiliate Triad members to promote.

It has a mid-high price point, much less than the big launches. This provides us with some nice pricing diversity in our product offerings.

Unite Challenge 2.0

Jason brought out his The Unite Challenge as a June 2020 promo, right as the histeria over the pandemic was getting hot.

This is now one of our evergreen products.

It has a small upfront price, but the buyer can get that rebated by completing the course in 12 days after their purchase. So, there is no commission here, just a lead gen to build that list.

Double Your Productivity

The first evergreen product Affilate Triad gave us was Jason’s Double Your Productivity ebook.

In this offer we sell the ebook for 1/5th the price Jason charges for it. That’s only $9.95, so you’d have to sell a ton of them to make real money with it.

It main purpose it to get people on our list.

High Ticket Product Promotions

Each month there is a product launch style promotion. These always have a limited time frame.  A few have been Rapid Crush products, but most haven’t.

They follow this general outline:

• Jason hosts a live webinar. This has valuable training that of course leads into the product.
• A replay of the webinar is posted.
• There is an email sequence that starts before the webinar. These promote registration for the webinar, link to the replay up to the close of cart.
• Jason and Wil develop a bonus stack for the product.

All the elements for the campaigns are provided to the Affiliate Triad members. These will include any pages needed – webinar registration, replay registration (email capture), the replay page itself, thank you pages when needed and all the cart for taking the orders.

All that material is provided to us via our Kartra accounts, where we personalize it with our names and links.

There have been a couple of offers less than $1000, but most are above that. The offer coming up for Feb 21 has a $2500 price point.

These promotions offer a chance at large affiliate commissions.

My Experience in Affiliate Triad

I’ve been a member of Affiliate Triad for 8 months. I’ve not made a penny from it yet, and I’m OK with that right now.

I entered this with no email list and marginal experience making money online. I have very little experience buying ads to drive traffic.

I recently retired from a job I had for 30 years. Internet marketing has always been an interesting hobby for me.

I like learning things. Affiliate Triad is like a marketing mastermind. Joining a mastermind group with access to as many helpful, successful people and resources as you can get in Affiliate Triad would usually cost more than this program does.

And that’s without providing products to promote.

I’ve really enjoyed the learning experience so far.  I like seeing how it evolves and grows.

I certainly intend to get more active in putting the resources to work, and making Affiliate Triad become a profit making adventure.

I can afford to be in Affiliate Triad without making money from it.

I realize most people can’t do that. If you have no list to promote to, and money is really tight, this program may not be right for you at this point in life.

If you have an active list interested in business and making money online type niches, Affiliate Triad will give you an opportunity make some nice commissions.

It’s a simple truth, and yet, it’s often forgotten by marketers who miss the point as they bog themselves down with a myriad of inane details which are part and parcel of running an online business – but are not the MAIN THING.

They do their best to overdeliver insane value in an attempt to build trust and credibility with their audience. They’re in a constant content creation race as they try to outdo the competition.

They check off all the required boxes except the one which puts money in their pockets – selling.

They fail to keep ‘selling’ at the forefront of their minds and end up failing miserably at it. Now what they have are blogs with lots of content, but which are about as useful as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.

The secret to avoiding this problem will be to monetize your blog effectively. You have to sell, sell and sell some more to be profitable. How else will you make money?

Even if you’re displaying sponsored content on your blog, you’re still selling space on it for ads to appear.

Now, there are many monetization methods with varying degrees of efficacy. But ultimately, someone has to buy something (or click on an ad) for you to actually see money landing in your bank account.

And that’s what this article is all about. You’re going to learn 5 ways to transform your blog into a money-making machine that works round the clock for you.

Selling products as an affiliate

This is probably the easiest monetization method of the lot because all you’ll be doing is selling other people’s products and collecting commissions from the sales you generate.

You don’t need to worry about the tech details or customer service. Your focus is only on pre-selling and creating persuasive reviews.

There are several platforms that allow affiliates to promote products. The most common ones are Amazon, ClickBank, ShareASale, Rakuten and so on.

Once you’re registered with these platforms, it’s just a matter of adding your affiliate links (on your blog) to RELEVANT products in your niche.

There must be congruence with your niche and the products you’re recommending. You wouldn’t want to promote a herpes cream on a toy blog just because the cream has a high pay-out.

Ideally, you should promote a mix of both tangible and digital products. It’ll also be wise to promote products on different platforms. This will ensure that all your eggs are not in one basket.

Far too many bloggers rely entirely on Amazon Associates (with its paltry commission rates). Then they see their earnings dry up overnight if Amazon bans them from the platform.

Unfortunately, this happens all the time and the affiliates are not even given a reason as to why they were banned. The sheer indignity of it all.

Your takeaway?

Diversify, diversify, diversify.

Sell your own digital products

This is a highly lucrative way to generate an income from your blog. It’s more technical because you’ll need to set up a sales page, funnel, etc. You’ll also need to create a product and have good sales copy so that your sales conversions are high.

All this may seem like a lot of work… and it is… but the rewards are great.

You could do a lot of it yourself by using page/funnel builders such as Thrive Themes, ClickFunnels, OptimizePress, etc. These types of software will help you immensely because they’re relatively simple and intuitive to use.

The truth is that you don’t need to do it all. The good news is that you can outsource the different parts of the process to freelancers on sites like Fiverr and/or Upwork… while you only focus on what you’re good at…

… and when it’s all completed, you just put the moving parts together and VOILA! Your very own Frankenproduct that you can sell on your blog.

After all, with all the content you’re posting and the credibility/authority you’ve built, it’ll be much easier to sell a product created by you than by someone else, because your audience likes and trusts you.

When you’re creating and selling your own products, you’ll have a lot more flexibility and be in control of:

• Product pricing
• If it’s a one-time fee or a recurring monthly/yearly membership
• The depth of the sales funnel (upgrades, downsells, etc.)
• What the product will be about
• Customer service

It’s more work, but it’s also more freedom from a business standpoint… and exponentially more profit, if you’re good at it.

Selling tangible products

This is similar to the earlier point, but now you’re selling physical products. You’ll need a store with a shopping cart that calculates shipping and so on. This is slightly more complicated because you’ll need to fulfil the orders.

You’ll have to decide if you’re selling print-on-demand products or dropshipping which are relatively hands-off processes… or will you be maintaining inventory and mailing the products yourself? Or will you use Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA).

There are several options here and you’ll need to do your research and see which method is best for your business. You don’t want to end up in a situation where you’re making lots of sales but the post office has become your second home.

Email marketing

It looks like no online marketing article can ever be complete without paying homage to email marketing – and that’s because it really does work. Unlike social media marketing which can be blocked by your audience, most people check their emails – and you want to show up there… to sell!

Yes! Don’t forget the selling… but always remember to deliver value in your emails. You’ll have to find the right balance here.

But first things first – you need to build a list from your blog.

The easiest way to do this will be to use software like Thrive Leads to display opt in forms, pop ups, scroll mats and so on. This is a fantastic software that most marketers will benefit from.

Another excellent plugin is Post Gopher. It allows your site visitors to download your blog posts as PDFs which they can read later – in exchange for their emails.

Now it’s just a matter of connecting your opt in form to a reliable autoresponder platform like ConvertKit and you’re good to go.

ConvertKit is one of the best autoresponders in the business and their feature of letting the subscriber double opt in with just one click of the mouse (to download a product, etc.) will ensure that more people end up on your list VS other autoresponders which require a 2-step process to confirm the opt in and you end up losing subscribers who don’t follow through.

All tech talk aside, just ensure that you have a way to collect emails on your blog and you have an autoresponder sequence in place to nurture the audience on your list.

Do remember to promote your own products (if you have any) or affiliate products in your emails.

Why?

Because you need to sell, sell, sell! That’s why!

Sell your own services

This point was saved for last because it has one downside.

As long as you’re providing a service which requires your direct involvement, you’ll be trading your time for money… which in itself places an invisible ceiling on your earnings, unless you have special royalty/commission arrangements in place with those who hire you.

Common examples of services are content writing, copywriting, graphic design, video creation and so on. These are time-consuming tasks. You could make top dollar, but ultimately, it’s still a job and not passive. But it’s your call.

You could also provide software as a service and still make a hefty chunk of change without much involvement.

Alternatively, you could be a middleman and use service arbitrage to sell services that others deliver. You’ll charge a higher rate and hire a cheaper freelancer to do the job for you.

You’ll then deliver that job to the person who hired you and you’ll pocket the difference. Of course, you’ll need to ensure that the freelancer did a good job before delivering the work, so that your reputation is intact.

Arbitrage is perfectly legal and people do it all the time.

In conclusion, the 5 methods above are really ALL you need to make six or even seven figures with your blog/s. You can apply 2 or 3 of the methods above and skyrocket your income in a couple of months.

Start working on them today… and remember to… SELL SELL SELL!

“Every artist was first an amateur.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you’re reading a site like this one, I’m pretty sure you’re interesting in making money online.

There are many reasons you might want to start an online business.

Maybe you have a job you hate. You just can’t stand your boss, and everyday is just another session in the torture chamber. You dream every night of smiling as you tell your boss to, “Take this job and shove it.”

Or maybe you’re like me and you’ve already left the workforce. And you discover that although retirement is great, a person still needs something to do with themselves. Volunteering at the local food shelter is noble, but it isn’t for everyone. Maybe you’d rather make some extra money and donate it to charity.

A great many of the people looking for a chance to make money online just need more money in their lives.

Maybe you would like to have a few extras in life, but can’t afford them. Perhaps you’re looking to build your nest egg, money to fund investments, so you can afford to retire someday.

Or maybe your paycheck always runs out before the bills do. Maybe you could find another job to help out… maybe. But that’s not ideal, even if it is possible. Working an online business will give you a chance to be home with your family while you earn some extra cash.

You discover this shining beacon in the distance, called affiliate marketing.

What, you just have to recommend products to people? Products you don’t own or pay to produce? And you get a commission when your people buy from your recommendations?

That could be just the ticket to some financial sanity for you and your family!

So you dig a little deeper on affiliate marketing thing.  You find you’ll need to purchase your own domain, pay for hosting, fork out more cash for autoresponder fees and so on.

You’ll need money to pay for different fixed and recurring costs in your business. That’s a given.

It’s like my dad used to tell me, “It takes money to make money.”

You’re already strapped for cash. You see your dream fading away, because your tight budget has no room for business startup costs.

While it’s true all that stuff is important, the webhosting, domain, autoresponder etc., and having them would be ideal. But…

They aren’t the only way to play this game.

You need a free business hub

There are several platforms that will allow you to have a free website. The catch here is that you’ll have no control over the advertising that appears on your site.

Another problem with using a free website is you’ll have to follow the rules of the platform however limiting and stupid they may seem to you. It’s their playground and they get to make the rules.

If they feel like you’re abusing their rules, they can shut you down, no warning, no notice and probably without giving you any reason or explanation.

Countless beginner marketers have lost their businesses overnight by ‘building their houses on rented land’.

So, your goal is to build a free website and once you’re generating sales, you should immediately buy your own domain and hosting so that you’re in control of your business.

Here are 3 free platforms you can use:

• WordPress.com – https://wordpress.com
• Medium – https://medium.com While Medium doesn’t allow you to build your own site, it allows you to post articles on their platform. That’s really all you need for now. The site gets a lot of traffic and has potential when it comes to ranking for low hanging keywords that you may wish to target. From there, it’s just a matter of publishing more targeted articles and getting affiliate sales.
• Pinterest – https://pinterest.com Pinterest is an often overlooked giant. You can set the links for your pins to go directly to the affiliate offer you’re promoting.

Getting your affiliate links

You can be an affiliate to promote just about any product you can think of. Start out by searching for the “product or brand of interest + affiliate”.

Many big retailers, such as Walmart, Target and Home Depot, now have affiliate programs. Go to the various store websites and look for info on joining their programs.

You can also find products to promote at several big network sites:

• ClickBank – https://www.clickbank.com/
• Amazon Associates – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/
• CJ Affiliate – https://www.cj.com/publisher
• ShareASale – https://www.shareasale.com/info/
• Rakuten Marketing – https://rakutenadvertising.com/affiliate/

Forget programs that require you to ‘pay to play’ – where you need to have a monthly paid subscription to the software/service/etc. before they give you the honor of making money for them.

There are tons of excellent affiliate products that you can promote for free without having to jump through hoops.

Free traffic

Since money is tight, paid ads are definitely not an option here.

The next best way to generate traffic to your pages will be to siphon it from high traffic social media sites and platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google.

It’s important to know that free traffic takes time. You’ll not generate massive traffic overnight. You’ll need to create content consistently and almost daily to get reach and traction.

If your content is valuable and top-notch, you’ll build a following and have people clicking on your affiliate links or article links. So, go ahead and create accounts in the different social media platforms and…

1. Start making videos with your mobile phone and post them on YouTube
2. Set up a Facebook group and a fan page and start posting content
3. Write articles on your niche and post them on Medium
4. Start tweeting your articles/videos/etc.
5. Use Canva.com to come up with attractive creatives you can use. (It’s free!)

Once again, it’s important to remember that social media sites are not your web properties, so you’re never totally safe with them.

The goal is to generate sales until you have enough money to build your own website and list. These are YOUR assets.

Putting it all together

One way to start will be to write and start posting useful articles on Medium (you’ll embed your affiliate links in the posts). Just remember to disclose affiliate links and DO NOT overdo it. Moderation is key here.

Here’s the plan:

This is a sales funnel using a free hub site.

Publish a great, informative article, and at the end place some info about yourself and a link to your related affiliate offer.

Check out this page to see an advanced example of how this is done. This Medium article is by Connie Ragen Green. She’s been making a living online for a long time.

Near the end of her article she links to a free report, which is a 7 page PDF containing loads of links for business resources. I haven’t check them all, but I’ll bet many of them are affiliate links. Great place for them.

After a reader downloads her free report, they just might pass it on to a friend or family member. They spread her links for her – for free. That’s smart stuff there.

In the bio paragraph at the end of her page she links out to one of her training products. While this is her own product, you’ll do the same with an affiliate offer.

As long as your content is good, you’ll have curious readers clicking on your links and reaching the sales page of the product you’re promoting… which is your main objective.

Point your YouTube videos, Facebook posts, tweets, etc. to your Medium article so that you can pre-sell the reader by providing more information and value. Once you build trust with your audience, your chances of getting the sale will be much higher.

Your Medium account with all your content will act as a hub-site for your affiliate marketing business.

The free traffic methods you employ will siphon traffic from different platforms and point them all to your hub site’s content. Your hub site articles link out to your affiliate offers.

This is your sales funnel. Get used to sales funnels. They will be your friend.

Then it’s just a matter of time for the traffic to convert into sales (if your content is valuable and persuasive).

What next?

Keep making new content, as much as possible. Give yourself 6 to 12 months to see your efforts yield fruit. This is a slow process, but a rewarding one.

Once you see the commissions coming in, do invest in your business by getting your own domain, hosting and an autoresponder. Being able to build your own mailing list will help to elevate your marketing to the next level and skyrocket your commissions.

You’ll still be able to use the same basic funnel. You’ll just replace the free hub with one you control on your own webhosting. You’ll also be able to start building a list.

This is the best way to bootstrap your way from scratch to affiliate marketing success.

It felt like Amazon had a direct link to my wallet. A oneway link, the money flowed out of my wallet to Amazon.

Did you know there’s a way to reverse that arrangement, and have Amazon put money into your wallet?

That’s right, you can put Amazon to work for you.

It’s called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)

Amazon FBA for Beginners

Creating a business online using the power of Amazon is a great way to become an entrepreneur and earn a decent income. That’s because Amazon is the biggest online shopping market around.

By signing up for an Amazon FBA account, you can earn enough money to have some extra cash, or even build a profitable business as your sole career. Before you get started, make sure you understand what this business model entails and how you can become a competitive seller in your niche.

What Is Amazon FBA?

The simple answer is that this is a program where consumers buy something that’s listed on Amazon, but sold by a third party seller. Amazon stores these third party seller items and sends the product out when a customer buys it.

When you’re part of the FBA program, it means that you don’t have to deal with customer service. Amazon handles that. It means that you won’t be responsible for shipping goods out to each individual customer who orders your product.

So you won’t be making countless trips to the post office. You won’t have to fill your garage up with tons of products waiting to be sold and shipped. Instead, once you have the products you’ll be selling, you just send them straight to the warehouse that Amazon instructs you to ship to.

When your product is listed on Amazon, it’ll receive a sentence somewhere, usually on the right hand side of the product page that says, “Fulfilled by Amazon.” Each time your product sells, Amazon still allows the buyers to have the same mailing options as a product not sold by a third party.

That means that if a customer chooses your product but they’re looking for free shipping, if they meet Amazon’s requirements for free shipping, which is usually by spending a certain amount, then they will get that.

Everything that’s available on products sold directly by Amazon is available for FBA orders. Amazon FBA orders are eligible for Prime shipping, too – which is why customers choose this option when shopping.

Why Amazon FBA Might Be the Right Business for You

There are many reasons why selling on Amazon might be the right business for you.

If you have a desire to become your own boss and you want the freedom to set your own hours and not have an income ceiling, that’s a strong enough persuasion.

But maybe there’s not a lot of money to invest in building a business right now. It’s this issue that stops people from even taking the first step to becoming an online entrepreneur.

However, Amazon has very low start-up costs. You can start selling on Amazon one of two ways and both are pretty reasonably priced. The first selling plan is the Individual Plan, where you pay $0.99 for each item that you sell.

This is the plan you’d pick if you don’t have many products upfront and you’re still trying to figure out how you want to move forward with being a third party seller. If you have between 30-40 items to sell, then you would use this plan.

This plan is also the one that you’d use if you didn’t have a lot of money to promote your business – such as purchasing ads. But on this plan, you don’t get access to a lot of resources that will help you sell items.

For example, you won’t be allowed to request to sell in other categories. You also won’t get your products on top placement and you can’t run your own specials. So control over your business is more limited.

The second plan is the Professional Plan at $39.99 per month, regardless of how many you sell. This is what you would pick if you have a lot of inventory to sell, because you’d end paying more if you tried to sell them per item at a $0.99 fee.

This plan is for anyone who wants to advertise their business. It’s also the one to use if you plan to grow your business in additional categories. With this one, you get access to more tools offered by Amazon, including being able to set and run your own promotions.

Another reason that this might be the right business for you is that Amazon’s reach is huge. When you create your listings, you’ll get your product in front of millions of people. No other selling platform has the same potential customer reach.

You won’t have to create your own separate business page to sell on Amazon. So you won’t need to buy a website domain and hire someone to set that up. You just list your items and sell. That’s it.

Someone begin behind the scenes handling everything is yet another reason this business model works well. Phone calls, returns and any hassles are handled by Amazon, so you don’t have that headache.

You won’t be alone trying to build up trust for your business. People already trust Amazon and they already shop there. So your items already have an audience. Finally, you don’t have to head to an office every day to build your business.

You can be completely independent. One week, you could ship items to the Amazon warehouse from one state and be in a completely different state the next and yet still run your business competently.

How to Find the Best Products to Sell on Amazon

You can sell your own stuff if you have a huge collection. For example, if you have a big library of in-demand books, movies or other items. However, most people don’t have a lot of things to sell from their own personal lives.

That means that you’re going to want to build an inventory of things to sell that are new – and it’s a lot easier than you think. You can use retail stores. This is when you go to stores in your area to scout for products that you can buy and resell on Amazon.

The concept is the same as when people buy a house, then flip it and make profit. You’re basically flipping products. But you’ll need to know what to buy because it won’t do you any good to choose products that don’t have good resell potential.

The stores that you would search would be the ones where you normally shop, like Target, Walmart, your local grocery store, your pharmacy, craft stores, clothing stores and more.

You want to find items that are on sale or being sold at a big discount. You’ll have to figure in what you need to pay for these products in order to earn the profit that you’re looking for.

Tally up your profit, plus the amount that Amazon will also take. It’s important that you account for Amazon’s portion for every item you want to sell. Otherwise, your profit will be small, if any.

When you shop at the store, you don’t have to use guesswork. There are apps that you can download. One of these is offered completely free by Amazon once you sign up for a seller’s account.

It’s the Amazon Seller app. Other scanner apps aren’t free and you’ll find a range of monthly costs for using these. Scoutify is one of the well-known ones and offers more features than the Amazon Seller app.

One of the features is ranking history, which is important for products. Another app you can use is Scoutly, which was formerly FBAScan. Or, you can use Profit Bandit. RevSeller and Jungle Scout are also two resources that you can use to help you get started learning which products may sell well.

Many of these apps will offer a free trial, so you can sign up and use each one to see which one works best for you. When you have these apps, you use your phone at the store to check the barcode of the item to see how well it’s doing on Amazon.

Once you input what the store is selling the item for, the app lets you know if that would be a good purchase or not, based on how much you could earn if you bought and then resold it.

Almost anything can be bought retail and then sold on Amazon. You can choose from clothing to personal items like shampoo. Some people start by shopping in the blowout, clearance or discontinuing items area of the store.

But you can also look for items by holiday or special events. These would be things like baby shower items, holiday decorations and more. Physically going to the store and scouting around for what to buy to sell on Amazon is one way to do it.

But you can also order through online stores and resell as part of your FBA business strategy. This is known as online arbitrage. Many high end clothing stores will run sales on things like T-shirts.

You can find these shirts that normally sell from $35-$50 on sale for $9.99 or less. You can also find that novelty T-shirts and ones that feature bands, musicians, movies or TV shows sell well.

Buying online and reselling online means that you won’t have to visit each store. You won’t have to stand in line or try to juggle your schedule around picking up your kids.

You can order your inventory from home or while you’re on a break at work.

You can order whenever you want in whatever amount of the item that you want and have it shipped to you. If you’re worried about spending money to make money and things aren’t all that great for you financially right now, then do a test run.

Just buy a small number of things that an app tells you have profitability and list those.

For those who have a little extra money who can invest in starting an Amazon FBA business, you can sell products using Private Label Rights.

These are items that are made by a company but then another company’s label is put on that product and they’re sold as if it came from that company. For example, most grocery stores sell “their” brand of toilet paper.

However, those stores don’t manufacture that toilet paper. It’s the same with food products. Great Value peanut butter is made by the same company that makes Peter Pan peanut butter.

There’s no difference in the quality, just in the label. You can do the same thing with the products that you want to sell. Search manufacturers locally or overseas for lower costs such as Alibaba.

Use the keywords for the type of products that you want to sell. For example, you could search for “yoga pants” and get over 98,000 choices. If you look those up on Amazon, you’ll see that they clearly sell well.

Once you locate a merchant, research how long they’ve used the site. Check out what the reviews say – especially about the company’s delivery results. If you like everything you see so far, then order a sample of the product.

Don’t move forward without having a tangible example of the business’s product so that you can make sure the item is well made. If you decide that you like the product, next, get a price quote for the total cost of making and shipping the product to you.

After that, you’ll need to have labels created for your product. If you choose to use PLR products, you may also want to consider having a separate website that’s dedicated to your business and products for branding purposes.

Being Competitive as an Amazon FBA Seller

Deciding that you want to sell on Amazon is a great first step. But you don’t want to make that decision without first knowing what it is that sells well. Just because you have an idea for a product to sell doesn’t mean there’s any profit in it.

It doesn’t make sense to waste your time or money listing items that will only sit in one of Amazon’s warehouses. The most competitive thing you can do is to make sure you’re in a niche that’s selling.

You can know this by looking at what Amazon has on its bestseller list. You’ll find this information within the bar at the top of the page right beside the links for customer service, gift cards etc.

When you access this list, you’ll see all the bestselling items listed by category. You’ll see one list for Toys & Games, another for Video Games. If you continue to scroll down, you’ll see a listing for Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry.

There’s a link to expand each of these categories. When you do that, you’ll see at a glance what the bestselling items are. Amazon lists what the top 100 items are. Under Toys & Games, you’ll see there are a lot of learning type games or toys featuring building blocks, so these would be good items for you to also sell because customers are already looking for these types of toys and games.

Another tip to keep in mind is that you’ll want to check out what’s selling well on eBay. The reason you want to do this is because shoppers will often head over to eBay when they can’t find what they need or want on Amazon.

You can find out what’s hot on that site by using a tool like WatchCount.com and it’ll tell you what’s selling well on eBay. Having the right resources on hand can help your business be competitive.

You have to know what’s selling – and trying to research this information on your own can take up a lot of time. This is why you want to use a keyword research tool. There are some free ones available as well as some paid ones that you can access with a free trial.

But these tools will show you which keywords to use that are good, but don’t have as much competition. Know what the people want to buy by going directly to the area listing what the consumers are talking about.

On Amazon, you’ll find this under the reviews on the products in your niche. For example, reviewers might leave comments on a listing for a man’s wallet that states although the product is nice, there was no place for photos and they really wanted a photo pocket.

When you know what the customers want, it’s an open opportunity for you to bring that product to the market. Building a business online means you have many different paths available to you.

The key is to find something that works well for your schedule, budget and interests. Using the Amazon FBA program, you can tap into a hungry consumer database without having to separately build a site and rank it competitively.

When you get started, all you need to provide is:

• Your company name and address
• Contact information
• Credit card and address
• Phone number (for the registration process, not for customers)
• Tax ID
• Identity documentation in some instances.

After you get signed up, you’ll be able to create your product listings, send the products to their fulfillment centers, and get your products to consumers who are eager to buy what you’re selling.

You can manage all of your inventory and replenish it whenever stock get low or you want to start selling something new or different. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to build your Amazon FBA store up to more profitable levels because there won’t be a learning curve for you anymore.

You’ll simply be able to scout out good deal, reinvest in your inventory and earn a profit from the markup as it ships out to consumers!

Great.

Now you need to figure out what business model you want to use to earn money from your efforts.

There are many business models you can choose, but you may want to start with one of the five most common ones –

• Affiliate marketing
• Info product development
• Service provider
• Self-publishing
• Online coaching

You should know, your business will be an evolving organism. You will probably use more than one of these ways to earn – maybe all of them.

But you need to start somewhere and focus on that.

Affiliate Marketing for Earning Without a Product

Affiliate marketing is where most people start when they try to make money online.

Being an affiliate for someone else’s products is one of the best business models for newcomers to the world of online marketing. With affiliate marketing, you don’t even have to have your own site necessarily (depending on the program).

You can make money promoting to your list or on social networking sites if you don’t have your own blog to review and promote products from. It also takes a lot less effort to review products than it does to create them.

With affiliate marketing, you can recommend products from a variety of platforms, depending on your niche. Be sure to check out both physical and digital marketplaces to see what all is available to recommend to your subscribers and blog readers.

There are many places to find products such as:

• ClickBank
• JVZoo
• Warrior Plus
• Amazon
• Share-a-Sale
• Commission Junction
• Direct programs, run by the individual merchant

One thing you can do is type in the niche or type of product that you want to promote in a search engine and add the words affiliate program to see what comes up. There are many companies who run their own programs that aren’t listed on the above platforms.

So for instance, if you were in the survival niche, you could go to ClickBank to find an info product to review. Then you might go to JVZoo and Warrior Plus to find content or courses to promote.

For tangibles, you could go to Amazon and see what all they have, but what if you wanted to promote some different MREs (meals ready to eat)? You could type this phrase into search engines and find more programs: survival food affiliate program.

As an affiliate, make sure you’re getting the proper commission (varies, but typically 50% for digital products) and take notice of how long the customer is cookied with your link to make sure that if they buy later, you get credit for the sale.

Create Info Products

Creating your own info products is a natural next step for affiliate marketers.

Maybe you’ve been blogging about food and cooking. You’ve been getting affiliate payments for various cooking gadgets you’ve promoted through Amazon.

So now you might create your own cook books. Maybe you can make an online course teaching your methods of planning and hosting a big holiday get-together without going crazy.

If you want to have an army of affiliates out there working for you, sending you tons of sales and subscribers, too – then consider creating your own info product and releasing it with an affiliate program.

Some new marketers get nervous about launching or doing it with affiliates, but this is the best way to brand yourself and build a quick following. It requires you to network with others and see if they will promote your product.

Decide what topic you want to create a product about. Don’t worry about competition or whether or not a subject has been covered before. Just pick something you feel people need help with in your niche.

Then figure out which method of disseminating the information would be best based on what your audience wants and what skills you possess to get the job done. Sometimes the two may not match, and that’s okay.

You might have an audience who devours video, but it’s not your forte – and in that case you can either outsource the videos, improve your skills, or simply use text and see if they’re accepting of a different media format.

If the information is good, they usually won’t care. Text and video are the two most common methods of creating courses, but a few have been done using audio podcast formats, too.

When you create your product, make sure you price it competitively. You want it to earn enough to make it worth it for the affiliate promoting and reviewing it. But you don’t want to price your audience out of their opportunity to buy it, either.

Do some spy work to see what others are charging in your niche and strategize from there. Make sure you also develop a hearty affiliate program that boosts sales and helps you build a list quickly.

Create a JV (joint venture) page that details the dates and times of the launch, how the funnel is laid out and with what price points, specifics about the course, and any other elements such as prize money or swipe files that help them promote for you.

Decide which platform you want to launch from – ClickBank, JVZoo, Warrior Plus, Udemy, Teachable, or your own system like Amember, perhaps. It’s up to you, but make sure that your affiliates are well taken care of and paid on time for both commissions and prize money, if you offer it.

As you build a list of buyers from your first launch, be working on the second in your line of info products. You can find out from your current buyers what else they’d like to see by polling them – or simply continue serving them what they need based on your initial research.

Become a Service Provider

Another path to online income is to provide a service to another business. This business model provides one of the fastest ways to get money in the bank.

If you are in a real cash crunch, and need a fast income, you should take a strong look at being a service provider.

You can outsource just about any task in your business. You may decide to outsource just one or two tasks, or you may decide to outsource everything. It all depends on your needs and your budget.

What services can you offer? Check out these ideas:

• Content creation (blog articles, social media posts, newsletters, etc.).
• Product creation.
• Video marketing.
• Copywriting (sales letters, ads, press releases, etc.).
• Customer service.
• Branding strategy.
• Overall marketing strategy.
• Research (e.g., product research, overall market research, keyword research).
• Search engine optimization.
• Paid advertising management (e.g., Facebook ads).
• Email marketing.
• Affiliate program recruitment and management.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course, as the tasks you offer will depend on your unique business. That’s why you’ll want to set time aside to compile a list of possible tasks that you’d consider freelancing.

Offering a service is also a path an established online marketer will add to their income streams.

You’ll find bloggers teaching their audience how to start a blog, often using affiliate links for things such as domain name providers, web hosting and website themes. Some of these bloggers also offer to do website setup as a service.

You’ll also find vendors of private label rights products offer to do site setup as an upsell.

You can find more info about offering services on this freelancing post.

Following the Self-Publishing Route

Self-publishing is another business model that you may want to adopt for your business. With this approach, you can become a bestselling author in either the non-fiction or fiction arena, depending on where your skills lie.

Amazon and other platforms have made it easy for the average man or woman to write their own manuscript, upload it and sell it to people on a global scale. You’re paid 60 days after the sale of your books, and you get money even if they buy a digital version they can read on their gadgets!

Although you can do most of this on your own, regardless of whether you’re pursing fiction or non-fiction, there are two areas you may want to invest in. That includes having an editor to go over it and hiring someone to create a professional cover for your book.

You’ll also find the rapidly growing world of “low content” books in the self-publishing world.

These include items such as coloring books (for kids and adults), puzzle and game books, journals of all sorts and planners.

Be an Online Coach

Coaching is often at the high end of the profit ladder for many online businesses. Coaching and consulting are at the high priced end of the customer funnel, and these programs are ultimately where they want to get their clients to land.

Many of these coaching programs are business related, but there are many niches where online coaching is a viable option as a business model for those who want to work for themselves at home. People hire coaches all the time to help them overcome personal obstacles and achieve success in something they’re passionate about.

For instance, did you know there is such a thing as a life coach? They seek to help people get through tough times, set goals and work toward them until they see them to fruition. You can use free tools like Skype to meet with customers where you can see and chat with one another on a regular weekly basis.

To make money with this, you can have individual sessions that you sell, or you can have package deals, such as buy 4 and get the 5^th one free. Take a look at others who offer this type of arrangement with clients and see how it can fit into your business on the ‘net.

There are many niches where all of these elements can earn money for your business. For example, let’s take the diet niche. You can promote weight loss tangibles and digital items as an affiliate, create your own info products, publish books on the matter, ghostwrite for others, and even coach people to succeed!

There are many other business models, such as dropshipping, domaining and more – so just take your time and investigate to see what appeals to you most before committing to one of more of the approaches.

Most of the business models we’ll look at on this site take some time to start generating cash.

If you need money now, if you feel the walls closing in on you, providing some sort of service may be where you should start.

Sometimes, you have no other resources or knowledge besides the talent you possess as a writer, graphics designer or customer service representative. If you don’t have the money or desire to invest in a site to launch a product from or promote as an affiliate from, you can get started working for others who already have a business online.

The real money is often made selling the tools others need.

It’s said that in the Gold Rush days, the people that made money weren’t typically the gold speculators. It was the people that sold them the picks and shovels that got rich. In this business model, you provide the picks and shovels.

Many people get these jobs through word of mouth when a friend in need of a provider connects them with a person who has the skill to fulfill their job request. It might be that they need an eBook written, an eCover created, or their inbox handled with customer service requests.

They might be searching for someone to act as an affiliate manager – recruiting potential top affiliates to come on board for future launches. If you can handle any of these tasks, then you may want to start with a service providing business model.

Although it’s great if you can get it, word of mouth isn’t the only way you can get a job offering your services, though. There are sites such as Upwork and even Fiverr where you can set up an offer or profile to accept gigs and jobs to do work for those who want to hire you for them.

You might find an ongoing job where you’re working routinely for an established marketer, but it might be a series of one off gigs where you get hired by one client one day and another one the next.

It all depends on what you’re offering and how long they need help with the task or service. If it’s for something like writing or graphics, it will often be a temporary exchange of money for the service until the job is done.

But if it’s for customer service or affiliate management, then it might be an ongoing position where you’re paid on a regular basis. With affiliate management, there might be a deal where you’re paid a set amount or one where you get a portion of the earnings.

If it’s the latter, make sure you negotiate upfront so that you’re able to get a down payment on what you’ll make. Don’t allow a marketer to promise to pay you after the fact because some unethical marketers will take the money and run.

I’m a member of Jon Dykstra’s Fat Stacks forum. The members of the forum focus on making money with niche websites. Most of them have several sites. They make their money from display ads on their sites. The successful sites have hundreds of posts. It’s a numbers game.

It would be nearly impossible for a person to write all that content themselves. So they hire freelance writers, and order a lot of content. There is a strong, steady market for quality writing.

Here Jon explains how he hires writers, and what he usually pays.

Please notice:

• The video is from the point of view of a content buyer, not a writer. Use it to learn what strong buyers are looking for.
• Jon usually hires through an agency. The prices he quotes include agency fees. The writer makes much less.
• He (and all the publishers on the forum) pay writers by the word.
• If you have specialized knowledge you can make much more.
• The more you can do, the better you get paid.

Many of these niche website publishers want their writers to write directly in their site’s WordPress editor. Are you comfortable with publishing content on WP? It’s a valuable skill.  You get extra credit (and pay) if you can format the post and source and add images.

Many of the heavy hitters in the PLR content business got their start doing ghostwriting and freelance work.

Tiffany Lambert is one of the most respected PLR vendors out there. Her store has been called the Amazon of PLR, because she has tons of content covering just about any niche. She started as a ghostwriter.

Back then her pages were around 450 words. So she was putting out around 7000 words on a “typical” day. You can feed your kids on that if you produce quality content, like Tiffany does.

Let me bring you back to planet earth here. You won’t be able to write as much as she does. The lady is a machine. But at the same time, it gives you an idea of what is possible.

If you’re setting up a profile on a site like UpWork, be very thorough in setting it up so that it offers a lot of information that puts the client at ease. Remember, many marketers have saved up to outsource, so they don’t want to risk paying a freelancer who disappears with their money.

If you’re offering a service like ghostwriting or graphics, make sure you fill your portfolio with a wide range of options for them to consider. For example, if you can write about almost anything, showcase articles on health, success and relationships so they can see your style.

You also might want to showcase different types of writing, too – like an articles, sales copy, email autoresponders and more. This gives the prospective client an idea of how well you can write for conversions versus simple conveying of facts and information.

If you’re on a site like Upwork, you can go out and bid on jobs rather than waiting on someone to find your profile and reach out to you. Bid carefully and don’t use canned responses to have the best success.

You’re not reliant on platforms to get jobs, either. You can set up your own website where you offer services, and charge whatever rate you want, unlike how you have to be competitive in a bidding scenario on another site.

Set up a portfolio of examples so they can see your work. These don’t have to be from real clients. In fact, most clients won’t want their work put up to represent your business, because ghostwriting is usually done discreetly.

The client will also want to know a little bit about you. There are many scammers online, so while you don’t have to divulge any personal details about where you live exactly, you should give them adequate details about your experience with the service you’re offering.

Make sure you also have a contact form. Some people put an order form right on their site, but you might want to be careful about doing this. It’s always good to discuss a project with a client before allowing them to buy so that you know if the two of you are a good fit to work together.

As well as Upwork and Fiverr mentioned earlier, the members of the Fat Stacks Community mostly mentioned these these places where they look for writers:

• Writer Access
• Text Broker
• ProBlogger
• Craigslist, yes you read that right. Choose a nearby big city and look under JOBS in the “writing/editing” section. You can also post your jobs under the SERVICES section.

]]> https://internetmarketingjunkie.com/freelancing-the-pay-me-now-business-model/feed/ 0 https://internetmarketingjunkie.com/take-aim-at-your-target-market/ https://internetmarketingjunkie.com/take-aim-at-your-target-market/#respond Sun, 19 Jul 2020 17:27:47 +0000 https://internetmarketingjunkie.com/?p=84 What Is A Target Audience & How Do You Define Yours

The term target audience may seem confusing at first, but it is a crucial part of business development. Knowing who you want to engage or sell to is a cornerstone of the foundation upon which you are building your business.

A target audience is the thinnest slice of the market that you can focus on, from which all of your marketing decisions are based. This audience is the focal point of your decisions, making sure that your efforts are tailor-made to find them and draw them in.

A target audience is the ideal customer or avatar that you have in mind when you are creating and selling. They are the image in your head when you imagine the perfect person or scenario for your product or service.

Creating an avatar is simple when you take the time to ask yourself specific questions about your target audience:

• Are they a man or a woman?
• How old are they?
• Where do they live?
• What do they do for a living?
• How do they spend their time?
• What is the need that you provide a solution for?

Here’s an example of an avatar created for a podcast for entrepreneurs:

Bob is a 31-year-old male who commutes 40 minutes to work, five days a week. He is bored with his commute and his current work assignment. He wants to start his own business but doesn’t know where to begin. He wants to be inspired by other men and women who have taken the risk to open their own businesses and are making it happen.

In this scenario, Bob is the target audience. By knowing exactly who the podcast is designed for, the podcast host and website owner can create an experience tailor made for Bob. The colors of the website, the content of the interviews, the coaching, the resources, and the sales that come from them can all be designed looking for Bob.

Having an avatar doesn’t mean you won’t sell to a wider variety of customers; you absolutely will. Having an avatar means you are clear and defined about who your ideal customer is for this product or service at this time. This allows you to create marketing materials that are on target for your client.

The key to having a successful sales experience is knowing exactly who is buying your product. Understanding and defining your target audience is the best strategy there is. This saves you valuable time and money developing your business.

Why Is It Important To Have A Firm Understanding Of Who Your Target Audience Is?

Creating content and bringing potential customers into your funnel is key to beginning the sales conversion. Having a clearly defined target audience is the crucial step towards selling. It is important to have a firm understanding of who your target audience is so you can create content that speaks directly to them.

If your business is designed to sell designer clothing for toddlers and children, it is crucial to know who is buying the clothes. You are not selling to toddlers and children. You are selling to parents, grandparents, and other adults who hold a high value for designer clothing.

Peeling this back further, we see hidden elements that must also be considered when understanding this market; the ideal customer for designer clothing for toddlers and children is:

• Middle to upper income
• Places high value on their kids’ appearance
• Likely shops on-line or boutiques
• Has discerning tastes
• Has high potential for repeat purchases

What does knowing this information do for you as a business owner? Knowing this helps you make crucial decisions about where to advertise and how to engage the audience. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping to find a few discerning parents or grandmothers ready to buy, you can apply targeted and focused ads and content directly to men and women who are looking for your designer clothing. The sale is made effortlessly because there are no roadblocks to the purchase. By finding and plugging into the market who wants you, you are there solving a problem that they had and are willing to pay for; finding quality clothing for their tastes and budget.

Knowing who you are selling to is especially important for your marketing decisions. It comes in handy when creating Facebook ads, posting to Pinterest, or using SEO for blog posts or online content. Being able to narrow down your market creates a bigger pool of potential customers. This saves your money and gives you a bigger ROI for your marketing investment.

Being able to sell your goods or services is easier when you know who your target audience is and where they live. Once you know these crucial pieces, you can make valuable marketing decisions, speak directly to your best customer base, and rest assured your business will thrive. Get excited about finding your ideal customer and providing what they need.

Helpful Information About Your Target Audience And How To Find It

Finding your target audience and creating an avatar to focus on is the cornerstone of the foundation of your business. Knowing who you are selling to and what they are like is the key to effortless sales.

An avatar is a specific person who perfectly embodies the elements of your ideal customer. If an image were posted of your ideal customer theirs would be front and center. They are likely the inspiration for your business when you created it.

In this day and age with Facebook ads, SEO and other algorithms, it is possible to hone in on the market in such a way that you can fine tune your advertising so specifically that your investments in your message are sure to get a return.

But how do you do that? How do you hone in on the market so concisely?

First, spend time thinking about your product or service:

• What does your product do?
• What problem does it solve?
• Who is it designed for?
• Who makes the decision to purchase your product or service?

Next, think about who benefits the most from your product or service:

• What problems do they face?
• What is their pain point?
• What solutions are they looking for?
• What language do they use?
• Where do they shop?
• How do they identify themselves in the marketplace?
• What do they do for a living?
• What rationale do they use to make decisions?
• How do they spend their free time?

Asking yourself these types of questions helps define your target audience. The defining factors can be translated to the categories available to you for sponsored ads, or the language you use when you write content. The more you know the better you can speak directly to your audience.

Once you have asked yourself these questions, test out your theories. Social media is an excellent way to screen your tribe to see who is a potential customer. Ask questions, pose scenarios and see who bites.

Use tools like

• Surveys– Post a survey on social media to test a theory or ask a question.
• Contests– Gather data by holding a contest that gathers information about your target audience’s habits.
• Split Testing– Create graphics or titles for your goods or services and test which get more traction.
• Forced Choice Testing– Create a dynamic where one of two choices must be made and see which gets the most attention.
• Observation– Pay close attention to your surroundings and see what behaviors your customers have in common.

These tools help you define your target audience and your avatar in no time at all, speeding up the process for marketing and sales.

The Benefits Of Dividing Your Target Audience Into Sub-Groups

Defining a target audience is a first step in the sales funnel. Developing an ideal customer in your mind is an important way to focus your marketing resources and save you time and money acquiring a sale.

Once you have discovered your audience and began to engage them, it is beneficial to create sub-groups that further define and market specifically-designed goods and services.

If you are in the self-help world and write books, it is important to have sub-groups of the customers to set apart those who are parents, married, or divorced, or empty nesters. Each of these sub-groups has specific needs that you can address through your targeted marketing.

Let’s look at the benefits of dividing your audience into sub-groups…

• Tailor-Made Messaging– Being assigned to a sub-group creates the opportunity for tailor-made messaging that speaks crystal clear about the need and the benefit for the goods and services. Selling to motor cycle owners is one thing; selling to Harley owners who ride in Harley clubs taking Poker Runs is even better. Knowing more about the sub-group means you can use very specific language and tone of voice that the group resonates with. This increases your credibility and your sales.
• Creating Long Standing Relationships– As customers fall into your funnel and engage with you, they begin to know, like, and trust you and your products. The more you know about them in general, the better you can engage with them and share your genuine interest in their wellbeing. You can filter the information you send them so it is the most relevant and important for their needs.
• Establishing Your Credibility– When you engage a market, you likely have multiple messages that when broken down, share one unifying message. Creating a sub-group allows you to establish your credibility with a wider range of customers on a wider platform. This gives your audience the opportunity to see sides of you that they may not have otherwise. Your audience defines you as the authority in the area as you engage them specifically.
• Content Creation– Having defined sub-groups makes content creation a breeze. Whether you are creating blog posts, emails or sales pages. Making a widget or developing a class or webinar, you can create content effortlessly with a sub-group. If you teach web design and have taught a webinar titled Web Design 101, you can direct these customers into a sub-group and teach enhanced skills.
• Repeat Sales– Ideally, we are in relationship with our audience and the goal is to do repeat business. Having sub-groups creates the opportunity to take customers on a journey or to sell to them in a way that is genuine and authentic. Creating relationships, establishing credibility, creating content, and tailoring a message all lead to repeat sales. Marketing decisions can be clear when you direct customers into sub-groups and you know exactly what you want to sell to them and why.

Once you have defined your target audience, you can easily create sub-groups that increase your relationships, help make content and marketing decisions and makes sales easier.

Marketing Directly To Your Target Audience

Once you have created and defined your target audience, it is time to engage them, establish rapport, and give them useful information that sells.

The more you know about your audience, the better you can speak to them in their voice with their preferred lexicon and examples. The higher your credibility, the easier it is to convert them into paying customers who come back again and again for more.

Here’s how to market directly to your target audience:

Create Content Specifically Crafted For Your Audience

If your audience is dog owners who love spaniels, it is easier to create meaningful content that meets their specific breed’s needs, solving problems that Spaniel dogs face. Offering products that are unique to Spaniels and their owners. This saves both you and the customer time and money. Because your net isn’t cast wide and far hoping to find a Spaniel owner in a sea of dog breeds, they can trust that you have done your homework about the needs of their Spaniel, effectively getting them to trust your product and buy it.

Use Your Knowledge To Speak Directly To Them In Sales Copy

Online marketing is highly effective and converts if you have clear copy that speaks directly to your market. Knowing your market and creating a tribe that knows, likes, and trusts you increase your ability to write copy that they connect with and accept. When you have alignment between your voice and their ear the conversation is effortless. You aren’t in the mode of convincing them to buy you are simply affirming their desire to do business with you. Use your knowledge about the subject to speak directly to the customer in your sales copy, opt-in pages, emails, calls to action, etc…

Tap Into Your Knowledge About People To Write Highly Converting Emails & Social Media

We all have friends from different walks of life. We speak to our family in one voice and our business associates in another. When we get together with our personal interest groups, we likely use phrases and energy we wouldn’t in any other venue. When you know someone, you know what will draw them in because you speak the same language given the context. Knowing your audience well makes it easy to speak to them in the language they engage and understand. This makes writing emails personal and authentic. Social media posts are effortless and get the clicks and engagement that create momentum and spread the word about your business.
Reach out confidently to your audience and engage them in a way that showcases your expertise and enthusiasm for them and your business.

I’ve been following the make money online world for a long time. I’ve built many websites. I have a bunch of domain names. 

I’ve had this particular domain for years and used to have a website for it. There was plenty of content there. Mostly I wrote detailed product reviews, with my affiliate links scattered around in the articles.

I made a few affiliate commissions, but not much. Not bad though, because I did absolutely nothing to promote the site, so it was really like a free gift.

One year, as Christmas was approaching, money was really tight for us. I had several sites on a HostGator reseller hosting account. I bought Christmas gifts for my kids instead of renewing my hosting account. Kids gotta have toys, you know.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough to save all those articles I’d worked so hard to write. HostGator blew them into digital dust along with my site.

Poof!

Like that famous moth, that couldn’t stay away from the flame, I keep getting drawn towards the internet marketing world. It’s just so interesting. There are so many areas of profit to try out.

I’m retired now and need something to occupy my mind. So, I’m going to light this thing back up and have some fun.

The last time I ran this place I spent lots of time finessing the writing, making graphics, either with my camera or making screen shots and getting all the formatting just so. Only after all that, would I publish anything.

All the gurus say, “Money loves speed.” 

This time I’m going to publish first, and massage the content later.

There will be a minimum of editing at first. If I use PLR content as the base for an article, I’ll do very little to change it before I publish it. Most people put images on all their articles these days. Unless they’re need for the post to make sense, that will wait until later.

I’ll come back and make things pretty later. I want content on here as quickly as possible. 

The same goes for the site theme. I’m using a fast, but basic theme to start out. I’ve made just a few refinements so far. I’ll gradually change it as we go along. The content is more important. 

I’ll share what I’ve learned in the past, and what I learn going forward. 

So let’s get this show on the road.