Did I ever tell my story?

You can read about it here. But I have been at this game since 2014 when I first found out that people were making an income from home, from their computers and phones.

I started with network marketing. Network marketing seems to have a bad name now because of how difficult it is to make money and if you do make money, because of how small the commissions are.

I made my first $700 however with network marketing within two years of promoting the product and I just was not satisfied.

That dissatisfaction resulted in me losing interest really quickly in network marketing, which then took me to affiliate marketing.

I saw a guy posting on Facebook about how much money he was making. It was not hundreds of dollars a month or a day. It was thousands.

“No way does that happen”, I thought; but on closer look and more intense research I realised that it could be done and became more intrigued in affiliate marketing.

That’s where my journey began. A year ago and within one month I made my first affiliate sale of $22.

10 Lessons I Learnt In A Year of Affiliate Marketing

Even though I made $22 in that first month, I still did not understand how it happened. All I was told was to buy a solo ad from Udimi and send the traffic to my affiliate offer.

I did that and was surprised that $22 appeared in my back office and within two days another $22 appeared. I thought to myself, where did this money come from?

Related Article:

• How To Make Money With Clickbank Affiliate Products
• 10 Step Blueprint To A Profitable Affiliate Marketing Campaign

I really did not understand it and for the next few long months I had a lot of high moments and tons and tons of low moments.

So the purpose of this post is to share with you the lessons I have learnt. I hope from my transparency you will be able to pick up a few golden points to use in your own marketing journey.

1. You Will Never Get Rich Trading Time For Money

What I realised is that the internet is a powerful tool. Using the internet and reaching billions of people all over the world, makes the opportunity to make money from the internet limitless.

That’s why working a job or exchanging time for money will only keep you at a certain pace because there are only 24 hours or 8 (if doing a job) where you will be able to do hands on work.

The thing about internet marketing is that you can use tools to automate your business. By using those tools you can have your business running automatically for 24 hours giving you the opportunity to make money whilst you sleep, whilst you’re travelling the world, or even if you’re around with your family.

You don’t have to be in front of a computer working all the time.

You can also scale your business to insane proportions.

If you’re reading this and still looking for ways to make money passively, then check out my article 25 Best Online Passive Income Streams And Opportunities.

You will find there, different ways that you can make money from anywhere in the world and also on a passive basis so you don’t have to work tirelessly at a job.

2. It Takes Money To Make Money

I see a lot of people still asking questions about how they can start an online business for free.

Hello!

The truth is, you can start an online business for free but you’re likely to make money very slowly or none at all.

The reason for that is because you need money for business tools and most importantly advertising.

Paid advertising rocks and whilst I have seen awesome results with organic traffic using this strategy, I get faster results with paid traffic.

With organic traffic like Google SEO and Pinterest SEO, it takes time to build traction. It also takes a lot of work.

However if you pay an advertising agency a few hundred dollars to run an advertising campaign, you can get your ad in front of the right people, a large audience and in a short space of time.

Also there are a lot of tools you can use for free but eventually you will have to start investing some money into these tools to get the best usage out of them.

For example, if you wanted to make money blogging, having a free blog will make you zero dollars as you are unable to post affiliate links to them or offer advertising.

Having a paid blog on the other hand means that you own it and you can add affiliate links, ads, sponsorships, etc.

You have a wider opportunity with paid blogs.

Start A Successful Blog Step By Step

3. Always Split Test

The first time I heard about split testing was when I started affiliate marketing. I did not know the real importance of it until I tested two lead capture pages and one converted at 65% and the other at 21%.

From that day forward I made sure to split test everything to get better conversions and save money.

I split test my lead pages, my target audiences, my ad networks, even my links in my ads and on my blogs.

You never know what appeals to your audience and you should never assume that people will prefer one thing over another.

Chances are the variable that you think your audience will like actually turns out to be otherwise.

4. Choose One Thing And Focus

It always amazes me how people blame a business opportunity or program for not making them money.

Actually I can’t be mad at that because at one point I thought that network marketing sucked until I really understood what marketing involved.

However, I was not the one to jump from opportunity to opportunity.

In fact I gave one program my all. I promoted it to the max and only changed it or moved to another when I felt that the program was no longer serving me and so would not serve my audience.

I really only promote any product that I use and can give my honest testimonial about it. I don’t promote products for the sake of making money, like some people do.

That’s why, you should promote one product that you truly believe in, learn how to make money from it and then move on to the next thing after you have made money from the first one.

Forget chasing the shiny objects because you will only lose money in the end.

I always tell people that the product is not the problem. What is the problem is that you have not given the opportunity and the advertising time to work.

When promoting anything give it at least 3 to 6 months of consistent effort. Always be willing to learn the best ways to promote the offer before giving up on it.

For example, you may be promoting a business opportunity. I have found that the best traffic sources for business opportunities are solo ads, safelists and PPC (excluding Facebook PPC because Facebook does not like this niche).

You should therefore be split testing these traffic sources and learning which one works well for your offer.

It may actually be that the product is not the problem, but rather the angle by which you are promoting the offer. For that reason before choosing an offer, make sure that you do a lot of research to see which products are converting well and how you can take what works well and model after it or improve it.

Which brings me on to my next lesson.

Start A Successful Blog Step By Step

5. Don’t Try To Reinvent The Wheel

There are already people who have mastered a certain thing so why try to do something else when it has already been tried, tested and reaped incredible results.

The best thing you can do, especially if you are new to a method of making money online or a product, observe what other marketers are doing and either model after them or put your own twist on it and improve it.

So when I say model after the marketer, it is perfectly acceptable to use what they have and create a likeness.

For example, if you see a marketer who is promoting Bitcoin and his ad copy is engaging a lot of people, instead of trying to copy what he has written, take what he has and create a similar ad copy from the same angle that is already winning.

You can use your own image and call to action but it is never cool to copy verbatim what someone else is already doing.

Here’s a case in point.

I found an offer that was converting well for one marketer. I simply observed what they did and wrote my own copy but in a similar fashion.

I simply looked at how they pitched their idea and modelled after it.

That’s why it’s always important to do your research to see what is already working on the internet.

That way you save yourself time, frustration and money.

Always go after what is already working. Never reinvent the wheel.

6. Relationships Matter

The reason a lot of beginners fail is because they don’t understand the concept that “people buy from people that they know, like and trust”

Therefore before trying to get a sale you should always try to build that relationship. Most people get confused when I speak about relationships.

I know I was one of those. I always thought, “damn, are you saying that I need to try and become friends with my audience?”

No. Building a relationship simply means, introducing yourself to your audience, showing up consistently and talking to them everyday.

For example, if you’re using Facebook to promote an offer, one way of building a relationship is by posting regularly. Post content that inspires, encourages and showcases your life.

That way people will get to know who you are and by doing that you are building a relationship.

If you are using email marketing to promote an offer you can build a relationship by sending your list regular email broadcasts. In those broadcasts you can talk about your life, share valuable information that will help your list and even offer to have one on one conversations with them.

There are so many ways to build a relationship with your audience.

But most importantly focus on adding value first then the sales will come.

7. Learn AND Apply

This one is too funny for me.

Although it is not something that I have taught myself because I was always a doer, it is a lesson I have taught others.

Most people are afraid of taking action because they are afraid of failing. There seems to be either a fear of failing and embarrassing oneself, or a fear of failing and wasting money.

I think it is the latter one as my friend explained to me the other day.

One thing that stood out from our conversation and she explained why she had not done what I told her to do yet, was that she was afraid. Then she went on to say “but I know I have to buy it to get started” and it made me believe that the real reason why people don’t start something is because they are afraid of the initial investment and the fear of losing that investment.

All in all, sometimes you have to learn how to stop learning so you can apply and win. If you never start, you never know where you will end.

For me, the hardest part is just never knowing where I will end because it may actually turn out great and had I not started I would have never known what my fate would be.

All I can say, is that with any business you need to have an open mind and a positive one at that.

If like me, you believe in the Law of Attraction then you would understand that whatever you put out into the universe is what you will attract to you. So if you think that you will be a massive success, then expect that to be your reality.

If you think that once you take action you will fail, then that will be your reality.

8. The Money Is In The List

Yes it is.

My first affiliate campaign went something like this.

I sent 100 visitors from a solo ad campaign to my first affiliate offer. I spent $75.

I got 35 people added to my email list and two sales conversions. I made $44. I lost $31.

Then I stopped when I experienced a loss.

I said ok let’s try this again. I sent 200 visitors from a solo ad campaign. I spent $145. I got 58 people added to my email list, one conversion and made $22.

I lost $123.

I said damn! I’m just throwing away money! I was not prepared to do anymore of it because I had yet to see any profit.

What I had not realised until months later when it was explained to me, was that if I continued to buy traffic, build my email list and follow up with my email list that the sales would come eventually.

At the time my focus was on getting sales.

When I understood that my focus should actually be on building my email list and then nurturing that list to produce sales, that’s when it hit me like a ton of bricks.

After sending an email to that same list about three months later and making $374 in profit, I thought to myself, Oh my goodness! They were right all along.

Therefore as an affiliate marketer your goal should always be to build your email list. Never focus on the sale from the start.

The money that you put into building an email list is only an investment because that email list eventually becomes an asset which can pay your bills one day.

Related Articles: 

• How To Build A Profitable Email List Step By Step 
• How To Start An Email List From Scratch 
• The Ultimate Email Marketing Strategy For Bloggers

9. It’s A Numbers Game

How do people go on to make $5000, $10,000 and $25000 a month?

It’s because of their numbers and the ability to scale their campaigns. So the more people that see your offer, the more likely you are to generate sales.

It took me such a long time to understand this concept and get it.

I would say when I finally got this my entire business changed.

Because then I really understood what I needed to do, to make money in my business.

When I understood conversion percentages and how much traffic I needed to make a sale, I was able to improve my advertising campaigns and scale it to big numbers.

10. It’s Always A Good Thing To Invest In Yourself

I remember there was a time when I just could not fathom spending hundreds of dollars on an internet marketing course.

I had that fear of losing money too, so I could not justify spending so much money knowing that there was a risk I would not make it back.

Then my thoughts changed and I realised as time went along that internet marketing was the thing that everyone wanted to know.

If I could learn how to do internet marketing and then teach other people the same or actually offer a service to help other people, I would have had a great return on my investment.

Start A Successful Blog Step By Step

Now I am not afraid to buy marketing courses as I know that the knowledge that I gain, would be valuable to someone else.

I am now in the stage of building a course on Facebook Marketing and Blogging. Something I would not have been able to do, had I not invested in my own education.

So when next you have to take a course, don’t see it as wasting money. See it as investing in yourself and creating a marketable product which you can monetise later on.

So those are the most important lessons I have learnt and I hope that you can learn something from them too.

I am thankful for my journey even though there were highs and lows. Everyday is a new day and most importantly they are joyful because I am working on my own dreams rather than someone else’s.

Internet marketing is making people millions of dollars every day. If it’s one thing that you go away with, remember that you don’t become a success over night.

I am in my third year of internet marketing. I still have a lot to go through and only now can I say that I am finally reaping the rewards of my labour.

Who would have thought that I’d be a millionaire on the second day of starting my journey. Not me.

It takes time, progress, failures and eventually success.

You can do this.

Cheers,