MAKING MONEY ONLINE WITH AFFILIATE MARKETING

Content is written by Ayo Sodipo

Making money online and affiliate marketing is almost synonymous with the newbie who wants to make a living online. If you are one of those who want to go on an online entrepreneurial journey, you’re in the right place. Using real-life examples, you’ll be walked step-by-step through the way to achieving affiliate marketing success. Let’s get right to it.

Source - www.clickfunnels.com

• Introduction.
• What affiliate marketing is all about.
• An illustration of the affiliate marketing process.
• The 3 types of affiliate marketers.
• The profitability of the affiliate marketing business model.
• Affiliate marketing role models.
• Having the right attitude for affiliate marketing success.
• Choose a niche and grow your audience.
• Follow the masters' footsteps. 

Introduction

In the last few years, making money online has become quite fashionable. This situation became even more prevalent when the Covid 19 pandemic kept everybody in their homes for ages.

    The fact was that people had to survive. This meant that they had to look for a means of livelihood. Since they couldn’t go out to do this, it meant that they had to do it from their homes.

      Most people’s journey into making money online usually starts with affiliate marketing. The term affiliate marketing is so popular that, almost everybody you talk to about the subject of making money online is referring to affiliate marketing. However, what does this mean?

What affiliate marketing is all about

 A quick visit to the Wikipedia page on the subject says that “affiliate-marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliates own marketing efforts.” This is a very precise definition but, what does this mean in simple English?

      In simple English, affiliate marketing is an arrangement between two people, whereby a person who has a product or service to sell allows the other person to advertise and sell for him in exchange for a commission. It’s as simple as that.

      This is an arrangement we’re all familiar with. The only difference with this one is that everything is done on the internet, that is, online. An affiliate marketer is an online salesman.

However, that would be the situation in an offline line scenario. In an online scenario, the arrangement will be among three people. The first is the guy who owns the product or service. The second is the guy who wants to sell it for him and the third is the guy who creates the environment for such an arrangement to work seamlessly and fraud-free. Everything happening online. Understand this: these three guys will never meet each other physically in most cases, yet, they may be engaged in a business relationship for years.

An illustration of the affiliate marketing process

 Let’s illustrate what we have just said with an example. It’s like when my friend Joe developed unique software that could cut an organization’s dependency on a large accounting staff to the bare minimum and do the job faster and accurately in a tenth of the time, he knew he had a winner.

      Joe then created a website to market his app. He then decided that he needed to maximize sales, so turned his product into an affiliate product. Therefore, Joe as the owner of the app is the merchant. Joe now approaches an organization that acts as a go-between for guys like Joe and people who want to assist in advertising and selling his product for a commission. These guys are known as affiliate networks. The guys who visit the networks looking for products to promote on behalf of their owners are the affiliates. The last part of the equation is the customers, the guys who the excitement is all about.

      What happens is that, when an affiliate picks a product to promote, he is given a unique link attached to his promotion so that when anybody buys the product through him; the merchant and the network know and he is paid a commission. That’s how the deal works. It’s quite simple, isn’t it?

The 3 types of affiliate marketers

There are three types of affiliate marketers. First, we have the type we call unattached marketers. These guys when promoting a product are very disconnected from the process. They do not have any connection to the product or, service and don’t pretend to want to. They don’t have skills relating to what they are promoting. They have no authority about its usage. Their general attitude is that they are not interested in anything except getting paid.

      The second type of affiliate marketer is the type that is attached. This guy is the complete opposite of the first one. First of all, he cares enough about what he’s selling to want to know about it. He is relatively knowledgeable about his wares and can confidently speak about their benefits and usage. Although his customer relations are much better than the first guy, it needs very drastic improvement.

      The third type of affiliate marketer is the involved one. Of all the three, this guy is the one who is primed for success. He knows the product inside out. He is skilled at its usage and knows everything that is to be known about it. His knowledge is authoritative and deep. However, what makes this fellow unique is his deep knowledge of his customers. This knowledge is borne out of a need to help and, sincerely alleviate their pain points. He has empathy for his customers. This attitude guarantees that he will be extremely successful in the industry.

The profitability of the affiliate marketing business model

With all the hullabaloo about affiliate marketing, it is necessary to ask this question - Is affiliate marketing truly profitable? The answer to that question is in the numbers. You can’t argue with numbers. According to Statista, the highly reliable database company situated in Hamburg, Germany; the affiliate marketing industry is expected to grow from 5.4 billion US dollars in 2017 to over 8.2 billion dollars in 2022. According to the report, these figures are very conservative.

Source - www.statista.com

The point is that, given the increased attitude of organizations in favor of out-sourcing and remote workers,  a huge shift toward freelancing; and the pervasiveness of the new economic reality. Affiliate marketing as an industry is still in its infancy.

Affiliate marketing role models

Now, let’s get real. Are there any affiliate marketers out there that we can point to as role models? Sure, there are.

      According to popular legend, at the very top of the affiliate marketing totem pole is a dude called, Pat Flynn. Pat said that he got into affiliate marketing in 2008 after he was fired from his job. He created a site called LEED blog and decided to monetize it. He used GoogleAdsense as his campaign instrument and by 2013 he had made over $50,000. He has not looked back ever since and is a bonafide seven-figure operator.

Pat Flynn

Source - seowebfirm.com

 Pat’s core affiliate marketing value is rooted in the principle of service. Pat believes that your audience, that is people who visit your site, who are on your email lists, who listen to your podcasts, who watch your YouTube videos, who never miss a webinar, and, for reasons of relationship, trust you. He believes that you should treat these people like they’re your blood. You should know their needs, empathize with them. Feel their pain points. And then recommend solutions to these pain points through the products and services you promote.

Kirsty McCubbin

Source - www.facebook.com

 Another affiliate marketing superstar worth mentioning is Kirsty McCubbin. According to Kirsty, she got her first job in 1999 as an SEO specialist. One of her assignments was to assist in the creation of an affiliate marketing site. She got trained on the job, that is, affiliate marketing; and she was hooked. From that point on, affiliate marketing has been her profession and passion. She now travels around the world with her husband and kids enjoying the life of a true digital nomad.

John Chow

Source - johnchow.com

Another affiliate marketing superstar worth mentioning is John Chow. John is at the head of digital warrior entrepreneurs in the Canadian homeland. John said that he entered the digital life in 1999 when he created a site called Moto’s Project 504. It was about a computer that he had built by himself. Sure enough, after he had worked on it for some time it acquired its domain name and a list. With this done, he started The Techzone and joined the Maximum PC Network. His monthly checks grew from $250 to $2500 in short order. This is how quickly his list grew. John has not looked back since then.

Ian Fernando

Source - ianfernando.com

Another guy worth checking out is Ian Fernando. Ian has been in the game for 15 years. According to him, he started in eCommerce and then moved into affiliate marketing through AzoogleAds. He quickly learned the importance and correct uses of keywords and his income blew. From making $100 a day to making $1000 a week, to making $1000 a day, all through knowing the right keywords to use.

Having the right attitude for affiliate marketing success

Now, let’s get down to how we are going to do our own affiliate marketing business. The most fundamental issue is your attitude towards the business. If you’ve noticed anything about the successful people we have spoken about, is that they took their time. Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick game. It’s a business, and like any other type of business, it has a growth cycle. It takes time to grow any business and affiliate marketing is no different. If you are the type that wants to start today and get rich today, then affiliate marketing is not for you. No type of business is for you. It’s better that you take up scamming and be ready to pay the price. This game is a marathon, not a sprint. You must cultivate a resolute attitude, a never-say-die attitude. You know that the industry is legitimate and growing. You know that there’s money to be made in the business. You know that any average Joe can do the business. You know that if you follow simple tested techniques you will get the desired results. It means that all you need to have is the correct attitude. Stick to it, until it happens for you.

Source - www.youngquotes.com

Choose a niche and grow your audience

After making sure that you are mentally prepared for the job at hand, the second step in your affiliate marketing business journey is for you to choose a niche. This is very important. Don’t spread yourself thin by choosing several niches at the same time. You will only delay your progress. Choose one of the evergreen niches and then own it. A friend of mine usually said that it is better to be one inch wide and a mile deep, than to be one inch deep and a mile wide. What does this mean in plain English? It means that if you concentrate on one thing, you will go much further than when you scatter your concentration on a lot of things. 

      Your next step is to start growing an audience. You can do this by starting a site on your niche and offering solutions to your niche’s challenges. If you are financially able, you can drive traffic to the site using paid advertising. If you don’t have cash then you have to quickly teach yourself SEO. No matter what, you must grow your audience by growing your email list. On the other hand, you may rent another guy’s list while growing your own gradually. I recommend the second option. You can quickly scale up your earnings using this framework.

      Make sure that your voice is on all the platforms - websites, social media, YouTube, and podcasts. Make sure you gather an audience on all these platforms by making yourself useful to their needs and challenges.

Source - www.amnavigator.com

Follow the masters' footsteps.

I’ve always believed in sitting on the shoulders of giants. Our giant is one of the best, Pat Flynn. Using Pat’s advice, you first understand your niche inside out. This is the only way you can understand the challenges and pain points of that niche. Then you begin to build your audience in that niche.

Use Google Adsense and learn SEO

Pat said he used GoogleAdwords for this chore. Even when you’re using this, you must know about SEO. Search Engine Optimization, SEO, is easily learned, you don’t need more than grade school comprehension to grab them. Even if you have limited financial resources, a rudimentary knowledge of SEO will make a difference and assist you in building your list.

Build a relationship with your audience.

Build a relationship with your audience by supplying quality continuously. Give value and nurture trust. Your slogan should always be  - Audience first, always. This is an online business, always look for and feed your audience with information that is useful and factual. This is how to develop a relationship and build trust. Through this interaction, you are better able to understand your audience.

      With this knowledge, you can choose and promote products that serve their needs. When you’re doing this, you must follow a fail-proof procedure.

Use the product or, service yourself

First, you should buy and use the products yourself. There’s no risk in this since practically every product or, service comes with a money-back guarantee. If the product is okay, you do a personal and thorough assessment of the benefits and the drawbacks, if any. This is apart from the sales pitch of the product’s manufacturers. Then you introduce it to your audience using the following procedure.

Do a lot of demonstrations

When introducing the product, you don’t go straight ahead to make a pitch. The first thing you do is to demonstrate it using all your available platforms. This automatically gives the product a human face and, since you are already intimate with your audience, they are more receptive to your offer than they will be to a cold call.

Answer questions

 It is at this point that you begin to answer the questions that are both spoken and unspoken regarding challenges and pain points that your offer is going to take care of. At the same time, you are building confidence in the potency of the product to solve a problem.

Schedule interviews

If it is possible you schedule and air interviews with the product’s manufacturers as guests. This shows that there are real people behind the stuff you’re pushing on to your audience. An interview further legitimizes the product in the minds of people.

Show proof always

Make sure that you show proof all the time. Your reputation and financial well-being are at stake here. You are not looking for a one-off purchase, what you want is a repeat customer. Human beings are very timid when it comes to money. Once they get burnt the first time, they run away with their wallets. At the same time human beings have spending habits, one of them is that, if a person buys something from you the first time and, is satisfied, the person will continue to buy from you forever. This is what people in marketing call brand loyalty.

Never shy away from a call to action

The crunch! Get your product in front of your audience! Always do this. Most people are very shy when it comes to selling. This is because of the fear of rejection. They do a fantastic job in the build-up, but when it gets to the reason for the build-up; they freeze up.

ACTION IS MAGICAL - Ayo Sodipo 

 

                       

You should always put a call to action in every aspect of your promotion. A call to action shows that you are a serious businessman. The CAT, that is, call to action - the action of buying. Make sure that you sprinkle your affiliate link liberally throughout your promotional efforts. Never be shy about asking people to purchase what will solve their problems. It’s the ultimate win-win scenario.  That’s the reason why we are in the game of affiliate marketing.

Don't duplicate offers

 A note of warning here, never recommend more than one of the same kind of product to your valuable audience. What you will succeed in doing is to confuse them. Confused people don’t bring out their wallets. Although some people say that you can do this for differentiation. My take is that you should be on the side of caution - don’t do it.

      Affiliate marketing will continue to grow and has come to stay as a business model. It is never too late to join the party. Have fun guys.           

 

NIGERIA'S SURVIVAL AND EXISTENTIAL CRISIS

Only three categories of people do not know that the Nigerian state is in a deep crisis, and has been in it for the last six decades. The first category is children and infants. These are the little angels who go about their existence, completely oblivious to the fact that they have been born into a boiling cauldron.        The second category is those who are too ignorant to make sense of what is going on around them.         The third category is those who know exactly what is going on but, are too scared to admit it. This category buries its head in the sand like an ostrich, preferring to live in the self-delusion that everything is okay.

       The first two categories can be excused their ignorance. However, the scathing effect of their environment on their psyches and persons, quickly clue them to the fact that something is horribly wrong. Nevertheless, the third category cannot be excused. This set of people know exactly what is going on but pretend otherwise out of fear or, avarice or, both.

      Existentialism teaches us that entities, be they human or corporate, are born or, created, and put into their environments without purpose. They now have to find their purpose through choice and the deliberate expression of their will. Conversely, an entity’s purpose may be given to it by its creator, thus, its will may be an expression of its creator’s own purpose.

      The colony of Nigeria was created by the British as a colonial business enterprise. Its purpose was to enrich its creator by being a monopolistic market and a steady source of very cheap, primary raw materials. It fulfilled these purposes well, until uncontrollable circumstances, namely, the second world war; forced the British to relinquish control of its creation. Thus, the modern independent state of Nigeria was born.

      The new “state” of Nigeria still continued to fulfil the purpose of its creators as a neo-colonialist enterprise. But, right from inception made pretences at having a purpose within the comity of nations. It is this self-deception and the shying away from a set of crucial questions by its political and intellectual elite; that has created the existential crisis we’re now in. This existential crisis is the root cause of the threat to Nigeria remaining a state. It is what has plunged Nigeria into the long persisting survival crisis that it has found itself.  These questions are – What is Nigeria? Why should there be a state called Nigeria? Is there a need for a state called Nigeria? It’s the fear of confronting these questions that had prolonged the agony of its citizens.

      A nation may exist without a state but, a state as of necessity is made up of a nation or, group of nations. A nation is a group of people having a common origin and history, a unique language and culture, a perceived belief in a common destiny and, a unique way of viewing creation and the universe.

       The objective realities of global geo-political history are that; a nation may grow organically into a state. An example of this is the nation of Japanese people growing organically to become the state of Japan. The same thing can also be said of the French, Chinese, Russians, Arabs, Israelis and, many others. Thus, their reason for being is easily expressed in the spirit of “one people, with one destiny under the same sky.”

      On the other hand, a state can come about through the negotiations of a group of nations among themselves. In this instance, a group of nations come to a round table and hammer out the details of state creation. In other words, these individual nations become part of one country because they desire to do so. This may be done for any number of reasons, which may include – security, prosperity, obvious similarities, combined advantageous potential elements that enhance and uplift the individual component nations. The key aspect of this is, the nations are in such a state by choice. They are there because they want to be in such a union and, not due to coercion. They are there because they can see the clear and overt advantages of being in such a union. The oldest examples of such states are Switzerland, Canada and, the United States of America.

      Conversely, states that have come to be without the active negotiations of their component nations have been plagued with unrelenting existential and survival crises. This has been the case with most states that originated from being colonies. This fact is the fundamental contradiction creating the crises.

     The people of the various nations in sub-Saharan West Africa are not new to operating in the survival mode. In the last four hundred years, the people of this region have lived through consistent trauma. They have had to live through self-serving jihads. Inhuman slave trading. Humiliating colonial domination. Thoughtless civil wars. Soul numbing ignorance. Gangster political leadership. Disease and excruciating poverty and, much more. It is quite right to say that the component nations that make up the state of Nigeria have been through all this, and more.

      It is reported that one out of every four people of African descent can trace their roots back to one of the nationalities that make Nigeria. This makes Nigeria crucial to the development of people of African descent worldwide. Thus, it is very important to examine the contradictions causing the crises that had stymied the growth of this country. This can only be done by looking at the issues from the beginning, dispassionately.

       It is very important to point out a fundamental understanding of the fact that, colonies were never designed by their creators to function as states. Although they had structures and institutions that mimicked those of a real state, all these were deliberately perverted by their creators to enhance and accelerate primitive exploitative functions. Absolutely, none of the sub-systems of a colony is designed to function the way they should. They were all designed to subjugate and exploit the indigenous population with undisguised rapacity. The fact that colonies metamorphosed into independent states are an accident of global history.                                                               

      The colony of Nigeria which became the state of Nigeria was never designed by the British to function as a normal state. What they designed was a contraption that mimicked a state, but was programmed to appropriate and send an outflow of resources to the United Kingdom and its western allies. It is painful to point out that the Nigerian state still carries out this function.

      The colony of Nigeria was an odd contraption of more than three hundred and fifty nations, most of whom were brought to heel by force of arms. It is this amalgam of strange bedfellows that became the independent state of Nigeria. It may be argued that the terms of “independence” were negotiated, it was between a highly suspect political elite and their slave masters. True negotiations between supposedly co-existing nations never took place. This is the fundamental contradiction that is at the root of the existential and survival crisis Nigeria has found itself in since independence.

      The implementation of the Independence and Republican constitutions did not ameliorate the institutional and systemic contradictions that characterised deep-seated animosities and suspicions that had always existed between the nations that occupied the state of Nigeria. Matters were not helped by the invisible but, dominant hand of the colonial masters who continued to operate their business through local proxies.

      Deep cleavages became obvious in the political landscape immediately after independence. The rancour, treachery and, back-stabbing that characterised the six years after the gaining of independence is another story on its own. Suffice to say that, all the elements that were needed in building a viable newly created state were totally absent. This was so because of the fact that the most crucial element to creating a viable state was missing in the thinking of the political and intellectual elite – a unified sense of purpose.

      Despite the fact that, individually, the top-ranking members of the Nigerian political class were extraordinarily brilliant individuals; their personal biases destroyed that brilliance. At the root of this was deep primordial suspicions that had existed before the white man came on the scene. This was due to events that took place over a century before the coming of the colonialists. Thus, despite their education, eloquence, brilliance, there was an endemic xenophobic streak inherent in all the members of the Nigerian political elite. It is this basic character flaw in all of them, that made the building of a viable state impossible and, still makes it impossible. Thus, every action of the political elite had almost always had unintended disastrous consequences.

      The colonialists agreed to give the newly emerging state of Nigeria an administrative structure of three regions. However, this structure was obviously skewed in favour of the north. This automatically created an imbalance in the country’s administrative structure. This fundamental contradiction was inserted into the state structure by the colonialists, deliberately.

      It must be noted that nothing in politics occurs by happenstance. Things may occur due to the laws of unintended consequences but, never by happenstance. Nevertheless, all primary actions in the realm of politics are due to deliberate thought and intentions.

      Thus, the singular deliberate policy of an imbalanced administrative structure by the colonialists, was a deliberate action, from inception, to make the Nigerian state unworkable. This is because it gave the northern region an unnecessary and undue advantage in the political power structure. This made the other regions automatically disadvantaged and challenged within the political power matrix. A situation like that is humanly intolerable. Nobody or, a group of people like to play second fiddle and, the colonial masters knew this.

      Thus, with this fundamental policy of destabilisation firmly in place, and the basic existential questions deliberately ignored due to greed, ambition and, fear, the foundation for endless crises was hammered into place. Even before independence, it was obvious to anybody of average perception that things were not working out. The endless bickering, antagonisms, back-stabbing, betrayals, and openly domineering tendencies of the elite political elements, the details of which will be treated in subsequent discourses, was very disheartening to the enlightened segment of the citizenry.

      How this bunch of mutual antagonists came together to form a state called Nigeria can logically be explained on the basis of two facts – the need by the British to preserve its neo-colonial business enterprise and; the greed and personal ambitions of the apex political actors in all the regions. It was obvious to neutral intellectuals around the world that Nigeria, just like a majority of colonies agitating for independence was a tragedy waiting to happen.

       Within a decade of Nigeria gaining statehood, a monumental humanitarian disaster occurred. Oceans of innocent blood were spilt, all because of the hatred, arrogance, thoughtlessness, mind-numbing stupidity, with the youthful exuberance of a paltry few. It has been observed that the disaster could have been averted if only a little humility and common sense had been applied by the political actors of that sad drama. A repeat scenario is already playing out again, slowly. The only observable difference this time is that the situation is more insidious because there will be an implosion rather than an explosion. This is really dangerous because of the devastating effect it will have on the citizenry in general, and not a particular section. This can already be seen through the current observable fracture in political authority.

      In conclusion, due to the deliberate reluctance of the oligarchic political elite, their inheritors, with the newly emergent collaborator class to face existential realities; the various crises plaguing state survival will continue unabated. Meanwhile, the extraordinary citizens of the nations that make up Nigeria continue to battle against debilitating material conditions and, poor standards of living that are not of their own making. It is the writer’s intention to examine the crisis of state survival and confront the fundamental existential questions in subsequent discourses.