In 2009, I originally published this post, the 3 Types of Affiliate Marketing Explained—and The One I Profit From. A lot has changed since then, and I’ve learned a ton along the way about affiliate marketing the right way. It’s now October 2018, and I wanted to share those new insights here, with a bunch of new takeaways for you to bring affiliate marketing into your own business!

In this post, we’ll explore 3 main types of affiliate marketing:

1. Unattached affiliate marketing
2. Related affiliate marketing
3. Involved affiliate marketing

Ready to dive in? Let’s do this.

In my November 2009 income report, you may have noticed that my affiliate income had surpassed my direct income from the electronic products that I sell online. I received a lot of comments, asking me to explain more about where my affiliate income comes from and how it works.

Instead of just breaking down where it all came from—how much this and how much that—I decided to turn this post into something a little bit more useful that would do more than just tell you how much I earned. Again, I'm not here to show you the money I make online, I'm here to show you how I make money online, and what I've learned along the way.

When thinking specifically about affiliate income, I determined that I could divide how people earn money as an affiliate into three primary categories: Unattached, Related, and Involved. These terms represent how we are associated with the product or products we may be an affiliate for.

Make affiliate marketing part of your success.

Learn how to:

• Find products to promote
• Stand out from the crowd
• Find tools to help you with the setup and execution

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Unattached affiliate marketing

These are your basic pay-per-click affiliate marketing campaigns where you have no presence and no authority in the niche of the product you're promoting. There's no connection between you and the end consumer, and all you're doing is putting an affiliate link in front of someone via Google Adwords, Facebook ads, etc. in the hopes that they'll click on your link, buy the product, and earn a commission.

The reason why this type of affiliate marketing is so attractive to many is because no presence or authority is needed! It takes time to build up a reputation and trust with certain groups of people online, and many people are just too scared to commit to working on a blog or website, or just don't have the time. For many, this is their only option.

Personally, I don't like this business model because to me, this is not a business model. It's an income generating model, yes, but is it a business model where I can build relationships with the end user? No. With PPC affiliate marketing, you become a behind-the-scenes middle man.

With this model, there’s pressure to focus more on the potential income rather than the customers you’re serving. That’s the dark side of affiliate marketing.

And that's not for me. In fact, in early 2009 I tried something similar once. I signed up for an affiliate network and found thousands of potential products I could promote. I chose one and spent about $250 dollars on Adwords hoping someone would click on the link and I'd get paid.

If you dabble in PPC affiliate marketing and it's working for you in a way that you’re instilling trust in your audience, I applaud you and wish you continued success. It's a lot more difficult than it sounds, so props to those of you finding success with it.

Related affiliate marketing

Another form of affiliate marketing is what I like to call Related Affiliate Marketing. This is where you have some sort of presence online, whether it's through a blog, a podcast, videos, or on social media—and you have affiliate links to products related to your niche, but they're for products you don't actually use.

Back when text link ads were a big deal, I remember seeing every single “make money online” website with a 125 x 125 pixel advertisement for Text Link Ads, which was an older advertising model where you could have advertisers pay for having specific terms on your website become links to their products. This was big in the blogosphere when I was just starting out. Most of these sites did not actually use the text link ad service on their own sites. On many personal finance blogs, you'll see a lot of different affiliate advertisements for things like ING, Everbank, LendingClub, and numerous other financial institutions.

I doubt that every person who places one of those links on their blog actually uses each of those products and services. And that's okay. Placing affiliate links on your site that are related to your niche is a decent strategy to earn extra income. Whether it's in the sidebar in banner form, or in a text link at the bottom of your blog post, because you have a website and some authority, people will trust you and your decision to place the ad on your site.

In my early days, I used to have a few of these links scattered throughout SPI—for example, an ad for a “How to Make an iPhone App” product. I used to have a few iPhone apps that generated an income for me each month, but I didn’t actually use the product I was linking to. I did, however, personally know the owner, which is why I trusted him and decided to place that ad there at the time.

Nowadays though, I don’t like to promote anything I haven’t tried and loved myself. How can I honestly say that I support a product if I don’t know everything there is to know about it?

If you don't promote the right products, even if you know the owner or think it might be a great fit, you run the risk of losing the trust you have built with your audience. It takes hard work to build authority and trust, and one bad affiliate offer could potentially ruin that, so be sure you trust the product you're recommending, and the team behind the product to take care of your people.

This is why, now, all of my affiliate marketing comes from the last type of affiliate marketing I'd like to talk about:

Involved affiliate marketing

Involved affiliate marketing is where you've used a product or service, truly believe in it, and personally recommend it to your audience. Not in a banner ad or somewhere that says “recommended resources,” but within your content, as part of your life and strategy for whatever it is you're talking about. The product almost becomes something people “have to have,” because it's part of the process.

Check out this video on how I've learned to make passive income with affiliate marketing:

It's your involvement and experience with the product that makes that offer so attractive. I talk about this and highlight my top performing affiliate marketing products and how they’ve performed so well in SPI Podcast session 293.

There is, however, a level of responsibility that you have to uphold while making these kinds of recommendations, especially if you have a lot of authority and influence over your followers. This is something I take very seriously. If it were up to me, this is the only way affiliate marketing would be done, because to me it's the most honest and most helpful.

This is the complete opposite of PPC, where you're not even seen by the consumer in order for the transaction to take place. Instead, this is you talking directly to those who may need a product that you're offering, who have their ears and eyes on you. This is not using your money in order to make money, like with PPC. It's using your reputation, trust, and authority in order to get others to take your recommendation, use it and pay you something in return in the form of a commission.

Bluehost and ConvertKit are two examples of companies I’ve created long-term, thoughtful relationships with because I love their products, value their leadership, and feel great about recommending them to my audience because I know my audience will benefit from the web hosting of Bluehost and email marketing of ConvertKit.

These types of affiliate relationships are built on trust and authenticity. The same applies to how we should building relationships with our audiences.

So, to conclude, I would say that you can choose which kind of affiliate marketing works best for you—Unattached, Related, or Involved—but in my experience, using your authority and presence in a niche to recommend products that you've used and have benefited you in some way is the best way to go.

Focus on trust and authenticity. Focus on serve first, not income first. Focus on what is best for your audience.

Be as involved as you can with the affiliate marketing process, and you'll see success with your affiliate income. To learn more about affiliate marketing, how it works, and the best ways to incorporate it into your business model, check out SPI's Epic Guide to Affiliate Marketing.

Thanks everyone!

Want to try your hand at affiliate marketing and deliver even more value to your podcasting audience? The Fusebox (formerly called Smart Podcast Player) affiliate program lets you reap the benefits while you “share the wealth” of the best podcast player for power users with your fans. Learn more and sign up here.

The post 3 Types of Affiliate Marketing Explained—and The One I Profit From—UPDATED! appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Today, I’m sharing the two quickest ways to generate an income online. In this post, you will learn:

• Gary Vaynerchuk’s timeless lesson on patience and hard work.
• How your skills are foundational to your online business success.
• The many benefits of starting with freelancing.
• How to adopt affiliate marketing into your business.
• Why quick has value, but how being too quick can also set you up for failure.

On my podcast, AskPat, I’ve coached thousands of entrepreneurs on questions related to starting an online business. The most common question of those I get is this:

“What’s the quickest way to generate an income online?”

Before I get into my answer, let me tell you exactly why this question is tricky and a little problematic. There are two specific reasons for this:

• First, the emphasis on being quick. I’ve witnessed several new business owners who’ve put speed over quality and value, only to end up further behind than where they were when they started. Quick can be good, but if that’s your focus, you may be setting yourself up for a stumble down the road.
• Second, it implies trying to avoid the work it really takes to make money online. Building a successful business takes a lot of effort and strategy. From research to execution and everything in between—it takes blood, sweat, and tears. The question is in search of a magic button, but there is no magic button.

Gary Vaynerchuk puts it best. In order to succeed, you need “micro hustle, and macro patience.”

Micro hustle is focusing all of your work and effort on the next task at hand (not the task ten tasks from now), while macro patience is about allowing time to give you the results, because they will not often happen right away.

The question “What’s the quickest way to generate an income online?” is the opposite of Gary’s advice.

I’ve thought for years about how to best answer this question. I’ve been asked this question in person before, and even during a live Q&A on stage in front of hundreds of people, and my answer usually reflects the two points I’ve made above.

After I share my thoughts with those who’ve asked this question, their body language usually very clearly reflects disappointment. They were expecting an all-in-one solution, after all, and it’s not that simple.

As I’ve thought more deeply about how to answer this question over the years, I’ve come to a realization that the problem is not the answer, but the question itself. For those who’ve asked it, I don’t think it’s always coming from a place of “quick money.” If we reframe the question, I think there’s room to empower and actually help those who’ve asked it—to give them a foundational understanding of what it really means to generate an income online.

Here’s how I would reframe the question:

“With the resources I have available to me now, what can I possibly offer to others in exchange for money?”

Now this is a question we can begin to answer. And, as you can likely tell, the answers will come to each person on an individual basis based on the resources they have available, and to whom they may be able to share and offer those resources.

The answer doesn’t come from me, it comes from the individual.

If you’re ten years old, you might not have much, but perhaps you may have access to a lawnmower in your garage, so you (after asking your parents) offer to cut the lawn for your neighbors, in exchange for money.

If you’re a writer who’s been trying to build your own brand and sell your own books, offering your talent to others who need it would be the best way to go. It’s a resource you have available to you now, and it’s something others (i.e. non writers) may be willing to pay for if they need writing for their website or blog.

By the way, today’s post is on “quick,” but if you have more time and want a more in-depth look at how to make money online, check out my recent video on how to create multiple streams of income online:

Okay, back to our topic today: If you’re struggling to figure out how to make money online FAST—in a way that focuses on your strengths—that’s how you do it. Think about the resources you have available to you, the skills and talents you have, the superpowers that you’ve so severely underrated these past years, and journey out there to find those people who are looking for the resources and skills you offer. They are out there.

Your Unfair Advantage

Remember, the skills you have are an asset; they are your “unfair advantage.” They are essential to your unique personal brand, and you can start making money online using those skills if you have the right strategy, tactics, and mindset in place. Another way to describe this is your “unfair advantage,” a term I was first introduced to by Lain Ehmann in SPI Podcast Session #37.

Lain described an unfair advantage as a skill or asset that you have that no one else has, or very few others might have in your specific niche. There are a few different types of unfair advantages, including:

1. Your Rolodex: The People You Know

You know and have access to the right people in your industry, people who others do not have access to. You’re a connector, and you can provide value to a specific audience by using the connections you’ve made over time.

Who do you know that others in your industry may not know?

2. Your Experience: What You’ve Been Through

I watched an episode of Shark Tank once where I was introduced to Major Robert Dyer. Major Dyer was pitching a new energy drink called The Ruck Pack Energy Drink. It’s not like the world needs another energy drink, but he was able to convince both Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjevic, two of the investors on the show, to give him $150k in exchange for 20 percent of the company.

Major Dyer used his experience in the Army to create an energy drink that was perfect for a combating soldier. He was actually in Afghanistan when he came up with the concoction.

His experience became his advantage because he was in extreme conditions that allowed him to create and test a drink of this kind of caliber, one that provided this kind of energy and focus that a combating soldier needed. I doubt the guys at Red Bull or Monster put themselves in the line of fire when testing the capability of their drinks.

When I started SmartPassiveIncome.com, I already had experience with a successful, automated online business at Green Exam Academy. A lot of people were providing online business advice at the time, but most were using other people’s businesses as examples, or just spoke theory with no real case studies to back it up. Here, I was able to use my own experience as evidence, and it helped me become more credible right from the start.

What experiences in your life have given you the ability to prove yourself or your business more than others?

3. Your Story: And How To Tell It

Stories are incredible marketing tools. They stick. People who listen to or read stories transport themselves into the situations that are described and the storyteller is better able to make a deeper connection with their audience.

We all have a story to tell. If you have a good one, tell it and use it to your advantage.

I know I have a great story. I’ve shared it here on the blog and I even went deeper into the story for my first book, Let Go.

It’s funny because when I’m interviewed for podcasts and radio shows, many times the interviewer will apologize and say, “I’m sorry . . . I know you’ve probably told your story hundreds of times before, but I’d like you to tell it again if you don’t mind.”

I always respond with “Of course!”

I love telling my story, not just because it reminds me of where I came from which always gives me a motivational boost, but because I know it’s a great way to connect with an audience. To have the opportunity to share it right from the start is awesome.

Of course, your stories should always be true, but if you have a good one make sure there’s a way for people to hear it.

What’s your story and how can it help your business?

4. Your Hustle: How Much You Put In and Where

Gary Vaynerchuk would probably agree with me when I say that sometimes all you need to do is hustle. I mean like, truly hustle. The all-out just insane amounts of work kind of hustle.

Not everyone has the time or ability to hustle, and of course the work that’s done has to be the right kind of work—the right kind of hustle.

John Lee Dumas, host of Entrepreneur On Fire, is a perfect example of someone who is using his ability to hustle to his advantage.

John has a daily (yes, daily) podcast where he features an interview with a successful entrepreneur. Now, John enjoys many hundreds of thousands of downloads per month, he’s written a book, has products and has opened up a ton of opportunities for sponsorships and partnerships that wouldn’t have come otherwise. He’s not the first person to have a show dedicated to interviewing rock star entrepreneurs—not even close—but he’s definitely the fastest to see these kinds of results.

He’s not just working hard either, he’s working smart. Hustle doesn’t mean just pure physical and mental work, it can mean spending the time to put the right systems into place to generate more output.

What’s something successful that other businesses are doing that could use your hustle to stand out?

5. Your Personality and Your Ability to Connect With Others

Out of the 7 billion people in this world, you are uniquely you. Within specific markets and niches, you are definitely uniquely you. If you have a personality that people can easily connect with you shouldn’t be afraid to share it.

In 2009 when struggling to get traffic to this blog, I had a chat with Jeremy Frandsen from Internet Business Mastery.

He told me I had a magnetic personality and I should find other ways to share it. That’s when I started my YouTube channel, and then later, my podcast, which just passed 33,000,000 downloads.

How will you connect with others and grow your business by being you?

Click here to take my free Build Your Own Brand challenge.

6. Your Ability To Listen, Build, Measure, and Learn

All companies build something, but not all of them measure, learn, and then adapt or shift.

In Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup, a fantastic book about how today’s entrepreneurs and startup companies are approaching the way they create and innovate, Eric talks about how vital it is to use validated learning and scientific experimentation to be able to steer a company in the right direction. In other words, to use customer feedback and quantified data analysis (of real, non-vanity metrics) from a minimum viable product to make decisions and pivot a business one way or another. [Full disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive compensation if you purchase through this link.]

If you have the ability to see what holes lie in existing markets before you enter it, the ability to listen to a target market (or become a customer yourself who is extremely conscious of the overall customer experience), and learn from the wins and failures of the companies that already exist, you will have an edge over your competition.

Like I mentioned earlier, coming in late in the game can be an advantage if you listen, learn and provide solutions for what seems to be missing. Even coming into a market with a minimum viable product, you’ll have the advantage of being able to get deep into the customer experience to shape your product or service to what it should be, again, all based on what you’re able to measure and learn.

There is a lot more to be said about lean startup methods and the build–measure–learn feedback loop.

7. Your Specialization: Who You Serve and Your Ability To Do So

It’s not just the skills and experiences that you have to offer that can give you a competitive edge, it can also be that fact that you want to serve a more specialized segment of a market.

Generally, the more specialized you get, the less competition you have to deal with. In addition to that, the more specialized you get, the better you can hone in your skills for a particular group of people. Your advantage is your knowledge of and ability to serve that particular segment of the larger market.

Take for example, shoes.

Everyone (well, almost everyone) buys shoes. If you wanted to enter the shoe market, you might think your competitors are retailers like Zappos, Eastbay, Skechers and other large online retailers. Then there’s Nike, Reebok too. It’s virtually impossible to compete with them, especially when you’re bootstrapped. So what can we do?

Specialize.

Instead of getting into the market to sell all types of shoes, how about serving a part of the market that’s looking for a specific type of shoe: running shoes, walking shoes, children’s shoes, etc.

Even at this level of specialization, however, it’s not quite an advantage yet because companies already specialize in these types of shoes: Foot Locker, The Walking Company, and Stride Rite, respectively. Now what?

Specialize again.

Within running shoes, how about soccer cleats? Within soccer cleats, how about women’s soccer cleats?

When your target market is women who are looking for soccer cleats, it’s much easier to do market research and enter the build-measure-learn feedback loop. You have an advantage over others who are targeting a larger segment of the market.

Trunk Club is a great example of this kind of specialization at work.

Like lots of other businesses, they sell clothes. That in itself is not very special.

But, their target market and who they serve is special, and it’s not everyone. Their target market is specifically men who want to dress well who either don’t like to go shopping, or don’t have the time to do so.

It works like this:

You speak to a personal stylist over the phone, they ask you a number of questions to get to know you a little better and figure out your style, and then they send you a Trunk with a number of pieces of clothing in it based on your conversation.

You try stuff on, keep what you like, and ship back what you don’t like in the same trunk. Shipping is already paid for.

Boom. New clothes and I didn’t even have to leave my house. No membership fees, you just get a trunk whenever you want, and they charge you for pieces that don’t return.

I’ve received two trunks so far and another is on the way. I’ve kept roughly 35-40% of what was shipped to me.

I heard about this service from a friend, and I’ve definitely passed this service onto others. Not everyone, but other men around the same age who are in situations where they might need to dress up and they might be too busy to go shopping on their own.

You see, when you specialize and can provide value to a specific segment of a market, those people within that market tend to talk to each other about you.

How can you specialize and become the topic of conversation when those people get together?

All of this brings me to the first way to generate an income online, and that is:

Freelance.

When you think of all of your skills, and what you have to offer the world, your “unfair advantages,” chances are there’s someone out there who will pay you for it. No, it’s not at all passive, but it’s the quickest and easiest way to get paid for something that can actually help people and solve one of their problems.

There are two more major benefits of going down the freelancing route:

1. It’s a fantastic way to immerse yourself in an industry and get to know the lay of the land—the marketplace—so you can carve out your own niche in the future in some way, shape, or form. You’ll also be able to connect with the people you need to connect with, and build on those relationships to create more opportunities.
2. A freelancing service is something that can, with the right strategy and action, turn into something more productized and passive. Brian Casel, featured guest on SPI Podcast Session #158, talks about how he was able to turn his stress-inducing one-on-one design service business into something that was actually more productized, passive, and profitable. I highly recommend you listen to that episode if you have a service-based business and you feel stuck.

You can also check out my post How to Start Freelancing (and Get Your First Client), which walks you through the steps you’ll need to kick off your freelance gig, including:

• Why there’s huge opportunity in freelancing.
• The many freelance skill sets you can build into a freelancing career.
• The secrets to landing your first freelance client.
• Five ways to make more money as a freelancer.
• Career and business options for freelancers.

And once you get started, here’s a great video on FIVE WAYS to make even more money as a freelancer:

Okay, so beyond freelancing, what else can you do to make money online? Well, you could literally just start contacting everyone you know and offer a service today, right now, right at this moment.

I’ll just wait a moment while you do that

There is one more method of generating an income I’d like to share with you. This method is:

1. Even easier and faster than freelancing.
2. Something that has helped me earn more than $3 million since I started my online business.
3. Something you’re likely, in a way, already doing.

What is this sorcery I’m speaking of?

It’s not magic. It’s simply recommending products you already use to those who trust you. In online business terms, we call this:

Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is the process of generating an income through a partnership you have with a company by recommending their product(s) to others.

To learn about the basics of affiliate marketing, watch my Affiliate Marketing 101 video series:

Just think of how often you’ve shared with a friend or online network an amazing tool, service, or product that you love. What if you could potentially earn a percentage of the sale of any products you helped sell through your recommendation? Well, that’s possible, and it’s been around for a while.

The term affiliate marketing has taken a bad rap over the years, primarily because people are abusing just how easy this is to do. Internet marketers are finding products they don’t even use because they come with a sweet commission, and are spamming everyone until they either buy, or unsubscribe. This is also known as the dark side of affiliate marketing.

That’s why I sometimes hesitate to even say I participate in affiliate marketing. But that’s not how I, or you, should approach it. I’m here to lead the change and show people there is so much opportunity out there in affiliate marketing the right way (and the smart way). It’s insane to me that more people aren’t really realizing their full potential with this.

There are products that already exist in this world that provide solutions for your audience (and future audience), and when you align your attention to really help them, with the products out there that already exist, it’s a recipe for success and a win for everyone.

How do you make affiliate marketing work for you? There are a few affiliate marketing principles I stand by:

1. Affiliate Marketing Starts with the First Impression

First impressions are huge because they set the tone for a visitor’s entire experience through your website, including any possible transactions that may take place now, or in the future.

What is the first impression that you get when you go to a site and it’s splattered with advertisements, for example? What does a site like that say to a first time visitor?

“Hi, nice to meet you – click here so I can earn a buck?”

It’s like if you met someone for the first time and the first thing they ask you is if you’re interested in buying something from them. I’d much rather get to know somebody first, trust them, and then have them tell me what they might have to offer. Or better yet, be genuinely interested in what they’re doing, and ask them about it myself. This is the kind of philosophy that I use when promoting other people’s products.

2. Only Promote Products That You Have Used

As I mentioned in a previous post on the 3 Types of Affiliate Marketing Explained, the way I earn money with affiliate links in ALL of my online businesses is by promoting only products that I have used, and only what I would recommend to my friends who want to achieve similar results. I feel that anyone with an audience has a responsibility to do the same thing.

There’s something fishy about someone promoting Apple Computers who only uses a PC.

3. Always Describe the Product You’re Promoting

If you have an affiliate link that’s just a banner ad, or a link at the bottom of a post with no real description – it’s a waste. If you’re actively promoting a product (that you’ve used), you obviously know something about it. Share your knowledge with your audience, and they’ll be intrigued and more likely to click through to learn more.

4. Content First, Affiliate Link Second

Although I just said you should always describe the products you promote, the content that you write should drive the affiliate links that you offer, not the other way around. Don’t write posts just for the sake of placing an affiliate link within.

5. Share Your Experience with The Product

When describing whatever it is your promoting, share your experience! If you can throw in some data or graphs to go along with it, even better. Back when I was more actively writing about eHow, I promoted an ebook that I read which helped quadruple my earnings per article. I created a graph that showed how much I earned before I read the book versus how much I earned after. To this date, that ebook has been one of the most successful affiliate promotions I’ve done on this blog.

6. Only Promote One or Two of the Same Type of Products

There are a number of reasons why you should never promote more than two of the same type of products:

• The more products you promote, the less believable each of them becomes. If today I recommended Company X, and tomorrow I recommended Company Y and Company Z, each of their “stock” immediately goes down.
• The more products you promote, the more difficult the decision to choose between them becomes. I’ve been to a number of personal finance websites that offer sign-up bonuses for 4 to 5 different banks (sometimes within the same post!). It hurts my brain.
• If you keep promoting the same products time and time again, your audience will begin to realize that there must be something special about the specific ones you keep bringing up.

7. Starve the Horses and Feed the Stallions

This is a fancy (and thankfully not literal) way of saying that you should only promote the products that you know make you the most money, and forget about the ones that don’t. You will only know this after trial and error, so see what works, and get rid of the rest.

For a while, I had a number of banner ads on this blog that were not generating any type of income for me. There’s no point in wasting valuable ad space with banners that don’t pay out.

Test, test, test.

8. Utilize a Resources Page

A resources page is a page that consists of helpful links to websites, products and services related to your niche. This is a perfect spot for affiliate links, so take advantage of this if you haven’t already.

It takes the “books I’m reading” area you often see in blogs (within Amazon affiliate links) to a whole new level. not only is this great for you, but it’s extremely helpful for your readers who may be looking for additional resources related to your niche. Plus, they may come across products or services they weren’t originally looking for while on your resources page.

Everybody wins.

You can learn more about each of these principles in Chapter 2 of SPI's Guide to Affiliate Marketing. In Chapter 2, we cover exactly how to start affiliate marketing. Check out the guide to determine if affiliate marketing is right for your business, and to learn how to get started.

So there you go! There are two QUICK ways you can generate an income online. So go get started today!

Want to try your hand at affiliate marketing and deliver even more value to your podcasting audience? The Fusebox (formerly called Smart Podcast Player) affiliate program lets you reap the benefits while you “share the wealth” of the best podcast player for power users with your fans. Learn more and sign up here.

The post The 2 Quickest Ways to Generate an Income Online—UPDATED! appeared first on Smart Passive Income.

Dear Affiliate Marketer,

Whether you’re just learning about affiliate marketing, or you’ve been enhancing your online business with affiliate marketing for years, this letter—a must read—is for you.

First, I want to tell you a story.

It was 2008. I had just been laid off from my job in the architecture industry. In the months leading up to my layoff, I had been experimenting in online business with my very first effort, GreenExamAcademy.com.

As I was building Green Exam Academy to help others in the architecture industry pass the LEED Exam, I discovered something amazing.

In forums related to internet marketing and online business, I learned about this thing called affiliate marketing. People were finding products to sell online in places called “affiliate networks,” and spending money on ads to send traffic to those products and earning a commission on the side.

This was the first I'd heard about affiliate marketing. The people who were sharing their success were talking about how little they were spending on ads, and how much commission they were making as a result—and with products that weren't even theirs. I couldn't believe it, and it just seemed too good to be true.

Back then, when I first started learning about affiliate marketing, the purpose of it was geared toward quick money. The affiliate networks that were prevalent then are a good example of this. They worked like this:

1. You’d sign up for the affiliate network.
2. In order to join, you needed to share information about the size of your email list and how much traffic your website brought in, an opportunity for many to exaggerate their numbers.
3. Once you’re a member of the network, you have access to a giant library of products (from cosmetics to chicken coops) that were being sold as part of the network’s affiliate program.
4. If someone purchased from those referral links, you earned a percentage of the sale.

This seemed like a treasure trove, an amazing opportunity to make lots of money if you could convince people to click on those links and follow through with the purchase.

Future me (the me who’s writing you today), would say that that’s not the right way to go because you’re not starting from an authentic place. Unless you truly know the product, have used it successfully for yourself, and can prove that to your audience, you can’t expect others to just take your word for it.

But past me (the me who was just getting into online business) didn’t know better. Oh how time and experience can shape you!

My $300 Mistake

During this time, after signing up for an affiliate network, I picked a product that I felt was okay for my audience (but I didn’t really know), I set up a Google AdWords account to start advertising it, and I created my first ad. At that time, I was a terrible marketer and copywriter (still am in many ways!). In the ad, I drove people to click on the link for the product I was advertising.

After a couple of hours, I saw that I had a few hundred impressions on the ad. After a few more hours, it was over a thousand impressions. But I had zero clicks on the ad. Zilch, nada, none. I waited and waited until I finally got my first click, but that person didn’t end up buying the product.

So what did that experience amount to? I spent $300 on a couple dozen clicks, but those clicks amounted to zero sales.

As a learning experience, I began thinking about those clicks, and the person on the other end. Who were they? What compelled them to take action? Why did they click?

After a short while, I learned that there was really no way for me to know the answer to those questions. I couldn’t know that person who clicked, or even my audience. I had created an ad based on a product I didn’t understand inside and out. I didn’t spend the time to know the product, or understand how it could serve my audience. And in so doing, I was failing myself and the people (my small audience at the time) who counted on me.

I wasn’t going to do that ever again. I had a wake-up call, right then and there. I learned how important knowing your audience is, and how integral relationship building is to effective affiliate marketing. My learning process would continue from there, of course, but the building blocks were set.

Affiliate marketing isn’t a quick, impersonal thing. It’s the exact opposite.

Affiliate marketing is about fostering genuine long-term relationships with people you trust, products you love, companies that align with you and your philosophies.

Any healthy relationship takes time and a great deal of trust. And that’s what we need to focus on in our affiliate marketing relationships. I see, too often, people wasting time and energy in promoting products in the guise of affiliate marketing. But, you see, affiliate marketing should be a natural extension of your own efforts in business; not a tack-on just to make a little extra money.

The affiliate relationships I’ve built over the years took time because I spent the time to do the research, test out the product, meet with the creators, and understand their vision. We took the time, together, to build that trust so we can gain the trust of our respective audiences. All of that is essential in affiliate marketing.

And you need to know your audience.

Knowing Your Audience

If you want to make affiliate marketing work for you and have it help build you a long-term passive income, you need to know your audience. Always ask yourself this question:

How can I best serve my audience?

There are a multitude of ways to serve your audience. Sometimes it will simply be a free piece of content that you create: a blog post, a YouTube video, a podcast episode. Sometimes the best way to serve your audience is to promote one of your products, such as an online course of your own, or a piece of software, or a targeted service created specifically for them.

Other times, the best way to serve your audience is to recommend another person or company's product that already exists. You are a problem solver, but sometimes the best solutions are the products that already exist. If you can make that connection for people, you can be rewarded for it.

Your perspective, always, should be from a place of serving. Serve first.
[Tweet “If you’re not thanked for the products you're promoting, you're doing affiliate marketing wrong.”]

Rewriting the Story on Affiliate Marketing

Because of the potential for abuse in affiliate marketing (and actual abuse by some), it’s getting a bad reputation. If you are an affiliate marketer, and you really want to succeed as one, you need to do everything in your power to rewrite the story, and allow people to see affiliate marketing as the positive force it can be: to serve.

When you promote something that is not helpful, you’re not only not in tune with your audience, but you’re doing them a huge disservice. They will, in turn, be less responsive to any calls to action you create in the future, whether it's related to affiliate marketing or not.

It’s your responsibility, as an affiliate marketer, to see and understand the whole journey of those you serve with your affiliate marketing. It’s your responsibility to know what happens to those you serve. And, it’s your responsibility when things don’t go as planned, which happens even if you have the right intentions.

Here’s an example: A company I trusted and promoted started to fail my audience, and me. I started getting reviews from my audience about the company that were less than stellar. So, I flew to the company’s headquarters and had a serious chat with the CEO to see what was going on. I learned that changes were indeed being made, and although it took awhile, things began to improve. I'm so thankful that the company listened to my feedback, because the service they provide is significantly better now, and the customer reviews that are coming in more recently are back to the levels that they should be.

You can read about that conversation in more depth in my May 2016 Monthly Income Report.

Sometimes, as an affiliate marketer, there are things that happen that will be out of your control. But you have to be willing, if something happens, to take responsibility and take care of your audience—even if it means giving up your affiliate income to find a better solution.

1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing

As many of you know, I've come out with several courses this year covering a wide range of topics, including podcasting, starting your business from scratch, and building your own brand. In total, thousands of people have received help they need from these courses to grow their online businesses. And guess what? I have one more course coming out this year. In fact, it’s coming out next week! And that course is:

1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing

This brand-new course is designed to guide you from not making any money in affiliate marketing to a place of understanding exactly how affiliate marketing works, so you can make your first commission in a way that’s genuine, effective, and with an eye toward the long term. Even if you have tried affiliate marketing, and so far it’s just not working out, 1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing was created to help you too.

Here’s my promise to you:

If 1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing does not help you earn your first commission the right way, you will get your money back—no questions asked.

Editor's Note: 1•2•3 Affiliate Marketing is now a part of the All-Access Pass, our educational membership community. Learn more about the Pass.

Pat

Want to try your hand at affiliate marketing and deliver even more value to your podcasting audience? The Smart Podcast Player affiliate program lets you reap the benefits while you “share the wealth” of the best podcast player for power users with your fans. Learn more and sign up here.

The post A Letter to All Current and Future Affiliate Marketers appeared first on Smart Passive Income.