So, here’s how to escape 9 to 5 with affiliate marketing! If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is, here’s a quick synopsis. Affiliate marketing is a business model where third party “affiliates” make money through selling other people’s products.
Anyone can become an affiliate by joining an affiliate program, and getting their unique identifying link – known as the affiliate link. When they promote their link and make a sale of a product, they get a commission based on their referral.
Referral based sales is one of the most popular ways to make a living online – also known as affiliate marketing.
How To Escape 9 To 5 With Affiliate Marketing – What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an online referral based marketing strategy where third parties sell other people’s products. When they make a sale they earn a commission, a percentage of the sale value. The advantage for product owners is that the affiliate takes some of the advertising risk away from them. So rather than pay directly for adverting for themselves, the affiliate puts marketing effort in to make the sales. They only have to pay the affiliate when that affiliate has referred the sale, not for their marketing efforts (if they don’t make the sale).
The downside for affiliates is they take on some risk in that they aren’t guaranteed to make any sales. The “up” side is once they have figured out a strategy that works, they can run advertising on autopilot to make those sales. This is very attractive because it means you can access a scalable business model quite easily which gives you financial leverage.
The downside, is that initially you’ll likely spend time and money without making the sales immediately from all your marketing efforts. Most affiliates will quit, and there’s something like a 97% drop out rate.
Although this sounds a little gloomy, it isn’t. It shows that success is there for those who are determined and keep going when everyone else quits! The “winners” in affiliate marketing are those who push on, despite a few failures. It is how they see these “failures” which determines who wins and loses in affiliate marketing.
How Affiliate Marketing Actually Works
Affiliates promote a product online in a number of ways. They can create content such as with blogging or video. They can drive traffic with paid advertising and they use an email list of subscribers to communicate a marketing message to a large amount of people.
The key to making affiliate marketing work for you is to find a product you can get behind. One in which you are emotionally invested. If you don’t care about your product, you’re less likely to love what you do and therefore less likely to keep going through the pain and the problems.
Once you have found a product you want to promote, you need to market it to a large number of people. But this process needs to be very refined. Not everyone online wants your product. The “top” affiliates have mastered this process. They know exactly who they are communicating to in their marketing. The create an “avatar” of their perfect customer – a model and an understanding of who they need to communicate to, who their product serves the best, and who will really value, need and desire their product.
Once you have understood your customer “avatar”, you become a more effective marketer and communicator.
Top affiliates use paid marketing because it’s scalable. They target a very specific avatar and sell a single product again and again. Not multiple products in different niches. This is a common mistake of the beginner affiliate. They jump from product to product and program to program – something I once did! To make affiliate marketing work well, you must become a master at defining who your customer “avatar” is and putting marketing messages in front of them which communicate the value of your offering.
Once you learn this specific skill, the world’s your oyster, as they say!
Can Affiliate Marketing Really Replace A 9 To 5 Job?
Affiliate marketing can and does frequently allow people to quit their jobs and work from anywhere in the world with a laptop and internet connection, yes. However, it does take time. Building a sustainable income from affiliate marketing is not easy. It takes time and effort. You need to apply yourself to learning the skills and improving your mindset.
Most people have a 9 to 5 mentality. They work a few hours and expect to get paid. Affiliate marketing requires a lot of work upfront before you’ll see any return. This is often why so many people fail with it. They expect to much and when results don’t come quickly, they give up. But it’s a mistake because if you push past the initial problems and difficulties, affiliate marketing can deliver far greater results than working a 9 to 5.
Ideally, build an affiliate business alongside a job. You need marketing dollars/pounds to drive your business. There’s a limit to what you can obtain when trying to get your results from social media or organic traffic. I know this from painful experience because I worked so hard on the SEO (Search engine optimisation) side, I eventually built an SEO business out of it – checkout my website SEO Specialist in Leeds.
But yes, I have met many people who have built full time businesses out of affiliate marketing and freed themselves of their jobs.
How Long Does It Take To Make Money – Honestly
Most people want to know how long it will take them to make money from affiliate marketing. This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on so many factors. In my own personal affiliate journey, I think my first affiliate sale happened several months after starting. I wasn’t following a mentor, which made it so much more difficult. There are several strategies with affiliate marketing too:
- Blogging
- Video blogging
- Pay per click advertising
- Email marketing
- Social media strategies
- SEO – search engine optimisation
Depending on your strategy, it can take months or years to break through and make your first sale. My first sale was so small it was only a token – but it kept me going! I used Amazon to sell books – (not a good idea). You can’t make large commissions on books because they are cheap and Amazon’s commission is very low. It wasn’t until years later I found a community of entrepreneurs who helped me make my first high ticket sale as an affiliate. It happened about 6 months after joining the community and re-starting and a few dismal failures.
Some people have huge success within a year – but I hasten to mention they are often from a sales background and have large funds to use paid advertising. Most of those who are successful too have a very strong reasons for it. They have been made redundant, or their family needs their success. If you’re just “dabbling” your chances of success are greatly reduced because your “why” isn’t important enough. If you really hate your life and your job, you have a stronger motivation to become successful as an affiliate.
For me the difference was high ticket products and an email list – two important pieces of the jigsaw which my previous online education had failed to instil in me!
How To Escape 9 To 5 With Affiliate Marketing
So, how can you use affiliate marketing to escape your 9 to 5 job? While affiliate marketing is fairly well known, there’s many ways you can do it. Not all affiliate programs and equal and there’s a lot of different ways to promote affiliate products. This is where most new affiliates get stuck. They try a range of strategies and jump from one course to another. They don’t get traction because they don’t stick with it for long enough. Before anything can happen, they quit!
This explains my first few attempts at affiliate marketing. I jumped from course to course and didn’t get anywhere because I didn’t have the right direction and support. Before any attempt could work, I found another “shiny object” promising easy riches and I would jump ship and start all over again. This isn’t how to build momentum.
You need a direction, purpose and a cast iron will to keep you on track.
Common Beginner Mistakes
There’s a few common mistakes made by beginers and I’ve personally made all of them! Here’s a few:
- Jumping from course to course expecting miracles – my expectations were high, but my knowledge low
- Looking for the “easy path” which doesn’t exist except to say use high ticket items and an email list for leverage
- Spending all day on a logo – time is of the essence with affiliate marketing – you don’t get paid if you don’t sell (also known as being a busy fool)
- Not following through – you buy the course and then get sidetracked and don’t do it – then you buy another one (shiny object syndrome)
- No discipline – mindset is something so important because motivation will wear down, habit keeps you going (so establish good habits)
- Not getting the right education – I ran about with too much enthusiasm for too long and not enough know-how! You need both!
Being a beginner affiliate is fraught with problems and distractions. You need focus and a clear path to follow. Get the help and support you need from a community – start with our free video series.
Skills Beginners Actually Need – Self Discipline & Drive
I’d say that probably the most important things are self discipline and drive for affiliate marketing. Unlike a job, you don’t have someone standing over you, telling you what to do. You get free rein. But with much power comes much responsibility! This “freedom” can mean you spend your time on unproductive activities which you like, rather than those uncomfortable actions which move the needle on your business.
This is why regular check-in’s with mentors is hugely valuable. Without accountability, will you actually do the work required? When it’s all off your own back, most people don’t, even with good intentions. Your motivation is sporadic, and mood dependant – so you’ll need to establish some productive habits. Beginners often start with building a website and learning how to use paid marketing platforms such as Google Adwords, or Bing/Microsoft Ads.
Having a step by step platform, such as offered through the free video series on this website, removes a lot of the heavy lifting. But the work is really in learning core concepts and putting in the work each day – regardless of “proof”. When you start to look for “proof” some system works, you’re already changing your focus from what you are doing to the results you are getting – (and probably haven’t yet earned)!
How To Escape 9 To 5 With Affiliate Marketing – Get Educated
Getting the right information is key to success if you’re looking to escape the 9 to 5 with affiliate marketing. I struggled for years before I saw light at the end of the very long tunnel.
The trouble was there was lots of courses and information out there all teaching different things. So I jumped from course to course looking for the “easy” way! Unfortunately there isn’t a magic bullet which makes affiliate marketing “easy” but there are a few key principles which I’m going to share in this article which will give you the best possible chance.
When I started, I tried to sell the types of things I was personally buying. This wasn’t the best recipe for success, let me tell you. I was buying books from Amazon and “trinkets” from eBay. Amazon typically pays between 1% and 10% on it’s product inventory. So if you become an affiliate for Amazon, that’s what you can expect to earn if you manage to actually sell something – as little as 1% commission. On a book selling for $10, that’s a measly 0.10 cents.
On the other hand, some products pay much more – up to 40% on some digital products. So that little insight would have saved me a lot of struggle for starters.
How To Escape 9 To 5 With Affiliate Marketing – Leverage
Affiliate marketing is a business model which can give you superb leverage. Once you’ve learned how to sell a single product once, you can rinse and repeat for thousands of the same product. The major benefit to making money selling products instead of selling your time in a 9 to 5 job, is you can automate the process of selling products online. With a job, you will always have to keep turning up. So it’s well worth figuring out affiliate marketing even if it takes you some time. It can ultimately set you free financially, geographically and give you your time back too!
Here’s another mistake I made when I started out learning affiliate marketing. I spend too much time on the wrong strategy. It was a flawed strategy which wasn’t scalable. I was trying to get traffic solely through content creation. This strategy, although cheap, doesn’t have a scalable element to it. Later I learned to use the power of email marketing and run paid advertising, which is what I suggest. With an email list, you can reach more people over time and scale up into the tens and even hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Learn paid marketing strategies and build a large email list. I didn’t do this for years. Without an email list, you can’t build a solid income because you’re relying on passing traffic through blogging or some other content strategy. Blogging and video blogging can and does work. But it can take months of content creation before you get any traction.
Choose High Value Products
I was broke when I started affiliate marketing back in the early 2000’s. So I assumed everyone else was broke too! So I chose low value products to sell with this assumption in mind. The thing with the internet is, there’s millionaires buying hovercrafts and submarines online! Literally! My mentor taught me to go after these products instead of the low price ones. If you sell a hugely valuable product, you can earn many times that from the sale of thousands of a low value product.
You can also sell digital products which pay out larger commissions and those which carry subscriptions. A subscription sale is worth many times a “one-off” sale because you continue to earn from it, months and even years later. Membership products which are needed for online businesses, for example, are a great product to sell. Business owners need them and so will continue their subscriptions potentially for a lifetime.
Keep The 9 To 5 Going
It’s worth noting that it can take a few months (or years) to gain traction with an affiliate business, even if you’re using a high value product and paid advertising to build your email list. That means you’ll need capital to build your email list and generate traction. So it’s worth hanging on to your day job so you can afford to invest in building your list. Not only that, but a job gives you financial stability and mental stability. I know from experience that if you’re desperate to make money when there’s none coming in, you’re going to be in a worse mental state to build a solid, legitimate online business than when there’s regular money coming in.
An affiliate business is one of the best ways to Escape9toFive because it gives you leverage. You don’t need any of your own products and services. Learn more and get started here, or visit the escape 9 to 5 guide.
Step By Step Beginner Path
If you’re ready to get started as an affiliate, access the free video series here. You’ll get a free video series directly to your email. If you decide to take some action, you can join the program and get a step by step beginners portal. This gives you everything you need to begin online – products to sell, a sales funnel, education and the process to put it all together.
Once you have setup your email autoresponder and website, you’ll need a marketing method. Follow the step by step tutorials in the online program one by one. Don’t second guess, don’t jump ahead. Each step is laid out in the right order for maximum effectiveness.
