There’s a few ways people escape their jobs – they can find a passion project and turn it into a business, escape through financial freedom or simply lower their hours and work only part time, if they can afford it of course. But not everyone has a passion project they can follow. Many people find themselves in jobs they slowly start to despise over time. Once there, they become trapped by the lifestyle it affords them.
To escape 9 to 5 for them means replacing a good income and doing so in a way they can keep or improve their lifestyle, not limit it. Once you become established in a career, it becomes all the more difficult to escape. The income becomes difficult to replace, without more training, or time away from your job.
That’s why affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to escape 9 to 5. With affiliate marketing you don’t have to quit your job. You can build an affiliate business around your existing commitments and affiliate income can grow to pretty much any income.
Why I Chose Affiliate Marketing To Escape 9 To 5 Life
I stumbled into affiliate marketing while looking for a way to sell an ebook I had created. I got quite excited at the prospect of selling an ebook online because it meant an automated income. The ebook could be downloaded instantly over the internet; so it didn’t require any interaction with customers or any postage of anything. (Checkout my affiliate marketing for beginners ebook here).
But I struggled to sell my ebook because I didn’t know how to get people to my website. I looked for a course which could help me learn and this course taught me affiliate marketing. I quickly learned that I could sell other people’s products instead of mine. Also, there were much higher valued products I could sell other than my own ebook. I ditched my ebook idea and started learning more about affiliate marketing.
Why Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a very simple business model where you promote other people’s products online and earn commissions for each sale you make. The sale is tracked through your unique affiliate link. You can place information on a website which leads people to various products and services. Then, when someone visits, clicks and purchases something, you earn money!
There’s many other online business models too which can help you escape 9 to 5. But affiliate marketing, in my opinion, is the simplest. Simply join an affiliate program, learn how to promote your affiliate link, and you’re away! For me I just couldn’t get excited about other business models such as drop shipping, print on demand, or other e-commerce models. These might be a solution for you though, depending where your interests lie.
Affiliate Marketing Can Be Done In Your Spare Time
Another reason I chose affiliate marketing was the fact that it can be done in your own time. The pure flexibility of it meant that it wouldn’t interfere with my other opportunities and work. In my 30’s I was focused on finding work in the film industry as a stunt performer. This work was difficult to obtain initially but over time as I got to know more people, work started flowing in. The problem was I didn’t know when or where I would be working from one month to the next! So affiliate marketing was something I could work on when I wasn’t on set, falling from a building or being set on fire! (More about stunts in my about me page).
The other problem with the stunt business was the financial side of things. It was a feast or a famine for many years. I got paid well when work came in but money quickly dried up when I wasn’t working for longer periods.
Building A Future – Not Just A Job
Affiliate marketing gave me an opportunity to build something, rather than just get another low-paid job. I had many jobs over the years to fill in when stunt work was quiet. But none gave me any fulfilment or joy and in fact most of the other work I took was not enjoyable!
Affiliate marketing can take time to understand and get it working for you. But when it does, it can mean a passive income working for yourself. To me this meant freedom. Working for myself was a huge goal of mine because it meant no more difficult employment.
In fact, most affiliates who succeed have a huge reason to keep at it. They despise their jobs, want more freedom, or want something they can build themselves. Affiliate marketing is not for everyone and it requires patience and sacrifice. However, the journey is one of growth and self improvement. This also aligned with my journey.
A Passive Income & Automation
Many of the low paid jobs I took were physically hard and this helped remind me that I didn’t want to do them! I am lucky I stuck at affiliate marketing long enough to break through and get results. Top affiliates can earn huge incomes and this was my goal when I started out. But if you do things in the right way, you can quickly earn a pretty good income from affiliate marketing.
One of the best ways to earn a good income with affiliate marketing is to use products which have both membership commissions and high ticket commissions. This was the break though for me that was a long time coming. I struggled for a while before I learned this.
When you are a beginner in affiliate marketing, you can easily get caught up in taking the wrong actions which don’t get you anywhere. That’s why an affiliate marketing mentor is such a valuable thing to find. From my mentor I learned two pretty important things:
- Build a list
- Sell memberships
Why Build A List & Memberships?
Before I got this advice, I struggled for years with affiliate marketing. Perhaps I didn’t take it seriously enough or perhaps it was because I was more focused on my stunt career. I dipped in and out of affiliate marketing, using some of my spare time to work at it in between stunt jobs.
My early experience of it was just failure after failure and a lot of frustration. The trouble is you don’t know what you don’t know. It is easy to waste time when you’re a beginner. I built lots of websites and tried to get traffic to it, without understanding the best business models, or customer avatar, or any of it. Looking back I was so hopeful yet so naive!
A list of subscribers is something affiliates should build because it gives you control over your traffic. Without an email list, you have to rely on traffic from either paid marketing or SEO – optimising websites to perform on Google for free traffic (Search Engine Optimisation). A list can also contain tens of thousands of subscribers. So when you send a single email, thousands of people receive it. If they also make a purchase, it’s money in the bank!
Memberships allow you to build a reliable income quickly online. With one-off product purchases, your income will be more sporadic and it’s harder to build up the same consistency.
Why I Chose Affiliate Marketing – More Choice
As time passed I became more disenchanted with my career as a stunt performer. A few injuries quickly adds up and you start to feel less enthused about the prospect of another possible injury. This was another reason to build another career as an affiliate marketer. However, the stunt work was also pretty cool in another way – it gave me a lot of freedom. A small amount of work paid for a month’s wage in any other job. So it was quite addictive to say the least. I struggled to let go of the stunt work for a number of years but over time I found myself pursuing it less and less.
Affiliate marketing is pretty much untouchable here in terms of what it can give you. Not only can it give you a passive income (from membership sales, for example), but it can also give you complete autonomy from employment. As an affiliate you’re self employed and because I struggled being happy in so many jobs, self employment ultimately became one of my goals.
Affiliates can work from anywhere in the world – they can create their own perfect lifestyle without another form of employment.
Why I Chose Affiliate Marketing To Escape 9 to 5 – Personal Growth
I chose affiliate marketing because I thought it would be easy! Yes I have to ‘fess up here. I thought I would be rich with very little work! I bought all those courses which told me how easy it would be. Of course it wasn’t.
It took me a long time to make affiliate marketing work for me. In my ebook I share some of the reasons why I failed and how you can shortcut many mistakes I made. Check out my affiliate marketing for beginners guide here.
I ultimately stuck affiliate marketing because of all the reasons I have mentioned here – more choice, freedom, self employment, geographical freedom and financial freedom are just a few of them.
But also, I’ve always been an avid fan of self help books. I’ve always been a big fan of personal development and affiliate marketing took me on that journey. I kept choosing affiliate marketing because of the self growth element. Plus, I don’t like to be beaten! I eventually cracked the affiliate code and started generating regular sales and commissions. Perhaps I made the journey more difficult for myself because I had a lot to learn. Maybe the success is so much sweeter because of the hardships on the journey!
