Mindset

To Do CPA Affiliate Marketing or Not – That is the Question

I get a ton of emails asking me how to get started in the world of affiliate marketing, and whether its a good idea to do so.

I tell these people the truth, affiliate marketing is a very, very hard thing to do. It’s extremely stressful, it’s super risky so unless they can handle stress like a day trader, have money they can afford to lose it’s worth it to join the battle.

I say battle because affiliate marketing is about battling failure after failure – learning something new in the process each and every time, eventually striking a winning campaign. A winning campaign that isn’t forever, it might run for 1 month, 2 months, maybe 4 months before it does due to many external factors. Product life cycle, increase in competition, bad reviews, offer dying, new regulation just to name a few potential ‘campaign killers’

When I answer with the above, then people say ‘But I want to be free, and just run traffic!” Well, there’s no such thing as just running traffic and winning all the time. Affiliate marketing is not instagram glam where everything is perfect.

To those who just want to quit their 9-5 and be there own boss, I recommend building a skill. Then getting a job as a freelancer or better yet creating your own service based business. These type of opportunities don’t require a lot of stress, you don’t have to lose sleep over them, and most importantly you don’t need to lose/invest a lot of money in learning as usually the profit is guaranteed – you do the job, you get paid (sometimes even before you do the job).

How to build skills you can then harness to make money online?

Well there’s always Youtube, tons of free information out there I rely on always to learn new skills from how to charge a car battery to how to create liquid tables in CSS. It’s quite vast.

If you are looking for most of a ‘classroom’ style approach, with modules you can go through step by step then you can pick up awesome skills by buying courses for like $5-20 bucks on sites like Skillshare and Udemy. Their courses are really good for building new skill sets.

How to promote your new service style business?

I have 4 major service businesses I’ve started many, many years ago – Content Pimp, Banners&Landers, Anglesaurus and Transey. The eldest turns 12 years old this November. Yes it’s been in business generating profits each month for 12 years now. Well over the “If your business doesn’t survive the first 6 months or 2 years (I can’t remember exactly which one people say more), it will die” phrase you often hear with offline businesses. My companies all survived more than 2 years in biz; heck my blog too even though someone really, really wanted it to fail and kept saying “most bloggers quit and don’t make it beyond 2 years” LOL yea well, maybe most – not iAmAttila. This person didn’t realize I did not start this blog to make money, I created it to help people and enjoy my hobby of copy writing.

Anyways if you are wondering how I built all these businesses from $0 spend on marketing? COMMUNITY! Join forums, groups on Facebook, start helping people, and they will start asking if you can do stuff for them and they’ll be happy to pay. If you do a great job, they will start recommending you to their friends and acquaintances.

It will snow ball from there, don’t do things just to make millions, always think about making $1 and giving a lot of value in the process – rest will follow. (A concept 9/10 people simply fail to grasp; hell most affiliate ‘friends’ won’t help you if they see you are down, because they are selfish pricks)


What stops people from becoming successful in affiliate marketing?

I received an interesting email yesterday from someone that read my BH spying guide for Facebook. They told me, they tried everything but can’t turn a profit no matter how hard they try. I asked them, what did you do to become profitable? And the answer was, well I tried to run an offer my AM told me is doing crazy well on their network, I launched the campaigns and lost my money. It was just too hard to deal with this so I gave up.

I see this all the time, people giving up because something is hard. I believe this is do to the fact that today we live in the world of easy, fast and comfortable.

Think AMAZON, how easy it is to buy the thing you want without having to go anywhere for the right place and get it in a day or less? Just a few clicks of the mouse from the comfort of your chair or couch (heck I’ve even ordered online from bed a few times!)

What about McDonald’s and other fast food places, when you are hungry you just drop buy, pick what you want and get it in a matter of minutes. No more going to the grocery store, picking up ingredients, driving home, preparing them, cooking them, eating them and then cleaning up after yourself.

NETFLIX, HBO on Demand, and other streaming solutions? Everything at your finger tips, on demand, whenever you feel like watching a movie, documentary or tv show.

We’ve become so accustomed to easy, fast, simple and cheap that when faced with anything in life it’s hard to get out of our comfort zone and do some things to achieve better things.

In our world, internet marketing, performance affiliate campaigns things have gotten way harder than years ago. The internet is maturing and with it came lots of regulation, rules you must live by – all impacting how you can promote campaigns, what you can run, what words you can use to target your perfect customer and the list goes on.

Here are 3 FACTS about affiliate marketing.

Lambos, stacks of cash, expensive watches and private jets don’t come easy.

Winning campaigns everyone brags about don’t come fast.

It’s no longer CHEAP, meaning you can’t start with $100 and make $1000 these days usually.

  • If you are not willing to crawl, you will never learn how to walk.
  • If you are not willing to walk, you will never know how to run.
  • If you are not willing to write, you will never learn how to write copy that converts like fire and unique angles.
  • If you are not willing to learn a bit of HTML/CSS you will never know how to make quick edits and launch before your competitor.
  • If you are not willing to learn new things, you will be left behind as the industry changes very fast.
  • If you are not willing to show yourself on Camera, you will never become a Youtuber (LOL, I need to battle this)
  • If you are never willing to save money for a rainy day, you will never achieve a peace of mind
  • If you are not willing to travel and experience new cultures, you will never broaden your way of thinking.
  • If you are not willing to read, you will make it very hard for yourself to think outside of the box and spot new opportunity.
  • If you spend your time hating on others you are only going to limit your success.
  • If you have no money and you refuse to do odd jobs like freelancing on upWork or Fiverr to raise money to launch campaigns, you will never become a successful affiliate marketer.
  • If you are not willing to get up and launch, and test over and over again until you find a winner, you will not make money in affiliate marketing.
  • If you work 9-5 and you say you are too tired to study after you get home, you will never ever escape the 9-5 rat race and live the freedom where you get to travel whenever you want and work from a laptop if you choose.

If you are NOT willing to be UNCOMFORTABLE, you’ll never achieve the life you deserve.