Thank you for checking out my blog.
For those of you that are new here, I have made a top priority to get involved in coaching, mentor programs, and business opportunities through the internet to bring you the most comprehensive resource and silo of information.
This has been a great asset for many entrepreneur-spirited people that are seriously considering launching a business or side hustle from their laptop in a very part-time, spare time basis without adding to their already demanding schedule the stress that typically comes from applying for a second job.
It’s in this particular blog post that I’m going to deliver to you my 3 picks for the best affiliate marketing courses of 2019.
I have personally experienced each of these programs so I will be speaking to you from a source of genuine experience.
What you’ll get in this episode of my blog articles includes:
- Why I think each program was worth their investment price
- My personal results (including the amount of money I have profited from using the individual programs’ methods exclusively)
- The bottom line for myself with these courses
Yeah, I like to not hold anything back in my blog entries, and anyone who has followed my regular postings is well aware of my style and character when it comes to delivering the goods on each program that I’ve spent my money and time investigating and trying.
Why would I do this?
Well, for one, it’s nice to give something of value to the marketplace.
What better way to give than to experiment with online business start-up oriented programs that advertise claims of being able to help you to rake in your own sizeable income without much work from your home office – if only you get started with “them.”
That’s a difficult thing for someone to chew on if they’re brand new to the entrepreneurial world or haven’t even made a buck off the internet.
How do you know that this can actually be possible?
Have these people (who are constantly pitching you) made money with the things that they’re trying to convince you that they can teach you how to do?
More importantly, how come these coaches have decided to open their minds and hearts to teach me a high-income skill?
Why aren’t they just keeping this information to themselves and going about their day with the
Since they aren’t necessarily obligated to become a coach, I know that I couldn’t help but wonder what these people were up to; these were the questions that I had when I first began exploring the use of the internet to try and make some profits online only a handful of years ago.
If you’ve also found this by simply opening your laptop or desktop computer and you’ve also begun searching the internet for a reliable, credible way to make more money at home, then you’re in good company.
Here’s some brief insight into who I am and what’s up with me here – it’s always nice to know who you’re having a conversation with and I’m happy to share.
I’m actually no stranger to the world of affiliate marketing, but I once had to start in this industry in order to get to a point where I could competently have a conversation about this industry – to include being able to afford these high-ticket coaching programs that brag they could deliver the goods on what it took to make a responsible income from home.
It wasn’t until the year 2017 that I had actually begun considering affiliate marketing so seriously that I decided to figure it out and find a way to turn a profit online.
Now, in order for me to be able to afford the costs associated with this business model AND invest the time necessary to scope out 3 whole coaching programs – all suggesting that they knew what was up and what the right steps were in order to take affiliate marketing to the bank – I needed to have another source of reliable income.
I haven’t worked for 2 years by this point in 2017 because I had amassed a reliable $30,000.00 in monthly, passive income with the local lead generation business with free traffic; a strategy I had learned from a mentor I hired back in 2014 –
I went through his coaching program where I had learned how to use free traffic to make money online; he’s a guy named Dan and he actually made a lot of money from this business model before ever thinking that this kind of information could have been packaged into a training course to teach others – like you and me – about how to do what he was doing.
This business has been able to let me generate a passive income of $750 to $3k per lead gen site that I’ve put online to leverage free traffic and pay me monthly, for years, just like this tree service site from Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Check it out (see below):
While local lead generation for small business is my top choice for working from home, I know you came here to learn more about affiliate marketing, so we’ll get there…
I just wanted to let you know that I’m able to afford the investment of these programs out-of-pocket and experimenting with the possibility of turning a profit while passive income streams continued to pay me as I spent my time learning affiliate marketing from each of these 3 mentors (that we’re going to talk about today).
Why knowing about the local lead generation business is important is because there’s a huge departure in experiences when you’re generating profits on the internet with the use of paid traffic (in affiliate marketing) and free traffic from search results (like most people do in lead gen).
It was important to me that I was able to see proof of success in affiliate marketing so I could write a blog about this and identify what has actually worked online.
However, all that this business model – affiliate marketing – actually proved to me was that I now have a personal preference in not having to pay money in order to get my offer online seen by others, whether they’re going to buy from me or not.
I get it, everyone’s usually thinking that there’s going to be good and bad aspects to each of these business models; I’d be lying if I ever said there aren’t drawbacks to each.
However, as a business-minded person in 2019, it’s also vital to ask yourself how each of these online methods for making money can really be sustainable for the long-term.
My opinion is that free traffic is the optimal choice for a business model for the long run.
Why?
It’s not to belittle affiliate marketing; in fact, I have met some people who do the affiliate marketing strategy very well – and I’m sure that I have talked about a couple of them in some other blog posts on this website.
Unfortunately, by the end of this trial experiment with three different affiliate marketing training platforms, I have to admit that I still wasn’t sold on the process of marketing other people’s products for a fraction of the commission.
When you’re finally operating your business 24/7 on free traffic and letting the internet go to work for you (instead of having to do your work on the internet), your lifestyle and mindset begin to shift; you start to see the world a little differently.
- A business that you can run from anywhere in the world (affiliate marketing kind of has that)
- Your assets bring you money all the time (affiliate marketing might have this)
- Lead gen is a set and forget-type of a business (affiliate marketing isn’t quite that high-speed)
- Since the internet never sleeps, I’m getting money while I sleep (good luck letting affiliate marketing do that for you with its paid traffic strategies on an ongoing basis)
I’ve heard before – you can set up a paid traffic campaign and let it run while you sleep.
In fact, some people even run paid ads and test things for a few days so they can gather more data about the marketplace; then, they’ll adjust campaigns accordingly.
In other words, this is what you’d be looking at nearly every day if you tried paid traffic in affiliate marketing strategies — lots of blue-colored web browsers for several hours daily (see below):
Accounts getting suspended is just a part of the affiliate marketing experience when pitching your offers with Facebook Ads — if it’s a secret, then it’s not anymore. I’d rather you know this upfront.
I can assure that you that I’ve heard just about all the arguments to the contrary.
It makes sense to get started with driving traffic to your affiliate offer with paid traffic strategy…
You get to have instant results through immediate traffic seeing your offer.
There’s no need to wait around and hope that people are going to cross your offer someday, eventually…
What’s something you have to do with the paid traffic of affiliate marketing that you don’t need to do in lead gen with free traffic?
Constantly review, monitor, and tweak your paid ads platforms for optimal performance.
I’ve done both kinds of traffic personally; I’ve been there and done it!
I’m just not that interested in spending my days worrying about my paid ads campaigns for the affiliate offers I’m running that I can’t wait to get home, open up my laptop, and begin looking at things just to make sure that they’re all okay and running according to plan.
We can touch more on this in a little bit.
The aforementioned reasons are why I’m beyond sold with the use of free traffic in the local lead generation business model.
It’s seriously why I make my top pick for 2019 that business model over affiliate marketing in general – regardless of what coaching course someone might decide to invest in.
Some people have turned to me and suggested that affiliate offers can still reach a point of success with free traffic.
I agree – it’s very possible, and I’ve even accomplished that very thing with free traffic to an affiliate offer that I was able to put together an affiliate review of and rank online to make some okay cash every month.
The drawback is that it’s become increasingly difficult to do online now.
How come?
2 reasons:
- The saturation of competitors who are constantly entering the industry is growing in more density as we progress in time – that’s my complicated way of saying that more sellers are jumping in and attempting to market similar products under the same strategies.
- As Google – our fluffy and loveable 800-pound Gorilla – has updated their search results programming with the 2016 Panda update, the game has officially changed for affiliate marketers.
With that, let’s get into my picks for the affiliate marketing courses that
In Third Place, We Have Gerry Cramer’s Traffic Master Academy
Gerry Cramer is notorious for leveraging the paid side of things, especially with Facebook Ads, to get more and more attention to the affiliate offers that he’s looking to promote often and regularly.
A serial entrepreneur in his own
The three coaching courses that I’ve seen out of Mr. Cramer include:
- MentorMe
- Rise Academy
- (His Latest Installment in Coaching Platforms) Traffic Master Academy
In the MentorMe package of learning from Gerry, 1-on1 coaching is key to the success of the individual student.
I know because I’ve seen one of his student’s success level and it was phenomenal; that same success student I’m talking about was the guy who trained me, named Nick Torson.
What I liked was that I was able to learn some key ingredients to the affiliate strategies that I had already known – and I really enjoyed learning from Mr. Cramer as the program went forward.
What threw me back was – even though I had made some money with MentorMe – my Facebook Ad account that I had opened and ran an ad for one of my affiliate offers with had been banned by Facebook.
When I first saw it, I thought that this guy was a crook and I want my money back.
It wasn’t cool or fair that I could pay all this and spend all this time just to get shut down on my very first ad account that I’d opened and ran an ad for under this so-called “guru’s” advice.
The heat in me began to fizzle away when I discovered that Facebook and affiliate offers seem to be mortal enemies that don’t like working with each other in order to turn profits.
While, yes, Facebook is the owner of the Advertising Platform, it would stand to reason that more people can market affiliate offers because that simply means more people are running ads and paying Facebook for of their ads platform revenue for the year.
The truth is that it’s a part of the affiliate marketing game in this strategy; your Facebook Ad accounts are going to get banned and that’s all there is to it.
If you’re serious about working under the MentorMe program, then I’d recommend learning how to acquire more ad accounts, open them, and try your luck again in the affiliate marketing game because it’s just going to occur no matter what you do here with this approach taught by Gerry Cramer.
To my amazement, and now that I think back on it, the method of opening more Facebook Ad accounts didn’t actually occur to me until it was taught in one of the other affiliate marketing courses that I had picked up along the way. In other words, Gerry doesn’t even teach this method (at least when I went through his program, “MentorMe,” it didn’t it).
I would be an ignorant goofball if I didn’t recognize the opportunity before us in affiliate marketing – there’s definitely room to grow and win some cash with marketing online, especially when it comes to paid traffic.
If you’re looking for the fast money, then this just might be where it’s at for you.
The catch that I see here – and have personally experienced through this training program – is that you’re entirely, and completely, dependent on generating traffic through the paid methods of the internet.
In addition to the lack of ease in paying for your traffic (so your affiliate offer can get seen), because without traffic you don’t get a sale with this business model, you also have to appreciate the big risk you’re taking in leveraging the paid platforms; you’re at the mercy of them and when they change something or don’t permit your affiliate offer then it’s time to find another way to get attention online.
Not to try and add an insult to the injury of what we’ve just been able to uncover with the affiliate marketing business model and the industry as a whole, we have to take into account that the paid traffic that we’re buying is going to cut into our profit margins – and there seem to be no two ways to look at this fact.
It is a fact; when you spend money on a traffic ad, you are losing your margin for profit because paid ad
That’s just a smart way to do business – pay expenses first – but in the affiliate marketing model, your margins are far too low from the start, and they’re only going to get lower as…
- Time progresses
- More competition enters the space
- Prices get driven down in the products you’re marketing due to inflation and competition trying to get the edge over you
- Perhaps a company that you’re working with or for – especially in an affiliate manner – might change their commission structure and never notify you about it until you turn a profit, see your check, and have a problem with why you weren’t paid as much as you had anticipated receiving for all the hard work you did in helping the company to expand the brand awareness in the marketplace
- A quick word of caution: I’ve never heard of an affiliate program paying any sort of reimbursement to the affiliate marketers that associate with the product and push the brand out into the marketplace.
To me, that last point means that the business really doesn’t care about you and that you’re a number to them.
If you’re going to come out of pocket for personal expenses to drive somewhere and then be a marketer for a software company as a leader in a sales and marketing industry…
Why wouldn’t an affiliate company do the same thing to help you and demonstrate a sign of good faith or a vote of gratitude for believing in their company and their product so much that you’ve put your own name to their product and publicly went to bat to say that other people should buy this product as well.
However, that’s not an option in this day and age – and while I hope that changes, I’m not going to hold my breath.
What was cool about my mentor, Nick, was that he had a direct connection to Gerry and both of them were rather experienced in the industry of affiliate marketing at first.
After a little bit of discussion and demonstrating my willingness to work, I asked if they would come in with me on a side project that I was working on.
As a result, we’ve crafted an ad together – that’s me and two industry-leading experts: take a look at the sample ad for yourself (below):
One of the biggest takeaways that I was able to gather from working with two experts was:
In Facebook Ads, the image is the bread and the butter combined with a handsome piece of meat for an awesome ad sandwich.
Here’s how we did it.
First, we chose to pattern our image in the sense of Vector Art – which means segmenting the available space into separate divisions so we had more room to work with and could put more images on the ad.
Since this is rather uncommon in the industry, this type of style becomes what the marketing industry would hope to coin as a “pattern interrupt.”
The reason something like that is a key ingredient to Facebook Ad strategy – and the affiliate marketing platform of digital advertising overall – is because when people potential buyers pause to make sense of the unusual thing that they had just seen (even if it’s in a perceived and notional safe space like the social media account that they own), the trend more toward actually taking your desired action for them.
That means that the clickthrough rates (CTRs) for our specific Facebook Ad expanded increasingly well.
If you liked that little trick, I’d like to recommend that you give it a go for yourself in your next ad campaign.
Another big takeaway that I had gained from two stellar experts in the field of affiliate marketing was:
The wisdom behind leveraging vector art for the sake of communicating with the intended audience of the ad.
As humans, we tend to read in a pattern and attempt to understand what we’re seeing in a similar fashion – that is to say, left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
What cool about this layout though is that when a person perceives this set of images arranged in this way – provided you’re intelligent with your vector art image choices –
It can be inferred that the person seeing the ad will either:
- spend time on it and attempting to reason what’s really taking place in the flow of the pictures (like a story might be told or a secret message lies within), or…
- they’ll simply click on the ad to hopefully find an answer behind the mysterious design of the Facebook Ad.
That effort – to try and figure something out – stems from something that you’ve caused which is a psychological concept, known as loop opening for the audience.
The event of causing dissonance within a person that’s reviewing your marketing might feel unresolved with the situation and take the action of least resistance with the hope of feeling resolved and whole – or simply no longer uncomfortable with what they’ve just experienced.
In the word of digital advertising, simple strategies can be more effective.
In other words, instead of giving multiple directions in written form that direct the audience receiving the marketing ad to read, understand, and then put work into following the directions that were given, wouldn’t it simply be easier to inspire them to have something that makes partial sense, but it can be
- Present something that will cause a slight bit of discomfort
- Arouse curiosity in the unusual thing they’re seeing
- Press their mobile phone screen or click a button on their computer to hopefully see and/or hear the thing that will resolve their confusion and help them feel good about something that momentarily just didn’t make sense for them
Whether or not the web traffic you’re purchasing buys from you after clicking on through your Facebook Ad, the exciting news is that you’ll know that your marketing strategy is working with its front end component.
Now it’s important to understand the entire funnel aspect and to be able to compose a completely effective package of a marketing strategy that can effectively land a sale through paid traffic.
As you can see, Mr. Cramer has a solid idea of what he’s trying to accomplish with Facebook Ads and his affiliate marketing approach.
That said, I am here to also report that I’m simply not running affiliate Facebook Ads campaigns or any form of paid traffic to affiliate marketing anymore.
However, the tips and tricks that I’ve explored with Gerry and Nick have led me to try and understand what is possible with Facebook Ads in producing referrals for other kinds of business needs – such as:
generating leads for local businesses (like local lead generation but with paid traffic instead of free traffic) or in promoting the lead gen coaching program that I had learned from only a handful of years ago.
- generating leads for local businesses (like local lead generation but with paid traffic instead of free traffic), or…
- in promoting the lead gen coaching program that I had learned from only a handful of years ago.
In my own experiments with these types of advertising outside of affiliate marketing paid traffic, I’ve noticed a better success rate for small businesses and coaching programs.
Why would I say that?
Let’s have a look at a couple of points that I’ve noticed in my campaigns ran long after discontinuing affiliate marketing paid traffic campaigns:
- If you own service company or the product that you’re attempting to pitch for and/or on behalf of, I’ve noticed a significantly higher return on investment (ROI) because the profit margins are simply bigger than affiliate program bits and pieces that you’re facing in the industry
- Bigger profit margins mean that you can continue testing more paid ad traffic campaigns because you’re making larger profits that can additionally cover the ad spend without breaking your professional version of a metaphorical piggy bank.
Above all of that, just remember that it’s not really fun being compensated in peanuts marketing someone else’s stuff when you could be seeing an even greater return by going across the street (again, a metaphor) for your higher profits at a local service provider’s place of business –
Although, I would go over there just to shake hands; I wouldn’t work in their office when I can do my thing on my own terms out of my laptop anywhere in the world.
Coming in Second was Stefan James of Project Life Mastery to deliver Affiliate Marketing Mastery
When you can learn a new skill but still be yourself while doing it, I’d say that’s an epic business model worth learning more about.
With Stefan James, you get to do exactly that; you don’t have to become someone else in order to duplicate the processes that this expert affiliate marketing and
Further, if you’re still interested in — or passionate about — certain kinds of products and still want to make a pretty penny promoting what’s meaningful to you in your affiliate marketing approach to generating profits online, I think that Mr. James’ Affiliate Marketing Mastery is going to be an okay option for the future affiliate marketer inside of you.
After all, there’s only one kind of you in this world so why not let the you within shine through in your marketing choices; especially if more than 10,000 people market the same product or affiliate offer, the market can still know your style and approach to helping them get the service or offer that they can benefit from.
What does that really say about the marketing industry online, though?
To me, it means that your personal narrative is a story that others may be able to connect with – and that connection could help you to produce sales through the internet.
Sometimes your target audience will still exhibit some resemblance of humanity with exploring products online – and therefore, you might stand a higher chance in those prospective future customers of yours buying from someone the trust, like or know, more than they’re going to cater to the other factors that marketing experts in college and high school teach:
- Good product reviews
- Lowest price
- Biggest bang for their buck
- Bonuses, discounts, promotions
- And so many more things that we could talk about, but won’t (at least, not on this blog post)
When you’ve got a personal story – especially a powerful one that can…
- Uplift
- Move
- Inspire
You might be on to something that you can then leverage in order to turn a profit through selling with a deeper connection to people that might not have otherwise heard of you or about you.
Imagine having that close of a connection with a recorded version of your story that lands you several thousand dollars in commissions – for something that you recorded one-time, long ago.
I’m more than confident that this must have happened at some time in the past history of the idea of marketing.
What’s rather epic about Mr. Stefan James’ training is that he actually does what he’s advising his students on – and I’m under the impression that this is a larger rarity these days than I want to believe.
You can see it in his character and in his marketing; he’s authentic to the core with his affiliate product selling strategies…
It’s actually refreshing to see someone put their business and their own story out there to make sales; it seems less scuzzy and less about the profits and more about soiling goodwill and positivity in the marketplace – especially the positivity portion which is something that I don’t think we see enough of these days anyway.
It’s pretty clear as to why Stefan has leveled up to close to the top ranks of the elite affiliate marketers – he’s a success because he doesn’t try to do it like anyone else except himself.
Think of the following accolades and then ask yourself if you seriously wonder how he’s accomplished all of these things –
- Loyal and active following on YouTube, with subscribers numbering in the half of millions (just in one of the brands, Project Life Master)
- Multiple 6 figures – with a business built in his own way
- Playing the long-term game, his blog (which he’s been consistently building since the year 2012) is focused on personal development and can be found online for some common phrases in the self-help business industry with extremely high rankings; feel free to look it up: projectlifemastery.com
This guy steps out of his comfort zone regularly, which is why I believe he’s going places even after all of his current successes right now.
In his program, he also advises on some nitty-gritty tips in the tactical methods employed with his online marketing choices, like:
- Collecting emails through a WordPress website
- Effective ways to organize your website to capture emails
- Founding a YouTube channel and consistently adding to it
- Leveraging email marketing to increase your regular reach and consistently pitch to a following that knows, trusts, and likes you, and is therefore primed to buy from you when you might ask them (not all of them will buy, but there’s no reason to think why some of them won’t – provided you’re pitching something that’s relevant, of interest, and beneficial or useful for them)
Normally, anyone would want to openly claim the desire to build their own business in an authentic way.
With the digital era, however, there seem to be a ton of shortcuts that business owners, marketing agencies, and the like are all attempting to accomplish and circumvent the journey to building a big company name.
You don’t get that with Mr. Stefan James.
A loyal following is a challenging thing to build – and most businesses want to build that but may not be willing to endure the work that typically is associated with such a thing… and it takes plenty of work!
There are things that you need to do to build that following consistently, regularly, and authentically – and some people just don’t find those things too comfortable to do, so that’s why Stefan James has a loyal following but not a lot of students in his coaching program…
ublic speaking and sharing a personal side of yourself simply isn’t a thing that many people are willing to do these days.
What does that mean for Stefan, though?
It means that his ability to sell just got a whole lot easier now that he’s put in nearly a decade’s worth of work in building his online reputation, building that following and the responsive email list, and connecting with people that he probably hasn’t ever heard of or met.
Thus, his customer base could be composed of a vast number of people that he doesn’t know – and that’s okay in business because your reach can often bring about a positive impact to assist people that you may not initially know but could learn about as time progresses.
When Mr. James aligned his business with what he believed to be his life purpose, money seemed to flow from the offers he made online – and the impact, along with the money, is probably why he’s doing so well online and enjoying the process as he indulges in his journey toward his entrepreneurial goals and endeavors.
As I’m building this blog, I shift my focus toward some greater appreciation for his tenacity and dedication to building his online presence over time.
7 years (to this day) is a long time to be writing his blog – and he’s no doubt got more in him to say and share with the world.
I’ve heard that it’s far more important to have something to say than to follow the prompting or internal notion of needing to say something.
I don’t see that in Stefan James, the founder of Affiliate Marketing Mastery (and Project Life Mastery).
Instead, I envision someone committed to a journey with a flexible, but clear, destination.
With this blog – and public thanks to this guy – I’ve become interested, and maybe even a little curious, to find out if my writing and my blog will end up enriching, inspiring, or moving others for the better with entrepreneurship.
I’ve said it before that part of the reason for this blog is to edify and educate others that are interested in starting an online business so they can get the full story of various programs from one such entrepreneur who had actually
Perhaps my writing will have helped someone to evaluate their life choices and entrepreneurial options to lean toward making a choice that comes with a direction that fits their situation at the time – and hopefully, their future is also evaluated in that decision as well.
What’s cool about Stefan James is that his approach and mindset in his affiliate marketing training course, Affiliate Marketing Mastery, teaches more than just how to establish a business and turn profits through the internet…
Instead, your laptop lifestyle becomes an enjoyable journey that inspires you, helps you to wake up each day and look forward to the adventure that awaits, and facilitates your ability to own a legacy that can last for a long, long time.
First Choice for Affiliate Marketing Training Online: John Crestani’s Internet Jetset and Super Affiliate
If you’re looking for an all-encompassing approach to learning how to generate web traffic with affiliate marketing, then you’re in luck because there is such an expert that goes after every style of web traffic.
I know… for a
Delivering a more comprehensive coaching program in the affiliate marketing spectrum of training, Mr. John Crestani steps up the game in the industry with specific and clear training steps for acquiring traffic on the internet and getting those hard-to-reach buyers to see your offer from:
- Native Ad Strategies
- Paid Facebook Advertising
- Organic Ranking in Google Search Results / Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
FOR BEGINNER AFFILIATE MARKETING TACTICS:
At less than $50.00 to sign up and begin learning the particulars in his individual strategies, the starting roots of affiliate marketing is best learned through the Internet Jetset coaching course.
However, if you’re looking to get started fast and dish out the goods on your affiliate offer for a maximum return of profits, you’ll need to be seasoned somewhat to know what’s going on in the…
FOR EXPERIENCED AFFILIATE MARKETERS:
Super Affiliate System.
Yeah, I really wouldn’t touch this unless – and until – you’ve been around the block a couple of times, and landed success online (meaning sold some things) with Crestani’s Internet Jetset training course or another coaching program that taught you the ropes first.
A down-to-earth person, he is actually familiar with the gentleman that I hired 2 years ago to sit with me side-by-side and educate me on everything he knows to promote affiliate offers with Facebook Ads.
In case you think that this isn’t legit, I’ll report that I paid this friend of his, Mr. Carlos Cruz (pictured on the right-hand side of the photo you see up above here) about 5 figures for his time – meaning, five figures in pure profit on the left side of the decimal.
Does he deserve that kind of attention and price for such a lofty request?
Well, after working with him, the proof was there and he knew the game better than any mentor I had learned from up to that point in my affiliate marketing career.
It was at this point that my affiliate marketing success through online traffic methods of generating attention to my offers starting to consistently bring in profitable revenue.
It was actually quite exciting, to say the least.
Take a look at an ad that was quite similar to what we had run when working together (see below):
While money was rolling in with this offer – probably to the tune of $3k to $4k of monthly revenue – it was only anti-wrinkle cream that was getting promoted.
What effort did this entail on my part?
- A few hours a day – and I’m talking the bare minimum that you could work if you were serious about making money in a strategy like this; I missed one day of staying on top of this and it was practically like starting all over
- Constant monitoring of my ad account, which took up tons of time in my day simply because I was always thinking about it
- Making adjustments regularly in each of the ad accounts that I had set-up through Facebook
Most people who read this have the initial reaction that so little time daily had rendered such a huge, monthly return – wow!
From my perspective, I didn’t really need the money, per se.
Instead, I was just running an experiment and learn what the results might turn out to be.
Frankly, I would have regarded the volume of dedicated work that I had invested in those few hours daily as a full-time job and I just wasn’t about that anymore.
Try seeing this from my perspective:
- Running a successful lead gen business
- Producing multiple 6 figures annually in passive income (meaning I don’t need a full-time job to survive now)
- One or two lead gen sites – done well – can provide that amount of income, recurring each and every month for the equivalent of less than a full days-worth of a time investment
- No more ongoing concerns about whether my lead gen site is doing its job to make me more money in a passive manner
Truth be told – affiliate marketing requires a person to dedicate a portion of their time – every single day – in order to maintain that steady, monthly income that they desire and earn through their patient and persistent efforts day after day.
I really think it’s a job, and I have trouble seeing it as a passive side-hustle (even though others do it and speak highly of it all the time).
To keep the level of digital sales that you’re raking in, you can’t simply go off and take a vacation; that time away will be interrupted by your need to keep the money coming in by tending to your affiliate marketing approaches at last once a day – and for every asset that you have put online.
Whereas the lead gen business allows me to step away from my business as I please!
The passive income allows me to do one project in one month, and then another project in the next month, and I could slowly, gradually, and easily expand my business if I were doing this gig on my own.
Even though I’ve hired some help already, and they’re doing the habitual, daily tasks that I would normally be doing here, the reality is that lead gen lets me begin stacking my efforts and get results that I can build into a handsome monthly income month after month, year after year.
In other words, I don’t have to keep working on the same projects day after day to keep that money coming in.
If you’ve been looking for a true business that you can knock out a task once and get paid for years (for that one task), then feel free to check out our coaching program where we teach you how to do exactly what I’ve done over the last few years to not only escape my 9 to 5 but also develop a nest egg of over $45k per month.
That wasn’t a dawning epiphany that I achieved on the first day of trying affiliate marketing, however.
I didn’t know what the whole game was about – and I wasn’t going to until I had put all of this time, effort, and resources into the process to witness what returns were really possible with someone that started out not knowing a single thing about the online business method.
It took me several different investments into different affiliate marketing training courses to finally realize that this is how much work affiliate marketing took, and it’s a job that I don’t want to have to do every single day.
Eventually, I was able to see affiliate marketing for what it was and let go of the dream that this could somehow work on autopilot and I really could step away from the daily demands of the industry.
In retrospect, I paid an expert approximately $10,000.00 for someone 1-on-1 coaching and mentoring to help me reach this conclusion.
Carlos was great at what he does, and he knew I was serious if I was willing to shell out so much cash in order to get his attention and time on affiliate marketing.
If you’re starting out in the online business world, most people won’t have a lucrative base of $10,000 that they can just shell out to someone and say “please help me.”
Adding more to this notion of this not being for beginners is the fact that you really ought to know more about the industry before jumping into your first project and risking money that you probably couldn’t afford to lose in the business venture – since it simply doesn’t guarantee that anyone online will find your product listing and/or actually make a buying decision from what you’re putting out there.
Why, then, am I still opening up and suggesting that John’s course is the go-to option for all of your affiliate marketing needs in knowledge, training, and strategy for success?
People still make money with this business model; if they weren’t, then a coach like this – an authentic one – may not actually exist or stay in the mentoring business online for much longer.
Mr. Crestani’s courses are…
- Clear and comprehensive
- Affordable
- Informative on every way that you can – and should – be generating web traffic to your affiliate offers in your marketing approach
I have no doubt that some people are still going to end up giving the affiliate marketing world a try – long after I’ve written this blog and given my two cents worth.
While I’m not promoting the aforementioned programs – which means I doubt I’ll see a dime of the money you spend in any sort of commission when you get started with one of my recommendations above –
I still want you to have the most information of anywhere on the world wide web so you can step up your business decision-making skills with my reconnaissance efforts – and maybe save you money or heartache (or both) in the process.
Additional Affiliate Marketing Trainings I’ve Explored
I wasn’t kidding when I told you that I’ve been around the block with this gig.
Of the several courses that I’ve tried, here’s just a short list of the ones I’ve delved into (I won’t name them all – that’s not the purpose of the blog post)…
Here’s the list to simply build some credibility and show you that I know of the other coaches that are floating around out there and attempting to pitch their recommended strategy to future, interested digital entrepreneurs of affiliate marketing:
- Mike Vestil’s Internet Lifestyle Academy
- ODi Productions’ Affiliate Marketing Champ
- Sean Bagheri’s Aversity Gold Masterclass
- Luca De Stefani’s Affiliate Marketing Revolution
In the grander scheme of things, each of these courses provide a large number of the basics in affiliate mrketing that you must know to get started with your business venture from home.
If that’s all you’re looking for, then I’d still go with my #1 pick for affiliate marketing training because it’s the most affordable, the easiest for people to make a buying decision with, and you can spend as much time as you’d like on it without (hopefully) breaking the bank before you see what’s involved in affiliate marketing and whether you’d want to try your hand at it.
Even though I’ve disclosed a few more of the courses that I’ve invested lots of time and money into testing on my own, none of these on the short list here quite measure up to the value provided in the 3 courses I’ve listed up above in affiliate marketing courses that were explored.
What’s Good, and What I Wish Were Different, In Affiliate Marketing
So I will admit that I’m human and can make the mistake of throwing some personal bias in some of these blogs unintentionally.
Rest assured, I’m doing everything I know how to do to avoid skewing the results here and attempting to sway you in one way or the other on which affiliate marketing training program you’d best go into.
One of the great things about entrepreneurship is that choices are entirely up to you to make and no one can tell you what’s right or wrong when it’s your show.
That said, it’s important to get a better idea of what an experienced affiliate marketer sees as good and poor aspects of the affiliate marketing industry.
If you’re still considering participating in affiliate marketing, then be sure to read this section and get some rationale under your belt as to whether or not these are aspects you’re okay with handling prior to shelling out your hard-earned money in the business venture as a whole.
Affiliate Marketing Pros
- With how everything in affiliate marketing can be set-up for order fulfillment requests by customers, you can focus all your efforts on one thing: getting targeted traffic to your affiliate link and published offer online.
This means that your business has nearly all hassles that other business owners experience removed from the equation.
Instead of assessing inventory, hiring and firing employees, dealing with overhead costs, etc., you can work more on the one thing that’s going to be bringing you cash and you would have focused on anyway when you got into business: getting more consumers buying from you and putting more cash into your, soon to be, fat bank account!
- Countless opportunities to find products to market with/for
When you can type in the words “affiliate program” for just about any sort of physical product out there – and some services even make something like this available for you – the possibilities and opportunities are virtually limitless.
You are welcomed to try it in a Google search (free to you, just for reading my blog).
- Simple business model but challenging to become an expert within
Skill, experience, and some industry wisdom are what’s going to separate the great from the good here.
Provided you have some guidance and effective training; you can set yourself up for the best possible bit of success that a newbie in affiliate marketing can see.
Again, there are no guarantees, but it’s nice to know that you can still empower yourself by attempting to do all of the right things from the beginning.
- Learn High-Income Skills
If you’re concerned about spending all of your time and catering your resources to one industry and lose your ability to become employable elsewhere, you can rest easy that what you’re learning as you train with affiliate marketing can be as applicable – if not more so – in other aspects of owning a
In addition to work ethic and solid business acumen, you can also learn the affiliate marketing trade subskills of:
- Sales funnel building
- Digital mediums of marketing (like emailing)
- Paid traffic strategies (Facebook Advertising & Google Ads Platforms)
- Attempting to reach free traffic through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices
If you’re open to expanding the skills that you currently have, that can make you more effective to help and recommend solutions to business owners (especially since you’re going to become a peer among those people now that you’re starting a business of your own – even though it’s online).
That also means that the value that you can bring to the marketplace skyrockets and you can charge great money for what you know and do for others – or just use these skills to expand your own bottom line.
If they weren’t working, then affiliate marketers wouldn’t be in the game and the offers would be available.
Cons to the Affiliate Marketing Style of Entrepreneurship
- The level of competition is astronomical
If you thought other forms of business were cut-throat and difficult, then you can intensify that by infinity to measure up to what all you’re going to face as an affiliate marketer.
This is a hard truth for new entrepreneurs to grasp – and I’m not entirely sure why.
My guess is that they believe the internet is so vast and plentiful that there are enough transactions with money going on that they can get a piece of the action from.
Unfortunately, that line of thinking isn’t enough to actually acquire money online.
However, you’d better be prepared for the reality check that your marketplace entails the entire world – an international level –
This means that your competition for sales can be affiliate marketers from Russia, India, Australia, and so many other countries that also have internet access and resources similar to the training that you’re thinking of investing in.
The information is out there and you can take the time to find it, stash it away in an accessible place, and reach in to pull out some more information to learn from as you have the time and see fit.
The coaching programs out there are nothing more than a compilation of the information and what the mentors believe are in your best interest to know going into the affiliate marketing space – albeit, they’re different because what worked for one person may not have worked for another.
If you’re not prepared for the harsh reality of the level of competitiveness with affiliate marketing, then you’re in for a rude wake-up call when your first few marketing campaigns and digital advertising efforts may not go your way.
- The products and services you market may not be the best thing on the market
Think that the product you’re marketing is the hottest thing simply because it’s available for you to market and turn a profit with?
Sometimes, the things that you’re pushing into the marketplace you probably haven’t tried on your own.
Unlike the typical drop-shipping business model, where you can sell physical products online (like with a Shopify store, Amazon FBA, etc.), there are some suggestions made on occasion that you could request samples of what you’re actually marketing.
With affiliate marketing, you’re either a customer or an affiliate – and nothing is for free in this industry.
When you’re selecting a product, often times the advice you’re given is to find what’s selling really well and do your best to get on that marketing trend before it goes away.
Also, some of the habits that I’ve seen marketers use can make a newbie feel really scuzzy about what they’re actually doing with their marketing approaches.
If you’re praying on the insecurities of people, is that really ethical or is that simply good business?
Having someone question their self-image isn’t the reputation that I want in the marketplace when I’m trying to push a product through to buyers.
Some people might read this and think that the bottom line is what matters; making more money is what business is all about, and if you’re getting people to buy then you’re growing and life is good.
Some people may not think or feel the same one that others do when it comes to this kind of marketing approach.
If you’re not sold on the product yourself, why would want to tell others about it?
Would you really go after an overpriced product that has never had evidence show to prove that it delivers the results that its parent company claims to?
I know that I’ve given this a solid try – affiliate marketing, that is – and I think that I would prefer to do something that doesn’t make me sick at night thinking that I told someone to buy something that I didn’t think would serve them at the highest level.
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Affiliate Marketing is Harder than Ever
If you’re convinced that you’re the next expert in ranking websites to the top of Google search results and you’ll end up getting all of the business – and that customers looking to buy are going to see you first, resulting in your pockets overflowing with cash… think again!
I don’t mind rocking your boat and raining on your parade here because this blog is about bringing out the truth and delivering an honest review.
Google launched an update in or around the year 2016 and it severely affected all the affiliate marketers that were trying to game the system and have a secret, strategic advantage in the marketplace.
While it can still be a valid claim that content is king, the reputation of your website that you’re trying to rank – through backlinks, that act as votes for credibility and trust online –
That is the most key ingredient to being found as the most relevant option for the search term you’re attempting to be found for.
The less authoritative and credible your brand new affiliate marketing review site is – and brand new websites often are – the less of a chance you’re going to have at being competitive and really getting the chance to see how many sales can come in from being at the top of Google.
I say that because you simply aren’t going to be at the top of Google when other heavy hitters have built their site better (for longer).
- High difficulty in running Facebook Ads to affiliate marketing offers
Facebook already loathes affiliate offers, so you’ve got an uphill battle ahead of you if you’re still looking at going into this industry and thinking that you’re going to buy your way to the 6 figure income that the newest online entrepreneurs dreamed of prior to getting started.
In addition, your low margin of profits that you’re already operating on will sink even lower with your choice to spend money on digital advertising.
Further, this is an expense that you need to factor into your annual taxes, and I don’t know of anyone that seriously wants to factor in more steps between them and being done with the government in any given year of being in business.
How Affiliate Marketing Measures Up to Lead Generation and Free Traffic
If you had been around in 2014 and learned about these things, then you might have found it more appealing.
In reality, you could have slapped together a quick site that you could get seen really fast with a little bit of idealized content.
From that moment on, it was easy to depend on the income coming in from being found at the top of Google…
All that mattered was your ability to get there quickly and become the most authoritative-looking site.
Welcome to 2019; you’re in the affiliate marketing house of difficulty now.
You can’t just be found for the long search terms and expect to rake in a handsome helping of profits anymore.
Google made sure of that with their 2016 Panda update.
If you’ve got some authority and credibility to you now, there’s a different level of appreciation that’s going to come from the master of search engines (also known as Google).
In the old days, you could get away with bringing up your credibility by using phrases that were found to infer a reference to the same thing.
Just to illustrate:
- Inexpensive dog collar
Versus
- Affordable dog collar
When you would write high-quality, authoritative web content identifying each of these phrases – especially in two separate articles – you ran a higher chance in the pre-2016 free traffic through search results era with both of those articles that aimed to be found for those two search terms above.
When it came down to the bare bones of what mattered in those days, people would expand their websites out to add multiple pages, several hundred on occasion, and have each of those pages all talking about that specific subject or topic.
It worked, too!
The more relevant search terms you were found for that connected to each of those two ideas listed above, the more credibility your website got – and, as a result, you were found in the top spots online to get all the free traffic that Google could bring you.
Quality may have lacked in this content writing back then, but quantity seemed to be the name of the game and the person with the most ended up winning.
This resulted in low-quality search results online and Google wanted to clean up the search results; hence, the Google Panda update of 2016.
In 2019, you can now take one well-written piece of content and get found for multiple search results with search term phrases that are very closely connected to what the topic of the page is about.
More importantly, your authority of the website that you’re posting plays a significant role in whether you’re getting seen first (or not).
When people in the affiliate marketing industry wised up to what’s taking place, their content quality and backlink strategies were things that they went to work on.
Your ability to get an affiliate review site to the top of Google for any of these highly competitive search terms can require tons of time, resources, and patience as it takes me approximately 12 to 24 months to actually get something no one has ever seen before to the top of my targeted search key terms.
It’s no wonder, then, that paid traffic for affiliate marketing (or any marketing efforts in 2019) has become so appealing.
Your results can be instant, and you can immediately begin evaluating what you need to tweak and adjust in order to make more money (or at least keep your profits steady, in some cases).
Why is this still not a good idea?
- Your ad, landing page, and several other factors of your process need to be so locked on and dialed in that it’s going to take you some diligent research and time to find a good way to actually pitch your referral link to the market of targeted buyers
- Even then, you’ll not see stellar metrics in the beginning – and there’s no guarantee that any form of your advertising is going to improve
- Every action taken by your desired audience renders your ad an expense that you have to front
No matter what happens – up to, and including, not making any money from your ad spend – you still have to pay Facebook for your privilege of testing your ad on their platform with their compiled audiences.
Facebook will eat up your ad spend no matter what, so even if you break even or at a loss, your profit margin (had you ended up in the positive for making sales) will continue to be so low in the long-term – with no predictability of your profits increasing (or actually realizing a profit) that burn out will often ensue with newbies in the affiliate marketing space.
If it were me, I’d stick with free traffic so I can…
- Step away from operating my business for spare time (Facebook ads won’t let you)
- Allow my business to run on autopilot (Paid traffic requires constant attention)
- I can know that traffic will still come into my lead gen sites often (and I don’t have to pay for each and every visitor that comes through the free traffic from search results)
I’d like to invite you to seriously consider the same – and take it from someone who has been there and tried that.
Top Choice for Business in 2019: Free Traffic with Local Lead Generation
If you want a business model where you can work on something one time and leave it alone to keep paying you over and over, then maybe lead generation is more of a business model that’d appeal to you.
Yes, it’s true that I’ve been associating myself and spending some of my spare time dabbling in affiliate marketing – and I’ve even seen a little bit of a profitable return on the labor I’ve put into it – the majority of my time for the last 5 years have been invested into local lead generation.
When you have a lead gen site up on the internet…
- There’s less competition (only 10 to 30 companies – as opposed to a world of affiliate marketers)
- Profit margins are nearly 100 percent of what is paid to you
- Passive income can become a reality
How do I know?
That’s how I quit my job in the first year of exploring this coaching program on lead generation for small businesses by amassing a whopping $10k in monthly income without having a second job to stress me out every day.
In case you haven’t seen the value in this opportunity yet – meaning, with local lead generation – take it from one of our coaching program members that are working hard on a part-time basis – and they’re young for the level of success they’re achieving in the online business world (see below):
How easy is this business really?
I’ll give you the rigorous involvement of my daily regimen for the entire first year of this business model.
Here’s what I did:
- Found a market and industry I wanted to serve
- Ranked a lead gen site
- Banked the profits that came in from free traffic
- Rinse and Repeat
Said another way, there are minimal competition and tons of money in local; the masses simply haven’t caught on to the trend that’s taking off today.
How simple is this? Well…
The limo lean gen site that I posted in Lansing, Michigan is getting free traffic to pay me monthly, and it’s been doing that ever since I started my online business with this model in 2014.
Here’s how the results look when it’s a finished product and working for you (see below):
There aren’t that many digital information resources that people seem to rely on to tell them whether a marketplace or a local service industry is going to be a good idea to enter into business with; the tools are just not credible, but can often be found to carry accurate documentation.
Often times, people want information that comes from data aggregators online, but the truth is that software is designed by humans – therefore, they’re subject to errors just like we are.
As a result, some assumptions are made on the numbers that software like this illustrates and claims are made that this isn’t a good industry or market to go into.
Trust me; if there are a wide variety of local businesses serving that one industry in a market, then there’s a reason that they’re doing well: there’s plenty of business to go around.
We point out what it takes to find these kinds of these in our lead gen coaching program which we’ve temporarily opened up to share the exciting business opportunity with people like you – serious about starting a side-hustle from your laptop at home.
How did I guess that?
Well, you’ve read this far, so why not come a little further and get the full scoop for yourself…
In addition to quitting my 9 to 5, amassing a hearty $50,000 in monthly, passive, reliable income, here are just a few more reasons to see the value in what tons of our coaching program members appreciate and get to wake up to every day now:
- A business model that you can expand any time you want – no marketing trends or volume of competition can stop you from doing what you want to do
- Duplicate the Airbnb and Uber model of business: generate leads and pass them off to service providers for a chunk of change that can go right into your pockets
- Help business owners with a real service that can benefit their bottom line and change the life of their family for the long-term
- You can feel good knowing that you’re helping your local community service-based businesses with what they’re already looking for: more customers
- Since most business owners don’t have time to investigate the online world of what it takes to bring in more customers, you can leverage the marketplace for them and profit off the service
- Small businesses always have a marketing budget – and you could be added to that payroll every month, which means your target audience for clients in your business model can almost always afford to hire and pay you for the life of your relationship in bringing them more buyers
- HUGE PROFIT MARGINS from simply bringing more value to a business than what they were making before you entered the picture and partnered with them
- Don’t want to work at 8:00 AM? Stay in your jammies and wake up when you want. You’re the boss now, and it’s up to you what you want to do and when you want to do it
There are new students entering our coaching program all the time and landing deals quickly – either because they already know someone who owns a business that they can help or they get to work and get results coming immediately by leveraging the skills we teach them…
By the way, that limo site still pays me like clockwork every month, and has for years, at a rate of $750.
This is what it looks like (see below):
And it’s the skills that you have that can pay the bills for the long-haul; after all, you can now tell a client that you are the bill that helps them to pay all of their other bills.
My #1 recommendation for an online business in 2019 is local lead generation and you can check out to begin building a sustainable, long-term, reliable 6 -figures in annual salary from the comfort of your home and the privacy of your own laptop.
Let’s talk about your goals already: CLICK HERE!