• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

  • Home
  • About
  • Advertising Services
  • Podcast
  • What I’m Doing Now
  • Writing Portfolio

affiliate marketing

4 Keys to a Successful Blog

November 18, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

create a successful blog

There are many factors driving a successful blog: high-quality content, engagement, social media traffic, search engine traffic, domain authority and more. I focused on all of those and attracted hundreds of visitors to blog, but did that make my blog a success? Nope. Here’s what made my blog successful:

 

Serve Your Audience

Focusing too much on SEO and metrics can lead to overlooking the most important part of your blog: your audience. Serve your audience and you’ll build a loyal following. I’ve heard this advice a hundred times over.

While it’s valuable advice, it has become a bit overrated. Don’t get me wrong. Serving my audience has helped a lot, but it’s only piece of the puzzle. Serving your audience means being attuned to their needs and interests, and creating valuable content accordingly.

But in a world filled with good content, writing more of it just isn’t enough. To truly serve your audience, you’ve got to do more. Think of content as an appetizer in a three course meal.

 

A Recipe for Success

Some bloggers mistakenly think success is a numbers game. But traffic and visitors alone won’t propel you to the top. Some blogs thrive because they enjoy hundreds of thousands of visitors while others struggle with that kind of traffic, or any kind of traffic for that matter.

But the real winners are the bloggers who truly LOVE their readers. I’m talking about the bloggers who, in addition to offering valuable content consistently, nurture their communities. They make themselves available by regularly answering readers’ questions, responding to their comments and engaging with their content.

If you view everyone in your audience as little more than a potential customer, your blogging journey will hit a lot of bumps. View each member of your audience as a human being with something to offer besides a pocket full of money.

 

Go Above And Beyond

You should already be going above and beyond with your content. But you should also strive to go the extra mile with your audience by acknowledging and showing appreciation for their support, and offering your own.

Writing alone doesn’t do that.  Acknowledge your audience by engaging with their social media posts, responding to their emails and thanking them for sharing your content. Always try to be available.

Neil Patel writes some of the longest SEO related blog posts known to mankind. I’m sure he’s written at least a few posts that exceed 10,000 words. He also spends a lot of time marketing himself.

One would think a busy man like Neil would have little time to dedicate to his audience. But that’s actually where he dedicates most of his time. According to an infographic on his blog, Neil receives around 207 emails every day. He responds to 91 of them!

contact neil patel infographic

Neil spends four hours a day going through his inbox and responding to anything from business questions to interview requests. He also makes the time to respond to readers’ comments on his blog posts, which easily attract 100’s of comments! His older posts consistently receive engagement as well.

 

Make Your Audience Part Of The Action

For a long time, I saw guest blogging as a personal opportunity but hesitated to accept guest posts for my own blog. Yet the benefits of opening your blog to guest contributors are many. It saves you time, keeps your content fresh and varied, helps increase your traffic and adds value.

Not only that, guest contributors become part of your story.

I have written many guest posts. Two that stand out were for Jeff Bullas’ Blog and ProBlogger. When I first started out, these blogs were the holy grail of blogging and social media, so I read them every day to learn more about my niche. Once I gained experience and expertise, it was an honor to be given the opportunity to contribute to these blogs.

Contributors inevitably have different motivations for writing guest posts. Some enjoy seeing their name on a credible blog (and potentially building their own brand), others enjoy giving back to the blogs they’ve learned from in the past. But every contributor becomes a small part of the blog’s story, of your story.

As an added bonus, you get a backlink. You can also do something similar on YouTube by recording collaborative videos with audience members.

 

Don’t Oversell

Overselling to your readers is a surefire way to make the relationship sour. You may be overselling if you are:

  • Creating products in bulk.
  • Involved in affiliate marketing.

Of course, some people who create products into bulk and/or engage in affiliate marketing don’t fall into this trap. The danger arises when you’re too heavily promoting a product (yours or an affiliate’s) every month. I made this mistake.

I first got involved with promoting other people’s courses in 2015. The first time I promoted someone else’s course to my email list I got a bunch of sales. The next month, I promoted a different course and got a bunch of sales. The following month, I did the same.

I spend five straight months promoting other people’s products and very little time delivering value. The result? Increased unsubscribes, fewer email opens, and fewer clicks. It was an email marketing nightmare. My email list is still somewhat scarred by the aftermath but my open and clickthrough rates are gradually increasing.

The point is I enjoyed increased revenues initially, but eventually my sales and email subscribes took a hit. Why? Because I was too focused on pushing products and not providing anything of free value. Worst of all, I saw my email list as just that: a list. Nameless, faceless people with wallets.

It’s was a big mistake, and hard to admit, but if I can help you avoid making the same error I’ll be happy.  In fact, I can thank one of my subscribers for helping me see the light. His email said, “You’re better than this.” And his sentiments were likely shared by the others on my list, the silent majority.

 

In Conclusion

While I still occasionally promote other people’s training courses, I am more focused than ever on my audience’s needs and interests, and giving them something of value that they can use.

Any successful blogger is successful because of his/her audience. Tenacity and grit factor in, but a blog is useless without a loyal following. If you love your readers, they will love you back (and will also be more open to trying your products and services in the future).

What are your thoughts on audience engagement? Do you believe there is a more important determinant of a blog’s success? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: affiliate marketing, audience, blogging, blogging tips and tricks, blogs, email marketing, readership

How To Increase Your Affiliate Marketing Revenue

June 21, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

I did something different for this video…all screen. While it won’t be the norm, I occasionally like to sprinkle these types of videos in.

If you are looking to boost your revenue as an affiliate marketer, then this is the right video for you.

I’ll talk about which opportunities you should pursue to make the most sales and a hefty commission per sale.

I talk about some of the tools that I am using to help out with my affiliate marketing process.

[Tweet “How To Increase Your Affiliate Marketing Revenue.”]

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: affiliate marketing

How To Easily Profit From Affiliate Marketing

November 11, 2015 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

how to easily profit from affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is alive and well.

Affiliate marketing alone presents its set of advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage is you get to earn a commission by promoting products that other people created. Sometimes, the product creators will even provide you with copy that converts well.

The main disadvantage is that relying too much on affiliate marketing makes you dependent on other people creating products and putting you in their affiliate networks.

For most of my journey, I haven’t given affiliate marketing much thought. I started off as an Amazon Associate, and after making only 4-6% commissions for each product sale, I thought affiliate marketing would never be my cup of hot chocolate (I not a big fan of tea).

Then, I randomly got an email from an affiliate marketer. This affiliate marketer gave me the opportunity to promote a copywriting training course and get 40% of the commission for every sale. Since the course was high-end, each sale I got as an affiliate brought in over $100.

I was immediately sold and decided to give affiliate marketing a second try. Now, it’s slowly growing into a big part of my business. As I started to explore affiliate marketing, I paid more attention to other affiliate marketing promotions. I noticed that many of the people who created successful products of their own were also affiliate marketers. How does that happen?

The answer is that it can take a very long time to create a product. For some people, it takes them several months just to create a new product that is bound to perform well. Mega training courses for instance can have over 10 hours of video with complementary PDFs, quizzes, and other interactive activities.

And for many successful products, the time spent towards marketing usually exceeds the time spent towards creating the actual product. Call it crazy, but that’s how it works.

While these people are creating their products, how do they make money? The revenue they generate usually comes from their old products but also through affiliate marketing.

I am an ambitious teenager but schedule conflicts are part of the norm. I anticipate on creating one mini training course on Udemy every week. Sometimes I accomplish that goal. At other times, the amount of homework and upcoming tests prevents me from reaching that goal.

When it comes to product creation, time will not always be on your side. As an affiliate marketer, time is always on your side. Even if you don’t get many sales from one of your affiliate offers, you can always search out the next affiliate offer.

Now that you know why affiliate marketing can potentially bring in revenue, I am going to share with you how you can generate revenue from a powerful affiliate marketing strategy.

 

#1: Get The Right Affiliate Offers

Most people are introduced to affiliate marketing for the first time when they become Amazon Associates. It’s one of the largest affiliate network known to mankind, and you have millions of products to choose from. The only problem is that most people only get a 4% commission rate for their efforts.

The reason I went back to affiliate marketing was because I started to make real money. I’m not talking about the 4% rate that Amazon provides. I am talking about making over $100 just for making one sale. Sell 10 of those products every month and you make over $1,000 every month. The math is as simple as that.

When you have a lower commission per sale, you need more sales to reach the same milestones. If you get a $5 commission for each product you sell, you would have to sell 200 products to make $1,000. For the product with the $100 commission, you only need to sell 10 of those products. In most cases, it is easier to get 10 sales of the same product than it is to get 200 sales of the same product, regardless of price.

The best part about some affiliate networks is that you may be provided with email blasts, social media posts, and sales pages that convert well above the average sales page. I was an affiliate for Ray Edwards’ Copywriting Academy course. As a part of his affiliate network, I was provided with email blasts that were designed to convert far beyond the average.

Basically, he knows more than me about getting sales. I promoted his videos and webinars that led up to the course. Then I promoted the course itself. His sales pages are some of the most optimized sales pages out there. Getting some of my visitors to that sales page resulted in more revenue for Ray and me. The best part is that the people who bought the course are going to learn a lot about copywriting and making more sales.

And I did no work. I just copied and pasted a few messages and sent them out accordingly. Ray put together the entire product, the entire sales page, and everything else along with it. In the end, Ray made far more revenue than me from his product launch, but I got my fair share too.

 

#2: Promoting Your Affiliate Links

The way you promote your affiliate links depends on where those affiliate links lead your visitors. When promoting Copywriting Academy, I had links to videos and webinars that required an email address in order for the visitor to gain access to the video/webinar.

I tweeted these links but never tweeted the link to the sales page (Twitter isn’t the place to promote the sales page of a product, especially high-end products. People rarely go on Twitter thinking “What will I buy next?”).

Most of the clicks I got from my affiliate links were directly from Twitter. In the end, over 5,000 people clicked on the link and over 100 people opted in. The final result was one sale and I made over $100 from that one sale.

Two takeaways:

  1. That commission for one product sale is way better than any Amazon affiliate link.
  2. Not bad for my first try

Some people make six figures from affiliate marketing alone. While you shouldn’t rely on affiliate marketing for your income, it can still be quite profitable.

 

#3: Repurposing The Commissions

I believe in making a profit and having a high net income. I also believe in efficiently spending money. I don’t buy many things for myself with my own money. When I spend money, I spend it on my business.

I spend it on online advertising. AdWords and Facebook ads in particular. My goal is to grow my audience exponentially. Spending money on online advertising helps with that.

YouTube is the next social network I am taking seriously. I want to leverage that platform and create videos more often. Eventually, I want to have more videos on my YouTube channel than blog posts on this blog. Oh, and I want this awesome YouTube trophy.

When I identified YouTube as the next social network to work on, I knew that my current approach wasn’t working. At just 2,500 subscribers, I knew I needed to make massive changes to get to 100,000 subscribers. It’s still a goal of mine, but I am taking action—by investing in online advertising.

I decided to run an ad with AdWords and see what that would do to my channel views. I started off at a budget of $3/day. Not much, but I just wanted to see what types of results I would get.

The results were awesome

YouTube Views From AdWords

I was getting targeted views, and I was paying $0.01 for one view. My video promoting my writing course suddenly went from getting zero views to getting over 300 views every day.

I only repurposed $3/day from my revenue, and I am growing my platform.

But if you frequently visit this blog, then you know the most important platform of all. The email list. Entrepreneurs are spending more time and money trying to master online advertising because it can be highly profitable.

Consider this: Every email list has a certain number of subscribers on it. When you make money from your email list, each subscriber, when averaged with the others, results in a certain amount of revenue. If you have 100 subscribers and make $200 from a promotion, each subscriber (on average) results in $2 for you.

Let’s say that rate of making $2 per subscriber remains constant, and you discover a method where you can spend $1 to get one new subscriber. No matter how much money you spend, you are going to make a profit. This dream of exponential profits inspires people to invest their time and money into online advertising.

 

POWER TIP: Have Your Own Affiliate Program

Ever notice an opportunity that was right there the entire time? That’s what recently happened to me. Udemy has become the main focus in my business strategy, and it’s paying off. Since I made that decision, my revenue from Udemy has significantly increased.

It didn’t take much of an investigation to determine most of the revenue I made came from my own promotion. What I didn’t initially realize is that affiliate promotions also contributed to my revenue increase.

The great thing about Udemy is that they have an affiliate program set up for you. All you have to do is give people the affiliate links to your courses and then they can start promoting them. Your affiliates get paid without your involvement, and you get a slice of the pie too.

So I decided to let people know about Udemy’s affiliate program. In all of my courses, I included a document with affiliate links to my courses. My students now have the option to promote my courses, make money for themselves, and then some of that money comes back to me.

Don’t think you have to make all of the sales by yourself. It’s okay to have a team of people who help you. Even if that means sharing some of the money.

 

In Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is huge. It’s not the holy grail, but it is valuable nevertheless. If you find yourself struggling to create products at a rapid pace, affiliate marketing gives you a product to promote.

I didn’t put together the Copywriting Academy course. But I made money by promoting the course as an affiliate. That’s affiliate marketing in a nutshell.

What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Are you a part of an affiliate program? Do you have any affiliate marketing tips for us? Want to promote one of my courses? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: affiliate marketing

5 Tips For Affiliate Marketing On Your Blog

May 4, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Affiliate Marketing On Your Blog

One type of marketing people under-utilize and take for granted is affiliate marketing. Most affiliate marketers only get a few dollars from their efforts which isn’t enough to generate a full-time income. After analyzing other affiliate marketers who make six-figure incomes from promoting other people’s products, I came up with five tips for affiliate marketing that you need to implement in your blogging strategy.

 

#1: Search For The Higher Commissions

The successful affiliate marketers I analyzed like to promote other people’s training courses and products to get a higher commission. Some people who create training courses will give affiliates 50% of the commission each time a customer buys the training course through the affiliate link. Plenty of training courses get sold for $100 which means you would make $50 per affiliate sale. Udemy offers an excellent affiliate program where you get to make about half of the profit per sale…by promoting training courses that you did not create. It is practically impossible to find a reasonably priced product that you could make $50 per sale through the Amazon Associates program. Udemy currently uses LinkShare for its affiliate program.

[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1EB73p3″]Look for affiliate opportunities that give you a high percentage of the commission. LinkShare is a good one.[/tweetthis]

#2: Only Promote Products Related To Your Niche

When you promote other people’s products, you must only promote products related to your niche. If you promote too many products that are too different from each other, your visitors won’t understand the meaning of your brand. When it comes to affiliate marketing, it is better to offer specific products than a wide range of products. A brand that is not specific has a vague meaning. Getting specific allows you to develop a clearer identity for your brand and offer more products that your visitors are more likely to buy. You may wonder if you could possibly find affiliate links of enough of your products if you get really specific, but in reality, there are thousands of products (if not millions) that you could promote as affiliate links. Running out of products to promote won’t be a problem that you come across. If you do come across that problem, then you need to use more affiliate platforms. You could also start creating products to fill in the gap.

 

#3: Don’t Over Promote Affiliate Links

Your blog is a place for people to read your content and develop a greater appreciation for what you stand for. If you primarily think of a blog as a money-making platform, then your blog is not going to generate money. Success on the web starts with your desire to empower others, and as you learn new techniques, money becomes the by-product. It took me several years and mistakes before I finally thrived on the web.

If your blog is filled with affiliate links, then you will ruin your readers’ experiences on your blog. The best readers are the ones who will come back to your blog and read your content often. These readers don’t stick around because you have a bunch of affiliate links on your blog’s sidebar. They stick around because they appreciate your content.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/1EB73p3″]Visitors will only stick around if they appreciate your content, not because of affiliate links.[/tweetthis]

#4: Don’t Rely On Affiliate Marketing

One of the most common mistakes I see affiliate marketers make is that they rely on affiliate marketing for their income. Some affiliate marketers are successful with this method and make six-figure incomes. However, the revenue affiliate marketers generate is dependent on products being available at desirable rates. If one affiliate generates half of your revenue, and that affiliate suddenly no longer becomes an option, then you lost half of your revenue just like that. If an affiliate decides to reduce the commission rate, then you lose more revenue. Although this is true for any marketer (even if the marketer creates his own products), these types of changes have a stronger financial impact on the people who rely on affiliate marketing to make sales.

Affiliate marketing is wonderful, but you must also create your own products. I promote other people’s products, but I also have over a dozen books on Amazon and a few training courses on Udemy. These products account for the bulk of my revenue because I get the best rates on my own products and I get to control the product creation rate.

Having your own products serves as a way to give you more options. You can still promote a fellow entrepreneur’s Kindle book and make 4% of the commission, but once you write your own Kindle book, you can promote that Kindle book and get up to a 70% commission per sale (KDP’s standard commission rate for a book priced between $2.99 and $9.99. You’ll make a little more by using your own affiliate link). Other affiliate marketers may decide to promote your products, and then you will get more sales in the short-term and the long-term. When affiliates promote your products, more people see them. More people seeing your products may lead to returning customers and word of mouth marketing. As you get more customers, you will build an authority on the web that will be impossible for others to ignore.

 

#5: Promote Products With Different Price Ranges

When you become an affiliate marketer, you need to promote three types of products: low-priced, mid-priced, and high-priced products. These three different price points depend on your niche, but some of the products you promote need to be priced at over $100. The more expensive products typically lead to greater commissions per sale but a lower volume of sales while the less expensive products attract a greater volume of sales but lower commissions per sale. Offering the perfect mix of these products will ensure that you get more sales and revenue when potential customers see your affiliate marketing in action.

 

In Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is a powerful type of marketing in which you don’t have to put in any work to create a product, but you can make revenue by promoting other people’s products to your audience. However, affiliate marketing only leads to a full-time income if you use it effectively. Moreover, affiliate marketing is by no means the right basket to put all of your eggs into. That’s too risky, and your earnings are dependent on affiliate platforms sticking around and keeping their commission rates at the same values. Affiliate marketing combined with product creation is one of the most effective ways to make money in today’s era.

What are your thoughts on affiliate marketing? Which tip was your favorite? Do you have any affiliate marketing tips for us? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: affiliate marketing

Primary Sidebar

I am a business freelance writer who writes for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. My content will help drive engagement and sales to your business. I have produced content for several companies, including…

  • Upwork
  • MoneyLion
  • Freight Waves
  • Westchester Business Journal
  • Property Onion

Listen to the Podcast

Click here to grab your FREE copy of "27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter"

Copyright © 2025 · Genesis Sample on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in