Do you dream of spending your days traveling around the world? Are you tired of working for other people? If yes, then you need to read this article. Hi, my name is Francisco, and I am the owner of Planet Marketing, a Digital Marketing agency. My company specializes in Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and Remarketing. This post in unique because it is based on my own experiences. I have been selling affiliate products for years. Not only that, but I also run my own affiliate marketing program in-house. So, I know what I am talking about here. It’s very possible to earn a lot of money via affiliate marketing to enable you to travel around the world. I have been doing it for over a decade! In this article, I am going to;
- Give you a brief background to affiliate marketing
- Show you how I did it
- Show how affiliate marketing can help you travel around the world
Affiliate Marketing Introduction
Affiliate marketing is not that different from the kind of marketing that took place way back, when men would go around trying to get people to buy samples of various products. Today, the world has pretty much moved on. People no longer need to lug around heavy suitcases containing their products. Now most business takes place online. And affiliate marketing is a large part of it. But what is affiliate marketing and how does it work?
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a system where brands engage the services of individuals who own marketing channels to do selling on their behalf. The following are the major players in any affiliate marketing cycle;
- The brand which comes up with a product
- The affiliate who does the selling
- Affiliate networks that serve as the meeting ground for brands and affiliates.
How does it work?
This is a subject that I have already covered in an article on how affiliate marketing works. So, I am not going to dwell on it much in this article. Just to summarize, affiliate marketing begins with the brand/advertiser coming up with a product. This could be anything, from the latest ball point pen to software for predicting the weather.
From there, the brand looks for partners to help market its products. These partners are what are referred to as affiliates. The goal is to sign up as many people as is possible. This can be done either directly or via an affiliate network. Or a brand may choose to use both.
The affiliate link
Anyway, once affiliates have signed up, they get an affiliate link. This directs back to the brand’s products and helps identify which affiliate is making which sales. Affiliate links, therefore, need to be unique to each affiliate.
How are affiliates paid?
Payment is done when a desired outcome has been achieved. This could be the sale of a product, such as a single pen. Or it could be when someone has signed up for something that the brand is offering. Affiliate payments can be once off or recurring.
Recurring payments are the most desirable, because they enable payment to the affiliate for as long as the customer remains active. So, if the affiliate has gotten people to sign up for digital products, he or she will continue to get paid for as long as these people remain customers.
How Affiliate Marketing helped me quit my job
I used to work a 9 – 5 job, just like most people. That came after I had attended college and had amassed my fair share of student debts. However, at some point, I decided that I had had enough of deadlines and difficult bosses. I decided that I wanted to be my own boss.
Most people reach this boiling point. However, the different thing is that not many people have the courage to let go of their programmed lives to do something daring. People feel that the moment they let go, they are going to starve or something.
So, I had the courage to quit my job, and I have not looked back since. In fact, I haven’t had to work for a single boss in over 15 years! I make enough money passively to last me several lifetimes. But how do I do it?
How I can afford to travel around the world
The key to my success is passive income. Again, this is a topic that I have covered a lot on this site. Passive income is money that’s earned without regular work. It, however, needs to be regular. Just to give you an example, I regularly earn money from Shopper Approved.
I am a Shopper Approved affiliate and have referred over 300 people to the company over the years. Shopper Approves is a company that handles online reviews and it pays money to affiliates on a recurring basis.
Anyway, you are free to do the Math. I get thousands of dollars every month from this company. And it’s only one of the companies for which I am an affiliate.
Is it easy?
Nobody out there is going to give you money to travel around the world for free. If you are serious about liberating yourself from the drudgery of a programmed life, you need to work hard. However, the reward is great at the end of the day. So, no, it’s not easy. Anyway, feel free to get in touch with me if you want my formulae on how to use affiliate marketing to earn enough passively to travel around the world.
How Affiliate Marketing can help you travel the world
So, how can you use affiliate marketing to achieve your dream of earning enough to travel around the world? How can affiliate marketing help you get away from the pains of working to enrich somebody else? Well, if you are serious about letting go, you need to read the points below;
1. You need to create your own blog/social media/YouTube channel
This is an absolute prerequisite to earning enough via affiliate marketing to be able to travel the world. You need to have a channel that you can use to reach out to a relevant audience. This can be a blog, such as planetmarketing.com, or a YouTube channel. It can also be a social media following. An example would be a Facebook following. The essential think is that you need a platform on which to gather and engage an audience.
2. It will only work if you have a big audience
The key to success with affiliate marketing is to have an audience that’s large enough that it can be monetized. If you create a site that is only visited by 1 or 2 people every day, then you are probably not going to have much success with it. You need hundreds of visitors to your site per day to begin talking serious passive income.
Of course, it’s all going to be different. If you create a niche site that monetizes via Amazon Associates, as an example, you could conceivably begin earning with a few visitors per day. The key is doing keyword research and targeting those keywords that are used by people who have a very high search intent.
An example: Reddit
The same thing applies when it comes to social media. Your audience needs to be big enough if you are hoping to succeed at affiliate marketing to earn enough to enable you to travel around the world. Let’s say, as an example, that you have created a Reddit community that has 5 followers.
Are you going to earn much from such a community? The answer is NO! Your community needs to be vibrant. If you have a Reddit community that has 1 000 followers, as an example, you could throw in articles leading back to your website. People will then click on affiliate links on your site. (You can’t post affiliate links directly to Reddit).
Become and influencer via social media
The same thing applies for Facebook, Instagram and other social networking sites. You are only going to start earning something via affiliate marketing if you grow your audience to such an extent that you become an influencer. The key, in any case, is to have regular, relevant content. That’s what gets people to subscribe to your channel.
3. You need to be focused
Being focused is absolutely essential when it comes to getting affiliate marketing success. Most people know that they need to create blogs. They go on to do so but after only a while, they give up. But why is that the case? The problem in most case is that they create sites that are not focused on earning money. While your life may be interesting, creating a blog that focuses on that will only be good for self-actualization. In fact, you could even get an large following, but how are you going to turn that following into money?
Know what you want to achieve from the beginning
The thing to do is to know what you want to achieve right from the beginning. For this article, the aim is to generate enough money passively to be able to travel the world without being bothered by annoying bosses. Affiliate marketing will help you achieve this goal. But you need to do it right. So, you need to tell yourself right from the start that I want to create something that earns me money. From there, you can be really focused.
Choose the right topic
Being focused involves choosing the right topic for your blog, YouTube channel or social media. If you go to Instagram today, you will realize that there are people on there who have millions of followers. Most of these monetize in one way or the other, including via affiliate marketing. Some people have become millionaire this way. Some were already celebrities to start with, but a lot of them are just ordinary people. Whether it’s on social media or on your blog, the following are some of the topics around which people have successfully created affiliate marketing businesses;
- Travel
- Food
- Humor
- Health and fitness
- Amazon products
4. Loving what you are doing helps, but is not essential
Most people will tell you that you need to choose a topic that you love. That is not entirely the case. You should choose a topic that has the most potential to make you passive income. You may be head over heels in love with donkeys, but how are you going to monetize that?
Of course, loving a particular topic can help in terms of creating relevant content. If you love cooking, you should create a food blog or YouTube channel. But you can still do so if you have no particular love for food. Once the money starts rolling in, you will start loving whatever your chosen topic!
An example
Let us give an example here so you fully understand what we are talking about. Let’s say you have created a site focusing on a product on Amazon; say televisions. Once you have decided that this is the right topic, you will begin writing all that you know about televisions. Your articles could be reviews and how to articles.
You will be able to monetize the reviews by convincing people to buy using your Amazon Associates links. Stay at it long, and you will soon become an expert on the subject. And people who search for keywords such as “best 55 inch TV,” are most likely in the process of buying. So, this is a good example of a highly focused site. In fact, you could narrow down focus to a particular brand.
5. Do Search Engine Optimization
People use search engines to find information on the internet. Getting them from there to your site is the biggest challenge as you set out to use affiliate marketing to help you travel around the world. We have already need that you need a big and relevant audience to have any success building your passive income.
The key to success is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Traffic that you get from search engines, such as Google, is great because it’s free. However, you will always face stiff competition, particular for high paying keywords. Some of the most relevant SEO tenets are looked at below.
Do keyword research
Before writing your articles, you need to do lots of keyword research. There are keywords out there that are used by thousands of people. Then there are others that only get a few hundred searches per month. So, which ones should you target?
Well, the most intuitive thing would be to target high volume keywords. However, that is not always the best approach. High volume keywords usually have a lot of competition. You will be trying to outdo people who have been at it for years. Chances are high that you are not going to succeed even if you produce the best content.
So, you should probably start by targeting low competition keywords. There are many keyword research tools out there. These will enable you to find the best keyword to target. You may think that a keyword that’s used by only 1000 people per month is not worthwhile, but it’s actually very profitable. Create unique content around that and you will get 1000 potential sales per month!
Produce high quality, relevant content
Relevance is important to your success at affiliate marketing. If you have created a food blog, being relevant will enable you to create a loyal following that is composed of like-minded people. However, they will flee if you start talking about something else.
Your content also needs to be of good quality. Of course, this does not apply when it comes to YouTube where things are rather informal. But you need to be consistent and you still need to ensure that your videos are good enough. That way, people will want to come back for more. They will subscribe to your channel.
Get backlinks
One thing that you will do once you have created a vibrant site is get constant requests from people who are looking for guest posting opportunities. It’s not actually because they love your site. It’s simply because they are looking for backlinks, and backlinks are one of the biggest tools as far as SEO is concerned.
Google and other search engines, assumes that a site that has many links pointing to is is authoritative. So, that site gets a higher rank on Search Engine Result Pages. So, link building is important in terms of giving your site greater visibility. The higher your rank on Google, the more traffic you are going to get. More traffic translates to more chances to convince people to buy using your affiliate links.
6. Join Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks have a rather love hate relationship with affiliates. Most people are loath to giving them part of the money that they earn from affiliate sales. Thing is, however, that there are many products out there that you are only going to be able to sale by signing up for an affiliate network such as CJ Affiliates or ClickBank.
If the brands that you want to promote all run in-house affiliate marketing programs, then, by all means you won’t need to sign up with an affiliate network. However, soon or later, you are going to want to promote products that can only be accessed via affiliate networks. So, you probably need to sign up with one big one.
