The average person aspires to quit their 9 to 5. That’s absolutely normal! Working for somebody else can be draining and unrewarding. Unfortunately, not many people ever achieve the dream of freeing themselves from this bondage. Why? Because they don’t know how to do it. They spend long hours trying to come up with ways of generating passive income. Some of these people even have the right ideas. However, where they falter is in the execution. This is where I step into the fray. Hi, my name is Francisco, and I am the owner of Planet Marketing, a Digital Marketing Agency. My company specializes in Facebook Ads, Google Ads and Affiliate Marketing. Over the years, I have helped several people realize the dream of financial independence. You too, can attain this goal by reading this post. In this article, I am going to;
- Give you my personal story.
- Highlight how I was able to quit my job through affiliate marketing.
- Show you how to do affiliate marketing the right way.
How Affiliate Marketing helped me
Okay, so there are probably thousands of articles about affiliate marketing out there. But none of them are as personal as my story. This story is meant to inspire other people. Truth is, I haven’t worked for somebody in over 10 years. I am my own boss! I don’t have to wake up early in the morning feeling all drained and dejected because I am about to face some annoying boss.
To be frank, I started out like everybody else. Somewhere along the way I got a college degree that proved to be rather useless in the real world. Okay, perhaps not entirely useless. But I ended up doing work that was only slightly related to the education that I had received. You know how it is in today’s clogged jobs market. There are so many graduates out there spending their days getting sore on the behind while sitting at the till at Walmart or at some other department store.
Finding my inspiration
Fortunately for me, I found my inspiration before it became too late. One day, I simply decided that I had had enough. It takes lots of courage, to be frank. There is nothing that’s as scary as leaving one’s job and stepping into the unknown. I was brave enough to do it, and I haven’t looked back ever since.
I Build passive income sources
So, how did I free myself from the drudgery of a 9 to 5 existence? Well, it all had to do with being able to come up with a number of passive income sources. Affiliate marketing is but one of them. If you are wondering what passive income is; the answer is; it’s income that you get on a regular basis without having to put in regular work.
Passive income is not so passive
There are some people out there who think that building passive income is easy. No, it’s not! It takes time and effort to achieve the kind of results that I have personally been able to achieve. Nobody is going to ever hand you money on a silver platter. At least not in the real world. Remember what I said about waking up whenever I feel like it? Well, there are times when I spend a couple of days without putting in a proper night’s sleep. However, the hard work is rewarding at the end of the day because I know that I am not working to enrich some annoying individual somewhere.
How I was able to quit my 9 to 5 through Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing, as I have already noted, is how I was able to build enough passive income sources to last me a couple of lifetimes. Even if I were to stop working today, I would still continue to make enough to spend the rest of my life basking in the sun on some beach somewhere. So, how was I able to quit my 9 to 5 via affiliate marketing? First, we need to give a brief description of affiliate marketing.
What is affiliate marketing?
Businesses out there are ever engaged in the cutthroat task if getting more sales as a way of boosting their income. Profit is the name of the game at the end of the day. Profitability is only achieved by getting more people to buy a brand’s products. That is rather simple on paper. Unfortunately, the reality of the business environment is that there are competitors and other factors that exert negative pressure on a brand’s ability to generate profit.
One such challenge, from a marketing point of view, is that there are limitations to what can be done by the brand itself in terms of marketing. What I am trying to say is that Company X may be large and it may have all the tricks in the book, but there is still only a single Company X at the end of the day. It will never be able to reach it’s full potential by going it alone.
This is where affiliate marketing comes into play. Affiliate marketing is a model under which businesses engage the services of affiliates to do marketing on their behalf for a commission. Both these entities; the affiliate and the brand, are motivated by profit. For the affiliate, the more people he or she can convince to buy Company X’s products, the more commission he is going to earn. The brand benefits in that it now has thousands of people talking about its products. On top of that, it only has to pay when a desired outcome, such as a sale, has been achieved.
How I use Affiliate Marketing
My website, Planet Marketing, partly monetizes through affiliate marketing. So, you can be sure that I am not just waffling here. I have already noted that I quit my job over a decade ago, and affiliate marketing was one major reason why I was able to do it. So, how do I use affiliate marketing to generate reliable income, most of which is passive?
I am an affiliate for several companies
One of the things that I have been able to do as part of the process of boosting my income is to join quite a number of affiliate programs. You will notice that when it comes to affiliate marketing, you can either join through an affiliate network or directly through a program that is run in-house by a brand. Anyway, my advice is that you should not go over the top. Some people try to join every affiliate marketing program that’s running out there. That’s not really going to work. In order to have success, you need to have a few companies that you focus on.
Examples of companies for which I am an affiliate
- Shopper Approved
- Kinsta
- Trustpilot
- Bluehost
- Dreamhost
- Hostgator
- SEMrush
- SERanking
- Moz
- ProRankTracker
- InterServer
I have my favorite brands
The reason why I have been so successful with Affiliate Marketing is that I do not try to market everybody. I have a couple of favorite brands in various categories and these tend to be brands that I am well familiar with. Familiarity is important; because it allows me to produce content that’s well written and that’s truthful. Of course, you can review a service or product that you have never tried out, but your review is probably going to come out shallow at the end of the day.
An Example: Shopper Approved
I joined the Shopper Approved affiliate marketing program several years ago. Shopper Approved is probably my favorite company when it comes to Affiliate Marketing. That’s not really surprising, considering that I get the bulk of my income from this company. But what is it that I like so much about Shopper Approved?
Well, Shopper Approved is an online reviews company that gives brands the ability to get star ratings in Google Ads and in Google Shopping. The reason why I have been so successful with this company is that I work closely with the folks at Shopper Approved. I even occasionally hold meetings with them. So, whenever I recommend Shopper Approved to people, the recommendation is based on real, firsthand knowledge.
How many businesses have I referred to Shopper Approved?
Shopper Approved is one of the companies whose affiliate marketing programs have enabled me to quit my 9 to 5 job. A major reason why Shopper Approved is at the top is that I have been able to refer so many businesses to this company. So far, I have been able to refer over 300 businesses to Shopper Approved. I am probably one of their Affiliate Marketing programs’ biggest successes!
How am I paid?
One of the things that you need to note is that there are two forms of payment when it comes to affiliate marketing. Under the first, affiliates are paid a once off sum per reference. Under the second, affiliates are paid a recurring amount for the lifetime of the reference. This is the model that I prefer because it means I will continue to get something for as long as the person that I referred to a particular company remains a customer.
Let me go back to the example of Shopper Approved; the company pays its affiliates under the recurring model. As said, I have referred over 300 businesses to this company. What it means is that every month, I get a share of the monthly subscriptions that the businesses I referred pay to Shopper Approved. And I will continue earning even 10 or 20 years into the future. That’s how I have been able to gain total independence via affiliate marketing. I am still referring people to this company, meaning my earnings can only continue to grow!
My own affiliate marketing program
Here is the thing; as my business has grown, I have developed quite a number of products of my own. These include my DIY Facebook Ads Marketing Course and my Google Ads Setup Plan. Now I run my own affiliate marketing program to market these and other products. So, you can see that affiliate marketing has helped me quit my 9 to 5 in quite a number of ways. Not only am I an affiliate for brands such as Shopper Approved, by I also have my own affiliates.
How to do affiliate marketing the right way
Affiliate marketing is a subject that I love. Carry out a search on my blog and you will come across quite a number of articles that cover the subject. So, I am not going to go in-depth into the subject here. You can check out my other articles if you need to learn more. Anyway, I am going to close this article by showing you how to do affiliate marketing the right way. Follow my tips, and you should be able to quite your 9 to 5 in your turn;
- You need to have a blog to do any meaningful affiliate marketing. A blog is how you build and engage the audience to which you sell on behalf of brands.
- Make sure that your blog is relatively focused on a particular area. As an example, my blog is focused on Digital Marketing. What you don’t want to do is to create a site that talks about every topic under the sun. This is important when it comes to monetization. Let’s assume that you wish to monetize through Amazon Associates. Focus on a narrow area to give yourself a chance to succeed. An example is a site that focuses on the best Bluetooth headphones 2020. That’s a narrow area that you can beat into submission as far as content is concerned. You can become an expert on the subject. If you do this, you will be able to create a loyal following.
- Create well written content that answers people’s needs. As an example, I have an article that talks about how to get Store Ratings in Google Ads. I wrote this article after carrying out comprehensive keyword research, and it’s the article that gives me the majority of my references to Shopper Approved.
- Do Search Engine Optimization to get your content the chance to be ranked high on Google. As an example, the article that I have just mentioned is ranked at number 1 on Google and the results have been amazing. I was able to reach this position because my article is unique and answers people’s questions.
- Join affiliate networks to find the right kind of businesses to promote. There are also businesses that run their own affiliate marketing programs. Don’t hesitate to sign up for such businesses.
- Cover a lot of topics, but not too many. You can see based on the type of companies for which I am an affiliate that I focus on Web Hosting, Online Reviews and Rank Tracking. Again, these topics are all related in that they cover various aspects of Digital Narketing. Let me repeat my warning against being too broad. You won’t be able to achieve the desired results that way.
That’s it! Hope this article has shown you how affiliate marketing helped me quit my 9 to 5. You too can do it. It’s just a matter of you seizing the bull by the horns. Otherwise you are going to spend the rest of your life working for other people. Come up with a plan and stick to it. Heck, feel free to run your plan through me. I have had over a decade’s experience in the business. I can, therefore, point you in the right direction as far as affiliate marketing is concerned. I can even help you get started by setting up your very own site!
