When you start an online business you want it to be successful as soon as possible. The end goal is to create a passive source of income to finance your lifestyle. In my opinion, Affiliate Marketing is by far the best way to achieve this goal.
I wrote an article that discussed this recommendation. Before going any further why not find out why I said it is the best home based business.
The concept may be simple. To achieve massive success requires knowledge on the tricks of the trade. You can either search for the information yourself and hope that it will work. Or you could get trained by experts who have succeeded immensely since 2008.
The company that has perfected a course devoted to creating an Affiliate Marketing business, is called Wealthy Affiliate. This course also applies to ANY online business as the principles are the same. I provided an overview of their training platform. It would be a good idea to check that out to get the big picture.
In this Blog Post I will be focusing only on the training from Wealthy Affiliate. Essentially, how to get started in Affiliate Marketing step by step. It enables you to build an amazing website through lessons followed by specific actions. Hence, you will be able to create an amazing online Affiliate Marketing business.
Start With The End In Mind
The objective of an Affiliate Marketing business is to channel customers to the affiliate company that carries the products you feature on your niche website. You accomplish this through your Blog Posts, first by bringing up a need or problem your visitors have. Then show how your niche product or service will fill that need or solve their problem in the best way possible.
As you build a relationship with your visitors, the chances are they will return. And of course, purchase more products from your affiliate sites. At the same time your Blog Posts will be attracting more new visitors, some of whom will become customers. This in turn creates a recurring stream of passive income.
Let’s start with the end in mind, and work out way backwards through the steps that will create income for you:
- Income that will be generated passively
- Conversions towards generating this income
- High traffic volume that will help the frequency of conversions
- Blog Posts using On Page Search Engine Optimization to attract visitors
- Off page SEO through the use of Social Media and other practices
- Website optimized for Desktop PC and Mobile Devices including high speed loading
- Select a Domain Name to reflect your brand
- Select a Niche that you are passionate about that will satisfy a need for your target market
- Decide on how you wish to get trained to make money online
- Do your research to verify that Affiliate Marketing is right for you
The Training That Will Help You Achieve The Above
It is critical that you make the right decisions in your Online Business journey. Training is the key to make this work for you. Wealthy Affiliate has a join-for-free plan. This allows you to experience the training for the first 10 lessons in the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course. But that’s not all. You can also go through the first 10 lessons from the more advanced Affiliate Bootcamp training for free. Believe it or not, there are other benefits of being a free member that other companies charge you for the privilege. Like being able to create two free websites as well as have them hosted for free at Wealthy Affiliate.
You may be surprised to know there is no time limit to staying on as a free member. However, as you complete these free lessons and start building your affiliate marketing website, you will want to continue to develop your business using all the powerful tools and services Wealthy Affiliate provides.
For that you must become a Premium Member. The subscription is $49 a month. There is an annual payment option of $359. That works out to less than $1 A DAY! If you were taking these courses in a community college, assuming they teach them, it would cost you much more. And that is it! There are no gotchas and up sell products that appear later, unlike other companies from my prior experience.
Let me show you the complete Online Entrepreneur Certification Course below.
Your Training Begins Here
Wealthy Affiliate has created the Online Entrepreneur Certification Course, consisting of 5 Levels. Each Level has 10 Lessons.
Each Lesson consists of a video followed by a written script for easy reference. Free membership includes the 10 lessons in Level 1. At the end there are homework exercises intended to solidify your learning. As a Premium Member, if you get stuck, you can ask the community your question and several more experienced members will provide you with an answer. With over 1.5 MILLION members it won’t take long to get a response. And if you wish to enter into a private dialog with anyone to discuss your problem further, you can do that too. I mention this to drive home the value you get over here.
Remember the 10 steps starting with the End In Mind I listed above? Why not study this matrix and discover for yourself what lessons are associated with which each step. This will be well worth your time to find out. I would love it if you told me in the comments section below what you found.
If you have any questions on this matrix, please ask me and I will be happy to answer you.
You may have noticed that business building concepts like Pay Per Click (PPC) was not covered in the OEC. These are more advanced concepts and best used after your website has generated traffic and sales organically. They may not reach the income levels you desire yet. However, the main objective is to guide you to earn an income without undergoing more expenses than your subscription.
Once you start earning an income, then it makes sense to use PPC and other concepts to scale up your business. All of this and then some is covered in the Affiliate Bootcamp training that I will be sharing below.
Advanced Training Concepts
The Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp consists of 7 Phases. The term Phase instead of Level was chosen to eliminate ambiguity when comparing it with the OEC. There are 10 Lessons in each Phase.
Notice that there are 7 Phases in this more advanced Affiliate Marketing course. Free members have access to the 10 lessons in Phase 1. You will also notice that there is a fair level of duplication of the basics. You can never get too much exposure to the basic principles of Internet Marketing.
If you are serious about learning how to build an online business, I would expect that you will review both the OEC and the Bootcamp training programs very closely to get a feel for what is being taught here. Let me go over just a few elements of the Affiliate Bootcamp training.
Brief Review of The Affiliate Bootcamp Training
The research and use of Keywords, images, graphics, web page design, Branding, Use of the Sidebar, Creating Videos, and Pay Per Click for scaling your business and many more new topics are taught in great detail.
This is one of the reasons why it is more productive to take the OEC course first and then move on to the Affiliate Bootcamp training. You could say that the OEC is like your Freshman year in your Online Business creation. The Affiliate Bootcamp is your Sophomore year.
Then for those who want to totally commit to earning income faster, Wealthy Affiliate has created the Super Affiliate Challenge that would be your Junior year. Your Senior year would focus on the weekly webinars that go into much more detail on the topics that were covered in the prior courses. This is where the rubber meets the road.
The amazing thing is, you decide how long you take to accomplish your Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior “years”. Each can be done in a matter of months. Even if it takes you four years to learn it all, isn’t that worth it to have the ability to decide and control what paycheck you earn? And instead of working 8-hour days, how about an 8-hour week?
Once you have your money making website running in full swing, all you need to do is spend a few hours each way to maintain it. Or you could create several new Affiliate Marketing websites based on other niches you may have.
Looking Ahead
Every successful Affiliate Marketer uses the power of scalability to multiply their earning power in the years ahead, but working FEWER hours. This is the power of LEVERAGE and PASSIVE INCOME!
Instead of exchanging hours for dollars, you create multiple assets that WORK FOR YOU!
Can you wrap your mind around this powerful concept?
If you were studying for a university degree say in Electronics Engineering. It would take you 4 years to graduate. Also, you most likely would have accumulated student loans that must be paid up. The stress of getting a job will be compounded by having the thought of paying off these debts. And if you hit hard times they cannot be erased through bankruptcy.
Here are your options. If you have a day job, keep it while you are getting trained. Build your online business on a part-time basis. At some point in time, your online income will grow to supplement the income from your day job. That will motivate you to work even harder to replace your day job income with that from your online business. When that happens, you FIRE YOUR BOSS!
It may take months, a year, of even a few years. Ask yourself. Is it worth it?
What is the price you are willing to pay to achieve financial freedom as well as free time? More time to spend with your family. Or go on vacations where you can keep track of your business anywhere in the world.
How about totally changing your lifestyle to the one you only dreamed about?
A New Mindset
You must develop a new mind set in order to achieve your new goals.
Do you believe you deserve to earn a six figure income or more each year? Do you have a millionaire mindset?
In other words are you willing and able to THINK LIKE YOU ALREADY ARE A MILLIONAIRE?
If you don’t then you will not reach your financial goals with your online business. Or any business for that matter. You must totally BELIEVE you can ACHIEVE what you set out to do.
I suggest you create a DREAM BOARD with pictures that represent the things you would like to afford with the money you plan to earn. Don’t forget to include giving money to charity. My favorite is St. Jude’s Hospital for Children. That organization is dedicated to helping kids with terminal and other serious illnesses. I suggest you place a picture of your favorite charity on your dream board too.
LOOK AT IT EVERY DAY. And meditate what it feels like to already have achieved these goals! Money should NOT be your eventual goal. What that money can do for you should be your focus.
Now get to work and make it happen.
What Is Your Next Step?
I hope after checking out the valuable training Wealthy Affiliate provides and what that can do to change your life, you will sign up for free. I am going to make that very easy for you. Just click the banner below and enter your Email address.
What does it feel like to be one step closer to becoming financially independent? As Nike says, Just Do It!
Note: (This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on a link to the Merchant’s site and purchase something I may earn a commission.The price you pay will be the same if you went to the Merchant’s site directly.)
I like how you laid affiliate marketing training in full detail. I have only been with Wealthy Affiliate for more than a month yet there are still so many training to cover up as I still do my day job. From time to time I go to Site Comments and give professional feedbacks and comments. It’s very rewarding because I get to pay my membership fee through my cash credit and didn’t have to shed money for it.
Just a question though, I haven’t covered yet the training about incorporating pay per click. Do you recommend it to newbies like me?
I just feel lucky with WA because everything I need is provided. I wish you’ll he able to help more people through your great articles. Have a nice day!
Thanks for your comments. I do try and help people see the value in really good Affiliate Marketing Training. I even wrote a Blog Post where I wanted the person to think very carefully if this was best for them. You can read that at Is Affiliate Marketing The Best Way To Make Money From Home.
Since you are new to the field of Affiliate Marketing, I suggest you complete the OEC course first and then progress to the Affiliate Bootcamp where PPC is taught.
I wish you much success in your online business ventures.
Edwin
You have effectively laid out the exact steps on learning how to get started with affiliate marketing. I agree with you that affiliate marketing is perhaps one of the best ways to build a business online with minimal investment of cash required. Most certainly time and effort is a must, but there is a huge payoff for that over time.
These days there are so many make money online products out there it can get quite confusing. Many of the offers are not legitimate and will waste your time and money, so it is important that newbies find a site and platform they can trust and one that will give them a complete package versus one piece of what they will need.
In looking the courses, levels, and the tasks you will learn about, it appears to me that the Wealthy Affiliate training platform is very thorough and complete, and the student or business owner will have the knowledge they need to get started with a successful affiliate marketing business.
I like the concept too of beginning with an end in mind, as this will help you get the most out of the training that is included, plus it will help you not waste time on things that do not matter or help you get to the end point you are looking for. Is there also some training on how to develop the end outcomes that you would like to have as well within the training?
Overall, I am quite impressed with your step-by-step layout of how to get started in affiliate marketing as it offers the most complete picture and a path that I have seen to date in a review or article on the subject. Thanks for your effort in putting this together.
Hi Dave, there are two ways to get ranked in the search engines. One is through attracting traffic organically. And the other is using PPC ads.
Regardless, Google decides if your article should be ranked high or not. And that means developing a reputation as being an authority site. Wealthy Affiliate teaches how to use Googles Search Console and Analytics to monitor ones status in so many ways and how to tweak ones posts and website to effectively meet SEO requirements. It is this training that helps one to develop the end outcomes one desires.
Also, there is no way around writing a lot of quality articles to help seal ones Authority reputation. PPC would help to accelerate ones rankings a bit. However, PPC is best used to scale ones website higher once it has developed momentum organically.
Thanks for your comments and insights into the Online Marketing industry.
Cheers.
Edwin
I ran into your post and was really happy to read it. Very good article and very helpful.
Since I’m searching to get into Affiliate Marketing your article for Getting Started in Affiliate Marketing Step By Step was very helpful. Your experience opened my eyes. When I landed on your website and read this post, it answered all my questions in detail.
So I’m happy that you decided to write about this topic and share it with people. It’s very useful and can definitely be used as a great source for everyone who is interested in this topic. Thank you for the informative article, knowledge is power!
Nasrin, I was delighted that my post was helpful to you. Thanks for your useful comments and kind compliments.
I wish you much success in this incredible world of Affiliate Marketing.
Cheers.
Edwin
Awesome post, Edwin. You have put together all necessary steps of Affiliate Marketing for starters. I couldn’t agree more that beginners have to go through these steps to succeed in Affiliate Marketing.
Your analysis of Wealthy Affiliate Review is in depth and comprehensive. Particularly I was researching more about its Affiliate boot camp training. Your post has cleared many of my doubts.
Thanks a lot for sharing this useful information.
Hi Akshay, I am writing a series of posts that take my visitors through a journey through the Wealthy Affiliate Platform. I started it off with and overview, and adding supporting posts to provide more detail. You may wish to check these out. I have 6 more articles to write to complete my project. This fits in very well with the Super Affiliate Challenge.
Anyone who is serious about diving into the world of Affiliate Marketing, or for that matter, any kind of Internet Marketing, they must get the opportunity to see what Wealthy Affiliate has to offer at a bargain basemen cost.
Thanks for your kind comments.
Cheers.
Edwin
I am always looking to learn. Affiliate marketing is a huge business arena and anyone who says they know everything about it, well let’s just say I wouldn’t be taking their advice. You have put a unique ‘spin’ on things with your ‘working backwards with the end in mind’.
My wife had recently been present at a ‘workshop’ where they were discussing goal setting and they had a similar approach. It somehow gives a greater clarity but also ties in nicely with your sentiment towards the end, with believing. This way, you already assume your success, a much more positive attitude. I have made a note of the process you have used for I think you have a created an affiliate marketeers ‘blueprint’ and one that should be used.
After finishing the OEC training I did work through Phase One of the ‘Bootcamp’ and found that it reinforced some of what I had already learned, it actually gave me some much needed clarity in certain areas. Of paramount importance though, is knowing that you will succeed and having that at the forefront of your mind.
Hello Twack,
I am happy you connected with my post. My goal is to create a flow chart of blog posts about the Wealthy Affiliate Platform. You may haver read the first one that gave an overview: The Best Training In Affiliate Marketing That Turns Beginners Into Pros I divided the platform into 8 Segments in this overview, based on the Dashboard links on the left I have since been writing one blog for each segment. The two I have completed thus far is this one focusing on training. The previous one focused on how the Dashboard works: The Best Way To Lean About Affiliate Marketing.
My original intention was to use the same title as the overview but add different extensions. When I asked what the members thought about that plan, the general response was don’t do it as Google will penalize me for repeating the same Keyword. Hence I’ve taken a different tack and giving different titles and Keywords for each of these 8 segments.
My next segment will focus on Websites. This will be a fun one as I feel building websites is the heart of the training. It pulls into use several different skills. I am not sure if you will get the notice when I publish that Blot Post. Now that you have found my website you can always return, review it and leave me a comment.
Thanks once again for your support,
Edwin