I am sure you have thought to yourself, "there's more to life than my job and the path that I'm on," but then that little guy on your shoulder said," starting a business costs money," "you have a job, so you don't have time to start an online business," and "what type of business would you start anyway," and so convinced yourself it couldn't be done.

It was the same for me back in 2002-2004

I had bounced around to a couple of customer service manager jobs at major corporations to a couple of outside sales jobs at a few commercial printing companies.

I remember looking at the commission structures thinking, dang the company is making out like a bandit, and all that ends up on my check is a small percent. On top of that, only two weeks of vacation a year, really? I had never made it long enough at any one company to get that sought-after three whole weeks!! (Nowadays, I travel for months, not weeks!)

I started my first website in 2004 and was proud of that site back then

I loved working from home and learned the ins and outs of owning web sites, posting pictures, social media, and eventually driving leads for the business.

This Meme is so true. I always want to excel at everything I do.

When I was a nightclub promoter, the work was intense, long hours in front of a computer, and you were only as good as your last party. Every night you had to perform and "bring the crowd." I was quite successful at this, and I even earned an award as "Chicago's Top Promoter" until I was moved to Las Vegas by the Hakkasan Group in early 2013 to help open their largest, most expensive nightclub the world.

Hakkasan in Las Vegas as the Promotions Manager was my first corporate job in nearly a decade since 2004, and wow, did I HATE it. They work you to death in Vegas. The insane hours versus the pay was not adding up, but the education I received was priceless.

I hated it so much and was entering my 40's and knew that I had to do something else with my life. (Street peddling flyers on the Vegas Strip was just not my style).

This online marketing bug had me from promotions days.

I had discovered online marketing from my promotions and party bus companies with some paid advertising on Yelp, Facebook, and Google; however, I had no idea marketing online was a feasible profession.  It was around this time that I decided to go "all-in." I was in pretty deep credit card debt from being overextended in 2008-2010, living beyond my means, but I knew there was something there. I bought just about every course that seemed relevant, different software, masterminds, events, you name it, anything that I felt could help me become an "online marketer."

I saw so many people killing it, and my thought was, "Why not me?" I want to travel, make millions, and be my own boss!! My online journey started there and has blossomed ever since. The path has been difficult, but the reward has been worth it.

So what is Affiliate Marketing:

Affiliate marketing is when you get paid a commission for promoting products / services for other companies.

Here is something to explain it better:

Do you remember the encyclopedia? Sales representatives used to go door-to-door selling people on the brand-new Britannica line.

Selling encyclopedias is the first generation of affiliate marketing. Imagine yourself making a $100 sale off the family and getting a $20 commission from that.

The encyclopedia company has many divisions: Research, editing, printing, etc., but you focus on one thing: The marketing and sale of the product.

You get paid 20% of the sale, and you are not even an employee of the company – you are an independent contractor.

 Suppose you are like most salespeople. You set your own hours and work your schedule. The more you sell, the more you make. That is your incentive.

So, what's in it for the encyclopedia company?

Each set of books cost them about $35 to produce, and they sell them for $100. The salesman gets his $20 commission, which leaves $45 profit for the corporation, risk-free. If the salesmen don't make a sale for a week, it costs the company nothing. Having affiliates is an excellent strategy for the company.

By now, you see the benefits for both parties. The salesmen "affiliates" make unlimited $$ and have time and location freedom, and the companies can quickly expand their customer base without taking on too much risk.

Once the company has the customer's data, they can upsell them to other products or services down the road; this is better known as LTV or long-term value of a customer.

So what makes Affiliate Marketing much better than door-to-door sales??

Aside from walking around in the cold, heat, rain etc, or getting attacked by neighborhood dogs, the internet has completely changed the game

1. As mentioned earlier your income is not tied to time

     No door to door sales trading your time for money
     Website and campaigns can make money for you 24/7 even while you are sleeping!

2. You are not limited to a territory

    With the power of the internet you can make money in just about any country. We have had a lot of success in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, to name a few.

3. You are not limited to one company

    There are typically no contracts. If you want to work with another company, you log off and log into another affiliate network and get your link to another offer.

If you want to take time off, go ahead. You are your own boss of your business.

Who is involved with Affiliate Marketing

Ultimately there are 5 people involved with a typical affiliate campaign

   1. The “Publisher” also better known as the Affiliate
        The publisher will be you. You are the person connecting the customer to the product or service. You create the ads, the copy, the landing pages, a.k.a "the funnel" to persuade the customer to make a purchase, enter an email, or create a phone call.

   2. You Find Potential Customers (Traffic Sources)

   3. Find Offers to Promote (Products and services)

   4. Create Marketing Material (Ad, Copy, Landing Pages, etc)

   5. Optimize your campaigns until you make them profitable

The Affiliate Network is the marketplace for offers. Usually, people call them AFF Networks and or marketplaces.

"Offers" are the leads, products, and services that the companies are trying to sell.

Affiliate Networks serve as the "middleman" or liaison between the affiliates and the product or service owner.

The are many affiliate networks and when you log in you will find 100's if not 1000's of offers to promote.

• Gaming
• Dating
• Mobile
• Insurance
• Weight loss
• Make Money Online
• Survival, and many, many more

After joining and getting approved in an Affiliate Network, you get assigned an “Affiliate manager” sometime called the “AM.” The AM is your inside contact to help you with any issues, recommend offers, etc.

It's typically easier to go through an Affiliate Network when you are starting. Still, the networks are optional in some cases. You may want to bypass the "middleman" and work directly with the advertiser who may have their own affiliate program.

We will dive deep into Affiliate Networks later on 

   3. The Advertiser

​The business or company that owns the offer. Most companies have an in-house marketing team, but affiliates can get more sales with a lot less risk.

The advertiser only pays a commission when a conversion happens.

Some companies can have an in-house team of affiliates that buy traffic internally.

Companies put their core focus on running the business, and having people like us run the marketing campaigns.

Millions of companies use affiliates in all verticals, dating, gambling, transportation - way too many to list.

4. Traffic Sources

Traffic sources, for instance, Facebook, have users, and we call those user's traffic.

You build a funnel or website and advertise your product or service. Once you have a funnel built, you need to get people to visit your page or site to make sales. A lot of websites you have visited sell ads to drive revenue to sustain their sites.

•  Direct – You can buy directly from a website. Here is a CNN.com example, and Google is another example

 Here’s a good example:

5. The Customer

So, in the end, someone has to buy whatever it is we are offering, right? The Customer the affiliate sent buys the product or service from the company.

Your role as an affiliate is to persuade them to buy; we call this "convert."

You may have heard "converting funnel" or "converting offer," this means customers are buying, and the affiliate is making cheddar.

Our role as an affiliate is to make people’s lives better.

​Your job will be to create a win/win situation for all the parties involved in the customer, the affiliate, and the company.

• The customer gets connected to the product or service that solves their problem.
• You, the affiliate, makes profit.
• And the company, traffic source, affiliate network all make money as well

Everybody WINS!

So what's the “back door”? The technical stuff is where most people fail. How does the money flow?

The setup is easier than you think these days. The "tech" is sophisticated and simple to use.

So here is an overview of how it all works:

1. You get a unique tracking link from each offer from the affiliate network or direct from the advertiser. You get paid when someone buys or converts on your link
2. You can put your link into a tracking software. The tracking of the conversions and other data will be complied for you. I will show you later on how to do this step-by-step.

Affiliate Marketing Benefits

1. You can make money while you sleep. Pretty much every day for the last 4-5 years of my life, I have money coming in while in I am sleeping.
2. There is a lot of money to be made. As I am writing this, my media buying team and I are the top earners on CLICK BANK which is an Affiliate Network.

THIS BUSINESS IS REAL AND
THESE NUMBERS ARE REAL, NOT A DREAM!

   3. It’s not hard to get started. All you need is a decent computer and internet connection, and some money for traffic.

   4. There are no long-term commitments or contracts. As I mentioned earlier you can join and leave offers as you wish, want to take a trip? Go ahead, you can pause and start a campaign whenever you want.

   5. This is as real as Marketing Training as you will ever get. Once you learn the art of selling, copywriting, and persuasion, you can pretty much write your own checks to yourself and possibly use this as a stepping stone to even bigger things.

Affiliate Marketing Downsides 

1. You are Not building any tangible assets. I preach this to my team. On my YouTube Channel you need to create a sustainable business over time. With affiliate marketing, you connect the customers to the advertisers. Advertisers get the customer data, and you, as the affiliate, only get paid once. Still, we teach you how to get paid repeatedly.

There will not be an “exit” check when you leave the business. No one will buy your company.

The fact is that affiliate marketing is a great business to make some cash and learn some skills, but in most cases, it should be a stepping-stone to bigger, more long-term things.

  2. Campaigns can be hit or miss, and often unstable

We have had days where we make $5-10K profit then weeks go by where we make nothing.

There are a lot of reasons for this:

• The traffic source shut down your account, or the cost of traffic went way up
• The offer you were running gets paused
• Your campaign ad gets ad fatigue, or someone swipes your creatives, and all of a sudden, you are no longer profitable.

Many people can't handle the unpredictability of this business and opt for a more "passive income."

It really boils down to you in the end…

Would you rather make over $1,000,000 in a year that is up and down all the time, or would you prefer to make $6000 each month at a job passively?

That's $1 mil vs. $72K a year.

Don't let the passive allure blind you to the opportunity here.

  3. There is a Dark Side to this business model

I am sure you have heard of online rip-offs, and overall, affiliate marketing doesn't have the best reputation.

There have been shady/dirty campaigns that make us all look bad.

Since this is a commission-based business, the affiliate will try and get every last bit of profit from a marketing campaign. You can promote legitimate stuff like Amazon, or products on Shopify, or custom hoodies on Teespring, or you can promote the other "questionable" stuff.

Ask other affiliates and affiliate managers on what is hot and where you can ethically run it

 4. Affiliate Marketing is a skill that takes a lot of time and hard work to master.

Have you ever heard the term, "If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it?"

Marketing online has many variables and many ways to make money, but "cracking the code" is no easy feat. One of the biggest roadblocks is that you have to spend actual money to make money. If you are not buying traffic or spending your time with free traffic, you cannot convert any customers.

Most of us, including myself, always looked at life like this, you go to work and bring home money. Affiliate Marketing is not like this. You have to put in the work and spend your own money to make money. Losing $100 hurts way more than the euphoric feeling of making $100. It's in our DNA to avoid losing money.

And finally, there is not a lot of great programs to teach you how to market online. There are many guru's and coaches out there who make their money selling you their courses and not off the actual affiliate marketing.

Are you ready to blast off ? with Affiliate Marketing?

How are you feeling? Is this all making sense, or is it too much to absorb??

I know the feeling, like a fire hose in the mouth, but don't worry; stick with me, and this business will soon make sense.

Next steps:

Learn more about me here and my full story at https://marketingmeathead.com/brian-pfeiffer-marketing-meathead-story

Memorize the definition: Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting other people's (or company's) products.

When you find a product you like, promote it to others, and earn a piece of the profit for each sale that you make.