Have you ever wanted to make money online?
If you’ve done some research you probably heard about becoming an affiliate marketer.
I’ll tell you now that it’s not as easy as it sounds, but it’s definitely a great achievement to earn your first profits online.
Even if it’s your first $100 online, you’ll feel very accomplished.
It really is an amazing feeling!
These are my first few payouts from CPA back in 2014.
At the time I was probably playing Counter Strike, trying to rank up to LEM. (sidenote: I never got there, I suck!)
If you have any experience with CPA, you’d know that these networks often play a sound when your get a new lead or conversion(aka make money).
Hearing that lead sound in the background is just so exciting, even to this day!
As well as that, each payout gave me butterflies in my stomach.
There is just something about making money by yourself, without a boss or anyone else telling you what to do. Your earning potential is literally, in your hands.
This is what you should expect to make and come to realize when you first start.
But that’s enough about me!
In this article I wanted to show you what skills are great to have when on your journey to success.
It may sound overwhelming but you can do so much with these skills. Also, learning is great. If this is really what you’re interested in then you will have no problem with really looking into it and gaining the experience and skill set required.
I’d also like to mention that while I make use of these skills all the time, you might not need to learn some of them depending on what kind of marketing you’re doing.
Mindset When Becoming An Affiliate Marketer
Before I get into the specific skills, I want to touch on the subject of your mindset.
I can only speak from my own experience, but I do know that a lot of people do this.
I used to read, and read for hours on end on forums like Hack Forums and BlackhatWorld.
Which are great by all means.
I took in so much information that I could recite the threads from memory, yet I didn’t make any money doing that.
Why?
Because I didn’t take action!
I was so afraid that I’d mess things up and waste $20 that I spent on a domain and hosting.
Stop right there! If this is you then you need to start taking action.
Find the one thing you want to do and try it, and by try I don’t mean spend a whole two days on it before you give up.
I spent weeks learning how to rank on YouTube and Google.
Remember that theoretical knowledge is vastly different to practical knowledge, and the latter is what you really want.
If I spent just a day before moving on to something else, I’d never get anywhere with anything.
What I’m trying to get across is that you should pick one thing, and stick to it.
You WILL figure it out, just believe in yourself and keep trying.
Also important, do it for the experience and not the money.
That’s what’s going to get you down. You’re not making any money so you don’t see a point in it.
Try a different way of looking at it and it’ll get easier!
Making Websites & Landing Pages
Here we go!
Do you like coding? I know I do!
It’s not 100% essential to know how to code websites from scratch, but it’s important that you know how to make simple HTML and CSS edits at the very least.(This way you can customize your content lockers like this)
Maybe even a little bit of JavaScript.
This is the first thing I learned how to do, I didn’t do a huge course for it. I completed a small course over at Codecademy.
This course has since been turned into six separate parts, which is great. You’ll be flying along very quickly with these.
What you’ll learn with this course is very valuable.
Even if you don’t become an affiliate marketer you will have this amazing & in-demand skill, which can earn you a lot of money even if you’re just a Freelancer and create websites for small businesses in your city! (I’ve done this, it’s a great way to get some start up money)
One more great web development skill
When becoming an affiliate, you’ll want to save time everywhere. In reality it can be very time consuming to create content, and then put it in front of a lot of people.
Bootstrap is a great way to save a lot of time when creating landing pages.
It’s a front-end web framework originally created by a developer at Twitter.
What it does is help make your website responsive, like this.
Recently Google came out with a Mobile-first index. So if you’re at all interested in ranking your website in Google you will want to learn all about this!
At first it can slow you down as you learn all the class names, but after a while you’ll work blazing fast!
Photo & Video Editing
No, I don’t mean using MS Paint and Windows Movie Maker.
Do these even still exist?
Anyway, if you’re doing very simple edits they can still be viable tools, but generally I don’t recommend them.
What I do recommend is Adobe Photoshop & Sony Vegas Pro.
You can actually get an old version of Photoshop for free. It’s the CS2 version. It’ll do the job and you won’t have to pay a penny for it!
Sony Vegas Pro however is another story, you may want to use other software to save yourself from paying $599!
Having checked their website, they are offering Sony Vegas Pro Edit for $249 at the moment until the 28th of March 2018.
How To Learn To Use Photoshop
If you have absolutely no experience with it, you’ll find yourself watching a lot of tutorials.
It’s a great idea to watch tutorials that you can follow along and learn. It’s really the only way to learn.
I started by watching “You Suck At Photoshop”. They’re great, short tutorials and they’re entertaining.
Just follow along with Donny and he will turn you into a pro!
I know the video quality isn’t great but they are very good tutorials.
How To Learn About Video Editing
This will be different for every software. Just look up some tutorials for your video editor of choice.
I learned a lot about Sony Vegas Pro when I was making crappy Call of Duty montage videos. (sadly I don’t have any to show you)
I simply watched other editor’s tutorials and tried to recreate the effects that they used.
I can’t say that a lot of those effects are good for affiliate videos but they were fun to learn and really helped me get better at video editing.
The main things you want to learn is how to record video at the right resolution, rendering video at the right resolutions and other small things such as adding audio, voice overs, cutting and splicing video.
It’s not nearly as difficult as you think it is!
Just make sure your video is easy to watch, without any black bars and stuff like that.
General Sales Skill & Sales Copy
As an affiliate marketer you’re essentially a sales person. Kind of.
You’re trying to convince people to bring their attention towards something they may not have given any thought before.
That’s if you’re doing incentive marketing that is.
Take a look at this video:
I know this is a door to door sales video.
But take a look at some of the things he does in order to get the sale.
He turned it into a stand-up comedy act to make the potential buyer trust him.
He related to them by asking questions about them.
He relieved any and all doubts about the product before they could even ask about it.
He gave examples about how they can use the product and why they need it.
He let the buyer hold the product he’s selling, almost like a trial.
Why am I telling you about this?
I’m telling you because you can learn a lot from door to door sales people.
I did door to door sales before, and it’s tough!
But if you study the techniques that were used to get that sale, you’ll be selling like a pro.
All you have to do is translate it into video form or text form(or sales copy).
There is no point in bringing traffic to a landing page that doesn’t sell the visitor on whatever it is you’re promoting.
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Networking
I love this one!
I started networking with other people interested in internet marketing from the get go.
It has really paid off for me!
Not only did I form friendships with people with similar interests but I formed partnerships.
I have friends that I’ve been in touch with from the start and we share information and help each other out.
It’s too lonely to be doing this alone, join us on the Facebook Group and Discord Server!
Staying Up To Date With Trends
This is very important.
New trends are the easiest to take advantage of and there is a plethora of tools available to help you find them.
Some of which are Google Trends, AppAnnie and IGN Upcoming Games.
Another thing you can do is read blogs and follow Twitter trends and Reddit.
My first big break was a game niche and because I followed gaming closely I managed to be the first to rank on YouTube and Google.
Conclusion
There is a lot to learn if you want to become an affiliate marketer but it can be a fun and enjoyable journey. You’ll learn a lot of new skills and make friends.
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If you have any thoughts I’d love to see them in the comments section below.
Thank you for reading!