Every journey eventually comes to a fork in the road where we have to make a choice. I wrote about that in the October 21 post, titled Fork in the Road as it applied to the journey of developing a blog income. The choice was to repeat or take on something new.
There was no right or wrong answer. In the past I have often repeated a course as I found that the second round gave me a stronger grounding and I picked up things that I missed the first time.
The next step I chose for Blog Income Life was to take on affiliate marketing. This was already on my mind and earlier I had purchased several courses that would take me through the basics of affiliate marketing. I knew that to be successful in affiliate marketing it meant more than just slapping on an affiliate banner or two and hope that the traffic that came to my website would click on the banner and buy that product.
I picked Ewen Chia’s Secret Affiliate Weapon to start with. If previous material I bought from Ewen was anything to judge from, then this would be an easy to understand, follow and implement course. I was right.
I like the way that Ewen makes everything so simple. I like the way that his whole course follows the most basic of teachings:
- Tell them what you are going to tell them
- Tell it to them
- Tell them what you just told them.
His video tutorials show screenshots of everything, from forms to be completed, what to enter on the forms, how to submit to what to expect when you complete your task, and what that should look like. He explains the importance of each step and how it will affect your marketing results.
As a reader of this blog you are probably aware that I have a grouping of dog related blogs. I have several affiliates but one in particular has been paying me some income. The plan is to apply this course to that affiliate on all the sites. I figure that by the time I get all of them done they’ll be running on a “set it and leave it” mode … ok, close to it anyway. It will be interesting to see the increase in sales and whether it will become a passive income. I am also an affiliate of this course and will go through the same process to see what kind of dollars I can drum up. Will you keep you updated via the Month in Review stats that I publish on this blog.
Some of the information covered is not new to me. It won’t be for you either. What I like about the course however is that it sets out a systemic approach to affiliate marketing which when followed thoroughly should drop paychecks into your mailbox with increasing regularity.
Something that was not new for me was how to set up an account with Ezine Articles. I was going to skip this tutorial but thought that if I was going to review this course, I should go over everything with a fine tooth comb. I was surprised at how poorly I had set up my Ezine Articles account. That was in the early stages of my internet marketing career and I did a poor job on the resource boxes and the bio. This also underlines the importance of continuous tweaking – small changes can reap big rewards.
Affiliate Weapon leads you through the mechanics of autoresponders, web pages, thank you pages, how to use Squidoo, Tube Mogul and more. I have to say that Ewen’s tutorial on installing WordPress is by far the easiest of tutorials on this subject that I have ever watched (it was included in a previous course of Ewen’s that I bought) – even though all my blogs are now on WordPress Direct I still occasionally refer to Ewen’s video when I need to tweak something in the admin area.
One item I was not completely crazy about. There is an excellent interview with Stone Evans who is one of those super affiliate marketers. The story is inspiring and I liked it.
Stone’s product is Plug In Profits and I must say the business model is brilliant. The short of the long of it is that you sign up for five network marketing businesses and Plug In Profit takes you to well, profits. I have over ten years of experience in network marketing and while I do not dispute that Stone and many others do indeed make money on these companies, none of the chosen ones would float my boat.
Aside from that one personal quirk, I found that Secret Affiliate Weapon is an excellent course. It starts off gently easing you into the process. Soon without your even noticing it your internet marketing literacy has taken on a significant upswing, your language now includes viral marketing and you actually know what that means! The simplicity of the course is ideal for newbies, the content makes it a good buy for advanced internet marketers and at $27 it’s a bargain for everyone!
Happy Affiliate Marketing!
Valentina
PS. Secret Affiliate Weapon offers an affiliate. You could open your affiliate account and apply the course to promoting it – and make a few dollars while learning “on the job”
Disclosure: I own and paid for my copy of the Secret Affiliate Weapon. I did not receive any compensation for this review. I am an affiliate and should you decide to buy it through my links, my Bank of Blog Income will thank you.
