Affiliate marketing is an extremely difficult business. Don't let any of the fake gurus selling courses on Facebook tell you anything different. The time and effort it takes to scale a campaign, or rank a website in a competitive niche is why most affiliate marketers fail.
However, for those of us that have been in this industry a while now how powerful finding a mentor and someone successful in this industry to show you real campaigns can make all the difference.
Or even better than one mentor, is an entire community of like-minded affiliates and multiple community leaders showing you real life case studies and analysis. I am talking about the affLIFT.com community with their 87,000+ helpful messages and niche specific software tools.
What is affLIFT.com
affLIFT is a affiliate marketing forum and community that was started in early 2017 and managed by some of the most successful affiliate marketers online. Luke (the founder) has been doing affiliate marketing for 21 + years and his favorite ad format is pops.
The forum has grown with 61,000+ users and is managed quite well with 7+ community leaders and staff to make sure it is spam free and filled with so much value.
What really makes it unique is the topics that are covered such as specific spy and tracking tools, reviews of different ad networks, and where to find some of the top new offers. The content is expert level, but has a lot of tutorials for new and intermediate marketers.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
Before we get into a lot of the advanced topics, I first wanted to speak on some of the beginning topics and how you can find really lucrative offers. You will see a lot of different acronyms or sayings thrown around such as "performance marketing" or CPA (Cost per Action), but I like to describe affiliates as commissioned salespeople.
Now what do commission sales people like? Big commissions. You think of realtors, car salespeople, finance, or anything that can earn a 4,5, or even 6 figure sales. Now I am not saying that affiliates do not like the smaller $.50, $2, or even $10 offers, but they need to make sure that they are much easier (and in bulk to achieve).
This is for the affiliate side, let's talk about the businesses side (or the offers). Instead of traditional advertising, these businesses get to choose which offers to promote and only pay per action. This means that they can either pay per sale, pay per lead, or whatever method they want. Imagine never losing any money on a sale?
Now, we all know how customer acquisition is the hardest part for these businesses, so the higher the fees they pay (or higher conversion) the more commissions sales people that will do the work to drive to your business. If you are not paying a high enough rate, all commision sales will lose interest and go look for your competitors that pay more. And this is how the relationship from affiliates to the advertisers works.
What does affLift.com Teach You?
The Affiliate marketing forum takes the basics that I explained above, then shows you how to take this and start to find profitable campaigns. What I like about the affList forum is how easy it is to nativate
They have a section for affiliate marketing basics, traffic sources, offers and landing pages, tools and software, tracking and analysis, as well as a marketplace where you can buy or sell products/services related to affiliate marketing.
I would suggest begging with their "getting started" section and ready all of the pinned content. The "best of thread" has many community members jumping in, but the naming conventions for campaigns and offers is the most useful thing to begin with.
Next, I would start by going through all the different Traffic Methods Throughout. After reading all of them, I would then start off by focusing on one of them and becoming an expert at that. The easiest (and well cheapest to get started) would be SEO. You can build a rank and site, but this may takes months (if not years) to rank and you are not guaranteed to ever make your time and money back.
Personally, arbitrage campaigns (with Native ads) are my favorite traffic source. A lot of affiliates I know are slaying it with push notifications, while a lot of the OG affiliates still rock the Pops and Redirects.
The detail that they go into each of the categories is very specific and value packed. For instance, here are just a few of the Pop & Redirects Thread teaching you about propeller ads and who you should choose to buy your traffic from.
How To Get Started With AffLIFT.com
One thing that really stands out to me is how much free (and valuable) content they have on their platform. Their paid plans are very reasonably priced, most others charge $250 / month for this level of content and they only charge $20 / month. I would suggest signing up for the $350 life time membership and really push yourself to do this.
Once you do signup for the plan you get access to their courses. They also do lots of live webinars for their members and you get access to even more content. Also I should mention that on the $20 / month plan you can quit at any time.
Editors Comments
I have been doing affiliate marketing for 10+ years, but mostly focused on SEO techniques and native arbitrage, but am personally blown away with niche specific type of content available on AffLIFT.com
As part of the community you are first to learn about scams, ad networks paying late, or the unfortunate realization that sometimes you are not being credited for your sale. Affiliate networks often scrub leads and take away money that should have been yours.
Whether you are a beginner or super affiliate, everyone will get value with this and not very often can you find so much info for free.
Make sure to sign up for your own free account and take your affiliate marketing to the next level.