Thread by @BowTiedElephant

LEVELS OF AFFILIATE MARKETING

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A @BowTiedElephant thread 👇

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LEVEL 0

You learn about Affiliate Marketing, read success stories and think how cool it is

You study a bit more about it and then soon realise it's all sketchy

You sign off, walk away from the laptop and forget about AM for quite some time

LEVEL 1

You learn about Gumroad from your Twitter heroes

You sniff about Gumroad's affiliate program somehow

Maybe it's your hero sending you a followup email after you get their freebie

The email says "Wanna earn free money? Sign up as my affiliate to earn 50% of every sale!!"

You take up the deal and become an affiliate for the first time in your life!

LEVEL 2

What do you do with the affiliate link that Gumroad emails you?

Of course you tweet it directly passing it off as general good-deed hoping your followers won't notice it's an affiliate link

Like a dumb idiot that you are, not knowing Twitter algorithm hates tweets with links, especially affiliate links

LEVEL 3

The few "You helped X make a sale" gumroad emails you got put some hair in your chest and now you are oh so confident about quitting your 9-5

You walk around finding how to scale this and lo and behold, there's a "community" of affiliate marketers that can really motivate you

It's only a few hundred dollars a year

But wait

Something doesn't add up

Their pitch doesn't even make sense and their twitter feed and email is just full of platitudes and "64 copies left!" and guys sharing their gumroad affiliate links left and right

You pat yourself on the back for having the innate sense to avoid such scam

LEVEL 4

You look around Twitter to see how people do this ;sharing-gumroad-affiliate-link' thing. You see many accounts have some weirdly spelled links in their profile. It's either Linktree or Carrd

You click that doubtfully

Sure enough, what you find there is just a bunch of gumroad affiliate links

These one-page websites are known as "bridge pages"

You learn that this allows you to write more sales copy than a single tweet will allow you to

You could type anything you want in that page, you could include testimonials (got from the author's own page), show before/after pictures etc

This gives you more time for you to convince the user to buy

LEVEL 5

You then (invariably) follow some copywriting accounts

They tell you the right way to share affiliate links in social media is to first write valuable twitter threads and then ask the reader to sign up to your mailing list whose link is in your twitter profile

And then send a drip sequence to the email subscribers about the product

5 emails in 5 days, getting the user from "unaware" to "most aware of your offer" level and then putting the affiliate link in every email

This, they say, has a higher conversion rate than the method above.

You try it.

Because why not?

You do get some results (it works. email list works, they were right)

Now there's a 93 percent chance you have the urge to write a Gumroad ebook called "Convertkit Consultant" or "Affiliate Marketing with Email Marketing" or some such nonsense

You somehow curb the ebook idea

LEVEL 6

You realise you can't play this game for long

Some snarky subscriber even writes to you "So, how's that affiliate marketing thing working for you??"

You don't budge

But you do wonder what's the way forward

Then it strikes you

The conversion rate on this method is terrible

You need to have twitter followers and then they have to become email subscribers and then they have to read the email and THEN click and buy

That's when you realise it's better to have these affiliate links in a website where it's easy to drive more traffic than in a social media account

If you do the SEO thing right, Google will send you tons of eyeballs on your offer.

Now you know why the true affiliate players like NichePursuits create websites instead of twitter accounts

LEVEL 7

You decide to get a domain and a site

You lose a week's time and that chest hair in just trying to get a wordpress site up for just the millionth time

While doing this, you remember all the horror stories you've read about Google banning sites for SEO malpractice

Black hat, white hat, link building, DA, keyword density, long-tail

All flash before your eyes. Deja Vu

You learn it's a patience game

Writing articles, tweaking the site for months without seeing any result

You now realise it's about driving traffic to your offer

LEVEL 8

You decide to do it properly, per the methods of the current times

Your relentless search leads you to real teachers who can teach these (they've done it)

You find out you simply don't build an affiliate site based on your interests or based on the offers you have at hand

You first have to find a profitable niche and then you have to find legitimate offers in that niche

And even then it doesn't stop there

You still have to analyse search queries & write articles that clarify an 'intent'

You learn about Silos, Money page, secondary pages, collections

You even start to question the mighty Google's SEO recommendations

You change your orientation. From White Hat to Money Hat

LEVEL 9

You are autistic

You want to find the best approach at whatever you undertake

And you are ready to do whatever it takes

You live in forums like BlackHatWorld where the experts rub shoulders

You learn every trick of the trade, tricks if Google finds you're using, will get you banned for lifetime

You smile, nod and agree

You cloak, you farm fb accounts, you get aged domains in auction

You recreate pages with same urls that the domain's earlier site had

To obtain "link juice".

You offer to pay for links in the subject of your very first email

With some basic equation like "Top 10 X for Y", you have your content writer (or AI) generate hundreds of articles

You find the best commission in diet pills and skin care

You sell them to middle-aged rich women

You get comfortably rich

You now become an anon and decide to help people taste that same finfreedom

CONGRATULATIONS!! YOU MADE IT!

To learn affiliate marketing at levels 8 and above, follow these wonderful folks:

@Charles_SEO
@JamesonCamp
@bowtiedopossum
@BowTiedTetra

And follow @BowTiedBull to get to levels beyond these

And it'll all be in vain if you don't follow me the @BowTiedElephant
and subscribe to my FREE newsletter where I share practical ideas in earning your FIRST SECOND INCOME

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