Youtube video transcript
What would happen to your monthly income if Amazon didn’t exist? This is something that’s probably gonna be true very soon. So we better act now. Hello, YouTube, and a very special hello to all my subscribers, my name’s Phil. And welcome to my channel where I talk about building my online income as passively as possible.
If you are new to the channel, why not subscribe and let’s get into the video today. So why might you not wanna put Amazon affiliate links on. Site. Basically, if you’ve missed the news, Amazon is reducing the commissions. As of today, they’re gonna be paying a lot less for several different sectors of their store, different types of products, and many users are losing over 50% of the commissions they were getting yesterday.
So basically we need to find a new store to promote. Now, the problem is we love Amazon. Amazon is great. They convert really well. They are. Good at upselling and many people know about them. They already have accounts and it’s just so convenient. So how can we R all that? There are other affiliate programs out there.
We just need to find a good one. So how exactly do you find new affiliate programs? The easiest way is just to type your niche into Google, followed by an affiliate program. You can also do this by putting a partner program. Now, the issue is many companies. Don’t know about affiliate marketing.
So they may not use the same term as you are using. But what you can also do is go onto the particular website you are interested in promoting and just check at the bottom. Often they have a footer menu where they have some sort of page that is basically an affiliate page. So you can check it out.
Now, what do you do once you’ve found an affiliate program? Many people out there will probably say, look at the commissions, see how, what percentage are they willing to give you? To be honest, every affiliate program out there, that’s not, Amazon is gonna be paying you more than Amazon, even before they reduced the commissions.
I would not worry about how much they’re gonna pay you. I would worry about a few other things. So basically you want to. Will they pay you for just the product that you are promoting or will you be paid for other products that the user buys, even if they don’t buy the product that you’ve promoted?
So in my short career, as an Amazon affiliate, I’ve probably sold One or two products that I’ve actually recommended. So in the last month I’ve probably made about 35 sales of which one of them was from a link. All the other ones were just the user went on to Amazon and happened to buy something.
So basically you are looking for an affiliate program that’s similar to Amazon. If you can find it in the sense that anything the user buys after they click on your link, you get credit for you. Get a commission for that’s great. Another thing you wanna look out for is the length of the cookie. So this basically means when the user clicks on your link, how long will you be credited for that sale if they make it?
So is it the same day? Is it 24 hours? Do you get a cookie for 30 days? Is it longer to the longer the cookie? The better? The other thing to think about is recurring sales. Now this is often the case with digital products. If you recommend a service, then you may be paid for the lifetime of that user, which can be great if there’s a program which is 30, 60, 90, a hundred bucks a month, and you get a certain percentage of that payment, then that can be a tidy little sum.
If you get enough users. And the best thing about that is you don’t have to be looking for new sales every single month. Once you get say 10, 20, 30 people paying. for a service each month and you are getting the commissions for that. That is just a great situation to be in. So apart from these kinds of technical things the longer cookie, whether or not you get credit for every product the user buys, you also need to think about the user experience and this falls into optimization.
So with Amazon, many of us were getting conversion rates of 10% or more. At a certain point, I was getting 30%, which was just crazy. Now with many other affiliate programs out there, you are not gonna break that 10% conversion rate, but what can you do to increase your odds? There’s so much you can do to warm up the customer.
And there’s so much that the actual website that you’re promoting can do to warm up the customer. So let’s talk about that now. So really what you should be. On is user experience and becoming a customer. My advice is to go and actually buy products from that service. Now it’s not always possible.
We don’t all have lots and lots of money to spare, but if you can do it, then you are gonna get a better appreciation of what it’s like for new users. So things that you should be looking for. How does the website actually look, does it feel good to navigate through the pages? Is it difficult? How easily can I get to the car and all these kinds of things.
The other thing to think about is do they offer free delivery? Do they often offer discounts? Are they using other, any other methods to make it easier for you to buy? So back in the day, when I used to promote click bank offers quite a lot, what I used to do is always watch. Sales videos. So often these sales videos, if you’ve ever seen them, can be quite long, but I would sit through and watch the whole thing.
And if I started feeling myself, being taken in getting excited, would I like to have extra inches off my belly? Yes, I would. Yeah. So things like that. If you actually feel that you are being drawn in by the website, that’s probably a good sign that it’s gonna convert. So there’s another thing that you can do before you actually buy the product.
And this is what I recommend you do. The first thing is to go through the entire process and then abandon the cart. See what happens. Does the company send you a follow up email? Do they say something like you were interested in this product, but you didn’t buy it? Would you like it? And that’s exactly what Amazon does.
Also check, does that website follow you around the internet when you are on Facebook, when you are Googling, do you do ads pop up now obviously most of you will be having an ad blocker of some sort. I recommend turning that off for a couple of days and just see, are you followed around?
That’s a good sign. That’s a good sign that the website may convert well for you. So once you’ve done the abandoned cart test, Just to see if you are followed around, then go ahead and buy that product and just see what the experience is like, because if they have a great website, but then the after sales is about crap the delivery time is not what they promise.
Then you may be getting a lot of returns. And often if the user returns the product, then you’re gonna lose that commission. So that’s something that’s important to test as well. So obviously that’s all to do with the website and how well they optimize their sales. Obviously there’s nothing you can do about that, but you can just test it better to go with someone who.
Does follow their users around the internet, does send follow up emails, then someone who doesn’t, I’m sure that those first types of websites they’re gonna convert a lot better. So let’s look at the other side of the coin. What can you do as the content creator to warm up the traffic?
Because once you send those users off to those websites that you are promoting those products that you are promoting, there’s not a lot. You can do it, you have to leave it in the hands of those websites, but you can certainly warm up the traffic before you send them. So the best way to sell products and services is to use those buyer intent keywords.
So to give you an idea of what I mean let’s take an example. So my ultimate dream. Is to build my own aircraft. I’d love to build a kit plane, unfortunately, here in Taiwan. There’s not a lot of general aviation, but there is a small little area down south of the island where you can fly, but it’s only the ultralight or microlight aircraft.
So I’d love to get one of the guys’ kits, but every time I have to type in the best kit or a particular brand that I’d like to buy, there’s just loads of ads on the first page or just the big boys. Niche. So if I was creating a website, which I probably should do, if I ever build a plane I just can’t compete if it’s a new site or even if it’s a year old, I’m just never gonna get to that space.
So how can I use those buyer intent types of queries to my advantage? Now, this is a theory I have, and I think it could work. So what you need to do is you need to bring in the traffic. Through other queries. So as you’re gonna go for those low hanging fruit type queries and write really excellent posts, and that’s gonna bring you in the traffic.
So on that particular post, when you want to talk about a product, instead of linking directly to the product, what I would do is to actually have a. View or a post, which you can link to. And that review or post is actually targeting one of the buyer intent keywords. Although you’re not going to rank for it on the first page, you can link to that post.
And because you’re gonna give an excellent review, you’re going to warm up the user that way. And then through the post that’s written for the buyer intent keyword. A best kit, plane to buy. For example, then through that post, you linked the product. Now I think this could be a good way now. I know what you’re saying.
You’re clicking from one page to another. How many people actually do that? Yes, you’re gonna have a lower conversion rate from one page to the other. That is. But the people that you send through to that second page, they’re gonna be a lot more interested in that product. And then if those people click onto the product link, again, there’s gonna be fewer people that actually click click onto the second page.
They’re gonna be very warmed up. And I think they’re more likely to buy the product at the end of the day. So this is something I’m gonna put into action. And, I’ll report back. I’ll let you know if I get any winners. Okay. So I love affiliate marketing, and I think it’s just one of the best ways to make money online.
So we all know that Amazon is pretty much pushing us out into the cold, but we can combat that. We can find it. Other affiliate programs, if we think about it and if we’re smart, but that’s not the only way to monetize your blog. This also adds now I know what you’re thinking. Ads. You probably thought of Google ad sense.
No, I would not recommend Google ad sense. I’ve had. Google ad sense on a particular website. Okay. Doesn’t have a lot of traffic, but I’ve had adsense on that for about a year. I’ve made 18 cents. It’s just a waste of your time. But Google ad sense is not the only ad network out there. In fact, I’ve just recently applied for Ezoic now Ezoic they normally don’t accept people with a low page view, but luckily I’m a.
Of Project 24, which is a an all inclusive program run by Income School, where they teach you everything about internet marketing and through a deal that Income School brokered with Zoic Project 24 members are now allowed to apply to Zoic with. As little as 1000 page views or 1000 sessions, I should say a month.
So this is something that I’ve set up recently. And I’m gonna report on this in future videos. So I’m quite excited about putting ads onto my website with Ezoic, because I’ve heard they can really optimize the ad placement and you can get a fairly decent EPMV. Now I don’t have much more to say about Ezoicbecause I.
Actually put them onto the website. Yeah. I’m still going through the process of setting it up. So if any of you have any good advice or experience of Ezoic just let me know. What would you recommend? I do. Do you think it’s a good move? I think it’s a fairly good move, Only time will tell.
So if you are in Project 24 and you haven’t got ads on your website, or you’ve only got Google ad sense at the moment, go into the Project 24 community, and you can find information there about how to apply. There’s a special link for Income School members. On the Ezoic website, if you are not part of Project 24 if you could join, but maybe you wouldn’t join just for this.
If you are interested in joining Project 24, you can check out a link in the description. But I’ve also put a link for Ezoic there. If you haven’t heard of that company before, it will take you to their website and it explains how to apply and how to set it up. So this brings me on to possibly the best way to monetize your blog.
And it’s through info products and I’m also gonna bundle in services in this part of the video. So info products are basically things that you sell that you’ve made yourself. It can be anything from an ebook to a course, or even just a consultancy call. Now, the best way to do this is to actually know your niche.
What you are looking for are pain points. You’re looking for what your audience finds. Difficult. And then you are gonna provide the solution. Now, a really great perspective that I recently learned from Income Schools, a new channel, which is called margin. It’s all about making money or how to keep your money.
It’s a really interesting channel that recommended that they were talking about this. Idea of how rich people think now you may have guessed. I am not particularly rich. I’m still working my way up, but I always think about things in a different way. I would do anything to save money because I don’t have a lot of disposable income to pay for things, to buy things.
However, when you are rich, you are much more likely to pay for a solution. You don’t often want to pay money to learn how to do something. You just rather. Pay someone to do it for you or to pay someone just to give you the end solution. So always think about that. Don’t think about what you would personally think about perhaps what other people would do now.
How can you find this out? You’ve gotta talk to people. You’ve gotta be in your niche. If you don’t interact. Audience, if you don’t know what they are worried about the type of things that they need to improve their life, I would say, or improve how they’re doing that hobby or how they’re receiving that service.
You are never gonna know what the best product is for that particular person. So always talk to your audience. Another good thing to do is Des spy on your competition. So go out there and see what other info products are available. And if you can buy those products, paying for them is the best way to find out what the competition is doing.
Uh, And if you can provide a better service. So I just wanna give you an example from my own experience. As we’re going through something of a pandemic at the moment and it’s affecting a lot of us in fact, my school. So I work as a teacher during the day. I. My school is going through a very difficult time and I haven’t actually had any work this entire month and it looks like the school is likely to go under.
So a lot of people would panic at that, but I see it as a bit of a kick up the ass, to be honest, and it’s pushing me into this idea of going full time with my websites. So this has made me focus on a particular project. That I’ve set up with my colleague, it’s called the IOCs grind. And it’s all about teaching this English exam that many students need in order to go to university abroad, or even to go through immigration, to get their visas, to live in different countries.
And it’s basically just a test. If your English, it tests all four key skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. And many students actually do self study. They try to learn how to do this on their own. However, without working with a native, it’s really hard to improve your writing and you’re speaking because someone needs to correct you.
So what I’m thinking about doing is offering a correction service. So what I did was I went and had. At the competition. Now, these writing tasks take about anywhere from five to 20 minutes to correct, to do it properly, I would say, and I looked at some of the services out there and they were offering as low as $5.
To correct. One of the writing costs. So if we put that into perspective, if it takes me 20 minutes to mark one task, I can do about three an hour. So that would give me an hourly rate of $15. That is not worth my time simply is not worth my time. It’s not gonna, I actually earn more teaching, so that’s not gonna work for me, but I also thought the quality must be pretty low.
If you are paying someone $15 an hour, they’re not really gonna be doing a great job. I don’t think so. I started thinking, what could I do? How could I offer a better service? And this kind of brought up the idea of what exactly do students need? How could I provide that service? How can I get the answers?
How could I provide the correct answer? And how much can I charge? Cause I know how much money I want an hour. But how much would a student pay for the service? And I thought the best way is to simply ask them. So what I did is I went into a couple Facebook groups. I came up with a little sales video and I said, okay, this is what I’m gonna do.
And I’m gonna do it for free. I’m gonna do it for a limited number of people, but I’m gonna do it for free. All you have to do is send me your answers. And then once I send the corrections back to you, just give me some feedback. Just answer a question now that I did. Yes. Today our YouTube channel subs doubled overnight.
So this is obviously something that people were quite excited about. And I think that just by doing something like this, it’s gonna give me a better perspective of what I can do for my audience, because none of my competitors would ever think about doing this. Okay. I may lose a couple of hours.
Working for free, but I think that knowledge is going to be invaluable and it’s really gonna give my reputation or the reputation of our YouTube channel, a real boost. So because of recent news from Amazon, this is quite a difficult time for many content creators and affiliate marketers, but don’t fret.
There are other ways that you can monetize your blog and all you need to do is think outside the box and just go that extra mile. If you do, then I’m sure you’re gonna be even more successful than you were just using Amazon affiliate links. If you’ve enjoyed this video, then why not subscribe to the channel?
And if you’ve got any questions at all, or any suggestions, just leave me a comment. I do reply to every single comment I get and I love reading them. So I will see everyone next week. Thanks so much for watching.