From images of lavish lifestyles, luxury homes with bougainvillea growing all around the walls, sleek cars, exotic yachts, and tons of cash flying around, to beautiful bikini-clad girls popping champagne, is the usual picture that comes to mind for most people when thinking of a million dollars.

You’d think most of it is true, but it’s not. Sincerely, earning a million dollars a month is a little far-fetched, especially if you’re just a beginner.

Most of the people you see flashing money online on Instagram and YouTube are not millionaires — they’re just after your hard earned cash.

Still, it’s a good feeling to imagine that you have a million dollars lying in the bank — isn’t it?

If you’re a beginner, the best place to start is to find a mentor — someone who has done it. One thing I can assure you is that the free courses you see on the Internet and on YouTube tend to only scratch the surface. They don’t go deep.

Even with the premium courses you buy online, most of them are just rip-offs, selling you outdated material you can find online for free.

Understanding affiliate marketing and becoming good at it is a grim story. 95% of affiliate marketers don’t make any money. Not even a dime. Yet they keep plodding on, hoping that one day, they’ll strike a fortune online, which will perhaps change their lives and deliver them from the rat race.

Affiliate marketing is just one of the hundreds of ways to make money on the internet, and for that matter, it’s just one of the hundreds of ways to make a million dollars.

Most people confuse affiliate marketing with multi-level marketing (MLM). No, they’re not the same thing. Plus, if you’ve been scammed before, I don’t blame you. Affiliate marketing has it’s own share of scammers too.

Anyway, don’t worry. We all must start from somewhere. When you’re searching, you don’t get tired. And you don’t give up. You only become wiser. Fortunately, you have someone to take you through the ropes and ensure you don’t fall into the wrong hands.

However, if you’ve chosen affiliate marketing as your primary vehicle, earning a million dollars in a year is quite possible if you put in hard work, determination, focus, persistence, and passion, and are smart enough to implement cutting-edge marketing strategies.

One thing is for sure — there are many things to learn. Marketing, copywriting, SEO, blogging, article writing, Facebook ads, Google ads, Native ads, Media Buying, etc., just to name a few, but the effort is worth it.

Consider spending less than $1,000 learning a few skills and techniques that will make you a million dollars. That’s a small price to pay compared to getting an MBA degree from an Ivy League university that will cost you upwards of $80,000 with no guarantee of a steady job that will yield a good return on investment (ROI).

Earning a million dollars a year through affiliate marketing is the same as earning a million dollars a year with any other method like real estate, stock market, Amazon FBA, drop shipping, FOREX, cryptocurrency, or any other business model you can think of. The difference is that the risk is not as high as those other business models.

Any business can make you a million dollars as long as you have the mindset for a million dollars.

The reason affiliate marketing is so popular is because it is all over the internet.

Moreover, it is one of the oldest and easiest ways to make money online without investing much capital except your time and effort. The other reason is that there are almost no barriers to entry and the risks associated with starting an affiliate marketing business are literally zero.

Signing-up for an affiliate program is free, and once accepted, promoting an affiliate product offer is also free.

For example, unlike traditional brick-and-mortar businesses or Amazon FBA, you don’t need to invest in working capital, inventory, rent, insurance, storage space, licenses, or a host of other business requirements. Everything can be done from your laptop and Internet connection at home. In fact, you can start affiliate marketing immediately without a website.

The other reason affiliate marketing is so popular is because of the media hype and internet sensation it has created over the years. The internet is full of rags-to-riches stories of affiliate marketers who started from zero to a million dollars in a single month!

However, these people did not just wake up one day to find themselves millionaires. They worked hard for it, and it took them years to reach there.

Can You Make a Million Dollars with Affiliate Marketing?

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. While the rest of the world is skeptical, many people are silently killing it online through affiliate marketing. I can’t impress it upon you further.

However, most people will never earn a million dollars in their lifetime because in the first place, they don’t believe they can earn a million dollars.

Secondly, they don’t believe in themselves, and certainly, they don’t believe in anything you tell them.

Thirdly, they don’t have what it takes to earn a million dollars. They just don’t know how.

More importantly, most people will never earn a million dollars because they lack the millionaire mindset.

What is A Millionaire Mindset?

A millionaire mindset is a set of beliefs, philosophies and convictions that drive a person to start believing they can make a million dollars. It’s a strong mentality to beat the odds and become a millionaire at whatever cost.

This mentality is followed by a strong conviction and determination to succeed in a particular area of business by exploring, learning, researching and implementing what you believe is possible.

A million dollars is just an idea. Implementation is the heard part.

Let me be sincere here…

Not everyone who believes they can make a million dollars will actually make a million dollars. The reason is that, earning a million dollars is not just a matter of believing. It is a matter of following a certain proven formula consistently, making smart moves, patience, taking relevant actions with razor-like focus, hard work, determination, and continuous learning.

To make a million dollars, you must think like an entrepreneur.

To most people, a million dollars may sound like some pipe dream they only see in movies, read in novels, or read in newspapers, but with the right mindset, you can remove all the mental blocks that prevent you from seeing possibilities where others see only impossibilities.

The millionaire mindset forces you to start thinking like a millionaire, act like a millionaire, talk like a millionaire, and feel like a millionaire, long before you actually earn your first million dollars.

Affiliate Marketing — What is It?

Since affiliate marketing is the topic of our discussion, we shall not waste much time describing what it is, how to start, whom to approach for help, and where to get the right training and marketing resources.

In case you’re not sure what affiliate marketing actually is, let’s quickly get that out of the way.

(You can skip this section if you already know what we’re talking about).

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business or person (vendor or merchant), signs-up another business or person (affiliate) to market their products or services through a revenue-sharing compensation plan.

Compensation models vary from one vendor to another and from one affiliate network to another. Which means we should also define what an affiliate network is.

What’s an Affiliate Network?

An affiliate network is a company that acts as a brokerage between merchants and affiliates. It facilitates a database of hundreds of thousands of products and services and avails a platform for recruiting, administrating and compensating affiliate marketers.

A few examples are Amazon Associates, ClickBank, CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction), Rakuten (formerly LinkShare), JVZoo and FlexOffers.

There are as many affiliate networks as there are verticals, companies and vendors.

Each vendor on the affiliate network can list their products or services at different compensation rates and plans. The network also facilitates performance metrics for each listed product and service to enable affiliates choose the products and services they’d like to promote.

Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, which is the best compensation plan?

What Are Best Affiliate Marketing Compensation Plans?

Cost per Sale (CPS) — In this compensation model, an affiliate is paid when a sale is completed. 80% of affiliate programs use this model.

The aim of this compensation model is to increase sales through affiliate links.

Cost Per Action (CPA) — Also called Cost per Acquisition, this model typically pays for leads generated. The affiliate marketer is paid for every lead who completes a specific action, like filling an online form, submitting an email or ZIP code, installs a mobile app, or takes any other specified action. Typically, with CPA offers, a web visitor doesn’t have to pay for anything since most of the offers don’t require a credit card.

Pay per Call — This model is particularly popular with mobile users. All you have to do is connect a prospect with a merchant and get paid. Just like that.

Just like clicks are tracked, calls can also be tracked using software to track a connection between a vendor and a prospect to your affiliate ID. The sale can then be tracked to you as the affiliate who facilitated the connection. That’s how you get paid.

Pay per Click (PPC) — The best example of PPC compensation model is Google AdSense. This compensation plan is popular with search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Each time a user clicks on a link on a website or blog, the affiliate who contributed this action is compensated for the action and a commission is issued by the merchant.

Pay per Mile (PPM) — Pay per Mile means pay per thousand impressions. Some merchants offer this compensation model through affiliate networks. It is another payment model mostly associated with search engine marketing. This concept also includes payment based on a thousand views.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s explore ways to make a million dollars through affiliate marketing.

CPS and CPA are by far the most popular compensation models, so we shall concentrate our discussion on just these two types of compensation.

Without complicating things, let’s look at the components that drive affiliate marketing.

Despite what people tell you, driving web traffic to a product offer is the secret to making money online. This means if you have a blog that gets a million web visitors per month, you can earn from $10,000 — $50,000 per month, depending on your conversion rate and the affiliate offer you’re trying to promote.

The same is also true if you have a similar amount of audience or followers on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, or any other social media platforms across the Internet. However, the amount of revenue varies depending on the platform, affiliate offer, and affiliate marketing strategy.

The process can be broken down to only 5 steps:

1. Find a Hot Niche

2. Find a good Offer

3. Create a Blog or find a good Platform where to promote your offer

4. Drive Targeted Traffic

5. Convert your traffic to sales

HOT NICHE + OFFER + PLATFORM + TARGETED TRAFFIC + CONVERSION = MONEY

As simple as it sounds, this is one of the most powerful concepts in online marketing.

The reason most people fail is because they don’t get the fundamentals right.

Finding a Hot Niche

Finding a hot niche is the secret to business, especially for affiliate marketing.

Ever heard of the California Gold Rush?

It was a period in history when millions of people from across the world trekked for thousands of miles to a place in California between 1848–1855 to look for gold. They came from as far as Europe, Latin America, Australia and China.

Many of them lost their lives and property on the way and quite a few of them struck gold in a big way.

Finding a hot niche and exploring ways to supply the niche with a hot product or service is the key to becoming rich. This fundamental principle hasn’t changed over time.

For example, in 1871 following the California Gold Rush, Levi Straus partnered with Jacob W. Davis to start making Jeans (a type of garments including pants, skirts, aprons, overalls, and coats), for the gold mining community. They became rich in the process.

The three biggest online niches are:

· Relationships (Dating, Sexuality, Marriage, Divorce) ,

· Health (Wellness & Fitness, Physical Health, Weight Management, Sexual & Reproductive Health, Mental Health, etc.)

· Wealth (Money, Investing, Entrepreneurship, Business, FOREX, cryptocurrency, etc.).

Of course there are many other niches like the passion industry, gaming and sports, but let’s just keep to these three.

Where To Find Hot Niches

There are many places to find a hot niche.

· Social sites like Facebook groups, Instagram, Twitter

· Forums (There’s a forum for just about anything under the sun)

· Blogs

· Q & A Forums like Quora (There’s a question and answer for just about any topic under the sun)

· Google Trends

· YouTube

Finding a hot niche is just as easy as finding a hungry market.

You begin by looking at social sites like Facebook groups, Forums and other places where people are deeply engaged and asking questions.

Look for topics where people are exchanging questions and answers like Quora and read what type of questions people are asking and what types of answers they’re getting.

Finding An Offer

Finding a hot product offer is just as easy as finding a solution to the problems people are looking for. Connect people to a solution and you’re in business. You can easily become a millionaire if you strike the right solution.

See what types of questions people are asking, and try to understand their inner feelings, emotions, pain and their language.

Then go and find a suitable affiliate product offer, sign-up with an affiliate network, and start promoting the offer to your target niche.

Web Traffic Secrets

As said earlier, driving targeted web traffic is the secret to any online business. It is the lifeblood of any online business. No traffic, no money. As simple as that.

People who control large amounts of web traffic also control boatloads of cash on the Internet.

Free Traffic Methods

The best type of traffic is FREE, organic traffic and the best source of free traffic is Google.

The reason is that Google will continue to deliver free traffic to your website or blog even after many years.

The number one free traffic strategy to get tons of web traffic is SEO (search engine optimization).

SEO is not easy, and takes a long time for your blog to rank highly on search engines, but if you do it the right way, you will continue to enjoy organic traffic for years to come.

Another free traffic strategy is writing quality articles on blogs and Forums. This method can generate tons of web traffic especially if your articles go viral.

The key to making big money online is to find a hungry audience who are already looking for a solution to a specific problem and target them with your marketing.

Note that if you don’t have control of a large amount of FREE traffic, then your next best option is to buy the traffic.

Paid Traffic Methods

Buying web traffic is just a matter of visiting your favorite paid ads network and start promoting.

The pros are that you can get instant results as soon as possible.

The cons are that you can throw your money down the drain very quickly and there are no guarantees that you’ll get good results, especially if you have no idea how to create paid ads on Google, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or any of the PPC networks.

The idea is to use cheaper advertising platforms where there is less competition.

Paid traffic requires mastery of the trade and any false move can make you regret you ever tried to make money online.

Paid traffic strategies like media buys and native ads can drive insane amounts of web traffic to a product offer and make you millions of dollars before you know it.

Do you Need a Website to Start Affiliate Marketing?

Although you can actually run an affiliate marketing business without a website, there are many benefits to have your own website.

· First, most of the best affiliate networks will not approve you without a website.

· Secondly, your website is your primary source of passive income. This means you can earn perpetual income forever, while providing yourself with financial security for the rest of your life.

· Thirdly, a website is your business property that you can sell any time you want, and make a ton of money, as long as it gets a ton of web traffic.

Taking Your First Baby Steps

As mentioned earlier, your turning point is when you make your first $100 dollars a day online consistently.

Earning your first $100 dollars a day consistently is your BABY STEP to a million dollars.

The idea is to break down your million dollar target into small baby steps.

If you want to make a million dollars per year, then your monthly target is $83,333.33.

This means your daily goal should be $2,777.77

Getting that kind of result using free traffic strategies is a little difficult, but once you start earning $100 dollars a day, you can spend half of it through paid traffic strategies.

Then you can gradually scale that to generate more revenues, by split-testing and other strategies to find what works and what doesn’t.

Making your first $100 a day is a piece of cake once you know where and how to get the traffic. I’ve already mentioned a few web traffic sources.

The key to earning big money in affiliate marketing is to promote high-ticket products.

The effort used to sell 100,000 items at $10 monthly is the same effort used to sell 100 items at $100,000 items per month. You only use different approaches and target different niches.

CPA Marketing

CPA marketing is a subtle affiliate marketing strategy where you don’t have to sell anything to get paid.

CPA is the easiest method for making money with affiliate marketing, especially for beginners, because the prospect or web user doesn’t have to pull out their credit card to pay for anything. All they have to do is fill out an online form, submit an email or ZIP code, download an eBook, install a mobile app, or perform some other specific action.

For example, suppose you have a rare online resource like an eBook, software, music album or online course, that people would normally pay for.

You can use a CPA content locker or link locker to lock this resource, only allowing people to access the resource after they complete a survey, submit an email or download an app.

The commissions for CPA offers are very low — ranging from $1.60 to under $5, but let this not fool you. If you can find a strategy to get tons of web traffic, you can make a boatload of cash, since the conversion rates for CPA offers are extremely high.

For example, if you can drive 1,000,000 web visitors through a link locker that pays just $1.60 per email submit and the conversion rate is 50%, your commissions will be:

1,000,000 x $1.60 x 50% = 800 000 US$

Imagine earning this kind of money in a month!

Some CPA affiliate marketers make millions of dollars per month using just this one strategy.

There are many CPA affiliate networks for just about every niche you can think of.

A few examples of CPA affiliate networks are MaxBounty, Peerfly, AdWorkMedia, AdscendMedia, CPALead, CPAGrip, CPABuild, Mobidea, Leadbit, EverAd, Convert2Media, and A4D.

In Conclusion

The landscape for affiliate marketing has changed significantly over the past decade.

From tighter legislation and policies, to enhanced artificial intelligence agents that have made it harder to manipulate search engine algorithms, to old school SEO (search engine optimization) tactics that don’t work anymore, affiliate marketing is becoming tougher each day.

Furthermore, with a general increase in competition on the web, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for affiliate marketers to get ahead in the game.

Despite all the pitfalls, many smart affiliate marketers continue to reap phenomenal returns.

To remain on top of the game, most affiliate marketers have committed to life-long learning.

Whether you’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced, you need to always keep abreast with the latest tech news, changes in technology and the latest internet marketing tactics, by learning from veterans and other internet marketers.

Further reading:

· Revealed: How to Develop The Millionaire Mindset

· How to Earn a 6-Figure Online Income From Home!

· How to get your hands dirty with CPA Affiliate Marketing…

· FREE Book: Traffic Secrets — How to Drive a Ton of Web Traffic to Your Website or Blog