Category: Make money online

Make money online, Uncategorized

Millionaires Challenge System… what happened next?

Sophie Sion

In my last post, I told you to watch this space for an update on what happened after I decided not to promote Zach Crawford’s Millionaires Challenge System anymore… 

Quick reminder: I was mentored by Zach for a year, from January 2020.  This was my first time being mentored and it was great!  I made a lot of progress thanks to Zach and became a 4-figure earner. 

It was only natural for me to promote Zach’s course and mentorship, as it was helping me so much on my affiliate marketing journey.  So until recently, I did!  I was an affiliate for his course, just like I’m an affiliate for other courses and tools that have helped me and I feel will be useful to my audience.

But then, as I explained in my last post, I began to feel uncomfortable about promoting MCS and finally, a few weeks ago, I came to the decision that I would stop.  I went public about it on my YouTube channel with this video here, feeling that I needed to tell my audience clearly about it. 

I’d been so positive about Zach Crawford’s program, that it was only fair to tell my audience that I’d somewhat changed my mind.

Anyway… fast forward 2 days after I published that first video… and…

I found out that I was unable to log in to my members’ area of the course!!!

I checked my password, requested a new one, waited 10 minutes, checked the promotions tab and spam folder… 

But NOTHING.  Just to be sure, 2 weeks later, I tried again, did all the same things, but nothing.  Try as I might, I couldn’t log into the course that I bought!

I paid $3k for the course and mentorship – and whilst I totally got my money’s worth, I’m pretty shocked that I’m denied access to the course now, simply because I announced that I wasn’t going to promote it as an affiliate anymore!

At least I’m assuming that’s what it is.  I haven’t been contacted by Zach Crawford or any member of his team.  Zach has blocked me on Facebook, so I have no way of reaching out to him.

***

To me, this brings to light something really important about affiliate marketing:

Being an affiliate for a product and having access as a user are two entirely separate things.

There are some excellent courses out there that have no affiliate program. 

A product owner has the right to decide whether he/she wants affiliates, how people qualify to be affiliates, what the conditions are to keep affiliate status, etc.

BUT once you’ve bought a product, you should have access to it, always, regardless of your affiliate status.  I mean, unless you’re doing something illegal like copying the course and selling it as your own, or something like that. 

To me, my “ban” makes ZERO sense at all. 

I’d completely understand if Zach had reached out to me and said something like “ok Sophie, I see you’re not promoting my course anymore, just so you know, if you ever change your mind I won’t let you be an affiliate anymore.” 

That would be absolutely fine.  I would totally get that. 

But not letting me have access to the learning area?  The course I bought and learned from?

That’s just wrong!  That’s unethical! In fact, that’s stealing!

That’s like Amazon telling me “you gave this book a bad review, you need to send it back to us and we won’t give you your money back”!

So… I had to make another video, telling my audience what happened. 

People need to know about this.

***

Anyway, that’s it from me for today… next I’ll write about some interesting reactions I had to that video… very interesting indeed, to say the least!  Watch this space ?

And here’s the full video story ?

Make money online, Uncategorized

Millionaires Challenge System – why I’m not promoting this anymore

Sophie Sion

Some videos are tough to make… this was one of them!

In my journey as an affiliate marketer, I always promised myself that I would be honest and transparent.  Honest with myself and my audience. Transparent with my results and my appreciation of the products I use, review and recommend.

This means having the courage to give my audience the whole picture – not just mention the positives of a product. 

And at times, this means having the courage to stop promoting a product… and tell my audience why.

***

Here’s just a little back story:

In January 2020, I joined Zach Crawford’s community.  I bought his course, Secret Affiliate Marketing Hacks, and a year’s mentorship.

This was a life-changing decision that helped me greatly!  I don’t regret it at all.

Having Zach as a mentor was amazing.  I had access to him and his feedback 24/7; I asked many questions and made a lot of progress.  He helped me take the right action and, as a result, I became a 4 figure earner in 2020. 

I promoted Zach’s course, feeling that it would help others just like it helped me.  I made a few reviews on my YouTube channel, and I stand by everything I said.

Later, in May 2021, I joined Dean Holland’s Internet Profits.  I needed mentorship and wanted to grow my business.  I’d come to the end of my mentorship with Zach Crawford and I felt I needed a change.   However, I continued to promote Zach’s Top Earner Transformation (as it was named then).  I felt it was a good program and would be helpful to some people.

All good so far, right?

So what happened? 

Well, as the months went by in the autumn of 2021, I saw things change in Zach’s program.  It became Millionaires Challenge System, there was a new launch, the price went up, many new people joined.

That’s all fine, nothing wrong there.

However, as time went on, I became more and more uncomfortable with certain things.  Some top affiliates of other programs joined, made sales really fast, and this was used as some kind of “proof” that the program was helping people make a lot of money.

I’m personally uncomfortable with that. 

I feel the selling point of a product shouldn’t be how much money it’s going to help you make by selling the product itself. 

I’m all about helping beginners and struggling affiliate marketers.  And I don’t feel Zach Crawford’s course, as it is right now, is going to be the best choice for a beginner or struggling affiliate marketer.

***

So I made the decision to stop promoting this – and I had to make a video to tell my audience, obviously.

It was difficult and terribly uncomfortable for me to so.

It was scary too.

But having promoted this program when I felt it was in my audience’s best interests, I had to tell them that I felt differently now. 

That was the right thing to do.

Here’s the video if you want to hear the full story ?

(And watch out for an update soon… there were consequences to my publishing this video ?)

affiliate marketing, Internet Profits, Make money online

Internet Profits – week 21: new coaching :-)

Sophie Sion

It’s 2022 and Internet Profits started its new coaching program 🙂

I’m only a few days in, but can already tell this is going to help tremendously! To say I’m excited is an understatement.

It’s going to be tough for me too, at times.  I’m going to be held accountable and I’m going to have to face uncomfortable stuff some days.

The way it works is like this: in the back office, we can submit any questions we have.  As long as the question is submitted before midnight, it will be answered on the next coaching call.  We then have the call and the coaches answer the questions in great detail. 

I’ve attended two coaching calls so far, and they both went well over an hour!  I didn’t need to listen to the whole lot, by the way, but I learned a ton, so I did!

There are replays available, for those who are at work or otherwise occupied and can’t make the calls live.

The first question I asked was about my traffic strategy… as this blog is an honest record of my journey, I’ll just share this here in all transparency.  My biggest challenge is NOT TO DO TOO MUCH.  I see potential in absolutely every traffic source, and I end up having my fingers in too many pies. 

So I asked the team for honest feedback about my traffic strategy, and one of the things that came up was my lack of a paid source of traffic.

My main traffic source is YouTube, and YouTube is relatively slow.  There’s nothing wrong with that – it brings me commissions and it’s something I’m building for the long term.  However, the fact that it’s slow also means I tend to go to other places to get eyeballs on my content – and the risk with this is that I spread myself too thin.

Anyway, one of the coaches mentioned Facebook lead generation ads, and that sounds like an epic idea.  So I’ll look into that as a paid traffic strategy.

That means I’ll have YouTube as my organic strategy and Facebook lead ads as my paid one – sounds good.

Now I have to be honest here: I am also present on other platforms, always with the aim of pushing traffic towards my YouTube channel.  Clubhouse is a big one for me: I do a daily morning room on the topic of affiliate marketing.  I also answer questions on Quora, and I repurpose my YouTube shorts on TikTok.  In addition, I still have my free Facebook group… but that’s my next question for Monday’s coaching call: do I keep it or do I ditch it? 

This blog post is a little all over the place, isn’t it?  I just wanted to share the kind of stuff we can ask and talk about in these coaching sessions.  I’m going to make the very most of them; it’s going to help me move forward and be accountable.  It’s going to help me stay focused.  I can only wish that everyone starting an online business has this level of support – if I’d had this from the start, I’d be in a different place already, I’m sure.

Want to catch the video version of this?  I don’t have much of a voice, you’ll see ? but the video is short!  Here it is ?

 

affiliate marketing, Internet Profits, Make money online

What’s a lead magnet – and how do you create one?

Sophie Sion

Let’s start the year with a few affiliate marketing essentials, shall we 🙂 ?

So… what’s a lead magnet and how do you create one?  And, maybe even more importantly, how do you use it to grow your business and make money?

Let’s start with the first question…

What’s a lead magnet?

Some people call it an “ethical bribe”, lol!  It’s basically something you give away for free, in exchange for an email address. 

I have several lead magnets – one of them is here: my free guide to get started with affiliate marketing. 

I created this because one of the most common questions I get asked about affiliate marketing is “how do I start?”. So I know that a guide on how to start is valuable to my audience – valuable enough for them to be willing to give me their email address to get the information from me!

That’s what a lead magnet is: something valuable and helpful that your audience needs.  You give it away for free, and in exchange, you get the person’s email address.

A lead magnet can be just about anything.  Examples include:

  • an e-book
  • audio tracks
  • training videos
  • a sample of a product
  • a chapter of a book
  • a free 15 minute discovery call
  • cheat sheets
  • resource guides
  • free templates
  • …

The list is endless!  As long as it’s useful and relevant to your potential customers, it can be a lead magnet!

Now how does a lead magnet help you grow your business… and make more money?

Well, let’s take my free guide to get started with affiliate marketing as an example.

Let’s say you want it and so you click this link to get it.  Here’s what will happen: you’ll land on a page where you’ll have to give me your name and email address.  As soon as you enter your details, two things will happen: 1. you’ll get the guide and 2. your name and email address will be added to my email auto-responder. 

Once you’re on my email list, you will start receiving emails from me.  Some will be automatic emails I’ve organised in an email sequence.  My auto-responder does the work for me, sending them at regular intervals that I’ve set up.  Some other emails will be what are called “broadcast emails”.  These are like letters I write – usually once a week (when I’m organised) – to give you value and keep you updated.

The purpose of these emails is to build a relationship with you and to make you offers that are relevant.  So obviously, if you ask for my guide to get started with affiliate marketing, my emails are going to give you some information about that.  I’ll tell you a little more about myself, how I struggled, how I started getting results, etc.  That’s so you know more about me and are reassured I know from experience what the journey is like.

Then I’ll share my tips and tricks, the things I found – and still find – helpful… because I reckon that if they helped me, they’ll help you too. 

And finally, I’ll put a link to a course that will teach much more in depth how to do affiliate marketing.  If you click and buy, you’ll get access to a great course and I’ll make a commission – we both win. 

And that’s how a lead magnet helps build a business and make money.

Once you have your potential customers’ email addresses, you can build a relationship and make offers to them.  If you do your job well, a certain percentage of them will, at some point, click your links and buy from you.

Your email list doesn’t only get you sales, it also allows you to stay in touch with your audience.  You can email them to wish them Merry Christmas, to inform them of a new project you’re working on, to share some personal news at times, to ask them for feedback, etc.  It’s extremely valuable! 

It’s also the only traffic that you truly own.  Any audience you have built on social media can be lost at any time.  I’ve known very successful marketers who lost their big Facebook groups overnight – had they not had their members’ email addresses, they would have lost everything!  I know others who lost their YouTube channels or whose blogs were hacked.  Without email addresses, you have virtually no way of telling people what happened and where to contact you.

Anyway, that’s probably another blog post I’ll have to write, isn’t it?

But to come back to our lead magnet…

how do you create it?

I made a video that shows you a simple way to create one with Canva.

Canva is free to join, and it gives you literally hundreds of templates you can use to make beautiful lead magnets easily.  It will help you with any digital lead magnets such as e-books, infographics, lesson plans, recipe cards, resource guides, videos, etc.

Once you’ve create your lead magnet, you’ll need to create a landing page or a form in your auto-responder, so as to collect the email addresses and send the lead magnet to your customers.

I show you how to do that with the auto-responder I use, Convertkit.

There are, of course, many other options out there.  I’ve personally tried GetResponse and Clickfunnels.  Aweber is another one that is popular.  Whatever works for you!

It’s not complicated to set up a form, but you do need to follow the steps thoroughly.  So I highly suggest you watch the video and take action as you go along. 

If you have any questions, just message me!  Or comment on the video 🙂 I’m always happy to help!

Anyway – does this post help you understand what a lead magnet it, and how it helps you grow your business and make more money?  I hope so!  Let me know if it doesn’t – I’ll try and explain it all better 🙂

Have a wonderful day, dear reader!

 

affiliate marketing, Internet Profits, Make money online

Internet Profits – week 20: price change!

Sophie Sion

Hey it’s the LAST day of 2021 already!  Oh my goodness… where has the time gone?  

Quick post today from me regarding Internet Profits again 🙂

As I mentioned in previous posts, Dean Holland is bringing great changes to the product in the new year – it’s going to be pretty awesome. 

Now with these changes also comes a price increase. Which means that if you’ve been on the fence about joining, NOW is the time to take action.

Yesterday, I went live on YouTube as usual, and just gave a quick recap about who Internet Profits is for – in my humble opinion of course:

  • if you’re a complete beginner, and you want to learn how to build a profitable internet business
  • if you’ve heard of affiliate marketing and you want to learn how to do it and make money from it
  • if you’re already doing affiliate marketing but you’re not getting results
  • if you need a clear plan to follow
  • if you do well when you are held accountable
  • if you need a community to support you
  • if you need regular feedback on your work and results

Internet Profits, in 2022, is going to give its partners even more of what they need to succeed.  It won’t only have a course to follow – it will also have daily coaching calls, where we’ll be able to ask questions and be held accountable.

AND it will have monthly sessions to review our results and give us feedback on how to tweak things to get better.

I have to confess that I’m excited about all this and can’t wait to see what the new year brings.

Anyway, if you want to jump in before the year ends, just click here 🙂

And there you go… that’s going to be it from me for 2021.

I’ll be back for more adventures next year.

Oh and hold on, just before I go, real quick: I had a goal of making $50 a day in December… well I reached it 🙂 As I write this, in the early hours of the last day of December, I have made an average of $55.63 per day in December.

Affiliate marketing works – you just need the right action plan and implement it 🙂

Want to watch the week 20 live on YouTube?  Here it is ?