I know, I know… it looks like I disappeared, right?  My last post was over a year ago, it’s crazy!!

I’m writing this on a Saturday morning, and as I sit here at my desk, I look back at the last 14 or so months and can’t believe how I survived it all.

Just in case you’re wondering: NO, I did NOT stop doing affiliate marketing!  In fact, I’ve been doing better than ever – more about this a little later.

The reason for my silence was personal.  Can I tell you a little more about it? 

I’m guessing you’re saying yes ?

So, here it goes: in April-May 2022, something happened to me in my personal life that triggered some ugly past trauma… in a massive way. 

And I had a breakdown.

I feel shy about talking about it, yet I also believe it’s important to share.  Mental health issues can be such taboos, can’t they?  And when you start having a bit of a following on social media, it can be even harder to share that you’re going through a hard time.

But there you go, it happened to me.  Luckily, in a strange sort of way, it wasn’t my first breakdown.  I had another major one in 1991, and a couple minor ones between 2000 and 2010. 

So I’m good at recognising the signs.  And that allows me to go and get help fast.  Which is what I did in June last year.  I got help and by the end of the summer, I was back to my usual happy smiley self.

Sadly, shortly after that, my Dad landed in hospital… and a truly tragic time started.

It’s a long story, but after he got back home from the hospital, it became clear that he couldn’t cope on his own anymore, even with all the help he was getting from myself, my family and the care team.

We had to make the heartbreaking decision to put him into a home against his will.  That was December 12th, 2022, and I truly hope with all my heart and soul I never, ever have to do this ever again, to anyone I love.

The care home, which was supposed to be a great, safe place for my Dad, turned out to be a nightmare. Medication was changed without his knowledge or consent – and without mine either.  My Dad became depressed, angry and frail. 

He caught cov*d and was confined to his room, not even allowed to go to the toilet.  After that, he was so weak he couldn’t walk anymore.  Then he was given an extremely strong painkiller he’d never had before, again without his or my consent.  This drug made him delirious, drowsy and very unwell.

We asked the medical team to take him off it, but they insisted he was in terrible pain and needed it.  He got so drowsy he could hardly move at all… Things then went from bad to worse as he started to have necrosis on one of his feet, probably as a result of not moving at all and not getting anticoagulant injections.

I wish I could tell you we rushed him to hospital and looked after that necrosis right away… but sadly, we were told there wasn’t much we could do… so he stayed in the care home, and his foot got worse, and worse, as did his pain, in spite of the drugs.

In extremis, my sister and I asked for him to be seen at the hospital and they amputated his leg, giving him blissful relief from the horrendous pain he’d been in.

We thought he was saved, but sadly he had a few more blood clots that travelled to his brain and lungs, and he continued to go steadily downhill.

Eventually, he was transferred to palliative care, where he was looked after in the absolutely best possible way.

At 1.51 on the morning of April 6th, 2023, he took his last breath.  I was with him, holding his hand the whole time.  He died in peace, without pain, and with dignity.  I’m so grateful for that.

So now you know why I’ve been silent.  I’m lost for words to describe how painful this all was – and still is when I think about it.

There’s one thing I know about my Dad, and that’s that he always went for his dreams… and he wanted me to go for mine.  So I’m pretty sure he’s proud of what I’m about to share:

Throughout this time, however, my business never stopped.  In fact, 2022 was my best year ever and I made 5 figures in affiliate commissions!

In March 2023, I had the honour of joining Dean Holland’s coaching team!  I now work alongside Dean and the awesome Glenn Shepherd, answering questions from members of the community 5 days a week.  I couldn’t be happier with this, it’s truly amazing!

It’s taken me a while, but I’m getting back to “normal” and I started publishing on YouTube again. 

With that in mind, I want to turn up on this blog again, to record my journey – hope that’s good news lol!

I’ve decided that I would go live every Friday on YouTube, to record a bit of my journey – and then I’ll write a blog post on here, related to that video, on Saturday mornings.

How does that sound?  I hope you’ll find value, encouragement and inspiration from this, dear reader.  Because at the end of the day, that’s what I always want to do: encourage you and show you that this is possible!  You CAN do it too, I promise!

See you next week for news ?

PS: if you want to know more about how I made 5 figures in 2022, in spite of all this horrid stuff I went through, watch the live video I made at the very end of the year ?

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 ?

 

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!