Episode 62Oct 4, 2024· 22:00
30 Day Start-Up Action Plan for Affiliate Marketing
About this episode
🚀 Elevate Your Blog with a 30-Day Start-Up Action Plan for Affiliate Marketing! 🚀
Hello, Bloggy Friends!
In this special episode, we dive deep into a step-by-step guide designed to set your blog up for affiliate success.
🔍 Key Takeaways:
Strategic Research & Planning: Start your journey with thorough research of affiliate review blogs and videos, and make informed decisions on tangible and digital…
Listener reactions
💡0
🤝0
🔥0
😄0
0 reactionsShare your reaction
Pick how this episode landed — then leave a public review or a private note to the host.
You
Your name will appear with your review0/300 Visible to everyone
Sign in to leave feedback
Full transcript
00:00
Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show!
00:22
What's up my Bloggy Friends?
00:23
Famous Ashley Grant here and happy Halloween month!
00:26
This episode will be coming out in October.
00:28
It is being recorded early in the year, but I'm very excited to give you some tricks and
00:33
treats that you can use to make money on your blog.
00:37
That is the big thing that constantly comes up whenever I'm talking to people that are
00:40
considering starting a blog is they want to make money from it.
00:43
And I completely get it.
00:45
So today what I'm going to do is, the reason we are releasing this at the beginning of
00:49
October is because I want to give you a 30-day startup action plan for affiliate marketing.
00:54
I will leave some links in the show notes to different deep dives I have done on affiliate
00:59
marketing and different things that you can use for your website in order to drive traffic
01:03
and all those good things.
01:04
But basically the idea of this episode is what to do in the entire month of October
01:10
or whenever it is you're listening to this for 30 days to set your website up for affiliate
01:15
success.
01:17
So starting an online business or blog as an affiliate marketer is an easy way to get
01:22
started earning money on the internet.
01:25
You don't have to take the time or the effort to create your own products, recruit affiliates
01:29
for them, go through all the task launches and all those things to get your stuff out
01:34
there.
01:35
Instead, you get to hit the ground running with easy content that helps guide consumers
01:39
to the products that will serve as solutions to their problems.
01:43
In exchange for your advice, when the customer purchases from the vendor, you get paid a
01:47
commission.
01:48
The only problem that faces most affiliate marketers is that they are given a broad overview
01:53
of what to do and what they really need is a daily action step to implement so that by
01:58
the end of a 30 day period, they're beginning to consistently publish product reviews that
02:03
will actually bring in money.
02:09
So let's get into it.
02:10
The steps I'm going to cover in this episode, they're going to basically take the span of
02:14
five weeks and there's a day off to do as you please in each of them and feel free to
02:20
accomplish more than one task per day if you have time or stretch it out a little longer
02:24
if you feel the need to.
02:26
So the first thing we're going to start with is week one.
02:28
In week one, you're going to research tasks and decision time.
02:32
During the first week of your affiliate marketing startup plans, you'll be taking care of an
02:35
aspect of the business building that many fail to do.
02:38
Instead, they just jump right into the creation step of content, hoping to rake in overnight
02:43
profits and this rarely ever works.
02:45
Yes, there are exceptions to the rule, but it hardly ever works.
02:50
Because they didn't take the time to create a foundation that will perform well in their
02:53
topic of choice, they are left confused and they don't understand when they fail to get
02:59
traffic and conversions with their product reviews and content.
03:02
So on day one of this first week, you want to take a day to read affiliate reviews.
03:07
On day one, you want to go online and begin researching a variety of topic related affiliate
03:13
review blogs that are similar to the topic that you want to talk about.
03:17
Start looking at those review products at a broad scale and start looking at narrow
03:22
niche topics as well.
03:24
Make some mental notes or even like open a Google Doc and start writing down what you
03:28
see to yourself about how you feel about the quality of the reviews, about the quality
03:34
of the content that you're seeing.
03:36
Think about what you notice is lacking, jot it down.
03:39
If anything sticks out that impresses you, make a note of that as well.
03:43
For example, if you're going and seeing these websites and you're like, wow, these guys
03:46
are crushing it, write down what you're seeing is working and what you want to implement
03:50
on your own site.
03:52
Pay attention to everything about the affiliate websites that you're looking at, the affiliate
03:56
links, the articles, et cetera.
03:58
And remember that it's not about just the words that are written.
04:01
It's also about the layout of the information, the white space, the images, the call to action,
04:06
all the things.
04:08
Day two, I want you to spend this day watching review videos.
04:13
You're going to look at YouTube, you're going to look at TikTok, you're going to look at
04:16
Instagram, all the places that people will be creating video related content.
04:22
And this is just so you can start thinking about your multimedia approach of how you
04:26
can start getting people to learn about the products that you want to talk about.
04:30
Pay specific attention to how the video is being shot.
04:33
Is the reviewer on camera or can you only see the product itself?
04:37
Take a note about how long these videos are and how long these videos are typically for
04:41
the different topics that are around.
04:44
And look for forms of engagement, such as the number of likes, the number of comments,
04:49
things like that.
04:51
Day three, research your tangible monetization options.
04:55
On day three, you're going to take time to really research the tangible commission opportunities
05:00
for the various topics that are out there.
05:03
You can look on sites like Amazon, ShareSale, Commission Junction, all those things, and
05:08
basically find out how much commission are these people offering so that if you were
05:12
to sign up with them, how much money you would actually make.
05:15
I like to do this with a $100 product because that gives you a more concrete number as to
05:20
how much money you'll make for everything that you are going to sell.
05:24
So say for example, you sign up on Amazon Associates.
05:27
They typically start with a two to four percent commission.
05:30
So if your product is $100, you're going to make two to four dollars for every single
05:34
product that people buy from your link.
05:37
You can also look on Google to find direct affiliate programs that help you work directly
05:41
with vendors and manufacturers.
05:43
I have found that when you do it this way, you make the most money and the most commissions.
05:49
Day four, see what digital products you can promote.
05:53
So digital products, the cool thing about digital info products is they don't really
05:59
have anything to ship.
06:00
So you usually get commissions faster because the idea is if someone buys an ebook or a
06:05
course, they're going to buy it directly from someone using your link and then you're going
06:10
to get paid usually within 30 days.
06:12
Sometimes with Amazon Associates and ShareASale, the commission, it could take up to two months.
06:17
I've even seen it take up to six months before you get paid.
06:20
So it's important to look at what the different digital products are that are out there.
06:24
You could use sites like ClickBank or Warrior Plus, JVZoo, Udemy, Teachable, all the things.
06:31
And not only are you looking for courses, you also want to look for tools like on things
06:34
like AppSumo and see if you can review something that's of a digital nature.
06:41
Day five, make the commitment to a specific topic.
06:45
So this is when you're going to choose what topic you're going to be writing about.
06:49
Now this is assuming you don't already have a blog or if you do have a blog, this is where
06:53
you're going to make the commitment to pivot to this topic.
06:59
By the end of the day of day five, you want to make your final decision on which topic
07:04
you hope to make money with.
07:06
Day six, find a keyword rich domain name.
07:10
Again, this is assuming you don't have a website yet.
07:12
However, if you already have a website, this is when you're going to start thinking about
07:16
keyword research related to your topic that you can mix into whatever website you already
07:21
have.
07:23
On week two, you're going to set up your affiliate site.
07:25
If you already have a website, this is when you're going to start adding affiliate subpages
07:29
to your site.
07:31
Day seven, set up your hosting account.
07:33
If you've already got hosting, you might want to consider looking into whether or not your
07:37
hosting account has an affiliate program.
07:40
What I mean by that is if you're using Bluehost or Hostgator or GoDaddy, each one of these
07:45
companies, they have an affiliate site or excuse me, an affiliate program that you can
07:50
sign up for and whenever you sign up to be an affiliate with these different websites,
07:56
if you tell anyone, hey, this is hosted on GoDaddy or Hostgator or whatever it is and
08:01
you link to it, if anyone clicks it, you can get paid.
08:05
One of the girls I know, she does this a lot with Bluehost.
08:08
She just has a simple link in her footer that says, this website was built on Bluehost and
08:15
she actually gets quite a few clicks on that.
08:17
When people purchase hosting from Bluehost, she gets paid about $1.50 to $3 per click.
08:27
Day eight, install WordPress for your review blog.
08:31
If you already have a website, you can refine your WordPress blog.
08:36
Day nine, go through your settings and plugins.
08:39
This is where you're going to start thinking about plugins for search engine optimization,
08:43
socialization.
08:45
Install and activate all the plugins that you think are going to be most appropriate for
08:49
affiliate marketing.
08:51
On day 10, you're going to pick a theme and professional design.
08:54
If you already have a website, this may mean looking at the current theme and seeing if
08:58
it's actually working and if not, create a new one.
09:02
The cool thing about WordPress, especially WordPress, I love them as a CMS because when
09:07
you're using WordPress, it is so easy to just click one button and change the entire look
09:11
of your website.
09:13
The only kicker is if you do change your theme, you do need to be aware that there is a chance
09:17
you're going to break some of your plugins.
09:19
I would watch a lot of your tutorials, look on WordPress.org and WordPress.com and all
09:25
those things.
09:26
They have amazing tutorials that tell you everything you need to know about everything
09:29
from starting a theme to installing a plugin.
09:33
I'll leave a bunch of links in the show notes about how you can do different things with
09:36
plugins and the best plugins for affiliate marketing and all that good stuff.
09:42
Day 10, excuse me, day 11, day 11, create the proper affiliate pages.
09:47
There are a lot of different things that can be said about what an affiliate page is.
09:52
I have seen everything from a resources page to a products I recommend page to a about
09:59
page even or even your contact page.
10:02
There are so many different pages you can use that can be your affiliate portals to
10:06
the various platforms that you are trying to send traffic to to earn commissions.
10:12
On day 12, you're going to categorize your upcoming reviews.
10:15
What I mean by that is you want to create a content calendar that lets you know, okay,
10:20
this is the content that I'm going to be putting out this week and this is what I'm going to
10:23
be talking about and here's the category it falls into.
10:26
You want to start thinking about the categories on your review site and where these subtopics
10:30
of your general topic are going to fit.
10:35
Week 3, set up your list building strategy.
10:39
During week 3, you're going to start taking the steps that are necessary to contact the
10:42
visitors to your site time and time again.
10:46
This is things like building an email list and there are several steps involved in doing
10:50
this.
10:51
On day 13, I want you to create a lead magnet that is worth subscribing for.
10:55
This is the free gift that you're going to offer your visitors in exchange for their
10:58
name and email address.
10:59
In order to build a list that actually makes you money, you want to have a lead magnet
11:03
that is irresistible.
11:05
So take time to create one that wows your audience.
11:08
On day 14, you're going to start analyzing several email autoresponders.
11:14
What I would do in this case and what I have done personally is I sign up for all the email
11:19
lists of the different websites that I follow and once you start looking at what other people
11:23
are doing, that's when you can choose which email autoresponder works best for your needs.
11:29
So for example, two that I highly recommend are MailChimp and ConvertKit and the reason
11:34
for that is you can start with them for free.
11:37
If you have less than a thousand people on your email list, which most people that are
11:41
just starting out are going to have less than that, you can actually start your account
11:44
for free.
11:45
The kicker with ConvertKit though that you don't have to worry about so much with MailChimp
11:49
is you have to have your own domain for your email address.
11:53
So instead of it just being, you know, Mike at gmail.com, it has to be Mike at myreallycoolwebsite.com
12:00
if you plan on sending emails through ConvertKit.
12:02
So that's the only thing I would recommend that you keep an eye out for is if you're
12:05
going to start with a free website or excuse me, a free autoresponder, you need to remember
12:11
that something like ConvertKit requires you have a domain email address.
12:16
On day 15, you want to sign up for one of these email autoresponders and create an actual
12:21
list.
12:22
You already have your lead magnet.
12:23
You figured out the email autoresponder you want to use and now you're going to actually
12:27
create this lead magnet that you put on your website that draws people in and gives them
12:33
a reason to sign up.
12:35
Then you create your very first email list and you give it a name.
12:38
Make sure it's identifiable by your site and your topic that you have chosen so that on
12:42
a later date if you add another topic or subtopic to your autoresponder system, you have no
12:47
problem differentiating between the two.
12:50
On day 16, you're going to write your very first email.
12:53
It's your welcome email.
12:54
Even if this is someone, excuse me, even if this is to just one person, it could even
12:59
be just to your mom, your welcome email should give a little bit of detail about how you
13:03
run your list, thank them for signing up and deliver a link to your free opt-in that you
13:07
promised.
13:10
On day 17, grab your form code from your email autoresponder and email, or excuse me, install
13:16
it into your blog.
13:17
So every single email autoresponder that is out there creates this little embed code that
13:22
you can add to your website so that if you want to start bringing people in and offering
13:26
your freebie, they can click it and add their email and then automatically receive whatever
13:32
freebie it is you're offering.
13:34
What I recommend you do on this day on day 18 is check to make sure that the embed works.
13:40
So if your welcome email includes the link to your freebie, go ahead and sign up for
13:43
your own email list and see if it actually came to you.
13:47
All right, getting into the nitty gritty, here we are in week four.
13:51
This is where you're going to put yourself on the publishing schedule.
13:54
On day 19, I want you to pick 15 tangible products that you're going to actively review.
13:59
Yes, I know 15 is a lot, but the idea is that you want to start getting into the practice
14:04
of reviewing different products and actually writing about them so you can figure out if
14:10
this is actually for you because you may determine as you're doing these reviews, you don't like
14:14
it and that's okay.
14:16
So pick 15 digital products that you plan on reviewing.
14:23
On day 20, you're going to pick 15 digital products that you're reviewing.
14:29
So similar to the tangible products, you're going to look for digital products like e-books
14:33
and courses, memberships, coaching programs, all the things that you plan on reviewing.
14:37
On day 21, I want you to plan time for research and information gathering.
14:43
This is when you're going to start thinking about all the research you need to do a proper
14:46
review on every single product that you plan on promoting.
14:50
You may determine that as you're doing this research, you don't want to talk about digital
14:53
products or you may determine you don't want to talk about tangible products, physical
14:58
products.
14:59
So think about all these things as you're going into this and figure out how much time
15:03
and research you're going to need.
15:06
On day 22, you're going to actually order these products, digital or tangible, or you
15:12
can request review copies.
15:13
Now, I will tell you that whenever you are trying to get review copies, if it is a brand
15:18
new website, you're significantly less likely to get a yes.
15:22
However, you may be surprised at the number of people who are willing to give you what's
15:25
called an audit copy of a digital product or just send you a sample of whatever product
15:31
you're wanting to talk about.
15:32
For example, if there's a lotion that you want to talk about, you could actually email
15:36
the manufacturer and say, hey, I want to do a review.
15:40
Can you please send me a sample?
15:42
Sometimes you'll get a yes.
15:43
Other times you'll get a no.
15:45
That's why it's so good to try to choose products you're already buying because then if you
15:49
already have them, it's much easier to write about them.
15:52
Okay.
15:53
We're getting close to the home stretch, guys.
15:56
Day 23, determine which reviews that you write are going to have multimedia attached to them.
16:01
What I mean by that is, are some of the products you're going to be talking about only going
16:05
to have a blog post or will some of them require images?
16:09
Will they need an unboxing video?
16:11
Maybe you need to show how to use the product, all those things.
16:15
This is when you need to decide which ones need video, images, or just text.
16:21
On day 24, I want you to create an actual editorial calendar and assign a publishing
16:25
date for each product you plan to review on your website.
16:29
I know this is a lot, but if you have chosen products from a variety of categories, assigning
16:35
a publication date will prevent you from a repetitive pattern where you only review certain
16:39
items for long stretches.
16:41
So just put it all out in a spreadsheet or on a calendar and see where you should add
16:46
these to your content strategy.
16:48
All right, week five, like I said, home stretch.
16:53
This is when you're going to get the reviews ready and start sending traffic to them.
16:58
On day 25, you're going to decide if you want to create or outsource your reviews.
17:03
I highly recommend whenever you are first getting started to write the reviews yourself.
17:07
Yes, eventually you can start outsourcing them to freelance service providers to do
17:11
the job for you, but I highly recommend, like I said, when you're first beginning, write
17:16
them yourself.
17:17
This will give you an idea of what kind of structure you're looking for on your website,
17:21
what kind of content you want to create, and it'll help you create systems and processes
17:26
for your ultimate plan of how your reviews are going to go.
17:31
On day 26, I want you to create a template for how the review should unfold.
17:36
What I mean by that is, are you going to have a cold open or are you going to have something
17:40
that really draws the reader in?
17:42
How are you going to start telling them about what it is you want to tell them about?
17:47
You need to think about the certain style that you want to impress early on in your
17:51
research, and you can weave some form of these elements throughout your own affiliate review
17:55
template.
17:58
On day 27, you're going to actually carry out the product review process.
18:03
At this time, you want to actually begin creating your product review, whether it's a tangible
18:07
product or a digital product.
18:09
You've done all the research.
18:10
You know all these things.
18:12
It should be a quick and easy job.
18:14
You may not be able to get all 15 of your tangible products done in one day.
18:18
You may not be able to get all 30 of your tangible and digital products one day, but
18:24
you need to at least get started with how to start doing your product review process.
18:29
Every affiliate is different in terms of how much content they can get done in a single
18:32
day.
18:33
The truth is, some people can do a single article in a day, whereas other people can
18:38
write 20 to 40 articles a day.
18:40
I've seen some pretty wild numbers come out, but you have to figure out how much can you
18:45
actually do.
18:46
So even if it means you only spend one day working on one article, you just need to know
18:51
how your process works.
18:53
On day 28, you're going to begin queuing up the reviews that you have written to drip
18:57
out to publish on your blog.
18:59
So you're not going to publish them all at once unless you choose to.
19:03
However, if you're just trying to get your feet wet and dip your toes in the water and
19:06
you want to have one article a day or one article a week or whatever it is, this is
19:10
when you're going to create your publication schedule.
19:13
On day 29, write emails to your list that actually share these review links.
19:20
You could create a summary of each of these articles that go into these emails, whatever
19:24
it is that you want to do.
19:25
Instead of having to wait for organic traffic to start coming in through Google, you can
19:29
start sending people there immediately to consume your information and share it on social
19:33
media.
19:34
Now, here's the thing.
19:36
When you're first starting out, if this is your very first venture into affiliate marketing,
19:40
there's a very large chance that you're not going to have that many people on your email
19:44
list.
19:45
But like Pat Flynn says, you only need a thousand true fans to be able to start making $10,000
19:51
a month.
19:52
So if you just focus on continuing to bring people into your email list, you can start
19:58
actually using that email list to monetize your audience.
20:02
So go ahead and start writing these emails so that whenever you do have more of an audience,
20:06
you can start repurposing and recirculating these emails and continue sending them out
20:11
as people continue signing up for your list.
20:14
And finally, day 30, go to applicable social networking sites and share your links.
20:19
Now, you've been writing about all this content.
20:21
You have a lot of juicy stuff that you've been sharing.
20:24
Now this is where you're going to actually start putting it onto social media sites.
20:27
This is sometimes a faster way to help your articles and your reviews go viral.
20:32
And unfortunately, the truth is we have no idea what it is that's going to make a post
20:37
go viral.
20:38
It could be something as simple as you start laughing at the middle of your video or your
20:43
dog walks in and starts barking.
20:45
Anything can cause something to go viral.
20:48
But instead what you need to focus on is just the action of getting things out there.
20:52
You want to start making a habit of taking whatever link is on your blog where you reviewed
20:56
a product and you're sharing it on Facebook and X and Instagram and TikTok and all the
21:01
things.
21:02
So hopefully this was helpful.
21:05
Hopefully you took some notes.
21:06
And if you are interested in getting this 30 day action plan actually written out for
21:11
you, I will be leaving a link in the show notes below.
21:14
But if you go to famousashleygrant.com backslash 30 days, you'll see all the game plans that
21:20
I have on my website right now for everything from affiliate marketing to how to actually
21:25
make money online.
21:26
So hopefully this was helpful.
21:28
And if you liked it, please share it with someone.
21:29
And until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate below.
Support this podcast
Get discounts when you shop.
Support The Bloggy Friends Show — for free.
Install the Donato extension once, and a share of merchant commissions from your normal online shopping goes to this podcast. No subscription, no extra cost.
You save money with automatic discounts
The podcast earns from your regular shopping
No payment info needed — ever
Takes 10 seconds · No payment required · Remove anytime