The financial return on investing in an affiliate site can be huge.
It is not crazy to think that you can make $3,000-$5,000 per month from an affiliate website.
Some make way more than that.
You can even make $3,000-$5,000 per month after an initial investment between $3,000-$5,000 on getting the site to that point.
That is a 100% monthly return on your investment!
Yes, it sounds too good to be true. And for many people it is.
But it does not have to be.
It takes the right mentality. It takes time. It takes the right strategies.
This article discusses our mentality when it comes to investing in affiliate sites.
Our mentality has two main aspects:
long-term
show-up-daily
Over time, the newsletter will discuss strategies that help increase return on investment.
This article is a follow up to our previous articles:
Long-Term Buy and Hold
Although the financial return on investing in an affiliate site can be huge, it also can be zero or anywhere in between.
Despite this wide range in possible outcomes, it is no mystery how to make affiliate investing a success.
You can read about it endlessly online, and people generally say the same things about what works and what does not.
Post high-quality content
Articles should be at least 700 words, but longer seems to be better, like 2,000-5,000 words per article
Sprinkle throughout your articles the keywords that people search for in Google
Include videos and images on your pages
Get backlinks — other websites putting links on their site to your site
Write guest posts
And many more simple things that anyone can do with a little research
It just takes the right kind of effort.
As an affiliate website investor, I think the right kind of effort is based on a mentality that is a combination of how I invest in stocks and how I exercise.
A long-term, show-up-daily mentality.
How I invest in stocks
I take a long-term, buy-and-hold approach to investing in stocks.
This means I buy shares of companies I really like and typically hold on to them for at least three years.
I have been investing in stocks on my own for over 10 years and have done my best with this strategy.
Many of the stocks in my portfolio are ones I bought before 2015 and still own.
The benefits of being a buy-and-hold investor are too many to explain in this newsletter article.
But the bottom line is that the stock market over the long term is going to go up.
Here is an example. The NASDAQ performance over its history.
Buying a diverse collection of shares of solid companies and holding on to them for a long time is going to help stack the money-making odds in your favor.
Here are stock charts for two popular stocks that could play a strong role in creating a diverse stock portfolio, Apple and Amazon.
Of course, we could look at other examples that were big failures, but it did not take an expert to predict in 2010 that Apple and Amazon were here to stay.
With a long-term investing approach, you get the benefit of compounding gains.
Compounding. When your original investment increases in value, so do your gains.
For instance, in year one if you invest $1,000 and see a 10% increase, your investment is now $1,100.
If you do not sell after year one, if you see another 10% gain in year two, the gain is 10% of $1,100 because your investment is more valuable in year two.
In this second year, you make $110. This is 10% more than your increase in year one.
That is compounding. Your increases get bigger.
Instead of a $1,000 initial investment, imagine a $10,000 or $100,000 investment over 10 or 20 years. You can make some serious cash.
Additionally, it is impossible to correctly and consistently time the market such that you sell before your stock drops and buy before a big gain.
That kind of approach is like to result in you mis-timing the market by buying high and selling low
Moreover, you do not pay taxes on your gains or transaction fees on your trades until you sell.
If you buy and sell frequently, the taxes and fees add up.
So if you have time, patience, and some extra cash, buying and holding shares of good companies for a long time is probably going to make you good money.
As an affiliate investor, my plan is to look for long-term gains rather than measure my success based on days, months, or quarters.
Like most stocks take time to appreciate into real value from the purchase date, it takes time for a website to get good traffic and to find reliable revenue streams.
It takes time because of how search engines work and because it is time-consuming to make high-quality content that drives money-making traffic.
Like with stocks, with affiliate sites you get a compounding effect.
The longer your domain exists, the more content you have ranking in Google search results, and the more backlinks you have, the quicker your new content will generate traffic and make money.
Just by generating quality content and incorporating a few SEO strategies proven to work, your traffic is going to increase over the long term, and so is the value of your domain.
As your traffic increases and domain becomes more valuable, it should become easier to drive more traffic and make more money.
Like the saying “takes money to make money”, it kind of takes traffic to make traffic. Or something like that.
Therefore, by investing in content and SEO strategies consistently over time, the benefits are compounding.
This is a big difference between stocks and affiliate sites.
The “consistently over time” part is perhaps one of the hardest but most important parts for affiliate work.
Life gets in the way, paying work can take priority, and the results from affiliate work are not immediate or short-term.
This is a big difference between investing in stocks and investing in affiliate sites.
Stocks are truly passive. You buy them. You sell them. In between, you read the news.
You cannot really impact whether the stock price will go up or by how much.
An affiliate site is not truly passive. It is more like a mix between stocks and a job. Maybe it is kind of like being a landlord.
Not only can you impact the business, you have to impact the business!
At first, running an affiliate site is like running a business. You have to put in significant work to build traffic and monetize it. It can require a full-time effort.
Once you have the traffic, the affiliate site is more passive than running a business.
Though it still does take some maintenance work, which is maybe why it is like being a landlord at this point.
Some established affiliate sites make thousands of dollars per month with little to no maintenance effort.
Like an hour a day or week to maintain the income.
As a lone wolf, it can be hard to stay motivated to build an affiliate site.
In part because usually you do not see significant financial return on your work until a year or more later.
So it feels like you are working for free, and you do not know for how long. Or whether you will ever have success.
Plus, in my case, I am the only one holding myself accountable.
This is hard when just starting out and having virtually no traffic and few subscribers.
Oftentimes it feels like I am making content for only myself to consume, which causes me to question what I am doing.
Like speaking to a room full of empty chairs.
But that will change! Just wait and see.
How I exercise
To combat the challenges around motivation and doubt, I take a just-show-up-daily approach for my affiliate work.
This is the same approach I have for exercise.
The rules for my just-show-up-daily approach for exercise is to put on exercise clothes, go outside, and have no expectations in terms of how hard I push myself.
With this approach, I exercise every day.
I just have to show up.
Sometimes that means going for a short walk.
Other times it means setting a personal best.
But if I put pressure on myself to exercise to the maximum every time, I end up exercising once a month or less, which is not what I want.
I feel my best physically and mentally when I am exercising daily.
I get the best results in my non-exercise life when I am exercising consistently, not when I am setting personal bests once a month.
Therefore, I adopted this just show-up mentality for exercising because that is what gets me the results I want and need.
I think health experts would tell you that the benefits of daily exercise has a compounding effect, too.
People who consistently exercise and eat well tend to live longer lives and suffer from less diseases.
When it comes to investing in affiliate sites, I take a just-show-up-daily mentality.
I have to show up every day by making content or working on tools for makers.
Do not be fooled. This is not an excuse to be lazy. I do not just sit in work clothes and expect success to happen.
I have a smart, well-thought-out plan. I work really hard, too.
What I mean is that it does not matter whether anyone read my last article or watched a video I made.
Or if I worked a 12-hour day or a 2-hour day.
It does not matter if I got a new subscriber or made a sale today.
I have to keep showing up daily because over the long term, people will read my work, watch my videos, and buy my products and services.
The point is that even on days when I totally lack motivation or question my direction, I show up anyway.
I write an article, make a video, or make something with code.
It does not have to be my best work everyday.
Oftentimes, it is not.
But by working daily on the money club, I get better at it. Showing up becomes more meaningful because my average level of performance increases.
Plus, it results in more content and tools that will eventually drive traffic compared to if I work on the site in fits and spurts.
I know my strategy is good. I just have to execute.
In my past attempts to build financial freedom through affiliate sites or independent businesses, this is where I have been lacking.
I gave up too soon and did not take an approach that worked on the business in this kind of way.
My other work, personal life, and personal doubts got in the way.
So my just-show-up mentality is designed to maximize execution. Because everything else is there.
In my professional life, I have proven that I can show up for others when they need me.
And my track-record is one of over-performing and exceeding expectations.
Up until now, my best work has been mostly for others.
I do the work. Most of them paid me.
Now, I need to show up for myself.
By showing up for myself, I will make my teammates stronger, my students stronger, and anyone I am working with stronger.
I strive to continue to push the people around me to exceed their potential.
This time the team is mine, and I have a different mentality.
I show up daily for myself.
The End
Okay, got kind of weird there at the end, but I hope it helps you.
Currently working on:
Flask code samples and videos
Building a quiz application for the money club
Have questions about anything? Want to get started down a similar path? Let’s do it. Reach out and say hi.