Amazon Cuts Affiliate Commissions. Does It Matter?

might be live I'm live it's up welcome miles here miles bechler calm and welcome to the video today we're gonna talk about the big-time changes that have been thrust upon us as affiliate markets by Amazon so Amazon has made some drastic changes yesterday April 14th and we're going to talk about what they are why they happen I think it's really important to understand the bird's eye view of why this happened through the lens of affiliate marketing it's gonna help you be a better affiliate marketer if you want to dominate in business you should understand the roots and the reasonings why your industries do the things they do so you're gonna learn that and possibly most important at the end I'm gonna share with you a bunch of alternatives because we are not married to them we are not handcuffed to them and honestly I don't personally believe that this is that much of a problem and in fact I expected it so we have precedent here Amazon has been known to cut their affiliate commissions before and I guarantee you they will cut their affiliate commissions again in the future it would not surprise me if they closed down their entire affiliate kind of network there their entire affiliate program at some point I don't think that's in the near future by any means but let's talk about what okay first of all what change I want to get into that because if you haven't seen the actual numbers on what has changed it's important to understand what's going on so the drop in commission percentage is between about 50 percent and sixty two and a half percent depending on what category as they call it we might call it a niche or a niche so furniture home improvement home stuff lawn and garden pets products and pantry went from 8 percent to 3 percent so 62 and a half percent reduction headphones Beauty musical instruments business industrial supplies from 6 to 3 that's a 50% reduction outdoor tools went outdoors and tools went from five and a half to three percent grocery from five to one sports from four and a half to three baby products four and a half to three health and personal care four and 1/2 to 1 Amazon fresh from 3 percent to 1 percent so they're just dropping the amount of Commission's that they're willing to pay out drastically in census now what is affiliate marketing and and why do companies use affiliate marketing so Amazon is adept at running paid ads Amazon is adept at selling things to its customers Amazon has hundreds of millions of people signed up on Prime who have said I like you I trust you I want faster shipping and I buy so much stuff from you already that I'm just gonna gonna pay you more so I can buy more things from you it's kind of a crazy proposal if you really think about it companies use affiliate marketing as a customer acquisition channel okay not always as a sale acquisition channel but as a customer acquisition channel so when a new company goes out and opens up an affiliate program here's what they want to happen they want to go find the mega influencers in their space who have gigantic audiences and who have a ton of goodwill from those audiences and they want those influencers who already have the audience's to recommend their products to promote their products and they deliver a commission in exchange for tapping into their audience the business is looking at this through the lens of what is my cost per customer acquisition that's the number that they're monitoring okay and the cost per new customer acquisition they're gonna know what a Google paid ad cost per customer acquisition is they're gonna know what a Facebook paid ad cost per customer acquisition is and they'll know what their affiliate cost per customer acquisition is they also know their lifetime value of a customer and these are the metrics that they're playing with so they have data that is actually driving these decisions so where's Amazon at in the growth curve well hundreds of millions of people are on primer at least a hundred million people I don't know the exact number to be honest with you and they really have the lion's share of the e-commerce market undoubtedly what is going on is users who are already Amazon customers who already have their credit cards tied into Amazon who want to buy something new let's go the kitchen knife example they want to buy a kitchen knife they already know that they're gonna buy from Amazon they may already know they just don't know which one they're gonna buy so they're facing a form of decision fatigue and the decision fatigue is not what Reach hailer Who am I gonna trust with my credit card Who am I gonna trust to actually get the product to me they already believe that's Amazon okay what their question is which knife do I choose there's so many options I don't know so they go to Google and back in the day they went to Google and they found actual authoritative individuals they found actual experts in the real chef's but what's gone on is there's a bunch of people who are building kind of rubbish sites with kind of rubbish content and kind of rubbish backlinks that kind of rank and these people are now getting the attribution for the sale and Amazon's watching this clearly the Amazons also watching how many products are added to every single order so in my data from the last 30 days within my affiliate marketing case study site 1,900 individual products have sold I generated 270 sales let me let me restate this another way because these numbers are gonna bring some perspective at what's going on I brought to the table 270 sales I initiated 270 sales okay 270 product links of mine from my site got clicks but yet I sold 1,900 individual items so Amazon brought like 15 or 1,700 unique products to the table okay that got attributed to me that I earned commission on I've seen crazy things except I sold the laptop there's nothing resembling a laptop for sale promoted on my affiliate site at all I sold a freaking laptop like a $700 laptop and I got a commission on that and I don't know where I can't even attribute that back to a click I have no idea what that person clicked on but they ended up buying a laptop and I got the attribution for that so this is what Amazon's realizing is that there's a lot of affiliates out there kind of bulk cookie dropping by putting up these kind of pseudo rubbish review sites and Amazon is paying Commission's on sales that Amazon probably would have got anyways that's why the game is changing and eventually Amazon's gonna think at the numbers and be like we don't need new customers from them anymore we need to just work on our user experience and our our UI and our UX and we need to make it easier for our customers to make better decisions more quickly on our site and we don't really need these affiliates out there now is there still room for affiliate marketing because here's the other side of it so if affiliate marketing is a customer acquisition channel and if you have a website in a specific niche that has a lot of traffic and has built trust do you think there's other companies that would love to incentivize you to bring new customers there direction instead of Amazon's direction of course you would and that is what we have to do here if you were concerned about it right that is the being resourceful side of this thing that is the constant evolution so let's go back to my story I started making money online in 2003 on a website called MySpace that you may or may not have ever heard about or used well I was making about thirty five hundred four thousand dollars per month commissions I thought I was doing pretty good in this world and overnight without warning my income went to zero they literally shut me down to zero overnight no warning this is a part of the game an honest truth of that and it hurt like our girl is stung for sure I was bitter for sure it made me a better marketer I learned more from that failed business adventure about owning the racecourse about owning the traffic about building a list about really truly being the search person for my audience okay like I want you guys to search when you search YouTube and you're like man I gotta learn this SEO thing I don't want you to go look SEO and find my video although you will I want you to search miles back there sto because you trust my brand that much that's when I have one and that realization comes from when all those platform when that platform turned me off and when my income went down to zero because had I been building a brand and I've been building an audience had I been owning that relationship with that audience myself I would have overcome that and survived that easy totally easy so that's what I really learned from that experience and I do think that it it made me a better marketer long-term it forced me into a better affiliate marketer and ultimately I think this is going to force a lot of people into becoming more committed to helping their audience because what's really happening is people are freaking out be like oh my gosh I'm gonna need where's my money coming from where's my money coming from and the ultimate truth is when you build an affiliate website when you commit to this game you're committing to being the most helpful person for your audience in that world and if that means you take less Commission's because this is absolutely the best one and this is really truly what they need that's ethics that's what that's having integrity in your business and that's how you're going to win long-term now can you find the same product on a different place that has a higher Commission possibly are they going to go search for that product on Amazon themselves because they're already a prime number they might are they gonna price compare it between different locations they might can you do that price comparison for them between the different vendors and let them choose which vendor they want you absolutely can do this and we're coming right back to that whole be resourceful the world of affiliate marketing the world of building digital businesses online brands is gonna be around forever like it's it's a beautiful business model but you just have to realize there's a bell curve to it and companies that want to accelerate their new customer growth through affiliate marketing are going to incentivize you and companies that are like me we got enough customers I'm we are delayed on how often we're shipping out products like like we are no longer hitting our two-day turnaround time our one-day turnaround we're now five and 10 days out they clearly don't need more customers they're clearly at capacity everywhere and they're worried about their the health of their people right so all of this is going on in the world and this is probably going to be one of the best opportunities because two things are about to happen number one the weekends are getting shook out the people who really truly aren't committed to the audience who really truly aren't committed to the long-term work of building a real business being of service to others they're gonna disappear they're gonna throw their hands up make this stuff guys didn't work and they're gonna go binge watch Netflix and they're gonna drink booze they're gonna smoke weed they're gonna mood alter themselves bye-bye and then the people who are fired up are going to capture more market share than ever before because they realize I can just be of service to my audience and that's what it's all about is being of service to my audience and I really think that as you realize you got to grow up email list you got to grow a brand you've got to be a truly trusted individual that is the magical point here so I am going to get into the comments I see a bunch of comments coming back fourth so James help said miles do you think that these other companies would love to bypass Amazon and estate establish relationships with you for sure amazon takes a huge cut so personally my user behavior in buying things I go look at Amazon I am price checking now so I found some workout equipment that I bought was like $30 cheaper per unit he was looking like $120 thing $30 - so that's like forty thirty percent twenty to thirty percent thirty dollars cheaper per unit on Walmart also with two-day delivery target we've been look at the target man targets infrastructure their delivery their two-day turnaround time targets on top of it everything is a little wonky right now due to the overwhelming and the state of our current affairs but like targets online experience is fantastic and then you get to the microsite so there's a lot of people who are selling through Amazon and you'll be on their product page one of them I can think of I don't remember the name of it it was a joiner it's like a pocket joiner it's a blue pocket joiner woodworking stuff and I wanted to get one so I'm looking and I can see on Amazon that is it's sold by them their actual brand name the same company name and well let me go look at their website right cuz I know they're paying Amazon ten percent for for that sale um they did not have a better price on their website and they had like ten day shipping and amazon said they'll get it to me in three days so I bought that through Amazon but I think a lot of people are already starting to look at the other options so we as affiliates have an opportunity to educate to help to to save our audience members money through these other programs so let's jump in I want to talk about some of the other companies that are available because the options are amazing what's happening is is the easy loophole is getting soda is what's really happening and people are crying because the easy loophole is getting closed like this is normal at least you have seven days to replace the links I got zero warning at least if you do nothing you're still gonna keep 50% or so of your income I link to zero and I had to start over from zero again it was pretty rough it was a rough day in the world of miles back there but survived it made me stronger and this will make you stronger so where can you go to from here so the big stores directly are a great option Target Walmart if you're in the books world there's bookshop gorg they do 10% affiliate commissions and they actually help bring money back to local stores I've seen rumors in the VC world I have a friend who runs a very successful VC he's very very successful he's on Forbes as Midas list and there are new platforms that are trying to essentially compete with Amazon but all of the products are sourced from small local businesses because Amazon is kind of devouring the local businesses so there's new things emerging but Target Walmart bookshop org if you're in the electronics world Newegg has a bunch of products that are available B&H photo video if you're in the photography space oh my gosh B&H photo video is incredible so I'm gonna tell you they have a 2 percent Commission's startup so Amazon is already higher in most of those categories that they overlap then B&H photo video this is very competitive stuff and we're working a lot of times with products that have very very thin margins and Amazon has been known for a very long time to be losing money hand over fist for customer acquisition there comes a point in time when they got to stop losing money they got to start making money because the company needs to be able to stand on its own two feet overstock.com and then you give them things like Etsy right which is like a platform of the eBay platform so the world you can go find the individual items on Etsy so here's a quick affiliate story my wife is she's really into crystal crystal jewelry and we promote some affiliates as we promote some products as affiliates as for crystal jewelry and there's a very very specific stone that she really likes it's it's rare it's not super expensive rare it's not super Jemmy so it's not like a really high-end stone but it's just hard to find like very few people have it and not many people make it into jewelry so she found on Etsy a company that had that and she started doing sales and she essentially sold them out of their Etsy store of this specific item well they reached out to her and said hey do you want to work with us directly through art we can give you cuz I think Etsy was 5 to 7 maybe 5 to 8 percent commission don't quote me on that by any means it was sub 10 percent commissions you know like hey if you want to work directly together we'll give you fifteen percent commission boom my wife has sold them out every time they come back in they send her an email be like hey we've got it in stock again and my wife sends out an email and they're sold out like that and we make a couple of grand um why did that happen that happened because my wife didn't care what the Commission was my wife cared about her audience my wife cared about sharing that thing hey she's been building an audience for 10 years she's connected with tens of millions of people through her website she's built trust she has a hundred and some 1000 subscribers on her email list and she shares what she loves this is affiliate marketing done right look at the Wellness Mama for goodness sake if you don't understand how this game is supposed to work and she was just like hey I love this I wear it because I think it I believe it protects from PMS and and I love the look and it's one of my favorite like energy protection stones if you would like one yourself you can go get them here boom fly off the shelves and now we're making even more money but it happened because my wife just started she just started promoting wherever however she could with whatever percentage was there because it was the right thing to do for her audience okay and then things took some turns and and emails happening exchanged and who are you how did you generate $3,000 in sales overnight like what is this affiliate managers are looking out for the 1% now I started an affiliate program for a company for a desk job a commuter job that I had my last actual commuter job I started a affiliate program we grew it to about a quarter million dollars in additional revenue for them within about eight or nine months and my job as affiliate manager was to go find those influencers who could actually move units and what happens in an affiliate program is 95% to 99% of affiliates do nothing they ask stupid questions they break your rules they bid on phrases they shouldn't bid on they are writing spammy content they're publishing spammy websites they are an absolute problem for the brand absolute problem 95% plus of affiliates are a problem for the brand they are a drain of brand value and resources the other 2% maybe 1% to 5% that's where all the sales are coming from and generally within any affiliate program there's gonna be like a handful of people that are making all of that happen so when I was doing that one affiliate program hundreds and hundreds of different affiliates signed up some sent traffic some didn't there were like three or four people who were literally driving all of those sales and that's the goal as an affiliate manager is like how do I weed out all of the people and find those who work I'm event link which we're gonna talk about some networks here next month link is the network that they've got REI outdoor or backcountry comm they've got a bunch of great retailers they're well-known they decline eighty percent of affiliates who apply to them because they know those eighty percent are going to be a headache and they only allow in twenty percent so if you're in the the camping the backpacking the knife the hunting the bushcraft any of that kind of space even clothing and fashion if it goes in the direction of like outdoor stuff like cold weather stuff snowboarding gear ski gear etc event link calm is absolutely amazing that's who we ran our program through probably one of the best in the game other networks would be ShareASale shares hell we make a lot of money with share sales selling everything from physical products to digital products Rakuten which is the old link share program terrible interface but it works CJ which is the old commission junction again pretty bad interface but they work you can connect with thousands of different stores through these things affiliate window is one that's in the in the UK but then really there's millions of I mean hundreds of thousands at least of little one-off stores swim outlet calm yoga outlet calm these are big startups in the San Francisco Bay Area they're amazing with logistics they have wonderful stall software and they sell the bejesus out of board shorts and bikinis and yoga stuff and yoga mats and yoga rolls and I think they pay up to 10% commissions so this if you watched my last video which was the affiliate marketing training like the most important thing I said in the beginning was be resourceful and this is just a beautiful example and the timing was perfect for me to remind you that your job is to be resourceful there's no such thing as passive income there's no website you're gonna build it once it's gonna be done and you just get to kick back and you do nothing and you just get to binge Netflix or do nothing or whatever it is you want to do and the website just grows and grows and grows forever it's never gonna happen because platforms go through these s-curves platforms change their algorithms the pandas the Penguins they like there's things are always shifting from where our traffic source comes from and then vendors are always it's the who Moo my cheese concept right it's that kind of like we are playing in an ever-changing field and that's great I love it that to me just means the game is very challenging and it means the bar is relatively high for new people to get over right the hurdle it takes a bit it takes a willingness to not only learn what's working now but you kind of got to keep a little bit of an eye and an ear out for from where it's all going because theoretically you want to be ahead of these changes and not behind these changes so really I think for the niche in-house programs there are a ton of options available and I think more and more people would love to know on your review site if you have one what's the best made in USA direct consumer option for everything that you list could you go find that individual company could you go sign up for their affiliate program could you go get all of it tied in and start to add that kind of content in there for that consumer for that kind of sub segment of your audience who cares that this is not rubbish plastic made in a toxic plant in China this is like handcrafted in the US it's going to last longer it's going to help the local economy here in the US or the UK or wherever you happen to be is it more work yeah but that's what we do when you sign up as a when you sign up to be an entrepreneur you're signing up to do more work than someone who goes to a desk job if you want easy just do desk job stuff do simple work that you don't don't run a business like that's the hard way right we as entrepreneurs have committed to taking the hard path we work more hours than people who have jobs right we have the potential to make a lot more than they ever could and that's the the risk reward right we risk more time we risk it maybe not working out and the potential reward can be a 7-figure of your business by the way that's eighty three thousand dollars three hundred thirty three thousand dollars and 33 cents per month and that's possible if we go out on our own and we risk it and we really figure out how to be the most helpful person for our people it's not possible from a desk job from a commuter job maybe there's one job or three that can get to that level but for most people it's it's not very possible so those niche in-house programs how do you find them number one you need to be you need to know who's the dominant players in your space right so if you're in the woodworking category you know exactly who I'm talking about when I mention this pocket drilling pocket whole thing right you need to know who they are and you should be looking at their websites and you should be searching their domain , affiliate right so you can search site : their domain , affiliate and if they don't have the affiliate link in their footer which most of them do so you just go to the website and scroll down at the bottom look in the footer most of them are gonna have it there but if they don't you can just start to search with their URL , affiliate their brand , affiliate this is what I call being resourceful and that's what it takes right and ultimately are you gonna have a big old spreadsheet with dozens of affiliate programs with your login and all this information or you gonna have to use pretty links to manage all of those links and keep checking up on the links so if an affiliate program changes and Terms change and this that happen yep that's the job it's just not as easy as relying on one vendor but when you're relying on one vendor you don't have a real business you don't have a business that is dynamic or diverse enough to overcome this kind of stuff how do you build a more dynamic or diverse business put in the work that's what we have to do and that that's what we've been doing for a very long time so when these kinds of changes inevitably happen when Facebook organic just completely stops and we go from hundreds of thousands of visits for a month down to nothing okay figured that was coming at some point I saw myspace go from hero to zero figured Facebook would to instagrams gonna go the same exact way Pinterest will go the exact same way at some point I'm getting in and getting what I can while the getting's good but I know that that's all gonna change at some point and I'm always kind of just mentally ready for that and when it does I'll freak out I keep my head cool okay where is user attention going to be how can this be a value add to my business right searching for the silver linings being an optimist how can this experience be the greatest thing for your business ever and the answer to that is it gives you an opportunity to really step up and create more value and be more helpful to your audience and it's probably gonna shake out some of your competitors so that's really the main keys here of what I've got the model of building an affiliate site in a space you don't really care about a thing you don't really know about to write rubbish content because you know you need words on a page to then promote products don't know anything about you didn't actually research you just literally wouldn't grab products you're not adding any value anywhere and this model this loophole we'll call it has definitely been working for a while if you've tried to search for the best electric lawnmower or best anything you'll notice there's one standardized template and a lot of it has absolutely terrible content and I do not trust the recommendations from most of them and that's what's going on we've we've painted ourselves into this corner affiliate marketers well-done marketers ruin everything and that's where we are today but within this world there are brands that are dominating like and I'm gonna do a video here soon so if you haven't subscribed yet subscribe so you have a video that's gonna review I figured out like 13 or so affiliate sites I'm gonna review I'm gonna show you the actual sites we're gonna go onto them really gonna dig into each one of them swim university is a brilliant site no backlinks ever built to that website very very educational dominates 4 million plus visits a month in peak season on that right so there's modern castle as another one that's just like modern castle has built themselves as a brand of in the world of smart home stuff and vacuums and this that and when someone who already found the brand knows the brand thinks you know what I think I'm gonna get the ring but do I want the ring or do I want the other brand let me go see what modern castle says about it that's when they've won they're not just hoping they get traffic from they're building a brand that can be trusted so their users come back they own that users trust is not Amazon who just owns that users trust and the day that they say excuse me that this vendor over here is actually a better deal right if they say hey you can get it on Amazon Prime for sure but you're paid 197 if you go direct to the company you can get it for 174 click here who's not gonna click through to the vendor and go direct to vendor they save 10 percent they might be getting a better Commission right the the vendor 'sons saves 10 percent which would be the Amazon fee and they might be willing to pay out a higher Commission because that vendor might want more direct consumer because that vendor might want to relieve themselves from an utter reliance on Amazon as the big business in the space and we who have built brands with trust and traffic can potentially facility for people so this is the the big idea essentially that were that we're at I still think this business model is brilliant I think it's as brilliant today as it ever will be the game is definitely continuing to get more difficult but that has never changed there's never been a point since when I started that it got easier by any means attention shifted new methods came out new gurus come and they go and they come and they go and I come and I go my goodness the truth is those who have built brands that are 100% committed to the value of their audience are doing wonderfully right now and they're doing great so so that should really be the core philosophy and the core focus and monetization right the ATM audience trust monetize cover that process that's my process affiliate marketing is a monetization Channel you should have multiple monetization channels Amazon is a vendor within a monetization channel you should have multiple vendors within your monetization channel so not only should you have several several several streams of income but under each one like your affiliate marketing income stream there should be many vendors and this is how you build a dynamic business that can survive these types of things and welcome to the world of active business building the same passive because if you're passively just gonna sit back and let this happen your passive income is about to get a 50% haircut and at some point you got to get back to work and I'd rather just stay ahead of it versus doing nothing and waiting for my income to get so low I had to do something that's just ridiculous to me to even think about but that's where most people are so I'm gonna jump in the in the comments and the chats on this man 250 people on so I want to answer questions I've got 30 minutes left to jump into questions so if you've enjoyed the brain dem of the key ideas awesome thanks for being here give me a thumbs up on your way out if you want to get your questions answered get those questions going inside of the live chat survey NYC is it better to start a brand or become an affiliate again brand is you affiliate is a monetization channel okay like you're just if you want to build a successful business that will literally support you in the lifestyle you want to live to buy houses to pay taxes to be an adult to raise children to put them through college to retire yourself at some point with money so you're not reliant on social secur damn well bid or build a brand because affiliate might disappear completely right so you need to build something that that has the potential of reaching touching the lives of millions of people if you want to earn tens of thousands of dollars you are on a million bucks in ten years which is essentially ten grand a month for the next ten years it's not a ridiculous amount of money if you really think about it you better be reaching millions of people with your content and you better be affecting them positively and moving them is is what's going on so I'm gonna kind of scroll around here and welcome everybody I appreciate having you all in here if you like these lives hit that thumbs up for me to let me know essentially if I have more thumbs up on this video than the one I did last I'll do more lives and if I don't then I probably won't do more lives so that's kind of like I use that as my metric of should I do this again mr. Wu is saying remember when we used to make 8% from Amazon affiliate I think they call it the associates program back then and I do and this is this has been something we've all seen coming let's get down just I'm just getting to the point where the questions come in so mr. Wu would they cut the rates and not scope out the add-on items if this was their actual concern okay yeah there's a little bit of content in there yeah a disabled veteran noises myspace memories haha good old days when you get hack other people's pages by inserting HTML in the comments what a what a show that was that website was like yeah that was awesome good times okay question Daniel thank you for putting question all caps it helps me see it relatively quickly here so thank you for Laval you would I update existing pages or create new pages with different affiliate programs that's a brilliant question so big picture strategy K I want to give you something so you always know the answer if the reasoning behind it changes you never you really two things you want to do as rarely as possible number one have to change a URL google has indexed a specific URL so if you have four slash best kitchen knives for lefty and that's ranking and you go start a new URL and a new page for that that can be a big-time problem you run the risk of confusing Google Google's like well I don't know which one to show I was showing that one but now they put this one up this one's newer it's what does Google do confuse Google does nothing you can 301 redirect it if you want but you all you want to minimize that you don't want to use 301 redirects haphazardly or uselessly so absolutely go into your old content and update it and while you're there read through it is it great can you make it better so if you go into your best kitchen knives for left-handed people and you're gonna add some Walmart links and some target links because a lot of your customers trust those brands more than Amazon or they prefer those brands over Amazon there is a segment there um read your lead is it great are you connecting with them like is the title awesome you can so take some time to actually work with your content as you go update this and then you can republish it as new so you can republished the same post the same URL just set the publish date to yesterday and it'll move to the top of your blog role that'll send a ping for your RSS feed through your sitemap to Google say hey this thing just updated Google is gonna reread it see it's got a new updated title it's got 300 new words of content that you switch some things around and Google's gonna say hey they're working on their site they're improving it they're not passive income' do-nothing people they're actually improving it let me leapfrog them over the people who haven't touched their blog post in this space for a very long time I'm extremely generalizing here but boy it's worked for us I mean we get millions of clicks because we do take that approach whistles whistle whistles when your traffic justifies monetizing it is it worth joining Amazon affiliates at all or look elsewhere and get creative I mean it always makes sense right like like do you want options as a consumer do you personally buy things from Amazon do you personally buy things from any of those other companies that I listed off like do you commonly go to overstock or Etsy or Walmart calm or Target calm if your answer personally is no I don't go there I'm not an Amazon Prime I just click and buy from there like probably good to put yourself in the shoes of your audience member things that they might be there even if you're not so yeah absolutely it makes sense I mean so my affiliate site we cross the four thousand dollars in 30 day mark so so cheers to the team so we're now it's brought in $4,000 in the last 30 days which means if assuming I'm in 50% haircut range because I don't know where all my stuff falls to be perfectly honest with you it's kind of it's it's a quite we don't know I'll know in seven days um so he goes down to 2,000 and I'm still on pace to make my $3,000 per month like my name is shake my nose at to grant lightens that's and mortgages right there cool so I'm gonna go down but yeah I think it is very valuable beta 2 alpha C&C member in the house good to have you here so true focusing on value but what about a hybrid affiliate program multiple affiliate sources for physical and digital products plus adding your own digital products David that at that point David you have a very dynamic very diverse and very stable business in the long term Carroll Bach this will be this will be recorded your kids going mad go take care of the kids that's awesome let's see here yeah Justin knows about swimming university for sure he's a he's a pretty smart dude Matt Matt is hey Justin please pretty smart dude is it worth it if you need to spread across multiple networks for example you buy kitchen I have them make compassion tables from a few stores that's it right a comparison table that says this same knife is 93 dollars at Amazon 72 dollars at Target $35 like people are gonna be the wow this is super helpful I'm gonna click on the less expensive one and there's plugins that do that those plugins will slow down your website so be cautious of that but that's possible that's fantastic and Tanisha says it capitalizes on people who want to avoid using Amazon great stuff and there is a huge movement in this direction and there's how many Shopify stores that all pretty much have affiliate plugins going on like that it's it's a really really really powerful opportunity a fish and dive Hawaii what's going on Aloha from Oahu so yeah Amazon's dropping their Commission percentages for people and it's not that big of a deal it is normal let me get down here so I Dario says how can I build SEO silos that are focused on the destinations that you'll be promoting as a so like let's say you have a destination like the ultimate guide to traveling to Spain and then you could have packing guides for Spain weather guides for Spain best Botanical Gardens in Spain like there's all those sub things right and they all kind of support that idea of Spain if you will so very quickly what's my take on lifestyle versus starting a startup so me I'm all about a lifestyle brand like I've I like my brands my websites to be funded by my customers by my audience members in a way that allow me to live a lifestyle I want to live I never want investment money I will never consider taking on investment money it just messes with a lifestyle way too much that thought of growth at all costs and maybe we can monetize it later but let's get another affiliate check or another VC check so I was at hustle con in Oakland several years ago and one of the keynote speakers is on stage and he's talking about how he reduced his burn rate to $30,000 a month which means essentially his company is losing 30 grand a month and I was making over 30 grand a month at that point significant I'm like wait a minute like this dudes on stage bragging about how he's losing 30 grand a month and this is like a big deal for people to talk about and I'm just like some dude in the audience who's making significantly more than like this it just was like what are these people doing and his company went out of business since then and so most startups do and that's just what it is so I Bram Abraham so you started your website and the last video said go with Amazon for up after the 60th post any change I don't think so like you can find other programs but just be resourceful was the key out of that biggest mug ever yeah somebody caught on for extra life I like big mugs and I cannot lie so caner says I want to create an affiliate website like wirecutter is it possible by yourself or with two or three virtual assistants do you need a team so you got to remember look so go use the archive org which is the web archive and go look at what wire cutters started as okay look at the first month the wire cutter was every published ever publish and look at those and go month by month through the history of wire cutter and you're gonna see absolutely can you create what they have now published on your owner with EAS absolutely not but they didn't create what they have now published right it's been an evolution always look at people's beginnings my channel right if you're like oh my god I want to do a YouTube channel miles got hundred thirty thousand subscribers look how many live streams you thought I'm gonna do that great go look at my first videos and look how bad it was because that's what you'll see is all of these websites and brands and platforms that are dominating today they all come from very humble beginnings you'll also notice that wire cutter is a very old website so if you want to build what wire cutter looks like today be prepared to go on that journey if wire cutter started 13 years ago be prepared to do a 13 year journey on that website and I would say be sure you love what you're talking about in that world brands are will create through them yep for sure let's see here I'm just looking for more questions question I dare you oh we got that one yes please do more live Sadie alright great to hear saitec was looking at their their myspace profile on the wayback machine that's awesome what are the recommend what other affiliate programs would I recommend for those just starting I covered that in a video if you missed that point if you tuned in late just re-watch the video once you're done is this the end of MFA contents with thin content NFA sites with thin content is not made for Amazon I'm guessing what it is I sure hope so cuz god those sites suck and the market is self-correcting and if your content sucks if your website sucks you know it like just don't stop kidding yourself like rubbish content written by rubbish writers that's cheap sucks you're not adding value to anybody go away play games start a brand on something you care about something that you're willing to do the work to put up better content I'm flying me to say great content cuz maybe you can't put out great content yet great that's where I was when I start my youtube channel I was incapable of putting out great content today the last video I put up this one I feel like I'm putting a pretty damn good con I don't think it's great yet right there's quality things I can do motion shots and fans like I ain't even great yet 600 videos in so so just kind of like yeah there's that there Russian Prince I want to start an Amazon site now and work with it till it makes you at least 1k to 2k and then you want to sell it so cool you might be able to get there faster if you diversified beyond Amazon but um good on you so Nigel how often do I update my pages as often as necessary and do I always ensure you rank first page on Google for keywords and move on to others no so I really don't have much control in one of my past videos somewhere so my affiliate marketing case study site this made is making four grand per month in less than eleven months it's got something like 91 posts on it out of those 91 posts four of them are attributing the over half of the traffic and four not the same four actually are attributing for over half of the revenue so I had to do 91 things I don't know what's gonna rank it's the shotgun SEO method if you want a video I have a video on it to search shotgun SEO method so I put up a bunch of work the best stuff we can and out of that Google starts to pick up a few things I notice it in search console starts to show up in the search console in impressions and then I go back in and rework with those ones so I'm usually looking in search console at what is starting to get more and more impressions what is increasing what keyword phrases or queries they call them or what URLs are starting to get more impressions and more traffic that's a leading indicator that Google thinks the content on that page might be valuable for Google users and then I go back into that content and I improve it I've improved certain posts three four or five times right if you really go all the way to title tags or title and thumbnails some of them I've I've improved I mean just it's it's a never-ending like it's just it's never-ending a website is never finished it's a constantly evolving living thing that should always be improved upon and the moment you stop is when Google's looking at those who are improving upon it as probably higher and more valuable or higher and more valuable for Google's users okay that's why passive doesn't work that's why everybody who says passive income they're actively publishing they're actively doing the work they sell you alive but they do the work so just watch what people do not what they say survey NYC I answered it your that's all right sue somebody's going in timeout sorry yo but it had to happen so should you create three to six different posts around the same topic one post per keyword each post will have a different intent adjective keyword is it um intent one topic okay so generally a keyword is a topic so you don't want to cannibalize your content so you don't best left-handed chef knives best left-handed chef knife best left-handed chef knife but you get a best left-handed paring knife best level left-handed santoku knife best left-handed utility knife best left-handed knife set okay so those are different things so you just need to think relevance is it actually a different thing Nigel Lancelot what is a good copywriting course Nigel if you go to my website Myles Beckler calm on the top navigation there's a button that says resources when you click on that there's a grid of all of my recommendations categorized super and we spent call my team and I spent two months building that out it is in there's free courses and paid courses in there there's books in there but I have a whole copywriting sub page in there so go find it there and you'll figure it out so gee Sal how would you travel how would you niche down in the travel niche so you could do one bag right people who want to go one bag and that's it there's ultralight carry-on there's a heavy travelers travelers with amenities there's ultralight business travel for women would be another one just you just gotta kind of like think about it and there's there's a lot of options do I recommend writing your own blog post or hire someone if money allows if you're really good at writing if you can communicate and give value to other people through the written word go for it if your time is too valuable and/or you're not able to actually deliver value to other people who the written word find someone who can or start a YouTube channel this guy doesn't do really well with written content or didn't I'm better now than I was writing all my emails actually so I just started talking about on YouTube because I can kind of communicate in this medium better shushant dr. shushant sharma when you're launching an app would you say it's better to build an audience first with a blog yes and then launch it to your audience yes or find a Vail affiliates and give them a percent to launched you know affiliates going to trust you they don't that it converts you don't even know that it converts you don't know how well your your page converts any affiliate program it's actually gonna work you have to have an offer that converts if you're testing through affiliate traffic they're gonna try it they're gonna send you traffic leapin this doesn't work I'm never sending them traffic again I have a list this long of digital marketing affiliate programs that I've sent content sent traffic to they did not convert I will not promote them again unless they happen to be the only product that serves that or the only course that does that and they're they're just that good but if there's options in the marketplace if they don't convert they may get removed so you always want to build the audience first Louie if I lost all my sites and my youtube channel to gay how long would it take me to get back to about 10k per month so when I started the YouTube channel it took me nine months to get to 10k per month I bet I could do it in two or three depends on what I was willing to do for that money and how bad I needed that ten grand per month um I could start consulting right now I could sell hours I could do $1,000 hours I can sell ten of those and I make 10 grand I could easily find 10 people that pay me 10 to 10 people who pay me $1,000 a month for one alone consulting and I would just show up and consult and and that would be ten grand a month I just don't want to do that I wouldn't enjoy that I don't like that and I don't need it so I wouldn't but I would build an audience of people who I could help and then I would help them is the ultimate truth on that so it depends on like how many skills you have like what can you help people with like how valuable are you of a being like are you are you a traitor who has a system that you are just making twenty percent return month over month every month and you're just dominating like if you are you could probably find a few people to pay $2,500 a month to coach them for people at 2,500 bucks you're at your ten grand a month mark how long does it take you to find and meet those four people theoretically it could be a few months I guess how would I know got that one what I think about the CBD oil Mitch there's going to be challenges in that niche because federally I think CBD oil might be there's just you're in a weird legal gray area which means that one piece of legislation changes one presidential change one person changes their minds who's in a place of power and your business could go to zero and I don't like being in situations where other people hold that kind of power over me I love CBD oils I think they're great they helped my mom when she was going through cancer immensely so so that's my caveat to it but um as far as a marketer it's kind of tough that's awesome people getting sidetracked on the wayback machine in my space eric Niaga what's my biggest best Nuggets for a blogger beginner - most experienced from Kenya I'm stick with stick with it for three to five years and just pour your heart and soul into it to your audience for three to five years it'll be amazing how to create a social media site like Facebook I don't know why you would want to try Rick is already on Facebook we have a business it's already ranking in Google because of our original name first of all if you have an Amazon question type all-caps amazon question because the goal of this video has 100% been to look at and talk about the changes that Amazon is thrusting upon us and these are normal they're gonna thrust more changes upon you Walmart will be changing their affiliate program in the future target is gonna change their affiliate program in the future everyone is going to continue to evolve based on the metrics in their business and based on where they are on the business cycle so this is to be expected but if you have specific questions about these Amazon changes all caps Amazon question all caps and I'm going to scroll through I will answer all of those before we're off here yeah nothing is passive that's for sure can I give you a suggestion for a brand name in the massage niche please no it doesn't matter make up the brand is whatever you make it Pepsi meant nothing until some people decided to go all in on that name and make it the second best beverage in the world and they've done successfully at second best how do you capture emails on a product review page for example hi muscle diet review so Louis you I would create a like a food a meal plan for high muscle diets and I would say hey do you want the seven day meal plan click here and get it that's off the top of my head there's always a way to come up with it you just gotta again be resourceful that's kind of the biggest thing what do I think about the banking blog niche right now I mean there's been some gigantic companies getting bought nerd wallet sold for a massive amount the the fi re movement there's so many bloggers in the fi re movement yeah there's there's tons of data point that says it's extremely lucrative what's my opinion on network marketing it is substandard to affiliate marketing because again someone holds power over you at all times also the goal of network marketing is to get you to convince non entrepreneurs non marketers to become entrepreneurs and marketers and has somebody who teaches marketing here I can tell you that's the most difficult thing in the world and three never get three who get three ever it's like you and everybody says no and your family's like oh you're crazy and there's a huge stigma attached to it I'd much rather just kind of work on my computer from anywhere and build something that's of value to millions of people and I feel like it is I do feel like it's simpler and last note you often get way better margins if you think 3% Commission is bad on Amazon go look at what network marketers get on their freakin fancy protein shakes or whatever it is or something they might get 1% until they're super gold eagle diamond Dowell shiny Sparkle gold diamond owl Sparkle because once you reach that level then you make ten percent Commission's and it's just I'm not for me works for some people though other than affiliate what type of business do you suggest being of service to an audience affiliate marketing can be a monetization so the way I look at it survey I see is I run a digital media company that's it my wife and I run a digital media company that has multiple brands in different niches right meditation and spirituality bran there's the digital marketing brand and we have others okay so the goal is the digital media business is to bubble it publish digital content that connects with our audience that helps our audience and build goodwill and brand then I build email lists and then I offer them things that they want to buy how do I know what they want to buy I often ask them hey what do you want to buy and I ask them a little bit more cleanly than that it's what's your number one biggest challenge with affiliate marketing and I set up a survey and they answer and I go through and I'm like oh my gosh I know exactly what these people want and I can either create it for them I can offer it to them I can find somebody else who's created it and sell it as an affiliate etc etc Jordan Wadley putting together a blog site now for the importance of listening in relationship any suggestion on niching down further and affiliate products we sold with it so no just start right let the path appear where you're gonna go it will evolve so you'll probably find your niching down through doing the work you'll find things that just get picked up and they they resonate and they work as far as affiliate program I don't know like a personal development there's books right there's tons books there's yeah I would serve books book reviews is an interesting option that you might be able to be there fizzle says they need us we don't need them I love it I love it Amazon question Thank You Phil Java you're in the tools niche you went from 8 to 3 but does it matter like honestly it doesn't so if you go out and you get 100 percent more traffic you're you're I guess it would be one hundred twenty seven hundred three percent more traffic you're there but but where else do people buy so I'm T well ok don't want to guarantee it but just Home Depot have an affiliate program I think they do does Lowe's have an affiliate program I think they do are there other companies in the tool world that have affiliate programs absolutely undoubtedly of course so so that's that's the other option so it's kind of like you can play the game at both ends if you will and if you just continue to be like the best most helpful tool guy people are just gonna trust you no matter what you say if you're like hey you can get this on Amazon but you pay more but if you over here to Home Depot is the same thing and you get it for cheaper thing like oh my god I love you man that's why I come to you you're my man and they click and they buy and you make your Commission that way so so there's always a way to kind of tweak it can you make good money with them absolutely there's there's affiliates out there making a hundred thousand dollars a month with Amazon stuff and they will continue to make a hundred thousand dollars a month they've been at it a long time they drive an insane amount of traffic they run incredibly big robust successful businesses and they absolutely will continue to make a ton of money will people make more money as a family moreover they leave it some some will go both directions for sure someone who's tried most of em lambs I'm absolutely right thanks Tanisha I'm recovering opportunity seeker I have been in MLM that have shut down on me I built teams and they literally they closed it they just shut down shop I was in another one that one of the people who was at the very top they were making a million a month or a million a year either way lots of multiple commas in what they were making regardless of the timeframe they promoted something else and the company closed their account and literally turned like the the Home Office was like you're done you're no longer a part of our company you're out and booted him and like it was like oh like that's like relying on a corporation as an employee right the corporation you just go yeah pink slip you're done and I can't I can't let my life ever have someone holding that much control Amazon question from Nigel do I think this will affect audible Commission's are books a good niche market I don't know I don't I don't even know anything about the audible Commission structure I think books are a great option and I think on the website I mentioned which was book shop tour you'll get 10% commissions and they actually help support local bookstores so yeah books people reading by here's the cool thing about books people buy a lot more books than they read so yeah absolutely can you do affiliate marketing with Pinterest but without using a website and a blog technically Adolphe yes but it's gonna be extremely difficult and you're reliant 100% on trusting that Pinterest ain't gonna shut you down and I guarantee there's one thing that Pinterest can do at some point the future they're gonna change your algorithm they change something and they will cut you off from your traffic source you are building a precarious business if you are all in on them well your roi be negative is my ROI will be negative I don't know I don't know what you're doing you should be in touch with your numbers as the CEO of your business you should know what your input is what your expenses are what your growth projections are like that's being a CEO and I think it's so important for people to realize that like take it seriously like this is a real business this ain't no like I hope this kind of were like I'm paying for like the rest of my life with my digital business and I don't really understand why people think this is like a hobby or something or they treat it like a somebody do on the side like playing games like oh my gosh I put more time more energy in this and I ever did a day job and that's why I'm successful with it and and you have to know your numbers as a CEO of your company incorrect you must must must how do you get people to pay you for video production services online build a naughties to learn more about video production and then offer them your services I Darius should use Amazon to sell travel related products as well as fake ations I don't know if Amazon sells vacations I don't know who does but there are many many many booking sites I think every every booking site has an affiliate program like Priceline I think they've got an affiliate program so yeah just be resourceful on that survey NYC it's only wordpress so it sounds like serving you have not watched my previous video so the video before this I did that I dropped Monday go watch it it's it says start here on the cover it's the how to start in affiliate marketing ever true digital with these new Amazon changes do we need to change or update your links or where your old links still work yeah everything's gonna continue to work we're just gonna earn less on it WordPress is professional level and sometimes professional level things are more complex than amateur things and that is the the reality of life pro plumbing tools are probably more complex than amateur plumbing tools pro woodworking tools people who build wood things in Wood shops professionally probably use more complex tools than me trying to build a freaking doorframe on my own right so that that is this is if you're going to become a professional and if you're going to build a real is that yep that's it cool Amazon question should use Amazon to sell trouble rate products like they oh yeah I don't know if they even sell vacations on that and y'all we are here we are at the end I'm at the end of the comments give me a thumbs up if you enjoyed this video all in all this is normal this is it might sting like I don't I don't I don't want you think I don't honor that and I don't get that like I'm gonna lose a couple grand a month like that right but I'm gonna replace it I'm going to become a better person I'm going to recommit to my audience I'm probably gonna shake out a bunch of competitors who kind of raha fasten it and write in terrible content and hopefully Google puts out an algorithm update soon which is coming that wipes all of this terrible content off the first page of Google so if you've been basing on this you've been you know you're putting up subpar content and it's kind of been working and this is scary to you wait until Google drops yo ass cuz that's coming next right because rubbish content is not what Google users want to find and the market is always going to correct itself so be ahead of that curve build a real business that's number one sole purpose is to get your audience who's searching for things the best possible content you can in that moment and then make it better and then make it better and relentlessly go on a pursuit of making it better for your audience where the monetization lines up where you send the traffic and get the clicks and earn the income is actually irrelevant it's interchangeable right it's completely interchangeable and it's totally irrelevant as long as you build a brand that ranks it gets clicks and it builds trust because at that point that's when you've actually won that's the asset that you own and when you build it in a way that Google is gonna love for years and years what does Google love when Google's users have a wonderful user experience a fast website that has great detailed information that's beautiful it's laid out well that's what Google wants to see right and Google's algorithms are figuring out how to get better and better at finding that what that is at all times so just remember our job as affiliate marketers as digital marketers as internet business owners is to be of service to millions of people searching for things in our world whether that simracing or knitting or crocheting or gardening or whatever it is that's our job our job is not to get clicks on affiliate links that's a component of what we do and that's going to be an ever-changing area and with the right perspective and understanding that this is it's a customer acquisition process that these businesses use and at some point they're gonna turn off the customer acquisition spigot because they have enough damn customers amazon's closer to that point than ever and eventually I've got a strong suspicion that the Commission's will get down to two percent one and a half one percent and zero in some spaces and that's just the way it's gonna go so start preparing for that now start preparing for that next Google algorithm update now prepare for Instagram to be the laughingstock of social media which it kind of already sort of sort of is as far as driving traffic perspective prepare for Pinterest to get more difficult be ready for all that make hay while the Sun shinin right this is the game but know that we need to be skating to where the puck is going not to where the puck is at because that's how we say ahead of this game and the one thing that will survive everything is building a brand by creating incredibly high quality content for your users example if the miles Beckler youtube channel for some reason was shut down by YouTube and I they have that control they have there is a button there's a nuclear red button that is like this dudes done that they could push and I know that I've built enough goodwill with enough people that a I've got 12,000 plus subscribers on my email list B I've got an inner circle membership of people who are paying to get my attention in my my insights see people search my name they'll find me if I go over to some blockchain enabled a totally distributed video platform people will find me if I just go all-in on blogging people will find me there's some new social media out there and I go all in on that or LinkedIn or whatever people will find me because they know that I deliver I've built the brand and you could search if you search in YouTube you type in miles back there you'll see all of the things people search alongside my name that's because I've been building brand have I built the brand by being the most helpful person in the world the space of digital marketing how did I do that about 600 videos I spent three and a half years of my life dedicating myself no pitches no ads I'm just giving you what you want look at what people do ignore what they say you can listen to what I say if you want I think I say some mildly helpful things from time to time but just look at what I do right and all the Guru's selling you passive income on their webinar just look at what they do passive in a passive their showing up for the webinars or sending emails out every day they are working on their business in their business they're actively building their business which is good that's what they should be doing so just don't buy into the hype don't buy in the lies and when you give enough value when you help enough people says Zig Ziglar quote it always comes back to that Zig Ziglar quote that when you help enough people get what they want in life you'll have everything that you could ever imagine and what you could ever want in this life so let your guiding focus your guiding interest and and your guiding light be I need to give more value to more people I need to help more people get what they want because right now people are at home they're searching they're searching for help they're searching for things they're searching for ideas they're searching for millions and trillions trillions of searches a year happen and and you could be the one to help connect them with what they're looking for when you get good at that when you get really good at meeting them where they're at and actually helping them transform their lives in ways that they want to live a happier more fulfilled life whether they think that's a weight loss whether they think that's learning how to knit and crochet where they learn thing that's learning how to be a better homeschool teacher whatever that is they think that's gonna make their life happier and when you become the person that helps facilitate that and you help them transform their lives they're gonna love you forever and the money will just show up in greater abundance than you could ever imagine but it comes out of helping people not affiliate links okay that's the truth and on that note yeahjust sampson automated versus passive right like i get a lot of residual income but I'm still there making sure that website loads cuz websites go down okay and then ain't no automation gonna bring your website back when it goes down period like there's always a need for human beings to be involved and that's okay that's a good thing what else we gonna do with our time anyways so that's it I think very much Derek I'm on a logitech webcam super cheap 40 50 bucks I'll see 920 I think it is and on that note I'm going to rock out I got a new video coming out on Monday and I'm excited about it you should be excited to subscribe if you haven't give me a thumbs up if you haven't thank you for your time and I will see you on the next video until then be well my friend Cheers

Channel: Miles Beckler

Views: 13,149

Keywords: affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing for beginners, amazon affiliate marketing, amazon affiliate, amazon affiliate program, make money online, amazon associates program, affiliate marketing tutorial, affiliate marketing amazon, amazon affiliate marketing tutorial

Id: IU9L49CPhdg

Length: 64min 4sec (3844 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020