If there was just one thing that you always wanted to be able to do in life, what is that one thing?

For me, it’s always been the ability to go to sleep, wake up in the afternoon, hit the snooze button (as many times as I want), and still wake up richer than the night before.

And I know I’m probably starting to sound like a used car salesman…

“Stack ‘em deep! Sell ‘em cheap!”

…but this has been my reality over the last decade or so. I’ve been able to achieve this with affiliate marketing, info products, software, and services.

Affiliate Marketing: The Biggest Opportunity

What I want to write about today is what I think to be the biggest opportunity in 2020, and that is affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is, essentially, the art and the science of selling someone else’s product online.

For every sale that you get, you receive a cut, otherwise known as a commission.

Get Traffic. Sell the product.

Now, a commission can range anywhere from $1/sale to $1,000/sale, to over $10,000 for a single sale.

Let’s talk about the different levels.

Affiliate Programs With Measly $1 Payout

Don’t let these fool you! Just because it’s $1.00 doesn’t mean you can’t make millions of dollars promoting that particular offer.

I know several super affiliates who pull it off. This is not my bag of tricks, but I can tell you what they do.

What they do is master one paid traffic source. They take that traffic, send it to a very small one-page landing page (which contains their affiliate link) and promote that $1.00 offer.

The margins are super small! We’re talking 5¢-15¢ per sale. But imagine if you multiply this by 20,000 or 30,000 or even 50,000 people per day. We’re talking thousands and thousands per day.

So some people do it that way and earn bushels full of money doing it.

Me, personally, I usually promote stuff within the range of $50-$150. That’s more my style.

Let’s take the other end of the spectrum.

The $10,000 Affiliate Marketing Sale

This is the GetResponse affiliate program.

It’s the same email service that I use for my business. Right now, I’m paying about $400-$500 per month to send emails.

I’ve been using them over the last 10 years. 

And the person who referred me to GetResponse has been banking on that sale from 10 years ago to today, and probably for the next dozen years.

Here’s their affiliate program.

The affiliate (you) earns 33% for life. Let’s do some math (hopefully, I don’t look stupid doing this).

That’s roughly $60,000 that I’ve spent so far. That affiliate has earned about $15,000-$18,000 for one sale… 10 years ago.

And whoever coined the phrase “you snooze you lose”, certainly hasn’t met that guy.

Long-Form Content Is The New Standard For Affiliate Marketing

One thing I recommend you do from this point forward is to really think about and create long-form content.

That means long blog posts and longer videos than you did in the past.

It used to be, years ago, that all you had to do was create a 150-word blog post, slap an image on there and, before you know it, floods of buyers would be coming with cash in hand to hand it over to you.

Where you should aim this day and age is 2,500-3,000 words per blog post and videos that extend past 10 minutes.

I’ve seen a lot of 45-minute videos do really well over the last several months.

So I think there’s going to be a push towards that direction. And you’re probably wondering, “Oh my gosh! Do I really have to write 2,500 words?!?!”

The answer is NO.

You can outsource this to freelance writers. I don’t feel like doing it anymore – I’m just super lazy.

I’ve done this in the past. Sometimes with sales messages, I might write those myself. Otherwise, I’m done writing stuff.

I’ve learned to find good writers. You can find them for $75 on the low end. They’ll write 2,500-3,000 words (2¢-3¢ per word).

But I like to pay a little bit more and have them do most of the work for me.

What I like to do is have them write the article, post it to my WordPress, format it, add images, make it look purty and really tune it up to give it that extra bit of effort out of it.

It’s worth it for me to pay a little extra money.

If you don’t have the money, just put it that little bit of elbow grease and get to the point where you can reinvest the profits and have someone else do it for you.

That’s blogging.

Long-Form Videos For Affiliate Marketing

Videos are going to be crucial for video marketing or any info product sales in general.

If you’re not doing video, you gotta figure it out! What you need to work out nowadays, in my opinion, is making your videos better.

Work on good B-roll. Don’t have a shot of you just sitting there the entire time like, “..hey guys (with low energy). Today we’re making this video about this, this, and this…”

Really get into it!

Move around. Be like, “(with lots of vigor) HEY GUYS!! Today… we’re talking about EVERYTHING that you need to know… ABOUT… camera levels!”

So really get into it, polish it up. That means adding some music, add some B-roll footage. Pixabay or Pexels is a great way to really tune-up your videos in the future.

Get over it. Get over the fear! It’s like, “Do you want to get rich or not?”

If the answer is YES, then I think you can figure out ways to do it, right? When you really want to do something bad enough, don’t you agree that you will find a way to get over that fear.

So, I’ll come to you: DO. YOU. WANT. THIS. BAD. ENOUGH.

If you’re here, the answer is YES.

How Building A Brand Benefits Your Affiliate Marketing

This brings me to my second point. Build a brand! Think of it like this…

Imagine selling a pen. You can’t really do much to improve a pen. Granted, there are companies out there that are really efficient and can survive in the pen space, they have a huge competitive moat, they’re very disciplined. 

But by and large, it’s very difficult to innovate the pen.

You got the Fisher Space Pen, the all-weather pen, and so on. There aren’t too many gizmos you can add to a pen and innovate in the pen niche – and that’s a problem.

Because it’s commoditized, there isn’t much margin for you to come in and succeed.

However, with a personal brand, there is only one of YOU.

Because of that, there is an unlimited amount of things that you can do to continue to innovate when you focus on your brand.

A brand is a competitive moat that is unbeatable in almost every industry.

Some food companies tend to have some problems, but creative businesses like this… a personal brand is everything.

So, with that said, get longer videos. Get over the fear of being on camera. 

Also, focus on building some kind of “character”. You don’t have to go nuts, like me. You don’t have to go out in public wearing robes, like I do, and shoot videos.

That’s not necessary. I like doing it because I’m nuts.

Consider creating a consistent way that you talk, consistent use of certain words that you say, catchphrases. I talk about napping, snoozing… all that.

This helps to create small little tweaks that build up your brand more in-depth than had you not done it.

Another thing that I’m going to work on, which I’ve overlooked or didn’t see the value in, is the graphics.

I’m going to spend more time this year using consistent graphics across my websites, my thumbnails, my YouTube channel, the art, the actual graphics being used in the video, to give it that consistent, well-rounded feeling to it.

My Approach To Affiliate Marketing: The Contrarian Businessman

Last but not least, my final tip is zig when they zag.

I’m a contrarian businessman.

When everyone else is doing this thing over here – right now it’s Amazon FBA and Shopify – I’m going over here instead.

Years ago it was Clickbank. I went to Amazon affiliate marketing.

So, I think there’s a big void in the affiliate marketing space. FBA and Shopify are a massive bubble right now. That’s going to crash.

Once that does, people are going to flock back to affiliate marketing, info products, etc.

What I’m doing nowadays is, I’m doubling down on Amazon affiliate AND I’m also focusing more on advertising revenue.

Here’s why.

Because everyone is getting into the info product space and FBA space, advertising right now is more expensive than it used to be.

What that means is that, if you are a publisher and you serve that market (people that need ads), you can make more money because they’re paying more and you get a bigger cut from that.

The ad networks will be willing to pay you a little bit more.

So while everyone is spending their money, I’m going to be over here on the other end receiving that money.

I’m therefore focusing more on ads for my YouTube channels. Not so much for my blogs.

In addition, I’ll be moving away from selling info products and towards selling more affiliate offers.

I’m shifting more to affiliate marketing, more to ad revenue for several reasons. As far as info products are concerned, it’s a lot of work.

It’s a lot of work to make your own products. You’re more adaptable if you’re able to make them really fast. But I think there’s more adaptability in promoting affiliate offers.

I might release an info product but it’ll mostly be affiliate offers.

“Zig when they zag,” I think this is a key to life in general. Wherever the herd is, don’t get sucked into the herd mentality.

Herd mentality is a unified thought, and I think you’ll succeed if you’re able to remain independent.

Continue To Reinvest In Your Affiliate Marketing Business

I’m going to admit, I didn’t do this over the last 3-4 years. I stashed my cash into companies like Berkshire Hathaway and Apple (not financial advice, by the way).

But I should have done more was reinvest back into my core internet business. That’s what I’m good at.

I think I’m decent at investing in outside businesses, but I really know the ins and outs of internet marketing. It’s much smarter to invest in the things you know.

More importantly, by reinvesting, it’s going to create that barrier for all the new people that are entering your space.

So being successful in business means being able to reinvest your profits.

DO NOT LIVE OFF YOUR BUSINESS INCOME, if you can.

If you’re in a position where you need to, you’re just going to have to work really hard so that you can make enough money to live off of, as you continue to reinvest into your business.

You should reinvest as much as you possibly can.

With that said, you have to be smart about this. Don’t just think that, because you’re reinvesting into your business, that you’re doing a good thing – not all investments are equal.

So you have to put a lot of thought into where you should invest your money (ie, allocation).

Hire people, get tools developed, get programs developed, develop your brand, and you’ll do much better.

Comment below. Let me know what you got going on!