Imagine this: you're at a New Year's party.
The mood is cheerful, and everybody is having a fun time.
You're talking to a new friend, cocktail in hand, smiling.... when they ask you the dreaded question: "So what do you do for work? How are things going there?"
On the inside, you want to tell your new friend - "I hate my job! And I can't take off as much time as I want."
I'm working on making money online with affiliate marketing and someday soon I'm going to make a full time living online so I can quit this shitty job and spend my time EXACTLY how I want to..."
But... you're not making enough money online to quit your job just yet.
So you give that same old tired grin and mumble something like - "oh, yeah, the job's fine..."
But on the inside you're still seething.
You wanna quit the rat race... but you feel stuck, and angry. You've been buying all these courses, reading blog posts, listening to podcasts, and yet... you're still not making the money online you NEED to get free!
OK, take a second. Breathe.
It's not your fault.
You've been sold the idea that there is a "secret blueprint" to online marketing. You think:
“I gotta learn the secrets to making online biz work! Surely, once I know the perfect system, I’ll be set”.
And then a guru sells you on his “perfect system”. But yet another guru tells you that HIS system is perfect!
Another one says, “Hey listen, - if you just buy my system you’ll be making money in no time…”
It's no wonder you feel frustrated.
Here's your promise: if you follow the FREE, extremely detailed instructions in this massive article, and hustle your ass off executing, you'll be able to achieve financial freedom and give your boss the middle finger as you walk out the door.
Through this post, you can stop telling people: "yeah, I'd really like to quit my job..."
And start telling them proudly: "I quit my job last month! Now I'm making more money from my online business than I was at my old job - and I'm having a lot more fun working for myself!"
How are you going to do that? Through affiliate marketing, combined with your MVF - your Minimum Viable Funnel.
This post is a full "business in a box" guide to a simple affiliate marketing model that has been proven to work time and time again.
But before you get into the nitty gritty details, you need to understand a key idea that could be the secret to you making money online and quitting your job…
Vs continuing to read blog posts like this, but never making any money or seeing any results.
Ideas Vs Execution
With all the gurus spouting pretty ideas about business on the internet, it’s easy to get sucked into a mindset of thinking that your ideas are what really matter.
Well, here's some news for you: at this stage in the game (when you’re still working for someone else) your ideas mean zilch. Nada. Niente.
If you'd prefer to listen to this content from the video above, play it or download it from the podcast episode below.
What MATTERS (and what’s going to get money in your pocket) is your execution.
Why?
Because when you’re a newbie internet marketer who’s spending more time reading about business than executing on business, you have a lot of knowledge (aka models and ideas) in your head.
This knowledge is useful, no doubt - but it’s not the same as wisdom.
You can think of wisdom as applied knowledge. So if you take the MVF framework I’m about to give you, then execute on it and make some $$$... you’ll have attained some wisdom.
Wisdom is much more valuable than knowledge because it’s tied to the nitty gritty, the action steps, the real world.
And guess what?
People don’t pay you for what you know. They pay you for what you ship.
If you want to be truly successful online, you need to switch from a “learning and researching” mindset into a “executing and executing and learning directly applicable information and then executing more” mindset.
In other words… you want to transition from being a Frank to being a Matt.
Pick A Proven Model, and Run With It
All of this rambling to say - stop researching. Stop reading. Stop listening to podcasts.
Instead, pick ONE person’s model and run with it.
Today, you're going to get the details of one model in the form of a very simple affiliate marketing funnel.
If you’re interested in putting money in your pocket while building an email list you can build a business off in the long term… read on!
Why Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is your best choice for a few key reasons.
1. You don’t have to develop a product to sell. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. One of the biggest risks you can make as an entrepreneur is to put a ton of time/energy/money into a product, and then to sell it to crickets, aka nobody.
When you have an affiliate product (and you choose a good one like I’ll show you below) that work is done for you. You already know that product sells.
2. You don’t have to deal with customer support. Look, if you’re reading this, I’m guessing that you have a full time job or a string of part time jobs. Your time is limited. You need it spend it wisely.
When you sell someone else’s product through affiliate marketing, you don’t have to spend any time on customer support.
Instead, you get to keep spending time on marketing that product and earning money!
3. You don’t have to develop in-depth sales material/copy. When you choose a good product on Clickbank, you can rest assured that they already have video sales letters and long form sales pages in place that get results.
Basically, when you do affiliate marketing in the way I’m about to show you, you ONLY have to do one thing: drive traffic to a simple 2 page funnel that you set up.
That’s it. You don’t have to do any of the other bajillion things that operating an online business involves.
The Power of Focus
Trust me - learning how to drive traffic is hard enough. Since your time is limited, it makes sense to focus on this one area.
Plus, the skillset of learning how to drive traffic will help you in all of your other online business endeavors down the line.
Finally, since you’re just going to do, and not try to remake this system, you can use ALL of the energy you’re investing in your online biz towards getting results…
Rather than splitting your energy between thinking about action and actually taking action.
So if you’re ready to stop chasing shiny objects and work with a model that’s:
- Simple as hell
- Proven to work time and time again
- Built to give you both short term $$$ and long term gains
Then you just found the right model my friend.
Why The Minimum Viable Affiliate Funnel Works So Well
The MVF (Minimum Viable Funnel) for affiliate marketing works extremely well because of it’s simplicity.
What you have here is basically a “copy and paste” formula you can use to start making money online.
The MVF for affiliate marketing gives you 3 awesome outcomes when executed:
- Money
- Email subscribers
- A budding relationship with those email subscribers
Fitting these 3 outcomes, you have three pages to the MVF:
- The Opt-in page (gets you email subscribers)
- The Thank You page (builds your relationship with those subscribers)
- The Affiliate Offer (makes you money)
The Opt-In Page
The opt-in page is where you’re going to send traffic to.
Essentially, this is a “squeeze page” with one and only one goal: get people to give you their email addresses!
However, people aren’t going to give you their contact info out of the kindness of their heart. You have to offer them something in return.
What you’re offering them is based on your affiliate product - you’re going to be making them a promise through the headline/hook that you put here that the video sales letter of your affiliate offer will fulfill.
The Thank You Page
This page is where you build your relationship with your email subscribers through a short video that I’ll give you a script for below.
You may ask, “why have this page at all?”
You have this page so that you can create a long term business rather than just buying traffic and sending it straight to an affiliate offer.
For an affiliate marketing funnel, the thank you page becomes a bridge page where you bridge the gap from your website to the affiliate offer. You will need to either create a short video introducing yourself and telling them to click, or some simple copy...
And don't worry, the video can be as simple as grabbing your cell phone and following the script below... It only takes a few minutes.
Ultimately you need the Thank You page because it becomes the home for your affiliate link and you will learn exactly how to set this all up in detail, below.
The Affiliate Offer
You’re not actually going to build this page - instead, you’re going to simply link to the video sales letter of the affiliate product you choose to promote.
It’s Time To Set Up Your Sales Funnel!
Are you ready to start this process for yourself and start making some car payments, rent payments, and/or credit card payments with the money you make online?
Perfect. But before you get started, you’re going to need a few things:
- An email list provider. Active Campaign and Aweber are awesome options.
- A platform to create pages with. Instapage is a great option, ClickFunnels is way better but comes with a warning, WordPress and Thrive Themes are the internet tools I build my businesses on.
- A niche selected. This doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should have at least a vague idea of who you want to serve with your funnel.
NOTE: If you have not found your niche... Be sure to follow the simple niche selection process in this post here.
If you'd prefer to listen to this content from the video above, play it or download it from the podcast episode below.
In the screenshot walkthrough and the video you can see below, I’m going to be using Aweber and Clickfunnels to set up my MVF for affiliate marketing. I find that these tools work best for me.
If you’re strapped for cash, I would do this: sign up for a free trial of Aweber and ClickFunnels.
Then create a funnel RIGHT NOW using this video / blog post to get some momentum.
You can use Instapage or Leadpages or WordPress to “remake” the funnel you have in Clickfunnels if you don’t want to shell out 100 bucks a month.
How To Setup Your Affiliate Marketing Funnel, Step By Step
What are the steps to create an affiliate marketing funnel? You only need to do five things to launch.
- Find profitable affiliate products with Clickbank gravity score
- Create an email autoresponder series
- Build the Opt-in page of your funnel
- Create your funnels thank you page
- Create the affiliate VSL or sales copy
Make money! Lets start by finding a profitable and high converting affiliate product for free on Clickbank.
Step 1: Clickbank Product Selection and Headline / Hook Research
First, go to clickbank.com and go to their affiliate marketplace.
Then, you’re going to find a product in your niche that has a high gravity score.
You can hear more about this in another video, but for now all you need to know is that a higher gravity = better, because it shows that other people are successfully selling this product.
Once you’ve selected your product, you’re going to want to check out the sales page for it so that you can get your copy for the funnel pages.
The goal here is to take the 'hook' from the affiliate sales page so you can mirror that copy and language on your opt in page.
This will make the transition from your affiliate funnel to your bridge page (thank you page) to the affiliate offer feel seemless to the user and is the easiest way to setup your funnel!
Ok, I'm using the "Diabetes Destroyer" as my example here, but be sure to enter a niche you enjoy... Here's the screenshot of their sales page:
Sometimes the hook (the promise of what benefits the buyer will receive if they buy the product) will be right on the video sales letter homepage, as you can see in this other sales page:
The hook is right at the top: "A foolproof, science based diet designed to melt away several pounds of stubborn body fat in just 21 days!" You're going to want to copy this hook whenever you find yours for the product, as you'll use this to create your funnel opt in page in a bit.
Other times, you’ll have to dig a bit to find the hook. One cool hack you can do is to click the “x” button on the tab of the video sales letter.
Then, you’ll be asked if you want to leave or stay. Click “stay”, and you’ll often be taken to a written version of the sales letter.
Then you can find the hook rather easily:
I’m using this diabetes cure product to walk you through this, and here’s the hook which I’m going to copy to a file:
“With this “pancreas jumpstart solution” that I’m about to show you, you’ll be able to reverse your Type 2 Diabetes, sharply reducing or even eliminating your need for medication.”
Finally, you’re going to want to actually watch the entire video sales letter, taking extensive notes as you go.
This is a bit tedious, as the VSL is probably about 30 minutes long, but it’s very necessary. When you create the first page in your funnel (which we’ll get to in a minute), you’re going to be dangling the carrot of a promise to your prospects that you drive to that page.
Your promise will be in the form of the headline, hook, and subheadline on your opt in page.
In order to make that promise accurately (which is crucial for building a good long term relationship with your email list) you’re going to want to know exactly what content is in the video sales letter.
This Product = Your Brand
Stated another way, you are spending your advertising money, your time and building your site to promote an affiliate product. If their product is rubbish, that makes you and your brand look bad.
Before you actually start selling, it is highly recommended that you buy this product because you need to make sure it’s a quality product and they deliver on what they are promising in the sales copy.
It doesn’t have to be the MOST AMAZING solution ever made - it just has to be a solid product that you are comfortable putting your name behind.
Remember, your email list is going to be associating your brand with this product, so keep that in mind and build your online business with integrity, for the long term!
If you’re short on cash and worried the product you are looking at may be a lemon, remember - Every Cickbank product has a 60 day money back guarantee, so you can buy the product and return it if it sucks.
...And this is probably the exact same position your web visitors are in, so you get to be their trusted adviser who looks for the best product for their needs and delivers. They will thank you for it with their trust and clicks on your affiliate link!
Step 2: Get Your Mailing List Setup If You Haven’t Already
First, choose a mail provider and create a new mailing list within that provider. As I said earlier, for this walkthrough I’m going to be using Aweber.
First, you’re going to want to make a new list in Aweber. Click "manage lists" in the upper right of your screen:
Then you're going to click the green "create a list button":
Type in your real name and your business email:
Then type in your website domain and your company name into this list. Name your company name whatever you please, (obviously use your real company name if you have one) but keep in mind that subscribers can see this.
If you don't have a domain name yet go buy one at namecheap or something - don’t overthink this, just buy any name that is in your niche for now. Then you can sign up for an email account through namecheap as well that's attached to your domain name.
Then, name your email list something straightforward and write a short, straightforward message describing the type of emails you're going to send out.
Next, write a nice confirmation message for your new subscribers.
Hit the green button that reads "approve message and create list" and you'll be taken back to the main Aweber screen.
One last action here - click the tab that reads "sign up forms" on your Aweber bar:
Then hit the big green button that says "create your first sign up form":
And then click "save your form" as we don't need to modify this at all.
Step 3: Create Your Opt-In Page of Your Funnel
OK, so let’s go over to clickfunnels. You’re going to hit “add new funnel” first:
Then, select the goal of “collecting emails”:
Name this funnel whatever you please.
Next, choose a template for your funnel. I really like the “super clean opt-in” template so I’ll be using that one for this walkthrough.
Next, hit the “publishing” tab on the “opt-in” step of the funnel and edit the path of your page so that it reads something that makes sense given your product. I'm naming mine the "pancreas jumpstart".
You’re also going to want to connect your domain to clickfunnels, which is a bit of a task, so you can do this after you finish the actual funnel creation if you like.
Here’s a help article to walk you through this process.
Go ahead and click the "overview" tab at the top, and then click the yellow "edit page" button near the bottom:
Boom. Now you are looking at the template of our opt-in page which is where you’re going to put our headline/hook that we got from our video sales letter research in Step 1.
You're going to edit the headline, hook, and subhead on this page to make them relevant to your offer and you're also going take a bit of time to make things pretty.
Click here and watch for 3 minutes if you want to see exactly how to do this.
Here's my final result:
Finally, you’re going to hit “email” on the upper right side of the screen. Choose your email provider, click the integrate action, and select the specific new list you created in Step 2.
Step 4: Create The Thank You Page Of Your Funnel
OK, so going back to your funnel overview page, you’re going to click on the “thank you” funnel step on the left hand side right below the “opt in” funnel step.
I’m going to use the template of the “simple download page”, fitting in with the theme of this post.
Then, click the “publishing” tab in the upper right side of the white part of your screen. You’re going to change the “Path” to “thanks here is your video” and then hit "update funnel step”.
Now, copy that URL that is in the middle of your “overview” tab on the "thank you" step of your funnel.
You’re going to head over to Aweber and go to the “settings” tab of the list you created earlier. Change the “thank you page” drop down menu to select “custom page” and then paste the URL from your overview tab in clickfunnels to the box below.
Don’t worry about the “already subscribed” page for now.
Step 4.5: Creating The Thank You Video
The purpose of the thank you page is to build a relationship with your new email subscribers so that you can build a business with them as your customers (not your affiliate’s) in the long run.
You’re going to accomplish that through a very short video. This video should be under 90 seconds ideally, and definitely shorter than 3 minutes.
If you have a smartphone or a computer, you have a video camera. Ideally you would get a lavalier microphone for good sound quality, but it’s better to have a video with the built in mic on your phone or computer than it is to have no video at all.
You could even just use a cheap gaming headset and plug that into another phone or something to record the sound, although you’ll look like a goon (which is fine haha).
There are two goals of the video:
- To make a good, personal impression
- To get people to CLICK ON THE BUTTON that takes them to your affiliate product sales page
Here’s an example video script for you to use as a template, based off the diabetes solution product I’m pretending to pimp:
“My name is Miles Beckler and my father had type 2 diabetes. He tried everything and it wasn’t until he learned about this secret that he learned to manage and even reverse his type 2 diabetes.
I’m excited to share with you through the video we’re going to get to next, but I also wanted to introduce myself because I’m going to share with you other emails that are going to help you understand how to better your health, to improve your situation, and to live a happier, longer,healthier life while managing your diabetes naturally.
So click the blue button below that says “click here for the pancreas jumpstart solution” and watch the video now.”
Short, sweet, and benefit rich, this script tells a bit of a personal story, and it ends with a VERY clear and specific call to action.
Make your call to action THAT specific. Tell them the exact color of the button you want them to click and the exact words that are on it.
As an alternative to this whole process, you could outsource the video to someone on Fiverr.com.
However, I don’t recommend that you do this unless you’re TERRIBLE on camera… and hell, you can be terrible on camera but still make a decent video if you just practice your script, speak clearly, and look right at the camera.
Step 5: Finishing Up
Once you’ve got your video done, upload it to YouTube.
Then back in ClickFunnels on your "thank you page", hit the add button below your headline.
Then, click the video button in the menu.
Copy your YouTube embed code into the URL/Action box where it says “video embed”.
Finally, we want to pretty up the page and add your unique copy. Click here and watch for 2 minutes to see exactly how I did this.
Here's my final page:
If you haven’t created an account on clickbank, now is the time to do that. Then, you’re going to go back to the affiliate marketplace and click the “promote” tab next to the product you want to sell.
Next, you’ll enter your account nickname and your tracking ID. You can make the ID whatever you want.
Clickbank will give a unique URL you’ll send people to - any people who buy from your affiliate after going to that URL within a certain amount of time will generate commission for you!
Copy and paste that URL into the “URL/Action” box within clickfunnels - the box pops up after you click on the blue button below your video.
Step 6: Test It!
You now have an affiliate marketing funnel set up that will give you money and email addresses if you drive traffic to it!
But before you start spending time/money driving traffic, make sure to TEST your funnel first.
Trust me, you ALWAYS want to do this - I’ve spent a lot of money driving traffic to dead pages, and that’s always a shitty feeling.
So go into clickfunnels and click the “preview page” button on your “opt in” tab.
Then, go into your internet browser URL field and remove the “?preview=true” from the end of the URL. Go to that page.
Your last step is to actually go through the funnel - enter your email address, make sure you get subscribed, click all the buttons all the way to the end.
Step 7: Drive Traffic
Now all you have to do is drive traffic to the URL you setup for your “opt in” page.
There are a ton of ways to do this, but they basically boil down to paid traffic or organic (aka earned) traffic.
This has been a massive guide, and driving traffic is a book in itself (or many books really).
At some point I’m going to put up another blog post on driving traffic, but for now here are some YouTube videos that can help you out:
Here’s a whole YouTube playlist you can use to learn how to drive traffic organically (good if you have lots of time but not much money):
If you'd prefer to listen to this content from the video above, play it or download it from the podcast episode below.
Here’s another playlist you can use to learn how to drive traffic through paid Facebook ads. This is good if you have less time but plenty of money.
I’m not going to say good luck… because luck has almost nothing to do with your success here.
Instead, I’m going to bite a line from The Roots and say, “don’t give up”.