Ask Me Anything FOLLOW ALONG: STARTING FROM $0 AGAIN

[ManionOverboard]

Hi Y'all!

A bit of background on me - I started my first affiliate website way back around 1999 when I was a wee little 14 year old. I got insanely lucky in the sense that my first affiliate website made a sale and I made in total something like $150 from my commission sales of Geox shoes!

Where I say I was insanely lucky is because I was fortunate enough to buy GeoxOnline.com and get my first taste for affiliate marketing success quickly enough to not get discouraged!

From that point I explored a lot of different niche ideas. The down side of being 14 was I never focused on one space and drove for growth - I was too distracted and got involved in too many different things.

- I developed a dozen different affiliate focused websites driving moderate success.
- I branched out into offering backlinks (Who here remembers the ScrapeBox days?)
- I branched out into offering IP Addresses for others providing backlinks
- I developed a FBA (Fullfilled by Amazon) market working with producers in Asia to sell Waterballoons and Gender Reveal Golfballs

Point being - I have done a lot in the space but had to put it all on the back burner 10 years ago when I started my dream job and career, I found the love of my life and we had our first child!

Now that I have a bit of time on my hands - I am getting back into the Affiliate Marketing world and wanted to share my progression, my story and my development.

The Fun stuff and Weekly Updates:

Week one (Day 1) back into Affiliate marketing I knew I had to get myself signed up for a few sites so I can start looking into what is out there I want to promote. After checking in on a few of my older accounts I still have access to my MaxBounty Account but I wanted to have access to a few others. 2 at minimum to get started.

My core direction at this time is organic traffic growth mixed in with paid promotion to grow my audience (I worked all those years - lets put some of that money to work!)

Next for week one is to sign up and get started with some social media presence. To start with I have built my page / captured username I want for Facebook, twitter, instagram, YouTube and TikTok while purchasing my domain name (ManionOverboard for all of these)

My plan right now is to develop all of the social platforms in unison along the same lines while producing videos and content on a weekly schedule for the following areas.

1. DIY and HowTo's (Mondays): Life isnt that scary and I want to share easy DIY and house hold projects - from fixing a broken Washingmachine to easy DIY shelves (Video on this already up )
2. Personal Development (Wednesdays): Diet / Exercise, lifestyle type content for this. Will also be focusing on more indepth health such as Diabetes (My entire family on moms side has it)
3. Professional Development (Fridays): Affiliate Marketing/Drop shipping/Books that change my life etc


Checklist for Week 1:
- Sign up for 2 affiliate programs (Complete - Signed up for CJ and Impact)
- Sign up and build Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and TikTok pages
- Film/Edit and post Monday DIY on easy, fast, cheap shelving units.

Follow along goals:
- Provide weekly updates (Date to be determined - most likely Thursdays to keep consistent)

 

[Graybeard]

Things have changed a bit in 10 years but I think the principles of marketing, sales and distribution are not that much different today, save the pandemic adjustments we are making. Opportunity exists even in hard times or a crisis --you just have to adapt to whats needed --both in the marketplace and in the dynamic ...

 

[Strickland]

I'll be following your progress, looks very interesting

 

[T J Tutor]

Ambition always wins out when you hold yourself accountable for the outcome!

Keep this going and let us know where your wins and defeats are. Plenty of minds here to guide you.

 

[sinam10]

keep going .. waiting for the rest

 

[ManionOverboard]

Episode 2 - Weekly Update

As I laid out in last weeks update for this week I had a very simple check list of "To Do's" and looking for a start to organic traffic

My Ask for the community: Check out the videos and social posts (ManionOverboard - Account for everything) - I am new to filming and would welcome any and all feedback so I can improve!!

Checklist for Week 1:
- Sign up for 2 affiliate programs (Complete - Signed up for CJ and Impact)
- Sign up and build Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and TikTok pages
- Film/Edit and post Monday DIY on easy, fast, cheap shelving units.

I am happy to report that I completed all of these items plus filmed and edited Episodes 1 and 2 of my Affiliate Marketing follow along YouTube series
- Its VERY basic and nothing really juicy yet - but this is me getting used to speaking to a camera, figuring out how to sync up my audio with my mic (Pain in the ass I tell ya) etc.

What has changed in my follow along:

Speaking with my Fiance we came to a conclusion that I think I knew for a long time but really had to look internally and be honest with myself about...

I am scattered! I try to take on too much at one time and although I am able to get things done, I dont specialize on one item and end up taking so many side paths that I get lost

Conclusion - I am going to focus SOLELY on affiliate marketing development and filming affiliate marketing follow along videos - I just dont have time to script, film, edit and complete weekly films on 3 separate topics.

I look at this as a positive! I will still be posting 3 to 4 times a week, just all on one topic.

Analytics for Week 1
- Domain and Hosting created (Very simple for when I start directing people to landing page, start creating sales funnel etc)
- Social accounts created and started posting slowly (ManionOverboard on all platforms)
- 3 Videos created for YouTube (Analytics below)

Checklist for Week 2:
- Social Media posting daily - simple affiliate specific information
- 3 to 4 posts per week on YouTube series
- Selection of product niche
- Provide weekly updates (Date to be determined - most likely Thursdays to keep consistent)

 

[ManionOverboard]

Its thursday Y'all! that means ITS UPDATE TIME

Where to begin - lets look at some analytics - I have kept up with posting to Youtube completing up to Episode 5
- Shameless plug (I was going to put a link here but I'm too new lol - Go check out ManionOverboard on youtube!)

Seriously - Check it out and get critical - what can I do better! (I know I need better gear already but Im a big believer in paralysis by analysis and just jumping in with both feet so for now im using my Pixel 5 to record everything!)

Analytics!

Little over doubled my views and doubled by watch time (Ok... its a flat growth curve, but its growth!)

YouTube:

Twitter: 0 Followers
InstaGram: +18 Followers

What I have Learned so far

Keeping up with a Video every second day ontop of developing a full on affiliate business is a TON OF WORK! not much of a surprise but god damn am I sleeping hard when I finally get to bed.

My days (for a long time is my guess) look like the following
07:00 - 16:00: I work my full time job
16:00 - 22:00: I spend time with my Fiance, friends, family (as much as possible during COVID)
22:00 - ?: I spend my time developing the affiliate work, planning videos, finding product, developing sales funnels etc.

Niche Development:

My background is in sales and business development with a bit of a specialization in non-verbal communication from my long standing Poker background (Played pro to put myself through university)

With this in mind I am developing my niche around Professional Sales training and development - this niche will allow me to do the following

1. Entry level offerings to new and aspiring sales professionals via training manuals, ebooks, books, entry level courses etc.
2. Higher tier offerings to newer or less seasoned sales professionals via courses, webinars, midlevel sales training
3. Top tier and long term offerings to senior sales professionals, full staff training etc by providing sales training and seminars.

Thats the plan atleast at this point!

To help develop this further I will be taking on more videos outlining sales specific type videos - these will be short and simple allowing me to increase my view count and hopefully add an injection to my traffic.

Traffic Development:

Paid: Youtube / Facebook
Free: Youtube videos / Facebook group development / Reddit page development / Discord server development

Checklist for Week 2 review:
- Social Media posting daily - simple affiliate specific information (Completed)
- 3 to 4 posts per week on YouTube series (Missed 1 day posting)
- Selection of product niche (Completed)
- Provide weekly updates (Date to be determined - most likely Thursdays to keep consistent) (Completed)

Checklist for Week 3
- Social Media daily
- 7 videos per week. 3 follow along videos and 4 simple / quick sales videos.
- Development of sales funnel for entry level books, training manuals etc


Its going to be a long long road - but honestly forcing myself to post weekly updates is keeping me on task! Its the old "project is due I better do it" state of mind.

 

[Ginlee]

I'll be following your progress, pls keep on~

 

[ManionOverboard]

Ok Kiddos - I apologize in advance but this weeks update is going to be short... Been a busy week, recorded a video every day and its already 01:00 AM and I am TIRED!

Analytics update (We all love to see analytics)
- View count is way up from my last posting
- Watch time is up to over 5 hours
- Picked up 8 more subscribers

YAY!

Without burying the lead - I mentioned earlier that I would be eventually paying for some advertising to get viewers to the channel to help grow my following with a little bit of extra support - this week I ended up paying a little over $20 for views (CPA was pretty cheap) and I plan to continue to pay a few dollars per video that is posted.

I am posting directed to Professional Sales and Business Management NICHE - I am still posting my affiliate follow along series on Monday / Wednesday / Friday (Check them out at ManionOverboard!) and will continue to do so although my main driver right now is building customer base on the Professional sales and business management niche (Its a larger market by far)

Checklist for Week 3 review:
- Social Media daily (Completed)
- 7 videos per week. 3 follow along videos and 4 simple / quick sales videos. (Completed)
- Development of sales funnel for entry level books, training manuals etc (Completed)

Checklist for Week 4:
- Social Daily
- 7 Videos per week
- Develop blog posting and sales funnels to accompany videos and key target demographics

 

[ManionOverboard]

Sorry I am a day late with my weekly update! Been a week for sure.

First things first - my affiliate marketing follow along video series has not been updated for the week - I ended up losing my computer (Had to return for repair) and was unable to record / screen record on my work laptop.

That being said it will pick up again this coming week when I have access to my personal computer again.

I was able however to do some basic videos and recording with WeVideo to continue producing my Sales professional video series and have successfully maintained posting 1 video everyday on this project.

Youtube analytics are as follows.
- View count is way up from my last posting
- Watch time is up to over 10 hours
- Picked up a few more subscribers

As I have stated before I am spending $10 per day on driving and promoting my videos to speed up the process.

For this weeks update I wanted to provide a look at my business plan for this initiative - I am a big believer in business plans and will be adjusting as time goes on.

Challenges I have been facing:
Social media is not my "Go To" and I have been challenged to post something / anything daily - finding I am struggling to post value add content... maybe I have to reassess on Social and just treat it like Youtube - just post daily no matter the quality and it will get better...

Anyways - update for the week done - more to come!

 

[ManionOverboard]

My bad on no update last week - the week went by so quickly that I honestly thought I had posted an update!

As always here is the Youtube analytics update outlining video views, subscriber counts, etc etc - some decent growth numbers and I have found that I can lower my daily promotion spend quite a bit while increasing video interactions with some fine tuning when it comes to promotion.

My challenge right now with things are the following

1. Finding the correct Niche item to promote via my videos - I am working on developing a training program / webinar series / in person training offering right now that I will be using to develop phase 2 of the plan.
2. I find that I am dead in the middle of the valley of despair! I really enjoy what I am doing and love the videos, but this is the period where I know enough, know the work that goes into it but find that I am struggling a little on heading up the valley into success ville.

Will keep posting updates - this was a short one as it is Christmas and the family is all getting together to celebrate!

 

[Graybeard]

3.9K views in 28 days there is some good potential
Try to get some comments that will help you decide niche 'subjects' you might be able to monetize.