This is a follow-up to my original post “I earn $12,000/month – Let me show you how I do it”.

I am going to show you all how I make substantial sums of money using affiliate systems freely available all over the web. Some are better than others of course. I only work with one system. Here’s my original list:

http://shareasale.com/ (I am mostly here)
https://www.offervault.com/
http://www.sitescout.com/
https://www.topoffers.com/
http://clicxy.com/

I primarily use Shareasale since it’s the easiest and most reliable platform. All you need to do is create an account and connect your bank account.

Find an affiliate to work with

Once you’ve created an account, you’ll need to move on to finding a niche you’re interested in. You can pick something you’re not interested. Hell, I do it all the time. In fact, my best money makers have nothing to do with what I am interested in. In fact, what you’re interested in might be heavily saturated. What does that mean? It means that you have to spend $1000s and $1000s just to rank on Google.

Finding something that’s not interesting among affiliate marketers and searched for is not as easy you may think. I’ve spent hours looking. Start by gathering a list and adding programs you think are best in your basket.

Ceiling tiles are boring. That’s just one example I wanted to share. The competition is weak. We’ll work off of this example and go from there.

Here are the most saturated niches in the affiliate industry:

Health = STAY AWAY - Most of this market has been taken by some of the best in the industry. I am not saying it’s impossible. I am just saying it might not be wise going head to head with people who have done this for a decade plus.
Loans - I am not even going to attempt to ask why you want to compete with banks for this space.
Insurance - Another space where you might want to avoid like the plague.

Picking an affiliate to partner up with

Alright, let’s assume you’ve picked ceiling tiles as an affiliate niche you want to get into. You now need to choose a company that’s reputable and trustworthy. Don’t just join any random site offering ceiling tiles with the most commission. After all, you want users to go to your partner site and enjoy their experience. So pick a site you would buy from.

Here are two examples:

http://www.ceilingtilesbyus.com/

https://www.lightingetc.com/

Who takes their website seriously? Who would you purchase from? Even though http://www.ceilingtilesbyus.com/ pays more money, I would rather choose https://www.lightingetc.com/.

Pay attention how long a cookie is tracked before it expires on any given visit from your website. A cookie is used for tracking users who click on a tracked link from your website. Once you join an affiliate, you simply create a tracked URL in Shareasale.

You simply copy and paste the link on your website. That’s all you need to do. I like companies who offer a cookie duration of 30+ days. That gives plenty of time for me to get what I deserve. Amazon is 24 hours and pays less than 7%. They can kiss my ass. I would rather deal with the company itself.

Competition analysis

It’s time to find out what the competition is for Ceiling Tiles. Here are some tools we’ll use to see what we’re dealing with:

https://ahrefs.com
https://www.semrush.com/

https://adwords.google.com/ (Google no longer gives you keyword data if you don’t have an active paid account. SEMrush can help with that)

Both Ahrefs and SEMrush are paid tools. Google Adwords is free “if” you have an active account, which most of us don’t have. I am lucky to be working with a few large clients who advertise on Google so I have full access to this data.

Solution: Start a paid Google account and put a small daily budget on a live site you run. It’s the only way if you don’t have an account.

SEMrush Research

Simply enter the primary keyword you are trying to target and you’ll see what you should be targeting.

This is a great way to find out how often your niche is being searched nationally within the country you’re targeting. You also get all the related keywords that are worth pursuing.

Ahrefs Research

Ahrefs is even more powerful because it tells you how popular you need to be on the web before showing up on the first page of Google.

Notice that for the keyword “best ceiling tiles” I would need to get at least 5 good links to show up on the first page. These numbers are estimates. A great way to find out the authority of the sites you’ll be competing with.

Both SEMrush and Ahrefs are extremely powerful. It’s my goto for almost all of my research. I also use both tools to gauge my own authority in the niche.

Final thoughts

Finding a good affiliate partner is the most important step before starting a new website. I am sure with this guide you now have a better grasp of what it takes to find a company where you can earn a sustainable passive income from.

If you’re serious about this and have a niche you want to target and don’t have the money to pay for the tools I mentioned, pass it on to me with your information. I’ll get you the reports you need to get started.

What I’ll focus on next

I am not going to tell you the ins and outs of how you should build your site. I don’t even know how it’s done. I always hire out. I rarely take on everything myself.

What I am going to show you is how to make your website rank and make money.

So let’s get started. What do you want to know? Any questions?