All this week, I blogged about my "real" foray into affiliate marketing over at BloggingTips.com (BT). Real is in quotation marks because I've tried affiliate marketing before, but never put any effort into it other than sticking some links on my site. That garnered me little to no sales.
Affiliate Marketing Success!
I recently started to make good headway with one affiliate product though (3-4 sales a day, earning $25 per sale). Not bad for about an hour's worth of work per day to promote it.
I'm currently in the process of scouting for my next affiliate product. So, if you know of any, write in and let me know. As I say in today's post on BT, ". . . for me, “decent sales” translates into three or four sales per day, preferably with an affiliate payout of $25 or more per sale."
To read all three posts, visit the following links:
Article Marketing or Free Classifieds: Which Works Better to Promote Affiliate Products? (Monday, 1/19 BT post)
How to Overcome Buyer Skepticism When Selling Affiliate Products and Services Online (Tuesday, 1/20 BT post)
Newbie Affiliates: How to Choose Affiliate Products to Market (Today's post)
What's It Like to Have a Life on the Beach & Retire as a Freelance Writer
I was in Florida this past weekend (for four days actually). I'm working on a new ebook, so it was a working/pleasure trip. My fruitful foray into affiliate marketing is getting me closer to my dream of being able to work on the beach -- and essentially retire as a freelance writer.
You see, my plan has always been to have the option of retirement at 50. I'm working on becoming totally debt free by then -- including having my house paid off. Retirement for me means working only on my own projects (ebooks/affiliate marketing); not having to take on freelance writing projects.
And, that's getting closer every day -- much quicker than I thought.
What's It Like to Have a Life of Leisure; to Have the Dream of Financial Freedom Realized?
I don't know, but it's no longer a faraway dream; it's a blurry vision that's coming clearer into focus every day. And why am I telling you all of this?
Because when I first started freelanc writing, I could not have imagined where it would take me. As I got older though, I started to formulate a plan for my life, ie, by this age, I want to have this much money in the bank; by this age, I want to be able to work x number of hours per week; by this age, I want to be debt free; by this age, I want to retire altogether; etc.
While I have stumbled badly along the way, I kept pounding away. My dream has always the foundation for everything I've ever tried. With every failure, I knew I had to get up and start again, because I knew I didn't want to wait until I'm 65 to "retire."
I always joke with my girlfriends that I still want to be "cute" when I retire; not old with one foot in the grave. Not that that's what 65 is, but I've been working since I was 11 -- literally. If I retired at 50, I figured almost 40 years of work should be enough -- I should be able to play for 40 (assuming I make it to 80 years old).
What is Your Dream as a Freelance Writer? Are You Achieving It?
So my message for you today fellow freelance writers is, "What is your dream? Are you making headway? Where do you want to be in 5, 10, or 20 years?" What you do -- or don't do -- today is getting you there, or not. As my mom used to say, "Time is going to pass; it's up to you what you do with it."
Detailed Testimonial from a Fellow SEO Writer
I'm posting this testimonial from a fellow freelance SEO writer, because when I asked her what finally moved her to buy the SEO writing ebook, she wrote back -- explaining in detail what taking concrete action can do.
QUESTION
On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Yuwanda Black wrote:
Tenisha: Could you answer the following for me: 1. What finally made you purchase the ebook? As you said, you'd been doing SEO writing for a while, so you knew there was opportunity out there. 2. Why hadn't you capitalized; what made my ebook so useful to you?
ANSWER (from Tenisha a few hours later)
I'll be honest. The economy has affected my writing and editing business -- drastically. And I've been searching ways to get more clients. After doing some content projects for a couple of social networking sites, I decided to focus more on social media and SEO writing as a part of that.
I remember reading one of your posts, or maybe it was an article, where you mentioned how your accountant asked what you could do to make money today. Well, that's where I'm at right now. I'm hungry for work And SEO work seemed like one of the quickest -- and easiest ways for me to pick up work and get new clients.
Your book is useful because it shows you step-by-step how to make money; it wasn't some pie in the sky concept, but clear, concrete steps that I could follow. And the query email you included in the ebook is priceless! Everything else is gravy. It was also realistic. You weren't telling me that I would make $1,000 in a few hours, but a couple hundred of bucks a day. I could get my arms around that. And it's realistic. I'm used to the tricks copywriters use with ebooks to play to emotions, and I saw none of that with your stuff.
Your book showed me how to market my services. That was a big hump for me. I've owned my writing and editing busines for nearly three years. And I've done SEO blogging for more than two years. But I kept seeing SEO article writers charging only a few dollars for their work.
Writing is my passion, but figuring out how to get others to pay for top dollar for it has been a struggle. I'm a former journalist, but nothing about my newspaper career ever prepared me for running my own business. [Emphasis added: This is where many freelance writers stumble, especially when they first start out. If you don't learn how to market, you'll never be successful as a freelance writer]
I wasn't sure if this whole SEO article thing was really viable until your ebook. I'd heard of copywriters charging $100 an article, but these are copywriters who easily command $10,000 for a sales letter; that's not me -- yet!
But I figured you were on to something and so I read your blogs, articles and your website. (Plus, I think I'd already heard of you some years ago because I used to get emails from Inkwell Editorial.)
I was discouraged, though. I completed a rather low-paying SEO article project with lot of keywords over the summer. When I broke it down hourly, I was making less than minimum wage. What amazed me was the client said they had people making at least $1,000 a month. I figured they must be chained to their computers and writing at least 20 hours a day!
I knew I had to cut out the middleman, but I was having a hard time figuring out how. Your book showed me, and I'm sure I'll buy some of your other books. You have a gift of writing to show others how to do something. As far as the basics went, your books didn't leave me with any questions.
I'm still marketing and I've had some luck. The low-payers are still out there. An SEO guy from Atlanta contacted me yesterday about meta tag writing -- I had to turn it down because it involved Dreamweaver and Front page and I'm not an expert. This guy outsources from India, so I think he was blown away at my rates.
Take care,
Tenisha
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That's it for today folks. To paraphrase our new president, "It's time to get down to work"(I'm working on a new ebook -- unrelated to freelance writing. I'll turn my attention to getting more of those out in a couple of weeks (I have many, many titles to get to)).
Yuwanda (Wanna know what I'm up to? Check me out on Twitter)
Contact: info *at* InkwellEditorial.com
P.S.: Where are all the freelance writing jobs? Find out in the 2008-2009 Freelance Writing Jobs Report
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