Video Transcript

I’m Stefan from projectlifemastery.com, and I’m happy to interview my friend John Christani today. Ah, Los Angeles in LA outside of I’m pretty close but John I’m going to be interviewing him today to talk a little bit about affiliate marketing because John’s had massive success building online businesses using affiliate marketing, and I thought he’d be the perfect person to pick his brain and ask some questions related to your business model and different strategies.

I was bored of college, I wasn’t learning anything, I didn’t know where I was heading, and I had two more years left.

I’d been day trading and investing before that, but when I learned about affiliate marketing and how you can manage a business from anywhere in the world without being a slave to the Man, I was fascinated.

I desire freedom. I won’t live on my last $500. I want to be successful, not a failure, and it’s been a long trip. I can identify to that since the 4-hour workweek motivated me because it went against the whole old civilization of 9:00 to 5:00 and retiring.

I’m hiring real-life clever badasses who challenge my thinking, so I can relate. It’s heaven. Today’s old.

Self-exclusion makes sense.

I did the same thing—I wasn’t excited about what I was doing, but I did it to create passive income so I could get a nice job—and not having that allows you the opportunity to focus on anything you want whenever you want.

Awesome. Can you describe your affiliate marketing model? If you don’t mind, we may also discuss your success, since many people are thinking, “Can you earn money doing this?” or “There’s all that complexity.” I’m contemplating your affiliate marketing business approach and its success. Affiliate marketing is a straightforward business model: you sell items for people and get rewarded with commission for it and you know in traditional sales you might go door-to-door and knock on people’s doors and sell them solar panels or cable TV or home security systems or you know mow their lawn and those business models the way the salesperson knows the salesperson is there’s a little box I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to B.

You’re just choosing things to sell and joining an affiliate network like Clickbank.

Clickbank, the most famous, says, “Sell these things. Weight-loss product.” You see a skin-care product and remark, “That product’s great. I’ll take that link and post a Facebook story about this product, including my link if others want to buy.” Affiliate marketing is just storytelling. You write stories on forums, blog comments, and social media.

You’re merely writing articles on the Internet, and the best part is that hundreds or millions of people every day may read your narrative about that product and buy it. Yes, you simplified it effectively, and the tale can be above a blog post if you have a YouTube video.

Anything on all these different channels that are out there and is that primarily what you focus on is your marketing more the may be a piece of content and then you’re kind of funneling them into a product or an email list or what does that funnel look like and I’m sure to make a little bit different based on the product and everything but what does that typical funnel look like?

I think email lists are one of the strongest affiliate marketing strategies. If I had to do it again, I would focus on creating an email list because I didn’t aware you can email people once or twice a day if you write or find relevant information.

If I were starting from scratch again, I would have focused more on kind of a brand an email list you more promote info products sort of physical products or you know what do you prefer so I’ve worked in a number of niches and I prefer physical products with an information product component I think the best.

Material possessions can assist, but change comes from within. I can demonstrate. I’m not sure if you use brain-boosting supplements or workout supplements, like pre-workout, but pre-workout won’t help you if you don’t work out, so you’ve still got to make that change within, you know, if you know pre-workout will help you if you go to the gym, but I think every physical product, like a Lamborghini, isn’t going to make you happy, but a Lamborghini will make you happy

Look for products that have kind of both — you know, I think the best products have also taught people about the product and all that stuff, yeah, oh, and oh, and I’ve also had success — so I focused a lot on the weight loss niche and the skincare niche, but my initial successes were actually in the investment niche as promoting gold investment programs, where I might get three leads a day, but the average sale was $80,000.

Last year, I did over 2.9 million dollars. I can present tax returns. I advertise on Facebook. I advertise on tabouleh, outbrain, visual content, native ads, mg ID, and Adwords. I started playing with YouTube.

Any specialty has many people. Some people create their business around a passion. It could be site biography, dog training, yoga, etc. Have you found that affiliates can profit in practically every niche? So yes.

If you go into business, you should focus on making money first and then using it. For instance, if you’re interested in watercolour paintings, there may be affiliate marketing money for them, but not as much as in other niches. I adore the idea, but I’m a foot away from you.

I think if you’re trying to do something different, you’re putting yourself in a position where you’re working uphill, so I just say, “Hey dude, focus on where you are,” whether you’re starting out, have money, or are financially free.

Focus on no 1.

I agree, there are niches you’re passionate about but there may not be much potential for yeah right and sometimes you know there’s going to be certain opportunities that present themselves where it’s higher ticket products or there’s just more demand there and you definitely got a way that in running a business because a business has to make money and everything and I think I know for myself that at certain points

Start a business.

Let’s say you’re promoting a product and you want to make sure you get a certain commission to make it worthwhile for you or that the product has a good sales page and converts well. What are the things you look for in ignition applause?

of whatever um now I I think that’s one way to do things you know and you say okay I’m advertising on YouTube well what what can I sell to people on YouTube you know you can probably sell anything to people but you know what would be the best thing to sell to YouTubers maybe camera equipment like Casey Neistat or something nice add, however Casey is an awesome vlogger. No, Casey.

This is my DSLR camera and he has like a two thousand dollar camera is he’s the photographer beach yeah yeah he’s in the photography niche but he’s got millions of fans millions of followers all he does is film his life and put up affiliate marketing links every day it’s fantastic. It’s amazing.

The important thing is, ultimately, you know your arm why you know if you can spend ten dollars promoting a certain product and make more than that or if you know or just how much money you make overall you know your overall profit if you’re doing a blog and getting SEO traffic or if you’re doing a vlog um can you make more money than the time and money you’re putting into it and I know

Many affiliate programs now include upsells to further monetize each consumer, so they’ll sell a skin cream and a membership forum, and they’ll pay you for both of those things you sell, so I’m familiar with a lot of the figures.

“You test stuff out,” I’d say. Testing is cheap. I might just copy and paste the same blog article and change the product I’m promoting, so I might write the same blog post on two different skin creams and recommend one that time and another the next time, or I might recommend one ebook on one page and another ebook on the next.

I watch as people come in and I say okay which one makes me more money okay you know and I’ll kind of go with that one awesome and let’s talk a little bit about traffic down because you’ve actually done some Facebook you needed advertising yeah, what are your favorites and what do you think are the best? Should someone focus on one source of traffic at first or should it focus on many like what you recommend for people in generating traffic?

If you’re not willing to wait for organic traffic and whatnot, I would put deposits down on two to three ad networks and tell people to find a coin and spin it to decide whether they want to do Facebook or Google, because so many people come into this industry with so many preconceived notions. Toss.

Pick a few smaller ones and put a deposit down. Putting a deposit down on these ad networks is the ideal way to start because your money has left the port and you are officially in business. That being stated, my favorite traffic sources are Facebook. Facebook doesn’t like my specialty because I focus on it, thus M GID, comm, tabula rev content We’re testing YouTube advertising, which is exciting.

Yeah, so when you’re doing a lot of PPC type stuff, is there a way to track um you know it have accurate tracking around the sales that you’re getting because part of it you have to put a guess the conversion tracking pixel Thank You page or how how is that the a tracking it so it depends on you know I use a click tracking program I recommend everybody if you’re doing paid advertising and recommend it by a friend of mine and it’s just an amazing amazing click tracking program and it makes it real easy to kind of manage a lot of advertising and it helped take my business to the next level with all their features and I think it’s but no matter what there are other click trackers out there thrive I mobi tracks prosper etc but you know the point is I think it’s

e.g.

I know some people do different bonuses and different things to stand out from other affiliates or promote products or anything like that that you do um yeah yeah I would start sorry I know you’re not I know this is not exactly what you’re asking but um one of the biggest things is when I hear questions like that with them the first thing I think of is oh this person’s looking for a trick you know I’ll give me some tips. dude, advise me.

If you asked me that question, I would tell you to focus on a traffic source or a vertical, which is like a niche, like dog training. The problem with most affiliates, almost every single affiliate I know who has failed want tobe affiliates, or anyone who’s tried affiliate marketing, is that they don’t focus on things and the commonality between all of these people is that they jump they never give something time they never allow their brain to access their full brain because they’re always working off they’re always chasing whereas you can make money from dog training it’s a horrible niche to be in dog training supplies but hey if you dedicated yourself to making money you can.

I agree, and I believe a lot of people start their business and don’t see results quickly enough because they think if they start an online business, they’ll earn all this money in the first few weeks know you’re going to attract people and you’re not, you know the long term, the long game is going to pay off, yeah, and it’s do this it’s so true ultimately, yeah, people download ebooks like people are going to download ebooks into the unforeseeable future, you know it’s not going to change, you know so like that’s not going away, and I think what it ultimately is if somebody’s asked that I tell them to go to UPW because you have self-esteem issues.

It’s high-level thinking, but asking for additional methods and advice indicates low self-esteem.

The best thing to do is choose one way and follow it. If you doubt yourself from the start, you’ll invent your own path.

If you doubt yourself, you’ll discover evidence to back your views, which is bad. I know we’ve talked about it before, but it’s not the importance of psychology, attitude, or that there are loads of tactics out there. You might speak a little bit more about that in you know what’s the mindset that

I think a lot of entrepreneurs wish to escape the main world but don’t realize that working from home, working for yourself, and having time and geographical freedom still requires responsibility and that you still have to polish your abilities.

should not be defined by the notifications, messages, phone calls, or emails you receive from various gurus and a lot of people in online businesses fall into this reactive state of mind where they are chasing each day rather than creating each day and so Barry it’s very easy to slip into that the mindset change I would say is you know create your day don’t chase each day I kno

Mindset is really that focused part, and I think a lot of people who are starting out find it hard to focus because they have, you know, obviously some kind of self-esteem problems about their business, maybe they had past failures or maybe they think things are too technical or maybe they’ve had so many failures or I can’t make this work.