1.    What Are The Guidelines Of Affiliate Marketing?

2.   How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

3.   What Are The Pros And Cons Of Affiliate Marketing?

4.   What Are The Rules Of Success In Affiliate Marketing?

5.   What Is The Conversion Blueprint?

6.   What Are The Essentials Of Affiliate Marketing?

7.   The Five Levels To Become A Super Affiliate

8.   Routines For Affiliates To Follow

9.  Resources

10.  Conclusion

I’d like to share my personal journey with you. I stumbled into affiliate marketing only after struggling in network marketing. I was figuring out ways to generate leads and sell products without chasing family, friends and cold calling, and stuff like that. And that’s when I got into the internet game. So my journey started by selling other people’s products. 

So what exactly is affiliate marketing? It is also known as performance marketing and associate marketing.

At its core are three parties:

If the consumer purchases a product or service, it becomes a conversion. 

Blogs that are visually appealing to the audience’s eyes always make it big, which is why affiliate marketers use links and banners to promote products. Banners placed at the appropriate place are a great way of making more sales as the product is directly targeted to the visitor. 

Affiliate marketing is a global industry worth well over $12 billion. Not only is this form of marketing growing fast, but it is also already a massive global industry. In 2018 it was worth over $12 billion, with the US and the EU leading the way. The affiliate marketing industry is growing steadily. Statista reported that spending on affiliate marketing only in the U.S. is expected to rise to $8.2 billion by 2022. Thus there is definitely a space to grow and earn. 

In India, online retailers like Flipkart, Amazon, and Yatra.com have already started affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is gaining popularity in the digital market because of online shopping and increased internet penetration. 

Successful people don’t do different things. They just do things differently from others. When the entire market is doing something, you have got to do something different. That’s what successful people do. My mentor Vick Strizheus told me that the successful ones, the ones who are successful, are doing something differently; look at insurance, look at affiliate marketing, network, marketing, anyone, even information marketing when I’m selling products. Everybody sells information products in a particular way, but I’m sure many of you have noticed by now that I do things slightly differently.

The most important principles for you to keep in mind if you want to be successful in affiliate marketing:

That doesn’t mean starting a second business, but finding ways to complement and grow the company business you have by offering more value to your customers and followers. 

For me, a lot of money that I make from affiliate marketing I reinvest back into advertising into my tool costs right now are running Rs. 2.5 lakhs per month.

I first started to promote other people’s products in ClickBank and I, of course, played different things in the past, but what got me results was under the mentorship of Vick Strizheus. He was talking about how you need to build your hub and ecosystem. That idea clicked in my mind. And then, I decided to jump into the Four Percent Challenge. I won this contest within 90 days, out of 200,000 affiliates. I hit one of the top 10 spots in the world. 

I came back home and created my first product, which is the Freedom Business Challenge course, in September 2018. 

To get started on this affiliate marketing journey, you need to register yourself with an affiliate network. You’re going to get a link, and you’re going to share that link. And when you promote that link and when the customer buys it, using that link, there will be a tracking system, so that commission from the advertiser is given back to you. 

The affiliate network I am promoting is The Four Percent Group because I genuinely believe that that is the best platform to upgrade to. It’s where you are the connector between the customer and the product, just like Uber, is a connector model. Airbnb is a connector model. Swiggy is a connector; all between point A and point B. 

Affiliate marketing is extremely popular and continues to offer tremendous potential, especially with more and more online stores now outperforming their offline counterparts. Consumers will always need information and do their research before purchasing a product or service. This is one of the main reasons affiliate marketing is still so successful. It is an efficient way to generate revenue for bloggers and other website owners while companies are improving on transparency in the business deals. 

Earlier, Google AdSense was the only option for bloggers for income, and getting an AdSense license was harder to come by. Even if one somehow got the license, Google had complete authority to cancel the due amount citing minor issues. 

In countries like India taking into account the possibility of frauds, scams, rules, and regulations, getting an AdSense license is difficult and takes around 6 to 12 months to obtain a permit. 

The pandemic affected the entire world, but in some areas, affiliate marketing got a huge push. Health products, entertainment, medical supplies, and digital coaching saw a significant rise. Social media is on everybody’s phone or PC, so the number of people buying online is soaring. Fashion, as in casuals and selfcare beauty products, has seen a tremendous leap.

Here are a few niches that affiliates can focus on for the initial months of 2021:

Focusing on medicine and health marketing can provide a good opportunity for added income for health and hygiene products, vitamins, medications, supplements, masks, sanitizers, and face shields.

People have been working from home for what seems like an eternity. Being cut off from the outside world has created a lot of mental issues. The demand for online mental health services has increased in the last few months and will undoubtedly continue for a while.

As schools have been shut down since the pandemic online learning has been the only option. So teaming up with an online learning platform for educational courses is popular.

Spending more time on gadgets for work or school purposes has increased the demand for accessories like laptops, tablets, keyboards, earphones, etc.

There is a huge demand for entertainment on OTT platforms. Online gaming has increased, as people have been stuck at home.

So here’s a concise history of affiliate marketing. 

The founder of PC Flowers & Gifts, Tobin, conceptualized affiliate marketing and launched his program on the Prodigy Network. This model involved paying the Prodigy network a commission on every sale. This unique marketing approach is generating millions in sales per year by 1993.

Soon businesses such as Amazon saw its success and decided to adopt the method for their use. Their many affiliate networks followed this. Next came BeFree, and Linkshare (now Rakuten Affiliate Network) These were followed in 1998 by Commission Junction and the Clickbank Network. 

Businesses were joining affiliate networks that had the tracking and payment systems they needed to grow. As long as they have a product people want, affiliates can help them scale. 

Then in 2000, the US Federal Trade Commission published guidelines for internet marketing. In 2005, Rakuten was purchased for 425 million dollars. In 2008 Affiliate Nexus Tax was introduced in the US. So the regulation started to kick in because the whole middleman concept was getting more and more popular, especially with ClickBank getting more popular. After all, 1998-2008 ClickBank had already paid over $1 billion in commissions to its affiliates. I think, as of today, maybe $4 billion in commission payouts. 

In 2009, the bloggers were required to disclose their relationships with the companies to promote.

Regulation started to kick in 2016; 81% of the brands and 84% of publishers, used affiliate marketing. Even if you look at the most prominent brands like, say, Macy’s and big names, I’m talking about the brands that come on television; they all have an affiliate program. 

If you choose to go and register on Rakuten, Impact Radius, ShareASale, I talked to you about some of those networks; you can become an affiliate too. This has evolved to such a large extent that it is going to be the next trillion-dollar industry. 

So there are three trillion dollar industries, and the way I’m positioning all of you is to ride all the to rise much further by 2030. 

Based on the statistics that I found out, affiliate marketing is a $12 billion industry. Commissions paid to affiliates are in the range of $170 million in transactions happening in a year. Now, this is the second-fastest growing industry. The third-fastest growing industry is the whole coaching industry training and coaching industry. In the 1980s, 1990s, speakers, trainers, and coaches were growing in the Western world. That’s how Robert Kiyosaki, T. Harv Eker, Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy, and Zig Ziglar came together and began to promote each other. They created a network. The same thing is happening in India right now and is evolving the whole coaching and training industry. I have a passion for this. I love to sell products and to add value to people because the fundamental aspect of selling is about adding value, transferring energy, and helping people grow. 

By 2023 you will witness the power of this industry and realize you made the best decision of your life when you joined this industry. The biggest markets are the USA, Canada, and the UK. These are the top three countries globally; the English-speaking countries and India are definitely picking up.

Can you really build a business without putting any money into it? This is the question a lot of people ask in Google searches. I’d like to say upfront there is going to be an investment. When you plant a seed only from that seed can you expect the tree to grow. In most cases, the seed can be an idea. There will be an investment of time, investment of money that should be put into it. 

If you treat this like a business, it will treat you back as a business. If you treat this like a hobby, it will treat you back as a hobby, so you cannot think that everything is free. There’s no free lunch in this world. Now, if you have a lower budget, you have to put in more time. If you have a bigger budget, you can save more time and put the money to work for you. 

But if you’re able to understand this game, you can really move forward much faster. I’d like to share some background and perspective of how the industry has evolved to where we are today. 

Vick Strizheus surveyed 2,730 affiliate marketers and asked them how much money they were currently making. The sad truth is 70% of them said zero. The big shocker was that 20% made less than $100 per month, 7% made $1000- $2,000 per month, 2%- 3% 5,000 to $5,000, and only 1% earned $10,000 and more.

When I looked at these stats, I wondered why people were failing in such a booming industry. Only when I got to the Four Percent challenge with Vick did I realize how to do it the right way. Despite having the passion and drive, I needed some knowledge about technicalities and systems to set up. 

In Vick’s survey, he asks the question, what do you think is stopping you from reaching your desired income goal?

So the biggest reason why people fail is information overload and no proper mentoring system.

Fortunately for me, I knew these statistics before I created my courses. When I saw this, I decided to create something that gives a clear path to success, and I wanted to coach and mentor people without giving them information overload. They should be able to take action and get results.

When Vick asked in his survey, what is the biggest challenge you need help with right now, 43% said that the number one challenge they were facing was traffic generation. They did not know how to drive traffic to their affiliate programs. 

This is why Vick created the course called Internet Traffic Mastery; his entire model is based on the feedback he was getting from his audience. He wanted to serve the audience, to get the results that they wanted. Vick is the acknowledged master in traffic and conversions. Undoubtedly others are making a lot of money, but I’ve seen this guy do some magic in how he does things.

In the same survey, what Vick discovered was that:

The other statistic that he shared was when he asked 2700 people what they were currently promoting. Many of them said they are selling affiliate info products, information, and courses; 34% said others; 21% promoting business opportunities. 

Now the business opportunities are a different animal altogether. And I will give you a red alert right now. Please don’t go in that direction. A business opportunity is something where you are recruiting people based on the money-making part and not product-centric. I’ve been a victim of some of these programs. I promoted a few programs before this, but of course, I was supporting the Empower Network. I love David Wood; I got a lot of inspiration from, you know, that particular company, but it shut down for various other reasons. But there are many different companies out there that are business opportunity-oriented companies, where it’s only about recruitment. It’s all about how much commissions you can make, but there may be a dummy product without value.

So that is where Vick differs from many others because he earned $750,000 in 21 days by promoting Empower Network. That’s when I saw it for the first time. I was looking at the leaderboard, and many guys were making money, and the contest was happening there. And this guy just comes in, and he just sweeps the entire leaderboard down, hits the number one spot in 21 days. The difference between the number one spot and number two spot was such a huge difference. 

When I realized that this guy had some talent, he had some unique genius, and I started to follow him. And that was the first time I got to know Vick. I trust him and believe in him because I like his values and principles of doing his business. And also the way that he teaches and trains and shares those concepts. He was great at traffic generation. He was great at promoting and conversions. 

One of the reasons he started Four Percent is to create his products is to build something of his own. I got that same inspiration from him to make something of my own.

Many people in the outside world don’t know about the affiliate marketing industry’s evolution and how to position yourself correctly. 

I’d like to give you a headstart, so you will waste no time, get straight to business and start to get results. 

Let’s first understand the good and the bad of this industry. The positives are:

Now let’s talk about the negatives and problems in the affiliate marketing industry. Let’s bring it all out. Let’s open the can of worms.

The fact is, this is not a get-rich, quick thing. You can never get rich quick in any business unless you hit the lottery; you have to do things in a particular way. You have got to follow proper systems to make it happen.

The difference between being a marketer and an entrepreneur is the set of traits they go with unless they have the right approach. 

An affiliate entrepreneur

It is essential to strengthen relationships. It’s not about transactions. It’s about having customers for life. There must be consistency in vision, message, and action. All three are essential. 

Look at some of the most successful entrepreneurs like Vick. I admire him because of his consistency and his vision; his vision never changes. You would repeatedly say the same thing; the idea should be fixed, but methods can vary. Maybe, Facebook is working today; after three years, it may change, but the picture will never change. So right design is an essential principle in entrepreneurship is consistency in your vision. In other words, 

Be fixed in your dream but flexible in your methods. 

Our mission is to help a hundred thousand people achieve a particular goal, but being flexible on the methods on how we’re going to be reaching that goal. These are the qualities of an entrepreneur, and that’s the difference between a marketer and an entrepreneur. 

Now you see the pros and cons of the industry and have a better idea of how you can be different. When everything is right in front of your eyes, you know which direction to move forward. Possibly you would have had a shift in your mind if you have been doing things in the other way; you’ll immediately shift and do things in the right way.

The first rule of success is you need to understand the laws of money,

To succeed in the affiliate market space, Vick says there should be 

You need first to understand how the laws of money work and the money will come to you. Only if you fulfill these three points, the need should exist, your ability should be high, and you should be hard to replace. That means you should be adding so much value that you stand out from the rest. 

The second rule of success for affiliate marketing is product selection. How would you choose a product to promote? The first level is you need to look at the industry. Is this a booming industry? 

For example, one of the reasons I picked ClickFunnels, as one of my affiliate programs is because it’s a booming industry. Everybody is getting into the lead generation space. Everybody needs a tool like that. Of course, there are many other tools also in the marketplace, some cheaper tools also, it’s a booming industry. The product is excellent, and the company is also solid as a company. They do $100,000,000 in a year at this point. And they have entirely zero funding. Russell Brunson has not gone after any investors or any of that stuff. He can scale massively, but he doesn’t need to. He’s already at $200 million a year through just his customer base. 

The third rule for success is the big money secret. You are the center of your business, and you need to create multiple income streams around you. You may also create a brand like Vick made Four Percent and has scaled an ecosystem model right now with many income streams built into it. That is why I’m creating products to add more to my hub so that the Internet Lifestyle Hub becomes such a valuable place that people won’t even feel like going anywhere else. They can get results in whatever they want. 

So it is not about selling just one product. So I’m promoting ClickFunnels, and I’m selling my courses. I’m promoting GetResponse and Demio, ClickMagick, Bluehost as well as Namecheap. I have many other income streams. When you create an ecosystem model around you, and you add multiple streams of income, that’s when you’re going to be making big money. 

Before this, I was taking one product or business opportunity and promoting it, but the problem is that the business opportunity could fail someday. The FTC could give notice and just shut them down. So when you pick products, if you follow these three rules of success, one is the laws of money, the product selection criteria. The big money secret, there is no way that you can fail in affiliate marketing because you’ll be picking the right products and doing things on the right track with awareness of the rules of this game. 

You can promote all these things as an affiliate and make extra money without extra effort because you’re helping others in yoga training choose the right tools.

You should always recommend the tools which you personally use. 

Let’s take the example of a trainer who is doing yoga training. When you are teaching yoga, you can sell the yoga mats as an affiliate. You can sell some music players as an affiliate because you can recommend to your students that, hey, if you want to do yoga, you can play this light music, and it will enhance your experience when you do yoga. He can do affiliate marketing for music players, yoga mats, or even some plants, and there are multiple things. 

Let’s take an example of an expert teaching the world how to do video marketing and become an influencer who influences the world by creating videos. He can do affiliate marketing for software like video editing tools, audio editing tools, audio mixing tools, and video mixing tools. There are multiple opportunities where he can do affiliate marketing and make extra money by recommending the right tools to his audience. Ultimately, he is happy that the money would come, but also helping the students to get the right tools without wasting their time doing endless research on Google. 

Awareness is the first step to making any kind of progress is educating yourself because 

The one who knows not and knows not that he knows not, has a problem.

I’d like to run you through the conversion model that I got from Vick. 

I always attribute my success to him because he gave me this model. He showed me this, and the first time I saw it, it was a little confusing. But then, once I started to implement this, this is what has worked brilliantly. 

Now you look at the community that we have over here. Let’s pick the Internet Lifestyle Hub; it is very successful right now because...

There are three parts to my hub:

So all those three layers contribute to the hub. This is a model which Vick said that the other affiliates did not succeed in building. Nobody goes to the community-building approach. Everybody’s going only with a product sales approach. They may probably have a good number of sales one month, but the next month they’ll be at ground zero. So if you want to build a long-term sustainable affiliate marketing information business, you have to develop this conversion model.

I religiously followed Vick’s system to the T, and that’s the reason why I’m one of the top three at Four Percent. Mine is possibly the only video testimony, out of 200,000 affiliates, that he has put on his sales page. 

This is the million-dollar conversion blueprint that you need to keep in mind. 

Let’s understand what is the correct methodology to implement the conversion blueprint. It’s going to be three steps here again.

Let’s look at your assets; we have the traffic list and money. If you want to make money, you need to keep building a list. If you want to create a list, you need to have the right traffic. To generate traffic, you need to start building a lot of digital assets. 

These are the different digital assets that you can build. Build up your personal blog and website. It has landing pages. So my ClickFunnels landing pages are all digital assets. My email list is my digital asset. My followers on social media are digital assets; my funnels are my digital assets. My email sequence, the content that I keep posting in terms of our podcasts and YouTube channel, these products are all digital assets. The connection I’m making within this community with other influencers here is an asset.

Your unique flavor. Anybody can build a blog and email list. You can copy all my funnels. You can copy my blogs. You can copy my landing pages. You can copy my followers. Maybe to some extent, you may have similar followers. You can copy my email sequence. You can copy my content. You can copy all the content on my YouTube channel but can others copy your heart? Will you be able to copy somebody else’s heart or uniqueness that is the magic in this game? 

“Copying others is easy. Being unique is tough. But it’s your uniqueness that will make you world-class.” - Sidz 

How you do things is different from others. Your flavor is going to be different from my flavor. And that is what people are looking for. So you, the brand, will determine how much money you’re going to make in affiliate marketing. It is not about the assets. Assets are essential, but it is about the uniqueness you’re bringing into your investments. 

The two questions that Vick always asks are, who are you? And why should anybody care about you? If you can answer that question for yourself, who are you, and why should anybody care about you? You have to have that mission statement. If I’ve introduced myself, my elevator pitch is... 

Hi! I’m Siddharth Rajsekar; I’m a lifestyle entrepreneur and coach. I’m the founder of the Internet Lifestyle Hub, and I’m on a mission to help a hundred thousand people live a lifestyle of freedom. That’s me. That’s my mission statement. I’m sure you have understood by now your unique positioning, and the more you voice out your unique positioning, your vibe will attract your tribe.

To attract that tribe, you need to start building these assets consistently and keep rolling them out. If you produce more than you consume, you’ll become rich, especially in this game, if you create more content, make more videos, have more podcasts, do more webinars. Every time my video, podcast or webinar is recorded, it goes into the archive and can be used for future events. That will be the initial phase is the consumption of knowledge. But the key is to consume and quickly start producing at the same time. Don’t wait. Now is the correct methodology to implement this blueprint to achieve the rules of success; everything is interlinked. Whatever I’m sharing with you today is all linked with one another. 

By the time I come to the end, like Neo, you’ll have a Matrix-like moment when you can just see through everything. 

Now let’s move on to the skills that you need to master. You need to master the five pillars, traffic generation, list building, webinars, copywriting, and tribe building. You need to be doing things. You cannot learn this from a textbook, or you can not just learn it from my videos. Like I never understood what tribe building was until I had 200 - 300 people in this community. 

Then as my tribe started to grow, I began to observe different things happen, different dynamics happening in this community, and based on that I had to learn. So the best experience is by just doing it. If you have never done traffic before, just start running Facebook ads, go to my Facebook traffic mastery course in level two and do your first and see what happens if you’ve not built any leads to now set up all the funnels and do the conversion. 

If you’ve never sold a product, do your first webinar. Even if nobody buys, just do it; you’ll have that experience because the more you do it, you’ll get better and better and better at it. 

Copywriting. I’ve been writing a lot of emails, and I’m going to be writing a lot more; one of the reasons I’ve still not launched a copywriting course is because I wanted a lot more stuff to show you practically. In terms of copywriting for ads, email copywriting, social media copywriting, and sales pages, it’s a different ball game altogether.  I’m talking about direct response; it’s very different from creative writing, where at your school, you might’ve learned essay writing and letter writing and stuff like that. This is another ball game altogether. 

Now all of you understand that you also need to have copywriting skills, video skills, webinar skills, Facebook Live, and tutorials under traffic generation skills. You can go a lot more into analysis and number crunching skills, understanding traffic sources, and so on. 

You don’t have to score well in this, but I want you to be aware; I started from ground zero. I’m nobody special, just somebody who just put in the hours, followed the mentoring system, and was very conscious of my time. 

I have been pounding my brains with learning for three hours, four hours a day over the last year. Even though it may not make sense now, all the dots will start to connect at some point. So even if you have zero skills right now, just go through the pressure cooker stage now. When you go through that kind of learning, you will actually see the magic happen. 

One of my mentors, called Blair Singer, talks about the concept of 

Perturbation, or a sort of anxiety, is the deviation of a system, moving object, or process from its regular or normal state caused by an outside influence. 

For it to work, there has to be the proper context. 

For example, there is a cracked glass cup. Then if you pour water into it, what’s going to happen? It’s going to leak, right? The crack is going to leak. So, in this case of perturbation here, when you have the proper context, for example, in the Internet Lifestyle community, I wanted to create the appropriate context for people to go through pressure. 

When you go through pressure in the right environment, you will transform into something more significant. Still, if you’re in the wrong setting and go through stress, you will break and probably get into depression, anxiety. 

For example, the Indian cricket team goes through so much pressure. Still, they are put through such stress under a particular context or circumstances with so many different support systems in the environment. Without it, if you’re left alone, you will crack. Perturbation is nothing but changing from one form to another.

So the only way that you can succeed in this business is if you go through some kind of pressure for the next 30 days, the pressure can even be going through a different challenge. You’re feeling overwhelmed; some of you may be feeling the perturbation right now that affiliate marketing is so huge. I’m pounding you with information, and that’s the reason why I wanted to do this. There is a lot of pressure in terms of the information you have to process. But in this context, when you assimilate it, you will be a different person. 

Perturbation in the proper context is the key to your success.

There are two kinds of marketplaces. 

The Typical Marketplace: 

You can join companies like ShareAsale, Amazon Impact, Flipkart, ClickBank, Alibaba, Rakuten marketing. You can join them, and you can become an affiliate of these marketplaces. Some of them will need an approval process. I got approved in most of these marketplaces because I had my GST number and my company set up and registered as a company and my websites, so the approval happened fast. 

The compliance documents that they needed, whether it be a Form 8233 form or they have a W8-BEN that we Indians have to submit to most of these marketplaces from a taxation standpoint, for us to be compliant with their laws. Most of them are US-based. So you have to submit our documents, our PAN number and other things. 

Based on the mentoring I got from Vick, he said the last place that you need to go and become an affiliate is ClickBank which started in 1998. Like ClickBank has so much junk right now. Impact, ShareAsale is good. Rakuten is also great. But I can pick and choose that I can have products that align with what you’re promoting. 

Private and Direct Marketplace: 

The second category is what Vick talks about, where you can become an affiliate privately and directly. 

Let me give some examples. I’ll give you an example ClickFunnels is a direct product, and you can directly become an affiliate. These are popular in the private direct place: Bluehost ClickMagick, Demio, Namecheap, SEMrush are all perfect SEO space, GetResponse, Teachable. Now, these are tools that we are using in our community here. And you can become an affiliate here. 

I am promoting all these tools to you, but how am I doing it? I might be promoting only Bluehost. I’m doing it through ecosystems and doing it through education. 

If you randomly came into my webinar and I said Hey, go and buy Teachable. It’s perfect. You’d be like, what the hell? Why do I need this? But now I’m giving you an education on how the components are connected. When you see how everything is interlinked, I’ve created a model in which I’m using the information to help you get results. The intention is not to sell the product. The intention is to help you get the result by setting up your system.

I’ve picked those kinds of products, which have private and direct products, which are beneficial to you, which are recurring in nature. But every time you renew your subscription on Bluehost or ClickMagick, it’s going to create a compounding effect. 

This is the big money secret, which is why I tell you first to create your product. Even if it’s a small minimum product, get it into your ecosystem. And then you become an affiliate, but you have to make the people believe that that program or product will help them achieve their goal. 

You need to follow the product selection criteria and the laws of money criteria. First, you need to have:

These are the main three for affiliate marketing. 

Even without a website, without a WordPress blog, you can do affiliate marketing. You just need to have landing page software. The others I only propagate when you have your personal branded website like eStage, then you can have your e-learning platform, Teachable in our case. 

Then you can have your webinar platform like using Zoom or Demio to help you build the ecosystem. You can use the GetResponse email marketing system, ClickFunnels, link tracking systems, ClickMagick, and you only need these three to capture the lead. ManyChat, etc., are frills.

You need to know how to convert that lead and just need to have the affiliate links. Because I’m using all of these tools, I automatically become an affiliate of all these tools. So another critical principle of super affiliates is that we will only promote tools we use. Don’t just promote a tool you can make money from, but you’re not going to use it.

This is where we are going to be closing the loop where you will have an a-ha moment. This is the crux. 

Now there are five different levels. I’m going to go from level one from the bottom to the top. And I’m going to show you some examples.

A niche blog. That means you create a blog around SEO, a blog around gardening, just a blog, and keep writing articles. I have many friends who are bloggers, and they write articles and make good money; people write articles, product reviews and promote different kinds of affiliate programs there. This is the most basic level of affiliate marketing, which means writing SEO articles where they just rank from other keywords. India has a lot of this category of bloggers because every affiliate marketer needs traffic. To get traffic takes effort or money, or both. Decide on a strategy that suits you personally. If you’ve no time, use cash. If you’ve no money, use time. When starting, choose free options to get people to your affiliate products. You can use YouTube and blogging. It’s a slow, long route, but if you choose a topic you’re passionate about, it’s still not like real work.

Suppose you have resolved to create a sustainable business on the internet by selling other people’s products, marketing, and creating a lifestyle of freedom. In that case, you need to have your priorities right. 

I’m going to be sharing the five priorities that you need to have in that same priority order to achieve success on the internet. Now, one of the biggest challenges that internet marketers face today is being overwhelmed. There are too many things to do, and they do not have their priorities in order.

Having been in the internet space for the last six years, learning from the best of the best, I’ve crunched it down to five areas of priority. And that is a way on how you need to follow the top five priorities so that you can have the best routine while growing your online business.

If you’re going to be doing webinars, you can set up a few days of the week where you want to be online and sell through webinars every week because that will get new customers. 

Another weekly routine, which you can have is customer nurturing. Maybe your mastermind, with your teams that can be once a week. It doesn’t have to be every day. 

Your business analysis also can happen once a week. Maybe you sit with your business partner; in my case, I sit with my spouse and view all the numbers every Friday to reconstruct all the accounts, the new customers, the receivables. We determine how much has hit our bank accounts, how much tax we must pay, and all the bills and invoices.

Now, if you have to put this into a routine, the best way would be this

If you’re building an online business, if you have this kind of discipline, it will help you.

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This is the transcript of an interview with Vick Strizheus: 

According to you, what are the characteristics of a world-class entrepreneur?

First and foremost, it is essential for any entrepreneur to clearly define their ‘WHY’. Know exactly why you want to be an entrepreneur and what it would mean for you, your family, and your future. Get deep. Get emotionally involved with the idea because it will be easy to quit if it’s just a surface-level desire when you meet with difficulties. 

Here are my top 5 characteristics of a world-class digital entrepreneur:

Where do you see the internet marketing industry going in the nextten years? 

The world today is changing rapidly, right before our very eyes. More and more companies and even entire industries are shifting to do business online. Internet marketing is booming like never before, and it will continue to expand and grow at a staggering rate. Unfortunately, with the massive internet and social media boom, fake gurus, fake mentors, fake marketers, and fake entrepreneurs are plaguing the industry. This makes it more difficult to differentiate between a real expert and who is just pretending to be one. I think there will be a correction, though. 

What is your advice to digital entrepreneurs?

My advice to any aspiring digital entrepreneur is two things:

Why do some affiliate marketers fail?

Many beginner marketers fail in business because they’re building their business following the wrong information they may be hearing from the many so-called “gurus” who have never made a successful business themselves, or perhaps they’re getting incomplete information. This can lead to failure faster than anything else. Many experts fail in business because of other things, such as not understanding how to run their business like a business, not a promotion or funnel. Many fail because they can’t generate enough sales as prices are high enough to stay in business. Sales cure all problems. Those who understand how to market and sell their products effectively will always write their ticket in life.

As a digital entrepreneur, you have tried and tested various systems and funnels to achieve millions of dollars in revenues and profits. What is your foundation for sustainable success? 

It is challenging to build sustainable success if you are running just a transactional business model. To create sustainable success, you must structure your business to operate on a “hub” model. Every great world-class company does it - Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, etc. Build a community, a tribe! To do that, you will need to engage in marketing funnels (like most of the gurus teach you). However, we take it a step further - your funnel MUST lead your prospect to your HUB, where they can become your tribe member. This is where you can serve them, nurture them, help them, and offer them additional products and services (whether your own or from other companies) that make sense. That’s the ultimate model.

Which mentors have impacted your life, and how? 

The first book I read that opened my eyes about success was by T.Harv Eker, “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind.” I also had many other great mentors I’ve learned from, including Bob Proctor, Dan Kennedy, Tony Robbins, and many others. As you and your business grow, your mentors and mentorship level will evolve. In the beginning, I recommend finding a mentor who is DOING what you want to do and getting the results you want to get, and they can show you how they’re doing it, AND you can easily understand it. It’s best if they can prove that they have helped others get the results they wanted. As your business grows, you will level up. Always strive to be in the room with people who are 3-5 levels above you. Don’t try to learn calculus if you’re starting elementary school; it will overwhelm you, and you’ll quit.

What would you do differently if you were to start again from scratch? 

If I were to start over again from scratch, I would do what I teach my students right now. It would save me so much money, time, and frustration. I would start by doing affiliate marketing - this is the easiest and fastest way to make money online. However, I would separate myself from all other affiliates right away and focus on building my HUB faster. 

Just like building a house requires some devices, the same goes for building your business. To develop and grow your digital business will require some basic things from a technology setup standpoint: 

A webpage/funnel building. You will need that to create landing pages and capture leads to build your list. You can use many great tools to do this, such as eStage.com, ClickFunnels.com, Leadpages.net, and many others. 

An email auto-responder and email management system. As people opt-in to your list, you must collect and manage them properly and communicate with them easily. I recommend companies such as Ontraport, Convertkit, AWeber, GetResponse, and ActiveCampaign. Your HUB. This is not just a website - this is your HOME and a central control center online. I recommend eStage. com. NOTE: This company is not open to the public at this writing, but they will be opening soon.

How would you describe your mission? 

Our mission here at Four Percent is simple: We help people build their dream business online that generates consistent income and allows them to live life on their terms. At the time of this writing, we have over 300,000 members, but our vision is to impact at least 1 billion lives. We strive for excellence in everything we do - deliver the most potent education for entrepreneurs, create topnotch technology that helps them grow their business.