Is anyone here currently doing any drop shipping or affiliate marketing or similar work? Or know someone who is?
I’m intrigued to give it a try but not sure where to start. Most sites and trainings I’ve looked at so far seem overwhelming, so would much prefer to get tips from someone who has had some success.
Please reply here or send a private message if you can be of assistance, thanks!
I do not do it in terms of business. I understand it from the media optics side of things.
Except for a very small group of people, there's no money in it. Where's the money? In selling programs that teach people how to be a "successful" affiliate marketer. For two years, long ago, I have a half ownership stake in a restaurant. Never again. I sold my end after two years and got my original investment back. But I lost the time, sweat, blood, stress and turmoil of those two years while also juggling my other businesses. You know who makes money in the restaurant business? Not the average restaurant, most are barely scraping by, but it's the companies who sell you the take out containers, the stainless steel, the industrial equipment, etc, etc.
If you want to start a business, focus less on servicing the public, focus more on servicing those who are trapped into servicing the public.
A good example is there's good money in plumbing. Great money if you do it right. But the best money is supplying plumbers, not being a plumber yourself. "Best" as in isolating yourself away from the majority of people.
Anyone who wants to teach you how to be a good affiliate marketer is likely a grifter. Probably unskilled. Probably trying to sell you something.
Best advice is this - Go casually watch some YouTube videos, not from people trying to sell you a program. Get the general lingo down. Get the core concepts down. Get a notebook and a pen and take notes.
Think about a subject that generates passion for you. Can be anything. You like building furniture out of recycled cardboard? Go for it. Start making videos on what you like and upload it to YouTube. If you have a topic that aligns to a product base, something like gaming PC building for example, then a pathway to affiliate links is natural. Start small, then baby steps. Focus on something you like. Then keep doing it and keep learning. Passion makes learning not feel like a grind to learn.
The people who can scratch out a real living are putting eggs into different baskets. A guy to look at is The Quartering. He turned his channel into a new business, his own little coffee/tea company. I don't think he's particularly great from a media optics evaluation, but he knows how to manipulate the algorithms of the platforms in place. Something also to keep in mind in that folks you see that seem successful are back end supported fronts for other entities. Also there are pathways to essentially buy your way into further manipulating various platform algorithms.
If you look at FBG's own YouTube channel, their videos get 500 views, sometimes a thousand, sometimes a couple of thousand. No offense to those guys, but they don't know what they are doing.
I could get them to half a million views for each video in three months. A million subscribers in a year. They'd need to make some changes of course. FBG is leaving money on the table there. But maybe they want it that way, I don't know.
Find something you really like. Something you are excited about talking about and covering and dealing with and learning about all the time. Do that. Keep doing it. It might not be drop shipping or affiliate linking, but there's usually some way to monetize it.
I cannot stress this part enough - Write your thoughts down. Write your ideas down. Write what you learn down. Once a week, review your notebook and weigh out what you learned, where you went wrong, where you went right, what you want to change.
All success requires consistent process and structure of some kind.
