The Piper Must Be Paid

WHY DID YOU JOIN WA?

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO ACHIEVE?

ANSWER to questions 1 and 2. MAKE MONEY.

The word ‘self-employed’ comes to mind. It means freelance, independent; that sort of thing, which I have been for many years.

It also means being in control of your own financial destiny and nobody to tell you when you can go to the bathroom. It certainly means working a damn sight harder at times; than your employed counterparts, because you need to pay your creditors. And most importantly, it is the only sort of freedom, in the work-place environment, that is worth having. But you can give up a lot to get it.

I DON'T WORK FOR FREE - Never have, never will. I GIVE to charity, that sort of thing, but that's a different activity; altogether.

I like free, don’t get me wrong, that’s why I joined WA in the first place, because it was FREE. But let’s face it, there are no free lunches; never have been, and even WA have to be paid.

So, I work for money in order to have/be/do anything I want, and you should too.

[Basically, I just like money. I like making money, I like spending it and there’s the odd exception when I just love to give some of it away. What is there not to like about money?]

But I digress.

As artificial intelligence strengthens its reason for existing; automating systems currently handled by humans, work opportunities will decrease even more than they have now.

And as nearly everyone on the planet is mesmerised by the content streaming out of their online devices, it is not too hard to make the leap (assumption) that there may be a bit more to this affiliate marketing caper than was perhaps first thought?

WILL IT BECOME A MAINSTREAM WAY OF EARNING A LIVING and will the masses embrace it?

Definitely food for thought on that one, personally I believe that it is very possible.

But the piper has to be paid, and have you realised that it costs a bit more than US$49 a month to really get sales traction on whatever it is that you are trying to do/sell/promote/write about?

If you haven’t gone down that route yet, fair not, the money drain will reach you at some point and it squeezes mighty tight if you’re on a budget.

One person mentioned spending nearly US$500 a month by the time he’d paid for his funnels and squeeze pages, auto responders and the like, not including advertising with Google, Facebook or Bing. Let’s just agree, it’s a reasonable chunk of change.

If you blog faithfully for a year, without expectation of a great return, you might be spending anything from US$588.00 to US$6000 a year, just to keep momentum going forward. The clever people won’t be, but when engaging in anything new, I always take a wee while to catch up to clever, and it’s never cheap.

So, I got to thinking. But, by this time I had already bought two domain names that I may never use if they turn out to be dud names, a theme that didn’t look half so good as when it was on the sales page, a mini blog course and a few other things that I’m too embarrassed to mention. Suffice to say it has not been a cheap exercise.

And the piper must be paid, every month.

But there is definitely an affiliate god that smiles benignly upon you if you’re on the “I’ve been REALLY good” list, and clearly it was my turn to receive.

Because, as luck would have it, I happened upon an informatively short blog about a WA member that had made $25k from one product. Mm… says I quietly, as I sends off a very polite PM asking for more details, which duly arrived.

IN EVERY AFFILATE OFFERING THERE IS A SILVER LINING

And so it was, with this one anyway.

A little bit different? I’ll say. Definitely a ‘think-outside-the-box’ one, but the possibilities are staggering beyond belief, and if you are infinity blogging anyway, then why not talk about something that will give you very decent returns over time?

And I did say that I really liked money, didn’t I?

So, the takeaway tip for everyone is to MONETISE EVERYTHING that you can.

Leave no stone unturned. Do not blog for free, do it with money in mind.

Make your writing enticing and captivating, keep your reader interested, provide solid product links to relative content, and ensure there is a CTA (call to action) in your final paragraph.

Having a following is everything these days, along with trust, and you are not here for free, you ARE here to win friends and influence people (more people, as many people as possible), and if you blog about crochet shoes for pigs, or knitted jackets for hens, then don’t be surprised if in five years (from now) you have nothing to show for your efforts.

Nobody cares… no one.

They don’t care if you’ve lost weight, they only care if you can show them how to lose weight EASILY and QUICKLY.

MONETISE OR DIE FINANCIALLY.

If you’ve written a blog about exercises you can do whilst lying down, and you don’t have relative affiliate product links in there to sell product to your readers, then you have wasted your time.

Nobody cares… no one.

YOU HAVE TO GIVE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT, not what you want them to have.

• Locate/identify the PROBLEM (that a person has).
• Point out to them the associated drawbacks to them putting up with their problem indefinitely.
• Provide a SOLUTION to their problem and provide social proof that it is working for others.
• Ensure a good outcome for all concerned (they get a solution/you get paid).

INDULGE YOUR PASSION FOR THE MUNDANE AFTER YOU’VE MADE MONEY.

If you can, for example, sell widgets to wombats (successfully, which means more than the odd two, or three) online, via information about crochet pig shoes and knitted hen jackets then fine, if not, restructure and begin again.

Because you’re not working for free, and the piper MUST be paid.