Today I Woke Up To $125.94 In "Extra" Commissions

byTimMcKinlay

71.7K followers

5 years ago

Something cool and totally unexpected happened this morning.

As I turned on the laptop and checked my emails, I discovered I had received an email from ShareASale (AWIN) who said they've got some affiliate commissions they've been trying to send me.

My initial reaction was… what, really?

Apparently, they had sent me a check for affiliate commissions a while back, that was returned to them since my address had changed. I hadn’t logged into my ShareASale affiliate account for years and didn’t even have my password saved anywhere. So I went through the process of getting access to my account again, and when I did, I discovered I had $125.94 sitting in there! And it was made up of some commissions from over a year ago.

Now I know that’s not much (lol) but it’s always cool to wake up to “extra” commissions.

I also thought it was cool that a company was chasing me up - to pay me! That shows a lot of integrity in my books, so as a side note, I highly recommend ShareASale as a legit and trustworthy affiliate network.

Anyways, I thought sharing this might motivate/inspire some of you who are just getting started. Because it reminded me of the contrast between you're first getting started (hoping and praying for your very first commission) to a little ways down the road, when commissions come a lot easier. To the point where sometimes you don't even realise you've earned them!

The truth is, once you get everything Wealthy Affiliate teaches dialed in, you can literally be earning money while you sleep, and from places you’re not even expecting. That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing, it’s very “passive” in nature.

You put lots of work in in the beginning stages, but over time this pays off and you begin to earn multiple streams of income based on work you did years ago.

But it all starts with you grinding and hustling for (what feels like) very little reward. The important thing to understand in this phase of your business is that every effort you put forth now is critical, and is actively building towards the overall success of your business. So if you put the work in, it does pay off over time and it actually gets a LOT easier to earn commissions too.

And I believe there are two main reasons it gets easier to earn:

Firstly, ranking content in Google is a gradual process. Meaning, the articles you create now may not reach their full ranking (and as a result traffic) potential for months. And not just the individual content but your site’s overall authority within Google naturally increases over time. So at first you’re grinding away getting (seemingly) nowhere but over time your results really start to snowball. To the point you have lots of older content ranking, and Google ranks your new content a lot quicker because you’ve built up trust. Which means you have lots of quality, free traffic coming into your site as a direct result of the effort you put in ages ago.

Related Training:

• The 4 Core Traffic Strategies for Affiliate Marketing
• Writing Awesome Content That Ranks

Second, over time you learn how to monetize your site effectively. Crafting conversion content, placing CTAs (Call to Actions) strategically on your site, and just generally understanding how to convert visitors into buyers a LOT better. This is a skill like any other, that takes time to develop. And it’s a very valuable skill, one that can be used within other business models too, including selling your own products or developing sites for clients for example.

Related Training:

• CASE STUDY: Integrating Money Elements into a Website
  
• Building Convincing Call to Actions
  

To sum it up... when you put the work in, you will have traffic on your site and you will have a site that is highly optimized for conversions. Then you will be making the real money, and you may even wake up to surprise commissions some day when you least expect it!

It all starts with following the training right here in Wealthy Affiliate and taking massive action. So set aside distractions and get stuck into building your business, you’ll thank yourself later. ;)

Tim