Marketing and Freelancing
I’m a Writer/Editor: Why the Heck I Built An Affiliate Marketing Business After the Age of 60
The importance and value of affiliate marketing for content developers and freelance writers
As one of the volunteer editors of Illumination Integration Publications on Medium since its inception, I wanted to write this piece to inspire writers to think outside the box, have an open mind, and act boldly. I don’t need credit for this work, but I would like the taste the joy of being helpful to writers.
I work as a freelancer with several decades of business experience who is still far away from being an open-minded person. I still have my doubts and insecurities ingested by society. One sure and the first thing we need to learn is that affiliate marketing is a legal, legitimate, and rewarding business.
There is no shame in this business opportunity. Many reputable entrepreneurs, even celebrities, do it. What is wrong with us, proud writers and editors? Are we just afraid of the criticism of a few small thinkers? Who cares what they think? I don’t anymore, but I used to due to stupidity. They don’t pay my bills.
Like many of my author and editor colleagues, I had an awful perception of affiliate marketing. I thought it was a sleazy business to deceive people into purchasing the wrong products. I also mixed it up with multi-level marketing schemes and all those marketing types which turn off our friends and colleagues.
Until I met Dr Yildiz, who is the author of “The Power of Digital Affiliate Marketing”, I never thought it would be something I’d enjoy and benefit from as a freelance writer and editor. I was thinking like senior editor Carol Price who thinks “Affiliate Marketing May Not Be Straight Forward”. But I was wrong. It was damn simple but not easy!
I already have considerable marketing skills leveraging an established newsletter, including a well-developed mailing list of over forty years. But I never thought I could use my newsletter and mailing lists to generate extra income out of nowhere.
Mentored by Dr Yildiz, suddenly, an unexpected revenue stream started flowing into my poor finance pool. Ironically, it happened in the middle of the pandemic when so many small businesses were suffering. My little writing and editing business has just started flourishing.
When Dr Yildiz created his manuscript, he requested me to be a beta reader. Frankly, I was hesitant to read a book about affiliate marketing that I had no interest in.
My initial thought was it would be a waste of my scarce time. However, since I have massive respect for his well-researched content and our close work and social relationship, I accepted it graciously.
I am glad I did because this simple and short book helped me generate income in the middle of the pandemic when I needed money the most. My home office bills are skyrocketing nowadays. Moreover, it is an income created with less effort and time than my other business of researching, writing, and even prestigious editing, which is truly hard work.
For example, if I compare the time I put on editing business books and the affiliate marketing process, the second one brings at least ten times more income than the former one. This may sound ludicrous and exaggerated to some. But it is not. Bear with me.
I had to deal with a lot of emotional issues in the editing business. It stresses me, disappoints me, and annoys me sometimes. But affiliate marketing does not. I have no responsibility for product development, distribution, and support.
All I do is introduce a product that I like by simply saying: “please take it if you are interested in it.” It is that simple. If they are interested, just a click brings real money to my bank account, even when I am sleeping. No mess, no fuss!
I don’t even see what the client and other stakeholders do behind the closed doors of this business model. All I see is a commission in my bank account, which delights me nowadays. I have no idea who bought the product, why they bought it, and what they did with it. None of my business.
Isn’t that wonderful? 🙏
Let me share a few simple yet powerful things I learned from Dr Yildiz in our mentoring sessions and from his latest book shared on Medium.
His book is sold in many bookstores, and he told me that this is one of the best sellers of his books which sold over 1,000 copies in a month. He received an award, but he does not share his accolades publicly.
He kindly shared it for Medium, Vocal Media, and even on NewsBreak readers by revealing the mystery behind affiliate marketing because he believes that every writer and blogger should consider benefit from affiliate marketing. He is challenging our perceptions by walking his talk.
I studied marketing, all sorts of marketing, including affiliate marketing in business school at a postgraduate level, but I never liked these subjects, honestly. However, general marketing has been a handy skill for promoting my freelancing business, which opened many doors for me.
Affiliate marketing is different from other marketing. For example, Dr Yildiz introduced me to a product called “Writing Paychecks” that I loved as a freelancer.
The product itself helped me gain many clients for the research, writing, and editing business. This product made finding the “paying clients” very easy. Since I liked the product, I posted an email to my friends on my mailing list, excluding my business clients.
But I was very hesitant initially to send that post. My subconscious was stopping me from sending it. I felt like I am using my friends to sell stuff. The feelings came from past experiences.
Once, I tried selling Amway in the 1980s. I was terrified and hated it on the first day and quit it the next day. It was a horrible feeling using my friends to sell things.
After fixing this past trauma using my neo-cortex, which I also learned from Dr Yildiz gratefully during our mentorship sessions, I decided to send a friendly email to my friends on my mailing list, excluding the professional clients.
Guess what! My friends loved it too. They said they wish we knew about this product before. And many of them became members of this site. It generated a few hundred dollars. Yes, just one email with a single link.
Of course, it took me years to build these friends, but if we look at it from a business point of view, writing this email took me less than 10 minutes. I have never earned this much income in ten minutes from any job in my career over the last 50 years.
And I did not make any investment. Dr. Yildiz helped me to get the link free from the Clickbank site. By the way, he also provided a step-by-step guide to using Clickbank in this chapter.
Then I decided to put it in my monthly newsletter for my editing clients. Those freelance writers had never heard about this product, and 40% of them purchased the product. How do I know?
I checked the Clickbank account and saw the number of purchases, and each sale brought a commission to my account. This was the most profitable newsletter in my freelance career. In one day, I earned multiple times more income than other newsletters I sent to my clients.
This is only one product. Dr. Yildiz introduced me to over 1,000 products. I was overwhelmed and immediately said, “hell no!”. The idea was so crazy. But he always told me there was an order in his madness, and I believe he has.
I asked him how to market over 1,000 products. I knew it had something to do with his metalhead. He said automation.
Even though I understand technology at a high level as a business person, I have no ability to automate affiliate marketing links. I told him I was not going to send a thousand links to my clients. They would think of it as spam, and they would fire me.
His elegant solution shocked me. First, he bought me a cheap domain name, yes, only $7.99. Then, he created an automated website for me using a hosting service, which is less than $10 a month. He copied all my product links from Clickbank, Amazon Affiliates, and several others.
In fact, he put over 2,000 products later for me. And he did not charge me for this service as I volunteered to edit and publish stories of his publications on Medium. It is his kindness and reciprocity.
I better understood this value when I read this post from Julia E Hubbel recently titled “Have You Thanked Him Lately?: Might be time, if you’re an Illumination writer.” Like Julia, I cannot thank enough Dr Yildiz for the avenues he opens for writers and editors. He also introduced me to Vocal Media and NewsBreak, which brought additional income to my freelancing business.
Now, instead of sending 2,000 links to my clients, I only send a single link, which is my automated website. This straightforward yet effective solution is undoubtedly genius. Unfortunately, not many writers can comprehend it.
But sometimes, elementary things can be very powerful. Therefore Dr Yildiz told me that he named his book The Power of Digital Affiliate Marketing.
Dr. Yildiz sometimes thinks ahead of our time. His obscurity definitely opens new neural pathways in my ancient brain. He catalyzes growing my freelance business without charging me a cent.
Being open to new ideas is critical for business success. Despite my strong respect for Dr. Yildiz, I doubted affiliate marketing when he recommended it to me. I was associating it with my horrible MLM experience in the 80s.
De MY helped to solve my personal psychological problems. He said, “Affiliate Marketing has nothing to do with MLM”. It was all in my confused and judgmental mind. He taught me not to be ashamed of this innovative marketing solution god-send to content developers.
I am very grateful for his enthusiasm which boosted my confidence and courage. I reread the book on Medium and shared the link with my friends with no shame. And they thanked me for doing so as they learned a lot about digital affiliate marketing.
Learning the power of affiliate marketing opens a new path in my financial journey. Now, I am not only practicing it but also evangelizing it to my writer and editor colleagues. Knowledge itself is not power, but sharing it freely is the real power. I learned this, too, from Dr. Yildiz.
If you are like me, confusing affiliate marketing with multi-level marketing, you are missing a lot. You may check this first chapter of the book on Medium and see how it can change your financial life as it did mine. It is free. There is no risk in reading a five-minute article. It can be a life-changer for you as it was for me.
I noticed that Dr. Preeti Singh, a finance professor, reviewed this book on SYNERGY earlier. I thought if a finance academician loves this book, why would I not as a poor editor? Many thanks to Dr. Preeti, who changed my mind as well. And Jay Toran, who reviewed it as well.
I have commenced using affiliate links in my blogs and articles. I use all products that Dr Yildiz selected on his websites. They have a very high conversion rate for me, even more than the Amazon affiliate links on my website.
I used my first affiliate link on Medium in this article recently. Some writers believe that affiliate links stop our articles from being distributed topics. It is nonsense. This article was distributed to topics, and I am grateful to Medium for it. As long as we follow curation rules, our articles will comply and qualify for distribution.
Thanks to Dr Yildiz, I am a top writer on multiple topics and tags too. He taught me how to become a top writer in three months. I followed his advice and achieved my goal. I also learned how to triple my freelance income. The key point is to declare affiliate links for legal and ethical reasons for every platform, not just on Medium or Vocal Media.
As a senior editor of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications, I highly recommend you review the following five outstanding collections that Dr. Yildiz created for our readers. These collections include hundreds of curated articles contributed by over ten thousand writers on Medium.
This is the best form of content distribution, empowering so many writers on Medium. Dr Yildiz distributes these collections to his subscribers, which is a free service to contributing writers of his publications.
As members of this platform, these stories are easily accessible to all of us. We can learn and gain new perspectives offered by many top writers. These business-related collections are equivalent to MBA courses.
I know it because I earned an MBA in the 1980s, which cost me thousands of dollars of student loans that I managed to pay completely only a few years ago. I don’t know about other people, but my MBA did not produce a return on investment.
Ironically, I learned the theory of affiliate marketing in my expensive MBA classes that cost thousands of dollars, which did not generate any tangible business outcome for me yet.
Paradoxically, a ten-dollar book for which I did not even pay a cent brought me a business generating a new revenue stream for my freelance career in the middle of the pandemic.
I hope my two cents in this post can inspire you and open a financial path and a new revenue stream for your writing and editing business.
This is not a book review, but it is about a new and creative business model that all writers and editors should recognize and take advantage of. Only with an open mind we see the truth behind the complexity of this noisy and crazy world.
If you need more inspiration, you may check my recent two posts bringing hope to writers in this bad economic climate.
You have learned the theory in my two cents. It is time to practice.
Take action now!
What are you waiting for?
Go and earn some money for your business. Yes, right now.
Do you reckon anybody would care for your business?
I have been there and done that many times.
Thank you for reading this story from one of the 125 volunteer editors on Medium.
Here are two stories that you might review and gain inspiration from.
And please remember to declare your affiliate links in your articles and blogs.
Please note that this story includes affiliate links.
Let’s remember this: “Nobody ever got anywhere by being shy and waiting to be discovered” — Karen Madej
Creating a viable passive income stream can be the best thing in your life.
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