$60,000 a month with Affiliate Marketing - Interview with Steven Droege

Grab your drink and get ready. This is the caffeinated hustle, the best place to learn about entrepreneurs and FTS and life expert advice and guest interviews to launch your business and NFT journey further than you ever imagined. Now, here's your host, entrepreneur, coffee fanatic and founder of the NFT project, caffeinated creatures, Ben Carson. All right, team. Welcome back to the caffeinated hustle. I'm your host, Ben Carson, thanks for stopping by today's guest is someone that we have not been able to have on the show yet. And I'm really excited for you to learn from. So this is something that a lot of people have a very isolating polarizing, just attitude towards affiliate marketing is something that you either love or you hate. And I hope that after this podcast is done, we can kind of bring it back towards the center for both sides. So my special guest today is Steven droge. He is a one of a kind guy with a founder of a company called the cashflow marketer, he helps employees become entrepreneurs with affiliate marketing and help them take back their time. Steve, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much, Ben, thanks for having me. I appreciate you. Absolutely. I'm really looking forward to this one. Because, you know, everybody knows about affiliate marketing, I'm assuming most people don't have a nice positive outlook on it. Just because it's been around for so long, you're gonna get a lot of junk when you've had something that's been in the business for 20 years. You know, everyone knows about it. I don't think very many people know how to do it. Right. So I want to start at the beginning. Tell us a little about yourself, what you did before affiliate marketing, how'd you get into it? And then maybe you can shed some light on the positive sides of affiliate marketing. Yeah, this all started back in 2016. I was in the US Army at the time. And at the time, all I was looking to do is make some extra income. When I was off duty. We were struggling, we had just moved from Michigan out to Colorado Springs, it was more expensive. And so I was looking for something and like a lot of people who are looking for some sort of side hustle. I went out to Google and I just said, How do I make money online. And that was where the journey just began. So went out how to make money online. And I actually found out about network marketing kind of the sister of affiliate marketing first. And what ended up happening was, I knew nothing about this space, nothing about digital marketing in any way. I actually when I signed up for network marketing, I knew so little I thought I was actually going to a job interview. So I got already thought I was going to a job interview and then found out I was being recruited for a network marketing company. So I ended up doing it started there and spent after that fast forward six years, and probably just over six figures in all kinds of training, lotions, potions, pills, all these different things to get to where I'm at today. So it was a lot of failure. But in that failure was just a ton of amazing lessons. And I fell in love with affiliate marketing, especially around last October. Man, that's amazing. Yeah, I mean, there's success is just what we call our mistakes. You know, I mean, that's just you got to learn from it. That's how you get your experience. And that's how you build that success from so when you were doing network marketing, you know, most people would probably say that's like the pyramid scam. And like, We're the people at the top make all of it and then the bottom. Do you feel now that you've been on the other side of this? Do you feel like that's true? Are there some real opportunities, even the network side of it, you know, even on the network side of it, there's some opportunities there. The big difference between affiliate marketing and network marketing is network marketing, you're building teams. So if a person doesn't want to build teams, if they don't want to start their own business and have all these sorts of people below them, then network marketing is probably not for them. Affiliate marketing, you're not building teams, you're actually promoting other people's products, and you're getting paid a percentage of the Commission for each sale. So let's say you sell a $10 product, if you're getting, you know, a 50% commission, you're gonna make $5 of that 10 For every single sale that you make of that product, no building teams, and that's a big mistake that I see with a lot of people is they think that affiliate marketing you're building that team and you're sort of building that pyramid is what they think that it is, but you're really doing it more on your own than network marketing where you have a team you have an upline and downline and network marketing is more closely resemble, say corporate America where you have the CEO and then you have a few people below it and you know, the office work it kind of forms a pyramid in network just like network marketing. Does that make sense? Which do you prefer? At this point? Great question. I definitely found that I prefer affiliate marketing over network marketing. It was a great experience training people in network marketing and building those teams. I found it took a lot more time than affiliate marketing did. They both take time and they both take effort. Affiliate marketing has allowed myself to be with my family with our newborn, more. And so I'm very grateful for that instead of having to do training sessions with different team members. That's a great point. How many kids you have just one three months old? Three months? That's awesome. So do you get to work from home full time, or you have to go to the office. So it's, it's all work from home, it's building a business entirely online. And I don't have any sort of Office that I go into, actually, I'm here in my office right now, as we do this podcast, I don't go anywhere. I don't meet up with anybody. It's just here, my wife and my son. So I couldn't ask for anybody better to be around. Yeah, absolutely. I got five kids. And I'm in my home office. And I mean, this is the I mean, post COVID. It's really easy to work from home. I mean, it's just it changed the game for a lot of ways, a lot of people and one of those ways is just how easy it is to work remotely now. So Alright, so let's talk about, there's a couple of ways we need to address this. I think the first one is you said you sell a product for 10 bucks, five bucks is yours five bucks is theirs? Let's talk about the products. Are you selling physical products? Are you selling digital products? What type of products should someone that wants to get into this and start being an affiliate marketer, where should they start looking for a good product to sell when you want to start looking for a good product to sell, those are the two as you mentioned, physical products, or digital products. Personally, I believe a person should start with digital products, physical products come with shipping costs, they come with inventory costs, they come with some storage costs, in some cases, whereas digital products to be able to fulfill that all you have to do is in many cases, send out an automatic email that gives them a link to their login, and you fulfill that purchase. So it's, it's much easier, it's much more streamlined. So I always recommend starting with a digital product and looking for products that are more on the high ticket side of things, something that's maybe closer to $1,000 or more per sale that you could receive a commission from it. That way it's easy to fulfill. And at the same time you have the potential to earn a really decent commission on every sale, instead of let's say, you're selling a product, right? It's easier to find one person who would want to purchase a valuable $1,000 product, then to look for 100 people that would want to buy a $10 product. And so I always recommend a higher ticket sort of digital product to start out. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So if you want to sell this high ticket, digital item, what type of niches are you looking for? Are you trying to what type of high end products do you sell? Like, don't tell me the specifics, but tell me that the niches that you're in that you're selling these high ticket items? Yeah, so the Big Four, well, actually, I should say the big three that have really great high ticket products are niches in health, a niche in wealth, and also in relationships. So health, wealth, and relationships are amazing places to look, because they're already proven people are willing to spend to solve problems with their health, their wealth and their relationships. And there's a lot of great products in each of those categories of niches. I personally am a geek for finances. So I love finances, so I stick more in the wealth niche. Okay, that's awesome. And so we can we need to probably establish a little credibility, because you know, I'm sure a lot of people have if you do a Google search for best affiliate market, you could probably find that type of niche, but I took a look at your Tiktok profile before we got on here. And it shows that you make 32,000 a month as an affiliate marketer, is that still accurate? You make it even more now. So now actually, it's a little bit closer. It varies because of commissions, right? But it's it's right around anywhere from 32,000. And on the best month. I've made up to $67,000 in a month. So it ranges between there. And there's just a little caveat. There's also for people who are interested in affiliate marketing, there's high ticket subscription products out there for you as well. So if a person was to go out and find a product that offers a subscription every month After a person signs up, they can potentially receive additional income from that subscription income as well. So it gives you a foundation a safe foundation to actually start building wealth with your business. That's amazing. I know some of our listeners out there are just you know, you could be a stay at home parent, you could be someone that just has a nine to five, that they're just really are tired of it, and they want to do something else. And I mean, if you're making 30 to 60,000 a month, I mean, the average sign in the US right now is probably between 50 and 60 depend on how much inflation is hit that but you're making a year salary in a month, so that you've got to be the top, let's say you're the top 1% of affiliate marketers, what separates you from the average affiliate marketer that might make 100 bucks a month? What is it that you do differently that a normal affiliate marketer is not doing? That's giving you that type of success? So here's what it has been initially, when you start out, you don't know anybody, nobody has a following starting out. A lot of people come to us and they say, Hey, you have to have a big following or be a big influencer, right? Last December, I had zero followers. So built this from December till now it happened very rapidly. And what I did to stand out is you give more value than the next person, you don't necessarily hide information from people. But if they ask a question, you don't want to forward them to say your paid course, or whatever it is, you give them a ton of free value. People know, you know, I'll give away free courses, free books, all of those things. That's a big thing that separates what I do from a lot of other affiliate marketers, they don't give anything away for free, they make a video, and then they try to send people directly to purchasing their product. And when that, let's say a lead, and they go, Yeah, I'm interested in affiliate marketing. They're interested in, you know, Ben's affiliate marketing, and then they click on the affiliate link to go out the link that the person says, they end up going out to, you know, Bob's company over here. And it's just a weird transition, because they're going whoa, I thought I was working with Ben. And now I'm on Bob's page who's Bob. So it makes sense, I give a lot of value up front, you gently introduce the company that you're an affiliate with, hey, you know, I think this would be valuable for you to meet Bob, this is, you know, gentle introduction. But the biggest thing that makes a difference in affiliate marketing is how many conversations, meaningful conversations a person has, every affiliate has every single day. So on Facebook, for instance, I aim to have at least 20 to 25 meaningful conversations in Facebook Messenger, every single day, asking people what are you looking to accomplish? What are you looking to achieve? What are your goals, and then we figure out if this is good for them, and how I might be able to serve them and help them. So it's, it's those meaningful conversations and that human interaction that has separated our business from a lot of other people out there who just dropped their link, I call it link barfing. And just give their link, they barf it out there and they go, hey, buy this from me, instead of saying, Hey, how can I serve you? How can I help you? How can I give my best? And what are you looking to accomplish? One of my previous mentors called it being more interested than interesting. That's how we run our entire business being more interested. Now. That's amazing. I mean, you're, you're not quite ecommerce in the sense of like selling something on like Shopify. But you know, we've had some guests on here that do that. And they all say the same thing. You're not selling something, you're solving a problem. And when you solve a problem, people will just open their wallets gladly because you're fixing something for them. So you gave a lot of really unique information there. I want to unpack a little bit. I think the first one is you said you're talking to 2025 people a day, are you just doing cold outreach and more or less spamming them? Do you have a lead magnet that generates them into some sort of funnel that you reach out? How are you talking these people daily like that, because that's a lot of conversations to have in a week. Here's what's powerful about social media. I always make at least two to three pieces of content in social media every single day, whether it's videos, posts, live, I've never in this entire business, cold outreach to anybody. I've never gotten on the phone with anybody. You make a few videos every day. And people reach out to you and say, hey, you know, that's really interesting. Can you tell me more about it? And in that sense, when they say can you tell me more about it? You as the influencer, you as the affiliate marketer have become the hunted instead of the hunter and all A lot of the success in affiliate marketing is about being able to position yourself as the hunted, never having to reach out to people. You never have to reach out to your friends, your family, it's just about creating valuable content that educates people every day and entertains them like edutainment, and then letting them reach out to you. And when they reach out to you actually showing interest in them and saying, okay, yeah, I'd love to tell you more, you know, what are you looking to achieve with this? What has you interested in affiliate marketing and letting the conversation just organically go from there. So it's really the videos, the posts, the lives that are able to generate the interest with people in the first place, so I don't have to reach out to anyone. Okay. So I really appreciate that answer. That's a very valuable piece of information to make quality content that's basically top of funnel is just your quality content. And then they get inside your funnel, and they start talking to you. So what about someone that doesn't have the time, let's make an example of a imaginary person that has a nine to five, they have a family, they have two hours a day they can give to this. So they can make the content, they can't do all these conversations, because everything else can they Is there a middle ground where they get top of funnel to get the content, and then they go to some sort of landing page and they get in through a process or without those meaningful conversations, you're not going to get the results. And you're just going to be another affiliate marketer stuck and making a couple 100 bucks a month, and it's no real income, they just move on. So that's a great point. Yeah, it for people who who don't have the time. To be clear, these the videos you create, they're about 15 seconds, they're normally just normal 15 second video, so it's literally picking up a phone, aiming an at yourself, and just telling a quick story, whether it's maybe you're telling a quick story about, hey, I'm frustrated with this, and this is how I solved it. And you can put a little bit of text on the screen in your video, but can be it can be created very quickly. As far as the content, it's more about the message behind it, because it can be a rather ugly video. It doesn't have to be professional, commercial quality. But what people really resonate with is the message that you're able to bring to them. And so if they don't have the time, what I always recommend starting out is taking either staying up an hour later, or getting up an hour earlier in the morning. And just making that a person's sacred time, their time, this is the time to work on this business, this is the time to grow this business. And committing to that time, either an hour in the morning, hour in the evening, and just taking that hour to to point the camera and just tell a little bit of a story. Because that's what it's our stories as human beings that separate each and every one of us from every other person. It's when when people say saturation and affiliate marketing is something that's a myth, because nobody's competing with anybody. If that person is using their personal stories, nobody's competing to be me, Steve, nobody's competing to be Ben Carson and Ben stories are all separated by those stories. And it's important that we tell those stories, we share those stories in our content, because that's what ultimately brings people into our community and attracts them to you. And it's it's as easy as just pointing the camera at yourself and telling telling a quick story and then publishing it on social media. But often I found when people are starting affiliate marketing, their greatest challenge is just pressing that red record button and filming themselves filming and being a little bit vulnerable. Yeah, for sure. It's Gary Vee has made tons of videos that say just document document and so many people are just scared of what what their mom's gonna say what their coworkers are gonna say it just doesn't matter. You got to put yourself out there. So yeah, let's take this a step further than so I really think this is some actionable advice here that we can take just immediately. So you make some content, you start getting some of these conversations in your DMS. Let's I'm assuming you're doing most of this on tick tock these days with 15 seconds for Instagram story videos trying to compete with tick tock, but that's kind of where your, your sweet spot is these days, correct? Yeah. And Facebook reels as well are a wonderful tool to use. So we're doing this content here. We're getting some conversations from that point, do you put them into a funnel, an email funnel of some sorts? do you where do you after the conversation? Where do you send them to keep them in the system? What I do is, once I have that conversation, I make sure that I can actually help them because I will forward people and say this isn't right for you. Or, Hey, I think this person might be better over here for you. If we feel it out. And we're like yeah, You know, this is this is going to be something we can solve, what I do is I share one of my links, one of my funnel links with them, and it doesn't take them out to a sales page. This is really important. We don't want to send people directly to a sales page, I send them to a page that first gives them something a very high value, say a course, a high quality video course, maybe it's a whole, you know, 80 page, ebook, something of value to them. And then I asked them, hey, in exchange for that, would you be willing to put in your email to receive it, a lot of them will put in their email. And then they get that for free immediately in their inbox, because it's a digital download. And so from there, it's just following up through email consistently. And following up and making sure we, we stay in touch with each other. And after they put in their email, the funnel will automatically take them over to the affiliate sales page, the affiliate link, and it'll offer it'll say, Hey, you could purchase this if you'd like to, I also do a video introduction of whoever the affiliate company is before they get to that page. And so that way, it's a very nuanced, and it's a very warm introduction to a paid offer. But it all begins by giving something of tremendous value, giving tremendous value for free, it's, that's where it always begins. And to get this value like that to get that lead magnet. For those that don't know what that means. It's you're giving something far worth for free. So you can get something more later, potentially, but you're giving them value for free with no strings attached. And that's called lead magnet, and it works excellent. But how do you get that lead magnet yourself? Or the companies you're promoting? Do they offer to you do you have to make it yourself like, can us send someone brand new in the space go find a lead magnet? Or do they have to figure out how to build something before they can really do this. So there's a few ways you can do it. First, a person could build it themselves. If they're going to build it, then it would be just maybe you're writing a short, you know, 20 page ebook or something, they can do the do it yourself route. There's also a website called fiverr.com, they could go out and hire somebody to be able to create that thing for them that ebook, or that infographic, whatever that piece of value is, you could hire someone or a third option, they can also utilize what's called Private Label Rights. And this is kind of an under utilized strategy. I personally love it. It's basically the idea is content creators out there have already created ebooks, they've already created. All the content, you could give away for free, you're able to download it, and you're able to give it away as though it's your own as though you created it legally. So that's a really powerful strategy with private label rights that people can use. And in some cases, you can sign up for these websites that have all this content for free. And you can even download a free ebook or a free video or a free piece of content and then immediately start giving it away without having to wait for it to be created. So those are really the three options. There's do it yourself. There's paid pay a professional on a freelancing website, or there's looking at private label rights, to be able to get the content that's already created for you. And you can think of private label rights. Kind of like if you think of a big company like Costco, Costco has their Kirkland Signature, that's a private label rights. Costco doesn't necessarily create all the products in that Kirkland Signature, but they have other companies who create the products for them, and they put their brand on the product and market it and it's the same we have the access to the same thing here in affiliate marketing. So those are the three best options. That's amazing. So let's say someone's ready to jump on this and try it they've figured out how to get their lead magnet they know how to make content so they think they can do this where do they go to find the digital items they're going to be selling where do you go to find the I'm assuming like the ones that come to mind for like 10 years ago used to be like Clickbank but that seems like it's is that still around? Is that still a thing? Where do you go to find your stuff? Yeah, Clickbank still around they still have products on there. There's there's a few other websites like Clickbank there's one called JVZoo There's another one called Max bounty and people can go out and they can look at products. They're what I always recommend to people when they're asking Where do I find my products? Where do I find my my niche is to look within themselves and ask yourself, what do you already love? What's a hobby that you already have you love. And you feel as though you're you got a pretty good expertise in it. And you can think of it as what is something that a person may be at your work will come up to you and ask you for who What are you the go to for? That's another way to look at it. What's your hobby, what are you really good at. And when you think of it that way, a lot of times, people when they have something they really love, they know about the companies, they know some things about the space. And it's good to go out to Google. And you can just type in whatever your your niche is, if it's crafts, you could say crafts, type in affiliate marketing program, if it's education, education, affiliate marketing program, real estate, real estate affiliate marketing program, and what will come up is lists of different affiliate programs that are out there. And then it's just about doing your due diligence. And using your expertise, you already have to pick and choose what you might like to get involved in. And I always recommend choosing when you start, pick one affiliate product, start with one and just focus on one and build your system all around that one particular affiliate company that you chose, instead of trying to do multiple companies. That's a great point. You want to be specialized, you don't want to be the jack of all trades here. So let's talk about a timeline. If you start with something like this, you pick your one, and you feel like you're not getting the traction you want to how long do you give it before you feel like you know what? You picked a dud, you got to try again. Yeah, so it's a lot of testing. In many cases, it's a lot of copywriting. copywriting is really important the words that you use. And so if you think it's if a person thinks it's a dud, I think the first thing they should do is go back and ask themselves, am I giving enough value? Am I really giving so much value in the form of my product, my service to others? Are my leads thinking, while I would be out of my mind to not do this, I'd be crazy, sometimes. Are you getting messages from people who are saying, This sounds too good to be true. A lot of people take it as a bad thing, that's a really good thing. You can build your whole business around, it sounds too good to be true. And you can actually be too good to be true. So start by asking yourself, are you giving enough value to other people? And if you feel like yeah, you know, you're giving enough value to others. You can even go out, you can ask your community that you're building, what sort of videos what sort of content would you like to see, and see if you're already hitting on those things that your community is looking for in the first place, I really tend to stick with something until success. So if it's something that you love, and it's something that, you know, people love, you know, going back to that crafts example, if you love crafts, and you know, a ton of you know, people love crafts, there's no reason to stop and switch over and start over. But it's more to focus on, gosh, how can I deliver more value? How can I give more than the next guy? And how can I just What am I talking about the things that people care about in this niche, I use the the term focus FOC us, and it just means focus on one course until success. So I'm a big proponent of not stopping with that. If other people are successful in it already, it's proven to be successful, then there's no reason that each of us can't be successful in it as well. We just have to figure out what they're doing, and start modeling people who are already successful in it. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that little tidbit there. My focus. That's very cool. And really, I think you've given a solid roadmap here of how to do this. And completely organic You haven't even mentioned, one thing that comes to my mind is the paid side of this. What are your thoughts on Facebook ads on tick tock ads on, you know, pay per click with Google? Like, are there any sort of doesn't make sense with how expensive it is to advertise most things these days? Because there's so much competition. Does it make sense to get a leg up by testing with paid ads? Or is the only way to do this the right way through organic the way you've said? That's an awesome question. Yeah, the two ways to really get it are to earn it, which is going out, you know, creating content, doing podcasts like this, or a person can pay for it as well paid ads. Tik Tok. has changed the game for all the social media platforms. And, you know, take it couple of years ago, I would have said, man, yeah, paid ads all the way we need to go with paid ads. But the thing is about tick tock is that it's the first platform or when somebody publishes a video, it doesn't just go out to the friends, the family, and you hope they share it, and you hope it gets kind of an organic build. It goes out to what's called tic TOCs. For you page, it reaches a lot of people really quickly. And it's because of TiC TOCs for you page and their algorithm that Facebook has created reels, and YouTube has shorts. And so there is such a massive opportunity for organic free traffic right now that it pays more, I believe, to learn how to use Facebook reels, learn how to use these free traffic sources. Because our business here, we grew this with no paid advertisement, it was strictly reals. It was just tick tock videos, it was all this was all built organically. You know, our Facebook page has almost 100,000 people on it right now, all organic. But for a person who does want to use paid ads, if you have some extra income, and you want to put it towards that, I think that's a great way to go. What you really have to do is you have to with your paid ads, make the paid ads look as organic and natural as possible, make them look like it's a person's friend that's just posting something funny. Don't make it look like an advertisement. So with me, I'll give you an example of an ad I did recently it did very well. It was about Star Wars, if you know it was about the Mandalorian. So you have grow goo at the top and you have Yoda just below him. And it has a caption and grow goo says you know getting to work. And then Yoda is at the bottom looking all messed up. And in the Yoda caption it says leaving work at the end of the day. So it's like this funny picture on you know, old and gray. And it resonated with a lot of people I even put the caption is, this is not the way and then below it, it said this is the way you know, Mandalorian reference. So have fun with your advertisement. It doesn't have to necessarily exactly explain your product or your affiliate thing. But it has to look really organic. And it has to provide value, even if that value is just making people laugh, making them stop, and just making them chuckle for a second, there's a lot of value in that. So make your paid ads as natural as possible. Or if you're gonna go the organic route, focus on you know, tick tock, and then Facebook reels and just deliver as much value in 15 seconds as you possibly can and model what other successful people are already doing in their videos on those platforms. Wow. Yeah, that's a great piece of advice. And, you know, with today's technology, you can use some of these platforms, there's planner platforms that you can actually repurpose it. So you could basically make a tick tock and then automatically upload it to reels and to shorts and one piece hits you with three platforms at once. So yeah, I love this. This is this has been great. So let's talk about the money just for a second. So let's say you make a sale Friday, when do you get paid from that sale? Like if someone jumps into this and makes a sale? Is it something they're like 3060 days out? It's like the money might come eventually? Or is this like pretty? Like you're gonna get paid like a normal job like within a week or two weeks, you're actually getting something out of this. It's an important question to ask your or to find out from your affiliate company because each affiliate company that you want to work with, they may have a different payout schedule. I've seen some who want to pay quarterly. Others pay monthly, some pay bi weekly every two weeks and others pay weekly. The ones I like the most I prefer to find a good company who pays weekly so I'm looking for every every seven days receiving payouts for affiliate commissions. But yeah, those anything weekly to monthly is really good. As far as payout Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Steve, this has been just amazing. I'd love to have you back later on if the community could vote for it and just you know, do a little mastermind and you take like 10 people from my group and you literally just helped them launch it themselves because this is it sounds very doable on a large scale for a lot of people. I mean, affiliate marketing makes total sense to me because the original creators getting free advertising and it makes sense for the promoters because they get a sale without having to make the content so it sounds like a good win win as long as you do it right. And it sounds like you're you're killing it. So I really appreciate you coming on where can our listeners get to know more about you find you online. Where's your where you're hanging out? Well, thank you Ben. If if you guys want to reach out and feel First, I appreciate you, Ben and I definitely want to deliver as much value as I can to your listeners. If you guys want to reach out, definitely, you can find me at cash flow marketer on Facebook is the best place. Feel free to come have a conversation. I'd love to meet each and every one of you. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think we're gonna wrap it up here. Our last question we ask every guest in the show is what is your favorite caffeinated beverage? That is a great question. You know what? I'm a tea drinker. All the way. I'm gonna go have some right after this. Absolutely. You earned a buddy. Absolutely. Well, Steve, I appreciate your time. Thanks for stopping by. And we'll talk again soon. All right, Ben. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the caffeinated hustle. Sponsored by caffeinated labs LLC. For more information for to connect with Ben. Check us out online at caffeinated labs.io. Or email us at support at caffeinated labs.io. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Or give us a follow on social media by checking the links in the description. We'll see you next time.