In the 1990s, I was fortunate enough to hear the story told on a series of motivational cassette tapes calle Leading the Field por Earl Nightingale.
Acres de diamantes is a parable
It tells the story of a farmer who hears that there is a fortune to be made in diamonds. Although his farm is profitable, he doesn’t want the responsibility to hold him back, so he sells to the highest bidder.
The farmer searches all over the world, but never finds a single diamond. After many years, he dies empty-hande.
Meanwhile, one day while digging, the new farmer discovers a diamond mine right on the same property that the old farmer had abandone to pursue his dream of finding diamonds.
The moral of the story is obvious
My intention in telling it is this: my first affiliate site became an “Acres of Diamonds” tale in itself.
I almost got lost looking for the next big thing to grow my online business, when in reality it was hiding right under my feet.
I almost lost my diamond mine, but you don’t have to. Read on!
Get going
I’ve been using MemberPress since it was launche in the early 2000s. That’s about five decades in Internet years, I think. I was one of the first customers, and I recently found the first version that I installe.
Back then, it was mostly a payment gateway and a set of well-designe rules to protect the sites. You downloade it, got a huge online manual, and off you went.
Make Customized Take a gander at the statistical surveying results · 2. Contrasting promoting efforts with income · 3. Reevaluating your shop system quarterly · 4. Increment the frequencyPut set up a cross-departmental work process · 2. Remember your main interest group · 3. Research and find your objective customersHowever, while building your most memorable information base.
I’m sure the MemberPress
Team will agree: At first, the learning curve was very steep, both for the team and for the customers.
A few weeks (and several support tickets) later, I had my website up and running, and starte growing my membership base. In 2013, sitios web the main reasons for blocking de afiliación eran un concepto bastante nuevo, por lo que había poca competencia, independientemente del nicho.
Hitting the wall
Things were going great at first. But then I hit a wall.
The number of new members phone number mx began to decline. And what is worse, the number of active members decrease.
I realize that if I didn’t take action, and take it quickly, it wouldn’t be long before my affiliate website would no longer be my main source of income.
I would have to find a job. And since I hate working for someone else, I had to avoid it at all costs.
I knew that in order to have a successful affiliate site, I would have to take the plunge. So I set out to market my site.
Moving on to marketing
Marketing an affiliate business
Successfully marketing a partner website is half skill and half art. What works for others may not work for you, and what appeals to your niche may not appeal to another.
I’m not going to go into all the marketing methods available here, but I will tell you that I starte by exploring pay per click (PPC) .
There are many PPC channels. Google Adwords (now calle Anuncios Google ) was the big one at the time, but there was also Facebook, Redit Ads, Amazon, YouTube, Instagram, and a bunch of others.
PPC marketing may not be right for you. And even if it is, as a small business owner, you’ll likely be limite to one or two channels. And you’ll nee to learn how to use the platform.
You will then nee to test carefully to see if and how the ads can make money for you, unless you can afford to hire an expert.
But after working with several platform experts, including representatives from Facebook and Google Adwords, none of them were able to help me use their platform to make a profit.
Not even to turn a dollar into a ten dollar. The Facebook team went so far as to suggest that my website was to blame for the poor ad performance. Maybe yes, maybe not.
Anyway, it was after this agonizing effort
My Acres of Diamonds moment
Illustration of an “aha” moment
I decide to hire one last freelancer to give Facebook Ads a try. I was sure I was missing some secret technique to unlock the huge benefits that PPC marketing sites promise.
Spoiler alert: I hadn’t
Freelancer in hand, I planne the campaign, set my keywords, ran split tests, and retargete. But I didn’t make a profit. Worse, I didn’t break even, and while I did convert some clients, I was at a loss.
The ad expert I hire decide to check my website to see if there were any unnotice barriers preventing people from joining.
We made a few tweaks here and there, like moving my warranty to a more prominent position and adding some security logos.
