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Being an affiliate marketer with The Retired Affiliates or an online business owner is something that I have always wanted to achieve. My name is Mark-Paul and after all these years I suppose you could call me an experienced affiliate marketer.
I have been involved with the affiliate marketing industry since 2015 which was when I got my start within the online world.
I am definitely not one of those gone from nothing to having everything stories, because honestly most of them annoy me, and the majority of them are scams. You can head to any of those “Get Rich Quick” sites online if that’s what you want to read.
What I am going to do instead, is explain exactly how at 50 years of age and with very limited computer or technical knowledge I got involved with the affiliate industry and what my journey to success looked like.
From a young kid, I was always looking to be really good at something but just wasn’t sure what that was just yet. Growing up on the beaches of Western Australia my first goal was to become a professional surfer, much to my Mum & Dad’s disgust, and my hero at that time was Mark Richards & Cheyne Horan, they were fearless when it came to surfing big waves. My problem, I didn’t have that kind of fearlessness. That game plan was now gone.
Fast forward to high school and I found that I really enjoyed the outdoors and more specifically hands-on manual labor, which is what got me into building and landscaping. I didn’t want to be working for the business owners for the rest of my life which is why I did a course at our local TAFE on business management.
At age 48 the many years of hard manual work and the stress of running a very labor-intensive business were starting to take their toll on my body.
It was while I was talking to one of the owners of a small business we used to contract to that I discovered affiliate marketing.
He was making some really great money right now, but was very limited in the amount he wanted to tell me about it, but did show me what kind of money he was making and I was honestly blown away that he was making that kind of money on the internet.
Well, that’s when the light bulb moment happened. I realized immediately that if other everyday people with no internet experience could make it work then so could I. Now all I had to do was work out how the whole “affiliate marketing” thing worked. I also needed to know how to get traffic!
My first 6 months online were a disaster. I made the same mistakes many people are still making today and that was investing time and money into all “The Get Rich Quick” & “Make Money Fast Online” type programs, none of which gave you any support once I had signed up and were leaving you to design your own websites, and with no coding skills myself I would have to pay 1000s of dollars to someone else to do.
I definitely didn’t have the access to website platforms like Site Rubix @ Wealthy Affiliate back then, where you can create a great-looking website within minutes for free.
So as you can see in the first 6 months, I built a website, something you can now do in a few minutes for free today.
Exactly 2 months from starting my website I made my first sale online. I was very cautious when I first started this time around, the main reason was that I didn’t understand a lot of things like search engine optimization or SEO. I remember starting my first entry into the pay-per-click (PPC) world with a budget of just $5 per day.
PPC clicks are for ad campaigns but before I could do that I had to start doing some market research, find different affiliate programs, and learn how to properly put together different ad groups.
To show my old age (Currently 57) I had to slowly learn the PPC game and how it worked.
In that second month, I managed to make a few more sales.
Things were really starting to get interesting and I was starting to get a better understanding of everything.
I had now learned that once you have the right steps in place your levels of success grow, so now it was just a matter of repeating this, something they call in the business world “Scaling Your Business”
I really thought I had the whole affiliate marketing concept worked out. I had gotten it to a stage where I was making a few hundred extra dollars a month on top of my salary but I just couldn’t progress it any further.
My dreams of leaving my current job and having the freedom to work when I wanted and where I wanted were slowly becoming further and further away.
Every training resource I looked at to help scale my business to the next level was going to cost me a lot of money, something I didn’t have a lot of right now.
This is the year I joined WealthyAffiliate.com and haven’t looked back.
From my experience and the many mistakes, I have made over the last 8 or so years as an internet entrepreneur I came across a place where affiliate marketers can go, irrespective of their experience to create, grow or manage their online business and be part of a community where everyone wants to see everyone succeed.
I am now a retired full-time affiliate marketer after leaving my AUD 190K P.A job.
Just like the name, I want to help people understand everything they need to know and what they can expect in the affiliate marketing world.
I am going to show you how not to make the same mistakes I did, and guide you with 24/7 support and content that is all based on my 8 years of experience in this space.
I am here to help people who may not have computer knowledge or business background, you could be someone who has always dreamed of doing this but has no idea where to start, or like me in the very beginning of my journey has been ripped off previously with one of the many “Make Money Easy” deals out there on the internet.
Join me on a journey that will lead to your success. Follow me, ask for help at any time and offer me your own opinions.
Thanks so much for having a look at The Retired Affiliate and going through my story.
Join me and with a little hard work, some dedication, and me by your side your story will be just as good.
Let’s make you the next retired affiliate marketer.
To Your Success,
Mark
CEO and Founder of The Retired Affiliates
