I may have told the story a few times… but I’ve been dabbling online for a couple years now… but really seriously only for the last 6 months or so.

Way back in late ‘06 I started The REI Brain dot Com to help teach investors what I’ve learned about real estate investing… and what other successful investors have learned as well.  That site didn’t start to churn a real income until about March of ‘08… not because it was hard to get it to that point…

… but really because there were specific steps I should have taken a year and a half ago to drive traffic and to monetize the site that I didn’t take until the middle of ‘08.

A Month In Review…

I’m not one for posting monthly “income reports” like some other bloggers do… nothing wrong with it… I just don’t feel the need to validate myself by showing others what I make.

But, October was an exceptional month for me online (what’s exceptional to me might be pennies to someone else. It’s all relative.)… and I want to kind of break it down a bit how it’s happening.

First off, my online income isn’t all of my income at all… I run a marketing consulting biz and have several great clients on retainer… I own rental units… and I’m actually taking partial ownership to a great company with an excellent partner that I’ll let you know about later on.

But, my online income is fastly making up the majority of my total income… which isn’t a problem with me.

So, here it is… Here’s what I’ve learned as far as how to make money (online or offline)

Providing Value

I’d always heard people say, “If you provide value to other people… true value… you’ll get it returned to you 10x over”.  I’ve always believed it… but I guess I had a hard time figuring out what kind of value I could provide to people.

Anyhow, when I started the real estate investing site I was just posting articles with my commentary.  They were great articles and still bring in some traffic to this day to the site.

But…

I re-looked at what I had written on the site… and it provided value… but nowhere to the point that I had a vision to do for my readers.  My readers are investors who are looking to be successful and make better lives for themselves through real estate… and up until early ‘08 my content truly wasn’t “instructional” enough to really help my readers find that success.

So…

I started to write tutorials, unbiased reviews of products, do free full content webinars, and started to help other guys with great websites and products (that I truly felt were great resources) spread the word too.  Once I started to provide “real value” to my readers it started to come back to me big time.

Product reviews make up probably 40-50% of my online income.  In October these reviews churned in a decent mid 4 figures.

Advertising hasn’t been as big as I’ve wanted it to be… but I really haven’t done ANYTHING to attract new advertisers… that just produces a few hundred a month… but hey, that more than pays for all of my own advertising for the site… so I’m just fine with that for now.

Letting readers know about products (not full reviews, but rather by friendly endorsements) has been pretty good to me… and made up about 40% of my online income again… so mid 4 figures in October alone.  The key here is to once again provide value.  I don’t pitch every product that comes to me… in fact I only “pitch” about 5% of the products that come to me… and they have to meet my own criteria or I won’t endorse them for my readers.

• Have to be of true value… provide great content and instruction for a reasonable price
• Have to be actionable… if something can’t be taken and immediately put to action it’s pretty much worthless to most customers
• I have to actually see and use the product myself… most people online will endorse any ol’ product that comes their way to make a buck.  I guess I’m a bit “odd” in this respect.  I want to build trust with my readers so I only endorse products that I have used and truly believe can help them get to the next level in their businesses and life.  Pretty simple to me really… that way I build value and trust over the long term rather than looking for short term gains.

Those are the main three criteria I use before I promote another persons product.

What All Of This Means…

I know, I know… I tend to get off on tangents sometimes and that’s something that I’m trying to work on right now (my wife always points it out to me when I ramble .

Anyhow, this all has a point and does circle back to the title of this post.

All in all, October has been my best month online and I crossed over 5 figures in PROFITS (not gross revenues)… which was about 3k better than September… and September was better than August (nice little upward trend… like I like to see it .   A $4k day at the start of October helped out a bit for sure… which I can tell ya about later on if you want to hear it.

When I got to adding up my income from October and trying to analyze exactly why the income keeps going up every month… I started to write down the things I’ve been doing recently that I wasn’t doing a year ago.

And it was a bunch of simple stuff… but mainly it all boils down to providing TRUE VALUE with no catch.

I’ve been putting out great content for my readers and clients, being honest, and having no catch.  By no catch I mean… I don’t put out a half assed article or video and ask people to pay a kings ransom to “get the rest”.  Heck, my buddy Patrick Riddle and I even did a full 2 hour workshop completely for free and didn’t pitch one single product on the damn thing at all… but, since that workshop the list that was generated from that little free workshop has generated multiple 4 figures a month… pretty nice huh?

October has been my best month online… not because I’m selling people harder or more… but because I’m giving them more… and being honet with them. That’s all there is to it.  I help my readers get where they want to go in real estate investing and don’t cram affiliate offers down their throats everyday.  Basically, I treat my readers as if they are my close friends (which I kinda have grown to really think of them that way) and I do what I would do for my firneds really expecting nothing in return… but knowing that by helping them it always comes back to me way more.

And… when it comes to the point where I actually create a product and offer it to my readers (which that is coming up very soon… and it’s going to be of huge value)… my readers will trust me more and will already have a high perceived value on my information.  And… of course, any product that comes out of any of my websites or companies will be the best single product to solve that particular problem on the market… and it will be the single best way for my readers to solve that problem. Period.

Anyhow, I’ve gotta sign off… heading to the Oregon State and ASU game today… gotta get ready.

Chat soon. Provide more value.  And help people out along the way.

For those of you who market affiliate products online… and have had any type of success… you know how awesome it is to hit those milestones you set for yourself.

• First you hope to make just that first dollar...

• Next you look for making just $100 a day…

• Then you hope that someday you’ll actually start to make real money and make $1,000 in a day…

• Then that $1,000 hour is the next goal…

I can tell you from first hand experience… setting and hitting your goals for affiliate marketing is a great feeling… even if you’re only making enough to pay your cell phone bill every month.

Here’s How I Have Hit My Affiliate Marketing Goals…

I didn’t even know what the heck affiliate marketing was until a little over a year ago.  Ya, I knew people made a crap load of money doing it… but I didn’t know where to start.

Anyhow, fast forward to today (a little over a year later) and I’m starting to make it look like I know what I’m doing a little bit (I’m definitely not big time… but things are heading in the right direction).

Here’s my affiliate marketing timeline:

• Made my first dollar using Adsense on my real estate investing tips website:I think it took me weeks and weeks to make that first dollar… but I made it and got my first Google Adsense check about 4 months later (ya… it took me that long to build up to $100).
• Saw that Adsense wasn’t going to make me rich (at least the way I was using it) so I started to look into affiliate products in mid ‘07:I made my first affiliate sale of Mark Joyners Simpleology in the summer of ‘07.  Simpleology was something that I was personally using and really felt it was worthy of sharing with other people.  The commission from each sale is $24.95.
• I noticed Simpleology starting to make a few bucks a month (like $75-$100) so I knew there were other products out there I could share with my readers at The REI Brain:Rather than making just $25 a sale… I wanted to make more per sale so I started searching for higher dollar products that I felt were great products at a great value.  So, I joined a few affiliate programs that had great products and began to send out emails to my email list… and write blog posts on the subjects.  A really cool thing that I soon found out was that people are willing to send you their product for free just so you can review it… even products that are selling for more than $1,000… free.  Pretty cool huh?  Anyhow, I made my first “higher dollar” commission in the fall of ‘07… it was a $148 commission on a $297 at home study course.That was my first $100 day (and I didn’t have another for several months).
• In early 2008 I just knew there was more out there to be had… and that making $100 in a day was only the tip of the iceberg:So, I started looking for new niches and products for my websites that I could try to rank really well in the search engines… and create recurring revenue.  I actually stumbled on a niche from an email I received from one of my readers at The REI Brain.com.  Long story short, I began reviewing property management software and started to hit $100 days more consistently… and even hit my first $500 weekend (profit… not revenues) in the spring of 2008.   Pretty cool I thought.  Work maybe 2-3 hours a week on these projects and turn that into the low 4 figures a month.
• Now, come up to a month or two ago when things really started to get consistent:Sales were coming daily, adsense earnings were well over $100 a month (really, I know that’s not a whole lot), and I had began to do CPA (cost per action) affiliate programs with Hydra Networks (and some others), promote more than 50 affiliate products, drive traffic with PPC (pay per click), use social media a lot more, and write content almost daily.In March of ‘08 I hit my first $2,000 month for profits from affiliate products.

Then I hit a big affiliate marketing goal of mine…

For quite a while I’ve had a goal to make $1,000 in affiliate profits in 1 day.  Ya, sounds like it’s pretty tough… and for some reason I had been making it actually a lot harder than it really was.

Yesterday (8/13) I finally hit my first $1,000 day (actually, I almost hit that in just 1 hour… and did hit it in just 2 hours yesterday morning) in affiliate profits.

Actually… let me rephrase…

I hit my first $1,596.70 day in affiliate PROFITS.  Not in sales… in affiliate profits (and it cost me absolutely ZERO in advertising costs… all through SEO, social media, and my blog readership).

Since it’s all the craze nowadays to post screenshots (even though a ton of them are fake and photoshopped)… above is a quick screenshot of the 1shoppingcart affiliate reporting area for this particular affiliate account that I promoted yesterday… which is where most of my sales came from.

Once again, I know… this is peanuts compared to what a lot of other affiliates are making online right now… but this kind of income can really add up and change someones lifestyle.

What would an instant $1,596.70 in 1 day (that you didn’t otherwise have) do for you?  It would be pretty cool huh?  And this $1,596.70 is for one day… it doesn’t include the profits from the rest of the month.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t make this much everyday… this was because of a small launch that was going on that I promoted to my real estate blog and real estate investing newsletter readers… and some sales from other affiliate products that day.  But, I’m confident that things will be at that level pretty soon once I systematize my online business a bit better… and get into the swing of things with my new VA (virtual assistant).

The “secret” to making thousands a day online…

I know, that heading sounds pretty hypey… doesn’t it?  It sounds like some late night infomercial trying to pitch you a $39.97 product that is tied to a $97 a month “forced continuity” product.

Well… this advice is free and is something that it has taken me over a year to figure out (and I’m still trying to figure it out).

1. There is no “secret” to making money online... follow a simple formula, systematize it, and don’t give up.
2. Be real, honest, informative, and provide a huge amount of value to your prospects… that’s the ONLY WAY you’ll make it online.  If you look at everything in the “how will I benefit” mindset… you’ll lose out on a lot of money and opportunities.  Take the “how can I benefit my customer/prospect/reader more today”… “what true value can I provide my prospect today?”.  I can promise you that your results will be 1000x times better when you take the focus off of how you’ll make money… but rather on how you can help your prospect benefit.
3. Find something that you enjoy to do and build something around that first… This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but start by focusing on a topic you are passionate about and really enjoy.  You’ll be able to stick with it longer.  I chose real estate investing because I am a real estate investor and love it… then I figured out how to provide a huge amount of value to my readers and separate myself from the competition.
4. Success won’t happen overnight… maybe not even in 6 months or a year…  If you want to build something really worthwhile it won’t happen overnight.  It took me over a year before my first website started to produce an income that a person can live off of (but, I’m pouring a lot of the profits back into the site and hiring Virtual Assistants to take the load off of me).  I’m not saying that you can’t build something more quickly… actually you should be able to if you become educated and take action a bit more quickly than I did… but too many people think it’ll happen quickly… then they give up too easily and never see their true potential.Find a niche, committ to it for at least 6 months… and spend at least 2 hours on your business EVERYDAY for the 6 months.  (I only spend about 2 hours a week now… but starting out it was a ton of work because I didn’t know the shortcuts I know now).
5. Network with people and DON’T be afraid to invest... Networking is huge.  95% of my current successes came after I went to Rich Schefren’s (yep, that’s an affiliate link event in Orlando earlier this year.  I got to know some really cool people… many of them who are way more successful than I am… and have stayed in contact with them to this day.  Huge… huge… huge.Also, up until March of this year I was almost afraid to really invest in myself.  The only education I bought up until March was a $50 ebook from an unnamed “guru” (which turned out to be a pile of crap).  I probably feel the same way you do… but I felt that if I bought anything I would be one of those guys who is an info product junkie and never takes action… I didn’t want to be that guy.So, I put in some hard work… won a trip to Orlando to go to Rich’s event in March (I still had to pony up about $700 for airfare and hotel… so it wasn’t free by any means)… and invested in myself and changed my outlook on my business.  After that event I’ve slowly started to outsource a lot more things that I was banging my head against the wall to complete myself… and the money started to come in a lot more frequently (in bigger amounts).

What are your online goals?

So, that’s my “cliffnotes” story of my affiliate marketing venture over the last year.

I hit my first $1,000 day (actually over $1,500… and did most of it in just under 2 hours)… am systematizing my business more… and can’t wait to see what happens the rest of this year and into 2009.

Whether you’re a newbie online still working to make that first $10… or you’re already making thousands a month… what are your next goals for your online business?

I’d love to hear them and help ya out if I can in any way.

Chat soon,

- Trevor