“I would rather earn 1% off the efforts of 100 people than 100% off the efforts of myself.”
Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American industrialist and founder of the Getty Oil Company. He was one of the first people in the world with a fortune of over $1 billion U.S. dollars.
This guy sounds pretty smart, wouldn’t you agree? There is some true wisdom in his quote, let us see how we could apply it to affiliate marketing shall we? It is easy to find information on how to increase your personal earnings from the hundreds of affiliate blogs, but let me share with you some different information, on how to build up an additional income not dependent on just yourself. I’m going to quickly share some tips on how to start the process of building your referral affiliate income.
But just how much money is in referrals? Well last month, my friend and affiliate mentor who introduced me to affiliate marketing in October 07, now earns over $750/month passive net income from me each and every month because he referred me to cpaempire.
Now $750/month isn’t going to make him rich. Yet. But hey, $750 a month is pretty good for not having to do any work at all. If he had ten referrals like myself going at my current rate, he’d have over $7,500/month in passive referral income. I’m not sure how many referrals he does have, but I do know that he has referred more people than just myself. Just imagine if you referred an UberAffiliate or someone like Ian Fernando, a Dexter Domingo or a Jonathan Volk?
So build your personal income primarily through your own efforts, but then on the side also start to also earn 5% of others’ efforts too. Just like in the quote. Now I’m going to show you how I built a small referral base of over 35+ affiliates who now generate myself an extra passive income stream of $200+ a month from other peoples’ efforts. Here is a snapshot of my CPAEmpire referral account as of today.
CPAEmpire Affiliate Referrals
Affiliate Code Referral Bonuses Status so far this month (April 9th, 2008)
CD15986 $0.00 Active
CD16113 $58.60 Active
CD17255 $0.00 Active
CD17350 $0.00 Active
CD17385 $1.93 Active
CD17519 $20.40 Active
CD17526 $0.00 Active
CD17547 $8.85 Active
CD17586 $0.00 Active
CD17598 $0.61 Active
CD17612 $0.00 Active
CD17631 $0.21 Active
CD17634 $0.00 Active
CD17678 $1.73 Active
CD17912 $0.00 Active
CD17956 $1.02 Active
CD18101 $0.00 Active
CD18134 $0.00 Active
CD18158 $1.61 Active
CD18211 $0.00 Active
CD18281 $0.00 Active
CD18361 $0.00 Active
CD18852 $0.00 Active
CD19099 $0.00 Active
CD19187 $0.00 Active
CD19492 $0.63 Active
CD20182 $0.00 Active
CD20466 $0.00 Active
CD21120 $1.09 Active
CD21391 $4.74 Active
CD21517 $0.00 Active
CD21623 $0.00 Active
CD22278 $0.00 Active
CD23842 $0.68 Active
CD24021 $0.18 Active
Empire Affiliate Referral Commission Earned
Earned Date Commission
4-2008 —–$102.29
3/2008 —–$286.94
2/2008 —–$232.02
1/2008 —–$174.76
12/2007 —-$238.10
11/2007 —-$271.51
10/2007 —-$70.05
9/2007 —–$6.58
Total Earnings $1,279.96
Pretty cool right? Again, its not going to make me rich anytime soon. However, it is a nice passive residual income stream that continually grows overtime. So how did I do it, I didn’t really do anything out of the extraordinary.
All I basically did was educate people. On my blog I basically made an open invitation to anyone who wanted to learn about affiliate marketing to contact me via AIM: T202Wes, which you could still do now. Then I would schedule conferences of about 5-10 people over AIM at the same time and teach people over the AIM chatrooms affiliate marketing with PPC. At some points we had over 15 people join the chatroom.
I’d let people login to my CPAEmpire account, and my Yahoo Search Marketing accounts. We had a lot of fun and everyone learned a lot. I basically walked them through everything right over the AIM chatrooms, and then people got started the next day. Showed them PPC, the basics, helping them understand EPC and CPC, showing them how affiliate offers worked, and how to setup a Yahoo PPC campaign from my own account. I no longer do theses personal consultations as much, I just refer them to my video now.
We even had semi-large email group going for awhile, we later shut it down as it became overpopulated and for some other reasons. But we basically educated people who wanted to make money online, with an open invitation from my personal blog, helped others network, make money and then they were given an opportunity and I’m rewarded was, and still am, being rewarded in return for helping out others.
I truly live by this quote from Zig Ziglar, “If you help enough people get what they want in life, you’ll have everything you want in your life.” And what better way to do that is empower new people to the affiliate marketing scene, show them affiliate marketing, help them make a significant income stream, and also be paid to do it? Enrich others’ lives, and be paid to do it, it doesn’t get much better than that.
“The most rewarding experience in life is having your name appear in another person’s testimonial.” – Jim Rohn
It is the most rewarding experience, when someone says thank you, for showing them information that has made a impact on their lives. Sharing is a great gift to give to others. But sharing isn’t just beneficial to others, if you share a good idea with ten people, they get to hear it once, but you get to hear it ten times. It’s good for you too because you heard it again. It’s called, enlightened self-interest.
So share more. The more sharing you do and the more you give away, the more that will be shared upon you in return. Sharing is called, Enlightened Self Interest, remember that. I’m now going to share with you some of the quick tips on how to build up your referral base.
- We are looking for people who are practically brand new to affiliate marketing.
- We are not trying to recruit super affiliates here, because all of the super affiliates already work with their networks. What we are looking for is helping brand new people to affiliate marketing, finding them by simply posting on your blog (or other creative methods) that you will educate others on how to make money online, and showing someone brand new affiliate marketing. You want to be able to show them the ropes, and have them get started with the network of your choice, which should be a 5% referral based network. We are looking to build new people up, the next super affiliates. So we need to find people who just want to make money online, and show them how to do it through affiliate marketing and earn referrals from it.
- You need to refer only to networks that have a lifetime referral program only
- We are only looking for passive income. A lot of networks will turn off their referrals after 6 months or a year, we don’t want that. Referring someone to a network that only pays you for 6 months is a waste of your time. You want lifetime referral networks. You should also focus on those that give the highest referral of 5%, like CPAEmpire and Hydra Network both give out lifetime 5% referrals.
- Focus only on building one strong network with referrals
- You should start all of your new referral affiliates on one next, and build that one network up instead of spreading out to thin. I always refer new associates to CPAEmpire, where I have build a long-referral list, and I receive the highest rate 5% lifetime from all of my referrals. Instead of a couple referrals here, and a couple referrals there, focus on building up one network.
- Build up your referrals network and knowledge
- We want to make sure we give our referrals the highest chance of succeeding, this can be done by continually messaging them helping them out, and keeping them informed of things they need to be aware of. I’d always help our team network with each other, so each person had a better chance to succeed. Introduce them to other people who are at a similar level so they can network within themselves. And then also give them access to tools. I’ve given lots of people access to my paid keyword tools like WordTracker, and I have even given several people $100+ Yahoo accounts with funds to help them get going completely free.
- Make sure you have all of the IM clients
- AIM, MSN or GTalk make sure you accessible via everyones’ different IM clients.
- Collect emails when referring them to the network, make sure the referral synced to your account
- Alot of times when referring people the referral will actually not sync up correctly to your account. There are many times when we’ve referred people and then they do not show up on our account as a referral. Your affiliate manager can sync up your referrals, just make sure you collect everyones email and name, and then tell your affiliate manager to sync up any referrals that accidentally fell through the system. Watch and make sure everything syncs up to your referral account. This is key.
- Create a small forum, or private email group for your new team
- You want to create a synergistic environment that allows your referrals to network with others and share tips. Having an environment oriented towards growth will help your affiliates earn more money faster without you as much because they can rely on others. Setup a Yahoo email group or install a private phpBB forum on your server.
- Once you get a large amount of referrals see if you can increase your commission percentage rate from referrals.
- Remember in affiliate marketing, everything is negotiable you refer enough people and do a lot of volume you can negotiable payouts. I have not got to this level yet, however, I know it can be done, I just don’t have the volume yet myself to do this to request a higher affiliate referral commission level yet.
- Once you become to busy online showing people, create some videos that show them while your gone
- Although showing someone a video like I created here, works. It isn’t as hands on and personal as talking one on one with the individual. It was a blast to personally walk people through the process, although after a while it takes to much time, and I had to automate the process. Once you get to that point you might consider creating your own video showing people, and then getting involved in your group instead of doing it in person each time.
So there are some tips, remember the key is the goal were looking to show new people affiliate marketing and build them up to the super affiliate level. We are not looking for people who have been in affiliate marketing for one year, we are looking for new people, to get started with your network and help them grow. This is how my friend now earns over $750 a month just from me, by helping me, and this is how I earn helping other peoples increase their income. Your welcome to message me if you still need help to, anytime, I’d be glad to help out. In return, I ask people to help others. But I challenge you instead, to start your own group and help others.
This post was all about building a referral base, it is really quite simple, help people get started.
- “If you help enough people get what they want in life, you’ll have everything you want in your life,” Zig Ziglar.
- “I would rather earn 1% off the efforts of 100 people than 100% off the efforts of myself, “J Paul Getty.
Do you feel like there is more tips that we should add to the list? Please comment, I’d love to add more ideas to the bulletin list above. What should else could we add?
I actually had a Twitter account for over a year now, although it seems like everyone is on it, so I’m now actually using it. Follow me, and I’ll follow you. I definitely won’t be spending as much time as others on here, but it looks like an additional tool to use for networking. Already looks beneficial if used correctly. Twitter is a micro-blogging web 2.0 community that allows you to post status alerts on yourself, see what others are doing, and communicate in an almost real-time fashion. You can find my twitter here: twitter.com/wesmahler.
We have some applications we are releasing here shortly, they are currently in the beta testing stage. We are looking for some PPC affiliate marketers, who would be interested in beta testing some self-hosted applications. Yes, self-hosted, where you can host the software on your own domain. For helping beta test the product, you can see first hand what we are coming out with and use it at no cost while you help us find the bugs. 
Today I had my first real time flying an airplane. Everything was great except for I was extremely air sick during the first flight and my stomach almost didn’t make it during the first flight. I wasn’t aware of all the turbulence in the sky, and doing some maneuvers made me airsick to the point I wanted to throw up almost. *I know gross* but this is how I felt and I got really sick to my stomach! I freaked out my instructor lol. But I barely survived and I have schedueled my 2nd flight on this Saturday. I will probably be flying every other day for the next 3 months from now, until I receive my 
