A little story. In 2022, I published a long-form blog post on one of my blogs (not this one) covering how to create a blog with WordPress. In the post, I also covered how to make money recommending affiliate products.
I covered literally everything. From registering a domain, setting up WordPress, to basic SEO. Literally from A to Z.
I plugged all my affiliate links into the post content. From Bluehost, Divi to MailerLite.
My hope was that when someone started his/her blog after reading my post, I would get affiliate commissions from at least three different programs (from Bluehost, Elegant Themes – the developer of Divi, and MailerLite).
The post consisted of 7,457 words, by the way. It took me days to get it done.
I waited for the outcome I hoped for.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.
And boom!
I got zero commission from the blog post!
BIG ZERO!
Can you guess why?
Because Google didn’t want to give me the traffic I hoped for.
This kind of issue is happening to most bloggers with a new project. This is normal because you can’t control Google.
If you can’t wait for Google to send the traffic to your affiliate blog, you can drive the traffic using paid ads.
The Funnel Idea
Based on the above story, I have the following idea:
Instead of publishing the content as a single blog post, what if you split the content into fragments and deliver them as an email course?
You deliver the fragments gradually (ideally once per day). The number of fragments (course lessons) can be aligned with original content length before you split it.
For instance, if your content is originally 7,457 words in length like mine, you can split it into 7 fragments. So, each fragment will consist of 1,000s words.
You can deliver the fragments (aka course lessons) to those who enter their email addresses to the form you have provided.
To make it clearer, you can take a look at the following image
The perk of delivering your content via email course is that you can control the workflow.
For instance, you can send the next emails (course lessons) only if your subscribers have clicked a link in the previous email. You can take advantage of it to make sure your subscribers click your affiliate link.
Here is an example.
If you are interested in the idea, you can use an email marketing tool that has automation feature.
The tool I recommend the most is MailerLite. It is an affordable email marketing platform that has a solid automation feature. I have a post covering how to run an email course with MailerLite you want to read.
🎁 Bonus
The biggest challenge with the above idea is that you need to work hard to drive traffic. If you have enough money, you can run a campaign on Facebook Ads to boost the traffic to your email course funnel.
I recommend Facebook Ads because it is relatively affordable and there a bunch of resources to learn how to use it.
Here is a smart idea you want to try.
Instead of releasing your email course for free, you can charge a small fee to those who want to access it.
Once again. A SMALL FEE. Ideally less than $20.
The goal with the course fee is not to collect profit. Instead, the goal is fund your ads. You will get the profit from the affiliate commissions.
You can use a platform like Gumroad or Lemon Squeezy to collect payments from those who want to access your course.
If prefer a WordPress plugin, you can use Paymattic, WP Full Pay or Payment Page.
In the above case, the affiliate commissions play a role as the LTV (long-term value) items where you will keep earning money (commissions) for as long as your referrals remain subscribed to the service you have reffered to.
While you spend the money you get from the course fee to fund your ads, the money you get from affiliate commissions is pure profit.
🚨 If you want to implement the above idea, I strongly recommend you join affiliate programs that offer lifetime recurring commisions like Kinsta, Elegant Themes, and MailerLite.
ROAS Calculation
Here is a simple calculation (I use Kinsta on this example):
Let’s say you want to run ads on Facebook (and other Meta’s platforms).
On average, Facebook Ads has 1% conversion rate in most industries. Let’s say you plan to spend $2,000 this month, then the math will be like the following:
- Facebook Ads budget: $2,000
- Estimated daily clicks: 203 – 593 (let’s take the lowest number, 203). 203 x 30 (days) = 6090 clicks in total
- Estimated conversion: 6090 x 1% = 60.9 (rounded to 60)
- Estimated commissions you will get: 60 x 50 = $3000
50 is the amount commission for the Starter plan of Kinsta. In addition to this fixed commission, you will also get 10% commission for subscription renewal. Forever.
If you consistently refer 60 new customers per month, you will get the passive income of $5,520/month after a year. You can click here to learn more.