Hey lads.

I know a lot of people are turning their hand at Affiliate marketing these days. I have almost zero skills in website development but have managed to make 6 figures using social media and some basic websites.

If anyone has any questions in relation to A.M. fire away and i'll be happy to help

what are your top 3 earners? poker sites?

I mainly work with bookmakers (Although have experience with other avenues IE Youtube, Google ads etc). I tried marketing poker sites etc but the average person is not going to rake you a lot playing poker so I think you are basically trying to take on the likes of 2plus2 forum and other poker sites where long term winning players hang out and that is the only way you will make money from marketing poker sites (From people who play every day)

My top earner is Bet365. It would appear that the retention rate on that site is far superior to any other site on the net for sports betting. I think there are many reasons for that but the main one being that the site is very user friendly and they do not have any gimmicks like Paddy Power for instance.

I spend a lot of time wondering why on earth every single site is not aspiring to be like Bet365 both in terms of how they treat their customers and also how they treat their affiliates. I have seen many of the big "Reputable" sites get involved in shady business in terms of their affiliates but not Bet365.

I'de say my 2nd biggest earner is from Betfred. Not as many people promote them which allows me to mop up new accounts easy enough. They also look after their affiliates but their site is not very good IMO which means retention rate isn't anywhere near as good at Bet365

Hey,

- Do you utilise email marketing?
- Main sources of traffic to your sites?
- How many sites do you have?
- Do you use any paid advertising? If so, which networks?
- How do you add value on your sites? What are they about and are they useful for users, or are you just there to get the cookie and not build any long term viewership?

Cheers!

what are your costs?
what sets you apart from others?

Ill try answer these questions separately -

1. Its funny you should ask that actually as I am in the process of trying to set up a mailing list. I am a complete noob when it comes to setting up websites etc so am finding it a little tricky but I Am sure ill get the hang of it (I have literally only this last week thought about a mailing list so am sure it wont take long to get it cracked)

2. My main sources of traffic are from my Facebook page/s - I am trying to get twitter on the go but its is so hard to do - You literally need to tweet 100s of times a day and I just don't have the patience to sit there all day every day for the next 6 months trying to build it up - I believe there is a lot of money to made this way but as I work on my own I have to also look after my own sanity.

3. I only have 1 main website (Not going to post it as I am fairly sure 2plus2 wont want me directing traffic to it haha) but I have made most of my money from the social media side of the business (Like 95-5% maybe more) - As I said in the main post, I am a noob when it comes to development etc so I am sure I am missing a trick having huge Facebook pages but a average website etc. This is another thing I need to look in to as Facebook becomes harder and harder to promote on

4. I have paid Facebook where I Can for advertising but they are very strict on gambling ads etc so I am blocked from most adverts on the site. So as it stands I spend almost nothing on advertising. I love the whole idea of Aff marketing just because you can spend nothing and make a decent living

5. Not sure how to answer that as I make most of my money from the Facebook pages etc. I can only imagine how much I would make if I had a decent website. I did partner up with a friend on the website but he let me down and has sort of abandoned it - This is something ill be addressing this year.


I apologise in advance that I do not have much technical knowledge in relation to building sites etc. I am more of a sales person who knows how to get people interested in things so building Facebook pages with no ads etc is the sort of thing I class myself as a pro at.

How do you acquire new accounts?

My costs are almost zero. My accountant does his best to put as much of my personal expenses as business expenses but tbh I started this business with no investment and have not needed to spend a huge amount on anything except a fancy new laptop

The second question is interesting as there are literally 1000s of people (just on Facebook) trying, every day to make their fortune doing what I do. I believe there are many ways I have managed to make a good living from this where others fail but here are 3 which I consider the most important:

1. You need to build a pie before you can take a slice. IE using the Facebook example, I see people trying to spam adverts on their pages when they have 100 Likes. I waited until I had 20,000 likes on one of my pages before even considering adverts. The main priority should be on getting an audience first which you can then feed off for a long time

2. People do not want to be sold to. I see other people trying to get sign ups by using every obvious trick in the book. I think the wording of ads needs to be incredibly subtle and not look like an ad. Having spoke to one of the guys who has much bigger pages/websites than me I can say he earns a lot less than me as he doesn't speak to his audience as well as I do

3. Hard work. When I first realised I could make money from Aff marketing I sat at my pc for 15 hours a day for 6 months doing everything I could to build an audience. A lot of people think you can do this successfully without putting time in to it. I read every comment, post, share etc and replied whenever I could.


This is a very simple thing to start making money from as long as you know what you are trying to achieve.

Very simple. Most big companies these days will have some sort of affiliate portal. Using bet365 as an example - you can sign up to be an affiliate here: https://www.bet365affiliates.com

They then allow you to customise web links that you can get people to click. When they click your link and register an account you have them!

In terms of getting people to click on that link. For Bet365 I have a Facebook page dedicated to sports betting. I will post up an article or some odds and then add the link at the end. People think they are clicking a link to get taken to Bet365 without needing to open a new window and type bet365.com but in fact they are adding themselves to my list!

How do you get new likes to your FB pages without spending money on advertising?

What's the FB page for your affiliate? What is the URL of a site that bring in some revenue? I don't think the mods mind if it will give us more information on how you become a successful affiliate.

Also, you said you don't use Twitter. Besides FB, what other social media do you use to acquire new accounts? What other basic websites do you use to acquire new accounts?

FWIW, the answers so far are generic so I hope you step up your game or else this thread is going to lockdown mode like similar AMA threads.

Slight derail: conversion rates are so miniscule on Twitter that this raises the chances that OP is legit.

Will reply to rest soon but wanted to reply to this first -

I think the questions have been generic enough to be fair so generic answers have been given? I don't mind if admin wants to delete this thread, I was merely trying to give a bit of help to anyone who may have a lot of time on their hands and wanted to try their hand at this....

Also, I am happy to pm an admin proof I made 6 figs last year if needed....

Are you one of these "footy acca tips" pages?

How did you build your FB page to have 20,000+ likes?

This is a great question and one which has a different answer today compared to a year ago.
Facebook used to allow pages great exposure for free just by getting Likes on their statuses etc. Now Facebook hide pages as much as possible so that people pay for the same exposure which makes it very hard to build pages these days for free. Hard but not impossible.

What I would do now if I was looking to start a brand new sports betting page without sharing it on any of my other pages:

- Think of a suitable name IE "Ultimate Sports Tips".
- I would then join as many groups that were related to this as possible and also Like as many similar pages as I could find. The key to building your page early on is to essentially steal other pages likes. You do this by getting noticed.
- The problem is that if you post underneath another pages post "LIKE MY PAGE" you will get insta banned from commenting ever again and will close off your avenue for ever getting likes from that page. The same with groups, if you post in a group you will get kicked out of the group. Because of this I recommend that you are subtle about stealing likes.
EG if you join a group you share your pages posts into the group. It looks less spammy and rarely gets you kicked.
EG if another page posts a comment about a sports bet just comment underneath it something like "I am also betting on this" etc.
I was doing this for weeks and getting 1 or 2 likes a comment and believe me it all builds up when you are commenting 100s of times a day.'

It is important that you do not spam your own page with rubbish early on. It is impossible to make money from a page early on so it is important to post anything that could potentially get Likes/Shares and a good way of doing this is by posting youtube videos (You can download and reupload them on facebook) - I once got 10,000 Shares on a video which gave me a few 1000 page likes within a day!

I personally think you need to just repeat this process over and over again and you will gradually grow....

Unfortunately it takes a lot longer to grow but it is still possible by doing it this way. The fact you post tips is irrelevant as people will read the posts but not like/share them compared to a nice picture or a video.

One thing I would never do is "S4S" or "Share for share" as you are first of all giving your likes away and also spamming your own page which will get people to unlike it!

As I said, 95% of my sign ups come from Social Media and almost all of them from Facebook. I have a few Facebook pages and not all of them are sports related. IE https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lad/172484109626020 is one I am currently working on. I am going to try and get it to 250k+ Likes before I start making money from google Ads. This will take the guts of 6 months but it is just a matter of time really. Rome was not built in a day and you certainly can not make money off a Facebook page that is too small.

Please understand that you can make money from any page.

Yes sir. I am no where near the biggest. There are pages that are 10x the size of mine but I do not feel they make 10x the money (I know this for a fact from speaking to some of the other affiliates who do the same thing)

My current audience from my sports pages totals about 60,000 people so not huge by any means

I'd be shocked if the audience from that FB page has any monetary value. It's like buying an ad on 2p2 and target it at the NVG subforum.

Do you have other FB pages that are done already and are generating sign ups? This is a really good opportunity to show you know what you're talking about. Any text besides a URL is basically worthless.

I disagree. "Uni Lad" and "Lad Bible" make an absolute fortune from their Facebook pages.

An example of a sports page: https://www.facebook.com/FootballAccas - It is as simple as adding a link to the end of any post I make.

Not really sure what you mean by "this is a really good opportunity to show you know what you're talking about"... I am not trying to prove anything to anyone or become a 2plus2 legend. I am merely trying to help people who may have questions. I do not care if anyone does not believe me

1. How long did it take to make your first penny after starting your Facebook page?
2. How long did it take for you to be able to fully support yourself as an AM?
3. Now that you are established how much time do you spend working in an average week?
4. What is your favorite and least favorite part about being a full time AM?
5. What is the most valuable lesson you have learned since becoming a professional AM?

1. About 2 months

2. I set up my first Facebook page is August 2012. I quit my job in November 2012. I was putting myself through college at the time and it was my final year so I was used to living on the bare minimum. By November I had made €10,000 and then by March I had made almost €60,000 (Give or take) -

3. Very little time is spent on it now. I can easily do my daily work in 20 minutes if needed. I am not growing as much in terms of page growth or sign ups as I was 6 months ago but then again, I have been on a couple of holidays IE took gf to VEgas for 2 weeks and then went to NY with a few mates after that (I am living in Ireland).

4. Favourite part is that I earn money by being involved in something I love (Football [Soccer]) and my least favourite part is that I sit at home by myself for most of the day. I think I have become less motivated over the last few months and although I have a few potential ideas on how to further grow what I am doing I find myself procrastinating for no reason other than the fact I am not as motivated. I am seriously considering getting a crummy graduate job just for social reasons.
I am only 24 and graduated with a first class honours degree and have previously been very successful working within a sales company so I am worried that I will have wasted years of my life and will not advance any further if I continue doing what I am doing regardless of how good the money is

5. I may have a think about this question and come back to it but for now I think the most valuable thing I have learnt is that you have to be patient if you want to make money from this. Everyone seems to be trying to do what I am doing but I think there are probably only a dozen people who are doing this professionally like I am (Using Social Media).

Thanks for the thread! I'm working on a Facebook page for a new company but it's been tough to get people to notice. I've mostly been posting links to blog posts with a headline and picture. Should I be posting more simple message pictures with a few lines of text?

Also could you talk about any other strategies you use to get people to like your page. How are you adding enough value in your comments on other posts so that people come over to your page and like it?

In terms of strategies to get people to like my page, it is as simple as the steps I listed in previous posts. I really do not think there are many other ways to get Likes from people on Facebook. It really is page dependant though. I think I would have a different strategy if I was running a page for PaddyPower compared to if I ran a page for Ben and Jerrys for instance.

My personal opinion is that people do not like spam and posting links to blogs and websites gives the immediate impression that what has been posted is spam. I know myself, I do not read half of the things that pop up on my news feed that come with a link so I could guess that other people think the same. If you need to post links to other pages outside of Facebook I would work out a ratio of None link posts to link posts IE if I was going to promote a betting website I would maybe post a link to the site once for every 20 none link posts. Otherwise you are just making your page known for "spam"

I would personally try and get my message into as fewer words as possible and add a picture that will make people click it. Sometimes that picture does not even need to be relevant IE I remember when I posted odds on Mario Balotelli to score first in a game a few years ago I put a picture of him with the post that had a list of his facts (I cant find the exact picture but it was Facts similar to this one - http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PjSK7ZIpyr...+Balotelli.png )

The post got over 5,000 Likes as it was clearly a very funny read. That is huge amounts of exposure to my link which was nestled nicely into the wording on the post!

Do you just find/steal a picture online and post it on your page or do you own the rights to all of the content you post?