How To Make a 7-Figure Income From Your Affiliate Business

Whatever your primary reason was for becoming an affiliate, I’m sure that at the back of your mind, your first thought was to make money online.

But not any kind of money, you wanted to be rich – hell, don’t we all?

HOW TO MAKE 6 AND 7 FIGURES ONLINE

Let’s roll back a notch though. Think back to when you started. You probably went through the following stages right?

• Occasional Sale
• One sale a week
• One sale a day
• 2 sales a day
• 5 sales a day
• 10 sales a day

You gradually start making more and more sales and spending the money on dinners out, travel, new gadgets, new car, new house… whatever takes your fancy really. But for most of you, there’s a point at which you stagnate, and that’s often around the six-figure a year mark (£100,000; £200,000; £300,000; £400,000; £500,000).

At this point, you might fluctuate and experience some years on lower levels and some years where you almost reach the seven-figure mark. But you’re not quite there yet.

The ultimate truth (which is quite obvious) is that you won’t progress any further unless you do something to take the plunge to the next level.

Credit where it’s due

Before I tell you how to take the next step, let’s give all credit where it’s due. A lot of the information below was inspired by a presentation given a while back by Nick James at the Expert Empires event in London.

Nick presented a session on ‘The 3 Phases of Building a Seven-Figure Expert Empire’ which was so simple and obvious, and yet such an eye-opener in terms of what you should be doing to achieve a seven-figure business in ANY industry.

CONCEPT OF TIME: £10, £100 AND £1,000 TASKS

I would like to introduce you to a concept of time that will make it easier to explain what you should be doing at each stage of your affiliate business development. Think of all the tasks you do on a normal day and divide them into £10, £100 and £1,000 tasks. Here’s a quick example of what this actually means:

£10 tasks (low skill/time consuming) – writing articles, sharing content on socials
£100 tasks (specialist) – SEO, improving copy and conversion, paid traffic
£1,000 tasks (only you can do them) – software investment, buying sites, hiring staff

Makes sense up to here? Hoping it does!

So, bear this concept in mind for the rest of this article and let’s crack on now with what it actually means for you.

THE THREE PHASES TO REACH A 7-FIGURE AFFILIATE INCOME

As I mentioned at the start of this article, your business passes through stages and grows over time. I will assume that everyone reading this article is at least able to generate £1,000 a year in affiliate income, at which point your aim is to achieve the next stage/phase of the following three options:

• Achieving five figures (Minimum £10,000 a year)
• Achieving six figures (Minimum £100,000 a year)
• Achieving seven figures (Minimum £1,000,000 a year)

P.S. If you are interested in learning how to get to eight or nine figures, I’m sorry but this article won’t be able to help massively other than ensure you have the bases covered and you don’t miss any step along the way that could push your business even further.

HOW TO REACH A 5-FIGURE ANNUAL INCOME

Who is it for? Those currently earning between £1,000 and £9,999 a year.

As someone who wants to achieve a five-figure income, chances are that you’re currently doing all of the three types of tasks (£10, £100 and £1,000) by yourself. In fact, you’re probably not even touching the £1,000 tasks yet, which is fine.

And don’t be worried. This is exactly what you should be doing to ensure you grow your affiliate business in a sustainable way. No one wants to take silly risks, right?

But let’s talk strategy. What should it actually be?

• You should be focusing on a single website (your cornerstone)
• You should start collecting a database of emails (hundreds at this stage)
• You shouldn’t have any costs, other than website maintenance (no Facebook/Twitter ads!)
• You should be providing one-to-one support where possible (live chat, social messages)
• You should be planning your content strategy weeks ahead (no random articles)
• You should monitor your month-to-month income (understand fluctuation)
• You shouldn’t be hiring anyone. Get the ‘backbone’ done yourself
• You should opt for super-niching and mastering sales/marketing (learning!)

With all that done, you should end up having a small, yet growing authority niche site that is starting to rank for a variety of keywords and that’s providing you with a minimum of £850 a month on average (bringing it just above the five-digit mark yearly – £10,000).

Sounds easy enough? Let’s move on to the next step then!

HOW TO MAKE 6 FIGURES ONLINE OF ANNUAL INCOME

Who is it for? Those currently earning between £10,000 and £99,999 a year.

During this second stage you’ll be spending money. So above all, remember that sustainability is key. You don’t want to earn money and then spend it all on investments without knowing what the next month will bring.

Always retain most of your income and invest only part of it. If you have a full-time job, you might have more flexibility but as a full-time affiliate, you really don’t want to put your job in jeopardy. Allocate part of your income (20, 30, 40, 50%) for growth investment but ensure you always have some backup money if things go wrong.

In any case, accept the fact that you will have to put some money into your business otherwise you’ll be forever stuck in the five-figure bracket (unless you have a lucky streak or find a golden niche – but bear in mind these don’t last forever).

So, do you remember the £10, £100, £1,000 tasks we talked about earlier?

Important: To reach six figures, you’ll have to stop doing £10 tasks altogether.

So things like writing articles or sharing content on social media are no longer worth your time. You will want to either outsource these tasks or even hire someone part-time to do them. You should still be improving the articles’ copy and conversion, as well as running paid boosts on social networks (£100 tasks), but you really can’t afford to spend any more time on low skill/time-consuming tasks.

You will also have more time to spend on your £1,000 tasks (for example, investing in new software like a good CRM platform or SEO tool and investing in buying other websites). But again, remember to be sustainable; avoid making investments which haven’t been properly thought through.

Ultimately this will mean that the output of new articles and social media content will be greater and much faster, since you’ll have dedicated people doing them for you. I don’t need to tell you what this means. I hope ££££!

So, the basic strategy we are looking at is:

• Outsource or hire someone for £10 tasks (with you focusing on £100 and £1,000 tasks)
• Get a CRM (there are free ones!) and build an email sequence for your audience, ensuring they get all your new stuff so you can constantly recycle traffic
• You should be focusing on lead generation within your site (your database should have the capacity for thousands of emails) that you can use on your CRM
• You will be looking to spend roughly £1,000 per month on marketing, including new content (outsourced), software costs and some paid traffic for your website(s)
• You can consider having more than one website (look for other profitable niches and use the same strategy – build authority niche sites). Each new website should be able to generate a minimum of £2,000 per year to be worth your time
• You will need to plan content months ahead (especially if you have two to three sites)
• Know your numbers. Understand your revenue, profit and cash. You are starting to invest; you need to know what your final profit will be
• Master managing a team, either an in-house team or outsourced freelancers

By following this strategy you’ll be able to scale up your affiliate business much faster than you could ever do all by yourself, and I have no doubt that you’ll be reaching a six-figure annual affiliate income in no time.

HOW TO MAKE A 7-FIGURE ANNUAL INCOME

Who is it for? Those currently earning between £100,000 and £999,999 a year.

I’m sure you’ve guessed where this is going by now. By this stage, you will be giving up the £100 tasks. That means for example, that content strategy, conversion and email marketing are no longer going to be handled by you.

You are generating a minimum of £100,000 a year, so you can afford specialist staff:

• • SEO specialist

• Conversion specialist
• Email specialist
• Copywriter
• Developer
• Designer

Not all at once, obviously (remember – be sustainable), there’s a big difference between £100,000 and £999,999. But there’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to hire key personnel as your business grows and you see fit. With all the specialised staff, you will very much become a CEO/director who focuses on business relations, investment, staff management and scaling the business.

So to keep it simple, here’s the key strategy:

• Stop performing the £10 and £100 tasks (they will be handled by staff or outsourced freelancers)
• Your email database should contain tens of thousands of addresses (and be managed by an email specialist)
• You will be spending a minimum £10,000 a month on marketing (content, paid traffic, outsourced freelancers and in-house staff). It will increase as you scale the business
• Your CRM is in full force so you are going to have the team focused more intensively on attraction marketing
• New sites or projects should be projected to generate £10,000 a year minimum to justify having your team on them. If you don’t see that income potential, don’t start them
• Plan your strategy quarterly and annually for all business areas
• Aim at creating a full-time team of specialists for your business needs
• Start having proactive knowledge of your revenue, profit and cash. Learn (or hire someone for it) how to predict your growth, opportunities and losses
• Master scalability and look for opportunities to expand

As you’ve gathered, this step is all about scalability and being ready to expand your business at every opportunity, both internally (new staff) and externally (investments).

CONCLUSION AND KEY INFORMATION

I hope the above has given you an overview of what it takes to achieve a seven-figure income for your affiliate business. It’s a general concept that you should remember at all times to ensure you don’t get stuck at any stage.

And while I’ve given you a variety of small strategies for each stage, if there’s one thing you should take from this article, it’s the £10, £100 and £1,000 time concept. Way too many affiliates overlook this step, yet it’s critical in order for you to advance your business further.