course review

Of all the business ventures in the world, and especially with regards to the internet, none seem to be more advocated and lucrative than the proposition of leveraging the power of the laptop to generate massive and passive profits in a business model. 

If you’re anything like I was back in 2014 – cold in a dark apartment, at the dead of winter, and wishing I had more money so I could buy a car to stop walking my morning commute where I can blissfully attend a less than pleasant atmosphere where the corporate monsters only compensate me $35k in gross pay.

They wouldn’t even give me a holiday bonus so I can get off my feet and not have to shiver every time I think about stepping out of my apartment in the outskirts of Detroit to get myself all the way downtown!

Metropolis or not, I was cold, broke, and miserable with no way out. 

So – much like how some people are finding this article online, I was looking for something that can get me out of the slump that I had found myself in only a short few years ago. 

I looked at everything, including the popularly referenced business model of E-Commerce. 

If you’re not clear on what that is, by the way, it’s nothing more than selling physical products online. 

It’s a very common thing and there are numerous places to try and find a good that you’re looking for – in fact, tons of people constantly search online with the hope of finding the best bang for their buck…

If they can get the exact same deal in a cheaper fashion somewhere else, then the time invested in their online research for the product they want was well worth it… for some. 

For others, they can’t wait awhile in order to get what they’re looking for and they can’t afford to expend any more time online looking for a good deal; they need something right away and are willing to pay whatever they must in order to acquire what they’ve been searching for right away. 

So, a gentleman by the name of Hayden Bowles stepped up to the plate after his time and experience of being successful in the E-Commerce discipline and made a concise, clear-cut course on how you can start your very own business online in selling physical products – even if you have nothing to sell yet. 

The intent behind Mr. Bowles short course that he posted online at Teachables – a hosting platform for short courses like what Hayden pieced together for an intended audience of, well, us – is that you can get started through the brief course that he created advising you on theoretical options and specific steps to take. 

The drawback that I’m seeing already in this blog post is that this guy must have been one of a baker’s dozen to proclaim themselves as a Shopify online store coach with his mentoring program launching on Teachables in only months recent. 

Add to that the fact that there are already tons of people online that are attempting to push their own marketing training platform that each claim to have the secret techniques and/or special recommendations that can get you to where you want the fastest – they always prey on the emotional insecurity to try and get you to buy instantly. 

As a side note: it’s best to avoid having your emotion drive your business decisions; that’s how bad things happen to a company’s bottom line – we’ve got to be smart and play for the long-term. 

Anyway, dozens upon dozens of self-proclaimed proficient people in the E-Commerce game are interested in telling you how you can achieve all of these wonderful things – but who is the real deal?

Who can we really trust with money, time, and patience in the brighter hope that we, too, can accomplish great things by leveraging their training to make our first few dollars online? 

We can already acknowledge a few things about business – especially anything in retail or physical products, let alone on digital platforms:

• No profits are guaranteed
• Selling products can be tough, and the added barrier of not being face-to-face with the customer can seem to be a greater hindrance than a facilitator of the sales process
• There are investments that must be made long after you purchase a training course

That last point is key and often overlooked by newly-beginning entrepreneurs; yes, business opportunities require a start-up kitty.  Unfortunately, that seems to drift out of our minds – along with other essential aspects of business ownership – when we’re listening to the pitching of course founders that do everything they can to let you know that this course is for you… for the right price, if you can hack it. 

So, how would we filter through all of these coaching courses and select the most ideal fit?

Is Mr. Hayden Bowles really the most ideal person to take your cues from in step-by-step fashion to turn your own deals into profits through nothing more than a laptop and a little know-how?

What about the dropshipping business online, in general? 

Would it be something that any of us are interested in?

Can it be possible to use this as a vehicle to really change our situation in life with just a little effort?

Will I have to work a second job to pay for this? 

Will this turn into another job that takes my time away from what’s important to me? 

These are all excellent questions and many of them I have heard lately –

I’ve thought them as well, even when I was surfing the net in a cold apartment and trying to find my way to the same thing that most who end up reading this blog post will share in a concern:

Where can I turn to that has the right guidance to get me situated to make money online? 

I can honestly say that I’ve tried this course and made my dent in the dropshipping industry online.

I’ve even turned a little bit of a profit from the work that I’ve done in this space. 

Therefore, I can personally tell you that I know there is money to be had.

However, I went at this a little differently than some probably hope to when they’re looking at this.

I’ve had entrepreneurs of all backgrounds read my content so my audience is rather diverse with my blog:

• You could be having a thriving business and are simply interested in adding experience working in drop shipping to your portfolio of monthly income so you can expand your net worth even more
• You could have a job like I did in the corporate life, waking up 9 to 5 and not really having any direction except to be going to the same $35k job for the rest of my 30 years – hoping only to have enough at the end to be able to retire; but what about the immediate lifestyle, I don’t have money to go on dates or turn the heat on in my apartment
• Then there are those that swing by here who are really okay with where they are, but they really are open to considering their options online and wouldn’t mind supplementing their already profitable salary from a career that they honestly don’t mind indulging in regularly

Whether you’re fitting one of the descriptions above or have a unique story all your own, this blog is for you. 

I’m writing it after experiencing each of the programs on here – yes, I’ve invested the purchase price and also put up whatever capital was required in order to make each mentoring program work for me. 

How could I afford to spend the time doing this, let alone the pocket cash?

See, back in 2014, I found a coaching program online that taught how to use free traffic in local lead generation – which was great, because I couldn’t afford to buy any web traffic to get affiliate offers seen or products noticed right away. 

Within a year, I was happy to tell my corporate job to stick it and I walked off my 9 to 5; one of the best days of my life. 

What I did was make a lead gen site (like you see in the image below), ranked it online, and it’s now kickin’ back a lot of money each month — that’s true passive income!

I left a $35k annual salary for the lead gen business model that was paying me a passive income of $10k each and every month; the most important thing that I can share with you about that accomplishment was…

I built that passive income over 1-years-time, and I did it in my spare time –

I’m still working this same give several years later, in my spare time (still), and tuning out the corporate life and woes I once lived to the tune of $50,000.00 in profitable income every single month – whether I work on the business or not.  If you’re interested in learning how I did it —

You can copy and paste the same strategy I used with this coaching program over here that I learned from to build my local lead generation business.

So, I can afford to try these programs now, and spend my time checking them out so you can read my blog posts and see for yourself whether the program is a good fit for you. 

I’m not affiliated with the programs – or, I don’t choose to be – so you can rest assured that these reviews are unbiased because you could still purchase the program after reading my article and I won’t make a dime off of your choice to buy in. 

So what have you got to lose other than some solid research time invested in finding out more from someone who has actually lived the experience of the coaching and mentoring program that you’re exploring right now: The Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course from Hayden Bowles.

So I have my fair reasons for choosing to let go of the dropshipping method to attempting to make money with my laptop –

It’s not because I was doing so well in my lead gen business – although, it is nice to have the reliable, passive income coming in so I didn’t have to stress over whether or not this coaching program worked.

Instead, I invested what spare cash I had into the methodologies introduced in this coaching program to see if there were any tips of actual value that can help make money online for anyone exploring Hayden’s course. 

One thing I always enjoy looking for is whether or not this mentoring training would have worked for me as a brand new entrepreneur, down and out on my luck in this miserably cold apartment way back when. 

That way, if you’re in that same position and looking to make a change, you can get an honest evaluation from someone who has experienced the program and hopefully can collect enough data to make a decision for yourself on whether this is a great fit for you.

With that said, let’s get this adventure rolling and learn more about what this guy Mr. Bowles is intending to teach us about the E-Commerce world of marketing products online…

A Brief Look Over the Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course

Leave it to us entrepreneurs to want to not only cut corners but find the quickest path to getting what we want. 

Why would this blog article be any different, Am-I-right?

So, let’s take a quick look at what you’re going to be going through when/if the time comes that you take the leap into Hayden’s course from Teachables on getting started with your dropshipping business venture from home:

• Introduction: Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
• Basics

This guy really digs in and delivers a stellar overview on several aspects of what you’re going to need to be aware of in order to accomplish this major feat of starting a physical products selling type of business from the comfort of your own home, or anywhere that you would like to work our magic with your laptop and in keeping a little bit of internet access handy. 

-Bare-bones of what you need to know

-Finding those winning selections of physical products in the best industry (or “niche”)

-Evaluating and connecting with your future supplier(s) that are currently serving up products on a website called AliExpress

• Establishing your digital presence online

These are the meat and potatoes that everyone wonders about when they’re starting the dropshipping gig.

They actually encompass just about everything that can be traditionally found in other dropshipping courses because nearly everyone in the game goes through completing these exact steps…

I’ve done my fair share of dropshipping over the last few years, and I’ve put a large amount of time and effort into the process of getting assets in place to be ready to market.

The following points are actually essential to your being ready to have someone buy a product from your online store.

This is the magical part where readers ask me how it’s possible for people to buy from them when they don’t have a store set-up online already.

I’m happy to be available for everyone here because the answer to that reaction is you need to get started with your Shopify store, and this is the module to teach that very concept and theory behind why it’s used and why you need it for your business.

Now, the assets and advice here may not be in the same order or to the same depth that other courses introduce, but they are still very good bits of instruction that you can bet are setting you up for success. 

-The Shopify Store: Breaking your business ground to get positioned for success

-Figuring out what your pricing should be – and what it’s really going to be

-Social signals: why your social media pages are key ingredients to not only getting yourself started but persisting in momentum with your sales process

I liked this module because it really brings into focus the nuts and bolts of the hardware that you need to get squared away with. 

Skipping this module can actually hinder your success, in large part because potential customers won’t be able to buy from you since they won’t have anywhere to go. 

As you can see, this course is already attempting to give valuable content with any student that’s actively participating and following along.

• Implementing Instagram

Part of being solo in your entrepreneurial endeavor means that you have the freedom to choose who you wish to partner with – and you don’t have to ask permission or seek agreement from someone else; not a boss, not a co-worker, and not a co-owner. 

It’s your show; so it’s your call on how you want to operate your side hustle (if this can actually be called one). 

As such, you can reach out to other people on social media and see what you can do to acquire assistance in marketing your products. 

Options can range from buying the product for the person to asking for a testimonial, and many other strategies packed inside of this module that is certain to get you motivated to run your business online. 

In the thick of it all, you’ll learn what an Instagram influencer is and how they can actually be leveraged for the better; instead of just using them, you can build a relationship with this person and consistently ask for them help as you progress with your store and business continues to expand your bottom line. 

Also, there aren’t any quotas to fill or restrictions on how many selling or distribution points you can have with internet marketing.

If you want to have more than one Instagram influencer helping you to pedal your products through cyberspace, you can. 

I won’t sugar coat it for you – there are tons of steps to making this happen and you’re going to earn those partnerships, let me tell you!

Once you have these arrangements, however, you’ll be ready to cook and grind all the way to the bank.

• Filling Up Your Facebook Account with Opportunities for More Sales

This portion is a little bit tricky. 

Most people are familiar with some free access to social media, like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, and many other platforms.

They don’t charge you upfront to be a participant in their network and host a social profile that’s your very own. 

When you start approaching social media with a different mindset, however – like when you’re trying to acquire sales through digital assets online – you’re going to want to position yourself to where you can actually begin pushing your message out to the masses in the social world. 

In addition to the notional concepts of branding – which, let’s be real here, brandbuilding doesn’t always correlate to building a business or generating more customers – it’s a very good idea to understand the paid advertising strategies associated with each social media account. 

For this module in Hayden Bowles’ Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course, you get a first-hand introduction to Facebook Ads and a broad-painting overview of the Facebook Advertising platform – in-part and as a whole. 

Some people tend to shy away from getting started with a module like this because of the perception that one needs to be technologically savvy in order to operate Facebook Ads…

Others hesitate to get started because they realize that it costs money to push out a Facebook Ad and they don’t want to lose money without the possibility of seriously landing a sale.

Unfortunately, I have to tell you that you’re getting ushered into the world of Facebook Ads – where testing is the name of the game.

You’ll need to design, establish, orchestrate, and market with a variety of ad sets and ads within each marketing campaign that you launch. 

Why?

You’re at the mercy of Facebook and the pre-arranged profiles that they’ve collected into groups – so you can target your ideal markets and prospective clients based on the information that Facebook has collected about these people over the years that they’ve been using Facebook and/or other platforms that Facebook can gather information from about those people.

Like this course you’re considering investing in, data is key in a platform like this – because Facebook can now charge a premium for marketers like us to go in and request permission to use their aggregated resources. 

The result is an online auction system where you can try and put your message in front of people that you hope will not only like what you’re talking about but engage with your ad to buy your product. 

Some paid ads simply don’t move people enough to go from merely seeing the ad as they scroll through Facebook to jumping in and becoming your customer. 

I once ran a campaign for wrinkle-free cream that was intended to be a solution for a targeted audience. 

Here’s a sample of one of the ads that was designed: 

As you can see, it’s not all that stellar, but we’ve made multiple ads just like this and pushed them all out into the marketplace in order to see which ones performed the best.

This is exactly what you need to know before you buy a course like this.

If you’re not open to spending money in order to make money, then this probably isn’t the marketing option for you to turn into a home-based business.

When someone leverages the Facebook Ads platform, it’s usually because they want to get immediate results…

• People immediately see the ad
• People instantly decide what they’re going to do after seeing it (click thru or keep scrolling)
• Let the market decide how to respond to your ad…

In order to let them react, however, you’ve got to put things out there and that’s where the complexity of dropshipping comes in – I think this is where the bulk of the time in dropshipping is spent and is why tons of people end up getting burnt out with the work involved in making money through this business model. 

That said, this module will provide you with some solid information on the fundamentals that you need in order to get started, including…

• The differences between a Facebook Ads Manager account and your Business Manager Advertising Platform
• What you must do to get your first Facebook Ad launched (not just “get started”)
• Enabling you to know what to look for as key indicators of good performance versus poor results in your Facebook Ad – and what steps you should take in response to what you see
• Want more money?  Want to reach larger audiences faster so you can have more at-bats to get your product(s) actually purchased?  This section also has a training aspect on what you can to do what the industry popularly refers to as “scaling up” or expanding your reach to hit a larger audience with your offer in a shorter span of time

When you’re ready to get started in the Shopify store space of E-Commerce, then Hayden holds nothing back in getting you situated to have the opportunity to become successful. 

What’s Missing in the Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course

By this point, we’ve been able to address a lot of things about dropshipping – in general, and through this mentoring and advising course – and in E-Commerce. 

However, each course could be either holding something back or not delivering the value that I think it should be.

Now, I’m not knocking the guy that founded something that he intended to present to the market so newbies can have a resource worth tapping into and at an affordable price…

Some of the courses I’ve explored have a higher ticket for admission – some of which can range in the thousands of dollars. 

Coaching is big business, but not every single one of those people who bring the heat in terms of value that you can directly benefit from by investing in what they’re attempting to push your way. 

For Mr. Bowles, however, there are just a few things that I’ve noticed other programs having that you’re not exactly going to realize from investing in Hayden’s course that you’ll benefit massively from knowing:

• Facebook Advertising that you can do in 2019 that include Video and Facebook Messenger

Facebook has done a lot of revamping of their Facebook Ads platform, and they’re going to just continue changing things because that’s how Facebook rolls. 

Instead of trying to fight the possibility of losing money to the competition, learning how to tap into these resources and leverage them for your gain is something that I hope you can use to further your experience in making dropshipping work for you. 

That’s not something that I’ve found to be touched on – or available – with this course people purchase from Teachables.

• Implementing Clickfunnels software for convenient operational structure

If you haven’t heard by now, Clickfunnels is a company – and a website software – that Mr. Russel Brunson brought to the market in hopes of helping digital marketers to more easily create funnels. 

Intended to be a quick, down, and dirty solution for those implementing paid advertising strategies, the more expensive website builders charged a lot of money to host each individual website – even if it were only 2 pages that you might need from the hosting account:

• Landing page
• Thank you page

The simplicity of Clickfunnels is perhaps brought up in other coaching and mentoring programs because you can leverage it for one product at a time and find out whether the marketplace will find it worthwhile. 

There are numerous steps to setting up your Shopify Store online, including the steps necessary to just have a 1 product not only viewable but clickable for more information and easy to purchase by a visitor. 

There’s no sense in building out your Shopify store with several products that no one in your target market (that you set up with the ad set in the Facebook Advertising platform) will see value in purchasing your advertised product. 

I think it’s an excellent approach to testing the selling potential of physical products online! 

I’ve also used Clickfunnels before and I think you would benefit from this strategy, but I just don’t see it in Hayden Bowles viewpoint of making dropshipping work for you. 

• Copywriting Tips for Killer Email Follow-up Sequencing

Sometimes information can be more valuable than an upfront sale.

Here is where you’ll be advised on what you can do to with collecting emails and putting them into a database where you can later selling them other items, or maybe even recommend an additional product based on the one they purchased; the possibilities are endless. 

• An Advanced Strategy of Retaining Bulk Orders in a Local Warehouse to where most of your customers are and how to reduce shipping time to save on the cost of products and overseas delivery of goods

There are definitely some hot items and knowledge bombs in this course – even without the aforementioned points that I would personally classify as exclusions from Hayden’s training. 

It may not be intentional; he may or may not know them, or he might have an upsell to his course that includes advanced concepts like the ones I had listed up above here.

If you’re looking for something that is beginner-friendly in regards to the vast world of E-Commerce, you can sell in confidence with the information delivered in this package. 

The Shopify Drospshipping Industry: Is It a Sound or Poor Investment?

Let’s look at the platform that you’re considering getting involved in for an online business in 2019. 

Should you get involved with E-Commerce and selling physical products, or should you herd along with those that shy away from the challenging world of digital marketing in this fashion?

Let’s discuss… PRO/CON TIME!

First, the awesome stuff…

• You can get started from the comfort of your own home
• Low barrier to entry – just launch a few digital assets and land a partnership with a seller
• The vast world of products awaits your selection of them to be sold online
• If you can land a product that sells faster than hotcakes (that’s a weird expression to use in describing this industry), then Facebook would be willing to back your play and let you expand your reach to get more buyer attention
• You can refine your target audience down to only the most ideal people on Facebook that you would hope become sellers – meaning you don’t have to cast that wide of a net if your product is catered to one specific kind of audience
• If you’re looking to cash-in after some time in your E-Commerce venture – and I mean “BIG TIME” – you now have the potential to expand your company name to a household reach that larger entities will be throwing money at you and begging for you to sell your company to them

That last point, by the way, is what the industry identifies as an “exit.” 

When you own a company and have an exit strategy in place, that means that you are getting a lump sum cash payment for the reputation and clout of your company being handed over – and with the ownership of that company – to another business entity or person. 

The payoff can be extraordinary if you’ve done your homework and did really well with this here! 

Now for the not-so-awesome stuff…

• You don’t have exclusivity to the product you’re pushing out into the marketplace.  Others can see what you’re doing, and if it’s going well then they can try and steal your strategy to profit off the same things you’re advertising – including product, ad copy, etc.
• Your commissions are a joke!  You’ll be lucky if you see 10 percent or more in cash coming your way – then, you still have to negotiate with the payment processors online to ensure you’re getting a good rate in handling money from the deals you’re landing

Tangent here: Are you starting to see why there are tons of E-Commerce courses that target newbies now? 

I’m under the impression that some coaches just want more money than to actually do what they’re suggesting you can “retire with,” or some nonsense like that. 

I’m not saying that this can’t work for you, but I’m not a fan of the 10-20% “profits” being sent your way – I’ll even have the guts to call them peanuts that you’re compensated with for your efforts in digital marketing with this business model. 

Back to the lack of awesomeness in dropshipping (as a business model)…

• The complexities with physical product selling can consume tons of time and frustrate owners

Think about all the things that you have to balance in this business model…

-consumer complaints

-foreign manufacturers doing things on their schedule or missing a shipment

-product returns (which cut into your profits and now you don’t know what to do with the product)

-what if the product ordered is out of stock – how will you fill it now, especially if the manufacturer or supplier didn’t keep you informed of the issue ahead of time so you could take the product out of your store and not waste your advertising dollars in Facebook Ads…

It’s as if you’ll always be in defensivemode just to keep your business alive and thriving; is putting out fires really an exciting way to run a business? 

To me, that sounds more like corporate life – something I left a long, long time ago! 

• Spending on Facebook Ads cuts into your profits

It’s a harsh reality in this business and a rather common complaint that I hear far too often than I care to admit. 

Your profit margin is extremely low to begin with…

You’re pushing the product that someone else made and ships on your behalf so you can have a satisfied customer that you’ve done the work to sell the product to. 

Add to that the reality of your needing to find a way to get reimbursed for all of that ad spend that is dinging your credit card – how great is this business model looking so far, now?

You’ll eventually have to change products while you’re doing this business model. 

Why? 

In addition to a concept called paid ad fatigue – it looks like this…

This occurs where the Facebook Ad reduces in its performance and effectiveness, an occurrence that is usually met with a rising cost in ad spend online – you will also run out of an audience volume that has yet to see your ad. 

While it’s good that you have an audience see your product and make a decision of buying (or not) from you as fast as possible, there’s always going to be a cost attached to that when you’re buying the attention for your product through a medium like Facebook’s Advertising platform. 

• Your competition can get fierce

What if someone else is running the same product before you did – and moments ago?

You’re now attempting to market a replica of that same product to the same target audience… and you’ll never know that this happened – but you will notice that you haven’t sold a single product and scratch your head in wondering what it could have been that caused you to lose so much Facebook Ad expenditure but never arrive at a single sale.

Further, if someone is attempting to match your ad copy and product delivery advertisement, even though you came up with it all by yourself, we need to keep something in mind since we’re using someone else’s platform to run paid ads through…

If you’re not careful, or not successfully getting sales or attention through social media fast enough, Facebook can suspend your account…

This means you’re done with trying to advertise on Facebook. There are ways to get around this, but if you’ve been banned or suspended from advertising once with this type of business, who’s to say that you wouldn’t be stuck again for trying to do the same thing in a new ad account?

Facebook Ads is an auction system. 

That means that someone else could be running something similar to what you are, and Facebook Advertising will have to decide which ad gets more credit and will get shown more to that desired audience. 

With the competing ads and want for attention from the same audience, we run the risk of the advertising costs going higher and higher until the cost in any given day is meaningless because it’ll either be too high or not reach enough of the audience in time for us to actually land a sale before our ad budget runs out? 

The drawback I see in self-proclaimed coaches attempting to advertise the successfulness of their training course is that they’ll take one incredible success story and exploit that to imply (but never directly say) you can do this too – just pay this amount of money to me to learn how. 

The catch to this situation is that those coaches might be showing the incorrect numbers on the video or social media post.

Instead of actually having landed those types of large successes in E-Commerce, I have a hunch that those people are exploiting their own profits from another income stream – maybe their own coaching commissions from their course being sold – and you’ll never know what the difference is because you’ll never have a way to validate or verify what their claims are. 

What would be a more reasonable request would be to ask those mentors with a coaching program on E-commerce how much they had actually spend to put that advertising into the marketplace that resulted in that kind of revenue. 

Was it enough to at least cover the ad spend?

Could those people simply be breaking even with their advertising – especially if they actually have a large amount of premium, paid-in-full students into their coaching program?

We need to keep in mind that the profit margins in this space are 20 percent – and that’s on the high-end… meaning a maximum income margin per unit of product sold (but it’ll almost always be lower). 

When you have a bigger picture to look at, you can better evaluate what’s really happening – including the struggles that go into running a physical products’ selling business model. 

What about all the disasters that could arise – and you’ll be expected to handle the customer inquiries and be expected to come with a solution (especially if you want to keep your commission), such as:

• Consumers demanding returns and refunds
• Manufacturers expanding their operation but allowing your customers (and your business) to suffer in the process
• Products breaking during shipment – or shortly after arrival
• More, ongoing product issues that we don’t have time to list here
• Want to hire someone to address the nonsensical calls you have to face from your buyers?  The demand for a solution will still come to you and that’s a headache in and of itself

When you’re down to a measly 10% in commissions for selling a product, is that really a business model for success or is that your business venture shifting into a full-time, corporate-style of a career?

When one fire goes out, there’s a very good chance that another one is going to float in out of nowhere! 

If that profit margin for physical products marketing were higher, maybe there wouldn’t be so many digital marketing coaches in the E-commerce space; maybe they’d stick to their guns and try to keep the money for themselves instead of inviting more students to learn the process and become their competition in selling products online.

When a coach markets a course, all they really need to do is keep in touch with the student and deliver a password. 

Some coaches may argue that there’s more to the process than that.

At the core of your obligation, as a coach, you are receiving something of value (money) in exchange for something delivered to the buyer (the information that they are agreeing to purchase from you). 

That means that they have little to handle and manage, very little overhead, and nearly 100 percent in profit from the sale they have just made with someone like you (the student – if you were to purchase the E-Commerce course, that is). 

Unlike the higher education world of the American economy, there seems to be more profitability in teaching someone how to run an online business than there is to actually own one and run it oneself. 

Ask yourself this reasonable question about the E-Commerce world:

If coaches know how to make tons of cash in selling products through digital advertising…

Why, then, are the E-Commerce coaches shifting from doing this (which they claim to be an expert at) to coaching and mentoring in the first place?

Can it be that value can be collected from running a business model online through Shopify if this so-called expert left the industry to pursue a teaching gig with recorded videos online – where he makes YouTube videos promoting that he knows how to sell online and can teach you, vice actually doing the selling of those physical profits for his own gain? 

I’m not saying that he does or doesn’t, but the thought makes reason stare… wouldn’t you think?

Conclusion

If you’ve been following this blog of mine for any amount of time longer than a few blog posts…

1. THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING ALONG!
2. I’ve ventured into a ton of different business models to try my hand at them – this includes the dropshipping industry with a Shopify store

The reasons that I had experienced burn out from this business model (dropshipping, that is) is for the same reasons that were discussed up above…

• Difficulties in the selling of physical products and all the associated headaches in keeping the business afloat
• The laughably tiny margins of profit
• The dip into those tiny profits with Facebook Advertising – at least, since that’s what’s taught in some courses like Hayden’s

In the spirit of complete honesty, I was generating an okay profit on a monthly basis – the nature of which some coaches pitch and claim is possible in their mastermind. 

Perhaps burn out from the hard work and stress of E-Commerce are why people have shifted to instructing and selling their E-commerce business courses online instead. 

At a price point of $497, Bowles’ E-Commerce overview course just might be something sensible for a newbie to get oriented in the selling of physical products online. 

Local Lead Generation vs. Hacking Shopify Dropshipping Course

What is local lead generation? 

It’s simply using free traffic – yes, free organic traffic from search results – to generate local leads that small businesses are happy to pay a premium for.

Why would I prefer Local Lead Generation over Dropshipping?

• No tangible products that have to be handled
• Nothing that needs to be shipped
• No risk of products breaking prior to arrival
• No need to purchase web traffic from Facebook Ads (or anywhere else)
• Higher Profit Margins
• More Opportunities to Serve
• Easier Access to Prospective Clients
• Customers Can Benefit from Service: We’re Bringing Them More Customers!

Why I Love Local Lead Generation in 2019

When I got out of my job in 2015, I was able to collect a respectable $10k per month in passive revenue. 

Today, that income has reached an excess of $45k every single month. 

When you’re making lead gen sites to post online and have them spit off cash flow while you sleep, you’ve found a method of virtual real estate properties that you can now rent out for a premium. 

You can begin stacking these resources and expanding your bottom line by simply making more of these virtual web properties in your spare time. 

That’s how I was able to get out of a corporate job that under-compensated and overworked me to the bone: 

I built up my side hustle in my spare time until my side hustle was bringing me more in a few months than my annual salary. 

Some people like their job and only want some additional income on the side; there’s nothing wrong with that.

To make real money online, however, that’s what got me excited to join this lead gen coaching program. 

As a result, I’m able to generate massive profits for less than 6 hours of work anytime I want more cash. 

A good example is this limo site that I ranked to the top of search engines – this is what it looks like online (see the image below):

Now, this is what it looks like and why it pays me so well: $750 every month to bring more customers to the company that rents this from me! 

Since I’ve built my business in local lead generation from free traffic to a steady level of tens of thousands of dollars a month – and yes, that’s real (or I wouldn’t be able to afford to write these review articles about these coaching programs in my spare time from my hefty salary that has allowed me to quit my full-time job) –

I’m now permitted to promote our coaching program above and beyond my business venture. 

Even if I weren’t promoting it, I’d still say that lead generation is – hands down – the best business model online for 2019. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION on starting your very own business online and learning the same things my coach and I both did in our spare time to change our lives (and that of our families) forever. 

Cut the reading and hit me up so we can talk about what you’re looking to do for your side hustle now!

There’s been a significant amount of attention given to the social media platforms lately. 

It’s been said that social proof is essential in selling online in this day and age – or for any business to have an elevated web presence. 

From likes to comments, shares and Facebook page fans, the evolution of social media seems to be drawing more attention and consideration from business owners who might not actually understand what those metrics mean when it comes to actually their bottom line expansion through seeking more revenue.

All they seem to really understand — from their time in conversation with local fellow business owners’ dialogue at parties and conventions — about how they hire and fire social media guys and gals because the business owner was under the impression that these things would really bring in more customers. 

Depending on the industry, it may be a valid belief that social media is a waste of their time; for others, they can’t get enough social presence in order to garner more attention and trust in the local commerce climate. 

As Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other social media get established, grow, and become more mainstream in today’s open communication with digital platforms, the notion that a picture really can be worth thousands of words can hit the nail right on the head when it comes to trying to garner attention and move products or sell services. 

For those that are crafty with prose and hope to bring content that carries a sense of value to the marketplace, Facebook and Twitter are the better places to leverage their use of typing words on a computer screen to serve and engage an audience from as far as your message could reach in cyberspace. 

When Facebook Ads require adjusting, it’s no longer a secret that the image of the paid ads campaign strategy could be one of the contributing factors for the desired result simply not being achieved –

This, of course, is assuming that all other aspects of the Facebook Ad are professionally sound, locked on solid, and ready to roll with what you’re trying to accomplish as your end goal. 

Still, the image can be implored to a brand’s credit or detriment (more than anything) on the ever popular – and rapidly growing – social media smartphone app called Instagram.

For those that are less savvy to the native tongue of English or would rather handle pictures instead of make the effort to type out what they’re hoping to say – not only would blogging be a poor fit, but your key forward would definitely be found in Instagram (which is often casually referred to as Insta).

Like all business owners, I once found myself in a funk and seeking a way to simply acquire more customers so I could grow my bottom line and my credibility in serving more customers at the highest level in my industry. 

For those who haven’t been following my blog thus far – thank you, first and foremost, for checking out this article. 

I really hope that it helps you to find what you’re looking for and made more sound decisions when it comes to exploring what coaching program or business venture you’d want to start and the mentor that you would most prefer to invest in to guide you to your dreams and goals. 

I actually have been running a very profitable local lead generation business ever since I was looking for a side hustle of my own while working a corporate job in the heart of the urban terrain of Detroit, Michigan. 

It was 2014, I was sitting on my couch during a wintery blizzard of an evening, and I was searching online for a way to make some money from my laptop so I could find a way out of my financial rut that had me in this joke of a low-rent apartment complex where any gust of wind that evening was chilling me to the bone. 

Shivering under a pile of blankets and miserable at my time sitting “at home” in the discomfort of my parka that I never took off since leaving work, I came across a coaching program by a guy named Dan – he seemed really cool and was willing to offer me a chance to learn what he has been doing for years. 

After some people that he was friends with asked him to teach how he was making boat-loads of cash online in his spare time, he decided that it was best to make this lead gen coaching program and reach out to the world to give people like you and me a chance to have something better with a reliable, honest, and credible system that is proven to work if you put the time and effort into it. 

Fast forward a year later, I’m raking in $10k in passive income each and every month, firing my boss at the 9 to 5 that I couldn’t stand, and all I really left in the downtown Detroit region was my $35,000 annual salary from a corporate career that wasn’t going to give me any more cash so I didn’t have to walk in the cold mornings to work. 

It’s all thanks to this lead gen coaching program that I learned this from that I was able to put up lead gen properties online — like virtual real estate — and have businesses rent them from me for $750 to $3000, and they pay me monthly… as this tree service does in Grand Rapids, MI!

(See the actual lead gen site for tree service below)

Now I’m making $50k every month and have the time freedom to write something like this article each and every morning for you to gain some leverage in your life and be armed with unbiased reviews of coaching programs so you can gain some better insight about where you think you should be going with your entrepreneurial-minded goals of having more cash to change your life for the better. 

With this passive income, I’m able to invest in coaching programs that require a ton of time in order to really get the most out of the training and be in the best position to see if it can make money for you online. 

Today, I’m reporting on what I’ve experienced with Instagram Mastery, which was founded by someone named Josue Pena. 

I had tinkered with Instagram here and there, maybe had a couple of followers and was willing to engage with some content on occasion; I was just never into the hype until I discovered that there were people raking in tons of business through just their online presence with this platform alone. 

When I heard that, I chose to up my game on Instagram and find a coach. 

Although, if my memory serves me correctly, I may have explored other coaching programs that suggested they would mentor me in growing my Instagram account just the same.

This is an ongoing problem – borderline pandemic, actually – as the internet is littered with tons of coaching programs and self-proclaimed experts that suggest they can mentor you to your desired financial goals if you would only pay them a hefty lump sum. 

While that can be shady, some people actually find value in the coaching programs and the testimonials that some of these things have is rather incredible – even to the point of believability. 

I’ve never actually seen someone have success online with Instagram turning into a passive side hustle and generating the kind of cash that I dreamed about when I was shivering on that cold evening’s dirty couch in the apartment downtown.  

As the winds raged, the cold sank deeper into my blankets and clothing, I decided that I needed to try something. 

Years later, I crossed this Instagram program again and could afford to invest in it – so this blog article is my effort to deliver an unbiased review of whether Josue Pena delivers on his Instagram Mastery program and open claims for helping his followers and students to achieve something better. 

Unclear of what I was getting myself involved in, I chose to take the leap and give this program a try. 

If it failed, I still have my passive income from the lead gen business spitting cash flow to keep me afloat. 

I know that there are people that might be reading this who aren’t in such a position to give something like this a try – or maybe the reader is fiscally stable but also pays a much bigger price in never having the spare time to get something like this done. 

For everyone that reaches this blog, I want to deliver to you the most unbiased review of this platform that you could possibly find. 

Let’s learn more about the Instagram Mastery by Josue Pena and figure out if this is where the action is at in the laptop lifestyle – or mobile phone lifestyle – in 2019. 

What’s Up with Josue Pena, Anyway?

This can be a really cool part of the blog, by the way. 

Even though I can get excited to learn about the person behind the founding of a coaching program, this guy really takes the cake with his life story. 

A fit, young man with strong ties to faith and an unwavering commitment to achieving his dreams, this guy – native to the Dominican Republic – was ready for more than life had delivered to him. 

Multilingual and driven to succeed from his younger years, this dedicated entrepreneur learned and honed his craft with commitment, finding a financial solution to his woes – and so he learned about digital marketing and making success in business a priority in his life.

Beyond his marketing competencies, Mr. Pena is the CEO and Founder of a fitness brand called Elation Athletics. 

A renaissance man, to say the least, Josue is constantly exploring ways to elevate his net worth; as such, he has now earned a variety of professional skills and trade-specific, insider knowledge in the disciplines of:

• Videography and Photography
• Personal Fitness Training
• Electrical Engineering
• Social Media Marketing

I anticipate that it’s his wide skillset and intense loyalty to achieving more that Josue Pena was ready to take on the world and make something out of what little he had in the early days. 

If you’re attempting to operate a business through an online presence, one of the stronger points you can position yourself within our digital era is by having what is known as influence thru social media. 

To earn that clout, however, Mr. Josue Pena valiantly pursues his social media following with massive and regular activity in:

• His Instagram Account
• A large subscriber base to his YouTube channel
• Syndicating content across his social media as liberally as is conveniently available for him to do

While it’s vital to have unique content posted in order to get individual credit from free traffic that can come from your content being found within search engine results, it’s a safe bet that Josue has his process down solid. 

In tandem with Mr. Josh Forti, these two launched the Instagram Mastery – and a second venture called the Digital CEOs – with the primary focus of advising entrepreneurs – targeting those that are brand new to the digital marketing side of our global economy – on how they can get started right, and well, in leveraging social media for their (hopefully) long-term success. 

Monetizing Social Media: More about the Instagram Mastery Course

As we speak, this information is deliberately revolutionizing my Instagram presence in ways that I had never thought possible before. 

Fun fact: did you know that the total amount of businesses (in our days of the most advanced resources in technology and digital communication) – who are even attempting to promote their solutions, products, or services via Instagram – are rated to the statistic of a whopping 33 percent or less? 

I’ll be honest – the pitching that this guy did was on-point: I’m a successful entrepreneur with no real or desperate need for more profits, yet I was hooked from hearing their message about Instagram Mastery. 

In addition to the volume of businesses that are actually trying Instagram out – their sampling and toe-dipping efforts are leaving tons of potential return on investment (ROI) on the table; the efficiency in their efforts are minimal, at best. 

We live in an era where tons of information is available at our fingertips and the Instagram platform – at least to start with – is absolutely free! 

How could businesses not be taking advantage of this? 

It’s madness, I say!  I’ll shake my fist to say it again: Madness, I say! 

The Instagram Mastery course by Josue Pena and his fellow co-founder (Josh Forti) seem to be an excellent fit for what I’m trying to accomplish online – especially on Instagram. 

The accessibility to this content is supremely flexible and available for just about anyone who has any sort of business or scheduling conflicts in their daily regimen:

• Since the course has complete online availability, I was able to tap into it on lunch breaks or whenever I had a spare few minutes
• If I were going to take a bus somewhere or sit and wait for hours to get my car registered (and we all know how boring that can be), I was able to do something productive and learn something new as my turn comes to get something done in this governmental office
• A wealth of video training modules to keep you focused and interested in the possibilities that are available on Instagram – and to be completely forthcoming, I haven’t even had the chance to watch all of the content; yeah, it’s that in-depth of a mentoring and coaching program. 

I won’t keep going on the point that there’s a lot to be taken in with this coaching program once you become a member and invest in the knowledge that’s available here. 

There were some specific points that I found especially helpful in the Instagram Mastery training:

• Account Security

It’s incredible how many people really don’t pause and consider the value of their brand on a social media platform like Instagram. 

Spoofing is a real thing on social media, and it’s important that you do what you can to protect your image and reduce the chances of spoofing happening to you. 

• Fundamentals in Branding

Yeah, I thought that I knew everything there was to know about Instagram and how to effectively use it. 

The truth is that these guys taught me some things that I didn’t know where possible – and I had been using it (albeit, passively) for years. 

• Options and Approaches to Funneling Traffic

There are actually ways that you can take web traffic and visitors on Instagram and motivate them to take your desired result – that ultimately redirects them elsewhere so you can get more content and pitching seen by your viewing audience and following. 

I had no idea this was really possible – or how to do it! 

• Recommendations and Advice on Market Research

Okay, I get it; there are tons of repositories that claim they can provide market research, but how do numbers that I have to look up actually help me to turn a profit online? 

With the Instagram Mastery by Josue Pena, you can rest assured that the things you’re looking into are very well worth your time and effort to explore. 

• Essentials in Networking

I hate that word in business: Networking. 

There’s this theory that you can determine someone’s net worth by evaluating the size and value of their network. 

On the same token, your network – especially in conversations of a business sense these days – are less about the relationships that you build and more about what you can get out of these so-called networks. 

Especially with the dawn of the internet, one major concern is that these networks you’re trying to build become so impersonal that the value of them – which was once perceived to be a great thing – is now a community of contacts that know of you but wouldn’t loyally move a finger if you were in need of medical attention, let alone if you reached out to them to ask for information, advice, or ideas. 

The level of value and responsiveness in your network always begins with you and in what you bring to the table that others can benefit from. 

When they see that you’re not out to simply game the system and be in it to win it just for yourself, then there’s a higher chance that you can build the type of connections that have been talked about for years – the connections that can establish you as someone that others like, trust and know, so much so that they are willing to respond whenever you reach out. 

That’s a different kind of networking. 

Which type will you be in this era of communicating through digital-based audience engagement?

Instagram Mastery: Additional Thoughts

It was a frustrating thing to get through what content I did, see the results I had achieved, and wonder why I didn’t get involved with Instagram Mastery earlier.  

I guess I didn’t have someone putting content about it on a blog post for me to gain insight from (see what I did there). 

From epic growth hacks and follow on tips that for building a loyal following, my results were:

• My initial volume of an Instagram following (when starting this program) doubled in sizing and loyalty within 4 days of starting to implement the tactics and procedures outlined by Josue.
• 4 weeks later: BOOM!  The size of that new following from only a few days into the mastermind had doubled again!

I’m kicking myself for not having done something with the Instagram Mastery when I had first heard about it. 

At this point, I am still not completely through the mastermind training; there really are tons of tidbits and expert wisdom contained in this series of online training modules. 

Think about this though, especially when it comes to the use of pictures in social media:

• Are you a photographer (or willing to take pictures of various things to share on Instagram)?
• Are you seeking a digital-based method for driving greater return on your marketing investment dollars (ROI) – to include time and money – so that more business opportunities come your way?

If I were in your shoes, then, I would pounce on this right away and begin demonstrating your expertise to a vast array of audience that could potentially end up leading you to someone that will ultimately hire you and throw their hard-earned dollars your way since the value you’re bringing is perceived as beyond incredible! 

Your 2019 Top Choice for Landing 6 Figures with an Online Business

The cool thing about most of the social media platforms is that accessing and using them are free. 

While there are resources online to try and help you to manage the variety of social media platforms that you could be juggling in a given day – and let me tell you, it can get out-of-hand sometimes – it doesn’t change the fact that these free access points to getting your message in front of potential customers can be worth the squeeze. 

That said, your ability to scale and expand your social media presence comes at a cost. 

When you’re spending time doing this, you’re not spending your efforts landing more opportunities to close business. 

You can build up a loyal following over time, but to do it right – and that’s the best way to do it from the beginning – you’re going to need to pace your effort and spend your spare time working on your social following clout. 

That means that you – if you were anything like me in 2014 – are probably in a position where you need to turn something into cash immediately. 

Maybe you’re not in need of that but you still want to invest in a coaching program that can do more than just teach you theories and wish you the best of luck. 

Still, what better way to build your business than with methods that are completely free?

My recommendation, then, is to use free traffic in search to build my #1 pick in an internet-based, digital business for 2019:

Local Lead Generation! 

Think about how real estate people own properties and rent out some of them instead of sell outright. 

Your lead gen sites can operate in the same way…

You can generate leads to send to small businesses who rent out your own virtual real estate from you, so you can get paid month after month. 

If you were looking for a genuinely passive income option, I think you’ve found it with Local Lead Gen. 

Want to know how I used this online business approach to walk away from a $35k corporate 9 to 5 gig within a year of launching my lead gen business? 

Here are the steps, and these are the same steps I use to this day to keep building my bottom line past $45K+ in annual revenue in 2019:

1. Figure out where you want to place your virtual real estate online
2. Build the lead gen site and rank it on Google search results
3. Rinse and Repeat

There really aren’t too many more steps to this – not that I’m leaving anything out, but I can’t give the whole coaching program away in a blog post. 

Needless to say, you land a partnership with a local small business who services the leads you send them, and they will gladly cut you in on part of their marketing budget.  

Why would a business owner do that? 

You’re hooking them up with more customers! 

How could you not be valuable to them when you’re giving them more opportunities to do good in their community?

To better illustrate what I’m trying to get across here, take a look at this lead gen site that I had pasted to the top of Google – I used the industrial strength adhesive equivalent in digital Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques from this coaching program so it keeps paying me — and has since 2014!

(Take a look at how it’s dominating the local market in the image below):

Now, I know that this placement doesn’t mean much to anyone that isn’t familiar with the tasks or steps involved with search engine optimization (SEO) – FYI, for those that don’t know, that’s the popular acronym given to the way that websites climb to the top of search results to be seen first by customers. 

For me, it means that I’m getting paid $750 every single month – and have been for years. 

Why is local lead generation so awesome of a business model for 2019, besides the passive income?

• Passive income means more time to do what you want – even sleep in or not walk to a job in the cold mornings, which I had done for years
• If you really don’t want to work a full-time job, this business model can give you the long-term solution to walk away from it if you really want to (but make sure that you have your lead gen sites in place and spitting off cash flow before you make any rash decisions here, please)
• These lead gen sites work off of free traffic, which means they’re virtual real estate that can keep making you money while you sleep, go on vacation, or indulge in a hot date on the weekend
• This passive income can build up over time, enabling you to generate more profits annually than the typical salary of specialized attorneys or resident fellowship medical practitioners
• Work from home in your pajamas, or go somewhere that lets you access the internet with your laptop
• Leverage the exact same business strategy big companies use (like Uber or Airbnb) to make their business work for them in 2019 through the internet: generate leads and refer them to people who gladly pay you a premium for the work
• Make a living out of helping people that are seriously looking for more customers; I remember meeting a business owner that had tears in his eyes after our conversation because his business was past the point of no return and wished he had only found me sooner to help him with more customers – lead gen can make a difference in the local market by benefitting all involved!

There are tons more benefits, but I’m going to shut up now and let you reach out to me to learn more about how you learn the same steps and strategies I used to quit my job in under a year with this coaching program.

Here’s proof of the actual lead gen site that paid me a whopping $750 each and every month from the 6 hours of work it took me to get it where it is staying today (have a look for yourself below here):

Yeah, yeah… the whole results aren’t typical disclaimer and stuff bores me, but it’s necessary to say. 

My question to you is whether or not you’re going to venture into starting your life on the path to raking in 6 figures (or even 7 figures someday) online by learning how to use free traffic in lead generation in 2019…

Stop reading now and check it out for yourself! 

Of all the digital advertising courses on the market today, none seems to be more popular than the ones that advertise the ability to help train you in the swift art of getting results immediately through a medium of paid traffic. 

Currently, the two big places to acquire that type of traffic are the top beasts that own probably all the web traffic on the internet; they’re very popular and you have heard of them:

1. Google (the search engine)
2. Facebook (the top social media platform in use today)

Why are these two so good of an option for you to acquire immediate results from? 

Let’s face it – you can launch an instant marketing campaign that can be live and getting attention online within minutes, quite literally. 

It’s absolutely incredible the way that digital assets have revolutionized how marketing is done – especially with the internet in 2019. 

Facebook hosts a social media-based advertising platform that allows you to reach an audience on both Instagram and the Facebook profiles (at least).  Facebook has grown rapidly in the short few years that it’s been around and progressing in business over the years. 

At the near founding of the internet, Google was formed as a search engine that could help anyone who wanted to host a web property to be found online with nothing more than a few clicks and button-pushing actions by their ideal audiences. 

It wasn’t until a lot later, however, that Google came out with something that was formerly known as AdWords – it’s now currently just named Google Ads. 

This is their own version of acquiring paid traffic through the search engines; it still works the same was as free traffic but instead of the advertiser just paying to host a property…

They’ll pay a premium to Google for each and every click (PPC, or Pay Per Click) that their audience takes in response to the ad that shows up on search results in desired positions based on the rate that the buyer of the ad is willing to pay. 

Well, before we go any further I think it’s important to identify that paid traffic strategies through digital advertising can be an ideal start to a marketing campaign – especially due to the possibility that, assuming the marketing campaign is so on-point that it produces desired results instantly –

You’re still dipping into one’s profits in order to attempt to acquire results in the game of producing online traffic. 

That’s largely why I decided that another coaching program that taught free traffic methods to generate passive income online – all from a laptop – really fit what I was looking for; the business method was called Local Lead Generation for small business. 

It’s treated me so well that I’ve been able to rake in large incomes online from working on a project for (usually) no more than 6 hours (over the course of a month) and it produce results that pay me for months and years long after I’ve finished messing with it – like this tree service lead gen site that generates profits for me over in Grand Rapids, MI; check it out for yourself (see below):

While paid traffic strategies can be ideal for a beginner in entrepreneurship, I personally have a bias against it.

It’s a very simple explanation as to why, as well.

Since the free traffic from search results have helped me to make over $10k per month in my first year, walk away from my corporate job, and get a better place to live than the crummy, downtown Detroit apartment I used to live in – the cracks would let the below zero winds in to chill my bones at night. 

Fast forward to today, I now collect a hefty $50k in revenue that is passive income for me, all from the local lead generation business model that I learned in this coaching program. 

Now, I get to write blog posts like this for your benefit – and I don’t mind it. 

That said, I have used Facebook Ads and other paid forms of buying attention and ad traffic online. 

I’m very familiar with it actually. 

So in this article, we’ll explore this gal named Ms. Cat Howell, and the coaching program that he had pieced together called Facebook Ads that Convert; it even has its own famous acronym “FATC Academy.” 

After all, there’s nothing more exciting to someone who dreamed much to the effect that I had back in 2014 in that old, rusty apartment, about nothing being more exciting than actually having some additional income arriving into my bank account. 

There had to be away, so I just kept searching. 

So today, I’m able to afford to invest in the programs of others because I love continuing to learn about the virtual business possibilities online these days – it’s just fascinating to me how so many people have found ways to generate a side income online and I’m ready to learn more and blog more about it. 

Stick with my blog as I progress through my journey of evaluating business coaching programs and report back what my experience has been. 

I’ve spent a lot of time doing this and I don’t mind delivering my results and perspective on it in an unbiased manner.  Yes, that’s right… I’m not trying to push you into an affiliate offer with the coaching or mentoring platform that I am reviewing. 

Even if you decide that the thing I’m reviewing is for you and seek it out to join up, I won’t get a commission. 

With that concern for credibility out of the way, let’s make a concerted effort to get to:

• know our mentor of the day, Ms. Cat Howell,
• deliver our unbiased review of her coaching program,
• what value Facebook can bring (or not bring, as the case might arise), and…
• where my preference in new entrepreneurs beginning an online business venture really is.

Behind the FATC Academy: Learning about Cat Howell

Proficient in the Facebook Advertising platform and possessing a deeper knowledge than most claim to of what it takes to turn a social media paid traffic ad in Facebook from questionable to profitable, Cat Howell has been named as a co-worker and assistant for some of the larger, household name brands that we’ve grown up with over the years, including (though not limited to): 

• Coca-Cola Bottling Company
• Fuji Film (the photography company)
• And many, many more that she has been privileged to learn from during her time with each of them

Does she have a secret? 

Is there a reason that her course’s value is only $297 per month (or should it be higher)? 

Perhaps it’s just her radiant confidence that permits her to step up here game and charger higher pricing than most of her supposed competitors in the Facebook Advertising space. 

Facebook Ads that Convert (FATC Academy) Quick Review

Okay, so you’re here and reading this blog because you’re looking for a way to get started online with a side hustle that really could turn you some magical business tricks for quick cash. 

If only business were that magically simple; well, sometimes it is, if you’ve got a lot of things lined up that you need in order to work smart and efficiently (wasting little in the way of funds, time, etc.). 

When you want to get up to speed in a hurry with Facebook Ads and are genuinely interested in knowing how you, too, can deliver results – Cat’s program of the FATC Academy may give you what you’re looking for. 

When you get a Facebook Ad up, you’re voluntarily entering into an auction system where you are competing for the same audience with others. 

As luck might have it, the more similar your ad it to someone else (which, as far as I am aware of, you’ll never know about it unless you know about it and see it outside of the ads platform), the higher you’re agreeing to be charged for the same traffic that your competition is trying to get – and that’s simply how their auction system works. 

That said, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, the cost of your ads can shoot through the roof if you’re not careful and give the proper or necessary attention to the results and performance metrics of our ad campaigns – paying sufficient attention while they’re running so that you know if/when you might actually have to:

• Replace the ads
• Change your targeting
• Switch up the ad spend
• (dare I say it) maybe even need to turn your ad off that you’ve been running for some time now, regardless of the amount of ad spend, length of time, or bits of data that you have to work with (after the first trial or successful campaign)

The awesome thing about Ms. Howell’s leadership in her training program – Facebook Ads that Convert Academy – is that you can figure out how to correctly approach your marketing on Facebook with the insight that she provides…

Then, you can confirm what you’re learning by actually going out into your own Facebook Ads account and trying things out as proof that you know what she’s talking about – and those little wins of yours will help you to gain greater confidence and enthusiasm as you progress in your knowledge and skill here. 

When you’re just starting out in the business world, the last thing you want to do is spend all this money trying the platform out – there’s so much to test that I was worried at how I might go broke if it weren’t for the training platform that she provides. 

An asset in its own right, I was grateful for this because I’ve personal spend a projected amount of $200k+ on the Facebook Advertising side of the social media company – and I’ve got a rude awakening for you:

It didn’t produce the results that I was hoping for – which really means that I didn’t see any sort of return on investment (ROI) that put me into profit mode with my attempts to market on Facebook. 

Yeah – I know what you’re thinking…

How did this guy (meaning, me) get qualified to write a blog post about the FATC Academy if he couldn’t get a quarter of a million to convert enough to gain a profit? 

The Game of Paid Social Media: Things Everyone Should Know about Facebook Ads

I guess that just goes to show you that the Facebook Ads platform isn’t perfect.

Also, your efforts to do everything right can still result in things that you hadn’t wished nor hoped for (like no web traffic and/or no sales that day).

Such is the reality of paid traffic online – and something we all have to grin and bear. 

I would hope that you don’t end up like the stereotype that everyone thinks of but no one wants to be:

• Testing on the Facebook Ads strategies that you think you know, or casually learned might work on a YouTube video or do-it-yourself article
• You’re grinding away and seeing revenue come in from your marketing efforts
• Web traffic is blowing through your ad spend and flying in to see your offer by the swarms
• Then, you barely break clear of the debt you’ve just incurred from your Facebook Ad comes to the end of the month – you find out that all of this wasn’t what it was cracked up to be and get frustrated that you now have a debt that you didn’t have before you started trying this “online business venture

Why go through all of that and hesitate to experience this kind of – potentially – avoidable issue? 

I acknowledge upfront that no sort of results can be guaranteed – and anyone who might in the digital world is lying to you. 

Yes, this blog is about telling the truth and keeping you well-informed.  Refreshing, isn’t it? 

So what’s the secret that one has up your sleeve to be profitable in Facebook Ads instead?

I wish I could tell that there’s a secret, but the answer is a rather obvious and mind-blowingly simple concept that people seem to get angry with me for sharing. 

Experience is usually the best teacher, but even Ms. Howell admits that she’s not really any more or less special than you when it comes to the possibility of an ad campaign succeeding or failing in its objective for web traffic.

What all boils down to is: you must be willing to apply lots of ads to your experimental process and test them – even split-test them, if you really need/want to. 

What It Takes to Get Good at Paid Social Media Marketing (Facebook Ads)

Look, you want to get good at a skill. 

We also agree that Facebook Ads hold the potential to return a high payout for anyone and on anything. 

That’s the risk we take, and the price we pay, for seeking the use of Facebook Ads in our business model; you pay upfront and hope for the results – test away and try to get your desired result, adjusting along the way. 

This means you have to be extremely willing to make trips to your laptop several times a day to analyze your:

• Ad and Campaign (to make sure it hasn’t been removed, banned, or turned off by Facebook Advertising staff
• Watch your cost-per-click, relevancy score, and tons of other detailed points to gauge how your Facebook Ad is actually doing since you’ve launched it (or, since your last revision)
• Find which ad sets and ads are performing the best – because you’ve divided the aspects of your campaign up so tremendously that you can see specifically which kind of audience is performing better with your targeting structure
• Still make time to adjust and change things as key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics suggest

This is what it takes – in large part – to win at the game of Facebook Ads; it’s like gambling against the house, really, because whether you acquire attention or not…

Facebook will still gladly spend your money if you leave your ad campaigns running. 

Other Things to Know about Facebook Ads Implementation

Depending on what you’re doing with Facebook Ads, especially if you’re running campaigns involving affiliate products, you’d better be prepared with some contingency plans for your business model because getting your ads shut off and your campaign banned are simply part of the game. 

If you’re not willing to get to this point, then maybe Facebook Ads strategies aren’t going to be a good business venture fit; you have just got to be willing to take adventurous guesses and risk if you want to find a creative Facebook ad copy that wins in your market and with your target audiences that you’re attempting to appeal to. 

Case in point:

2 Ads that are ridiculously similar will be performing completely different – and that’s just how the industry works. 

Take this first wrinkle cream ad (see below):

Now imagine this with a younger woman but still applying the cream on.

What sense is made of this?

For some, not much. 

The creative side of the paid traffic strategy suggests that 2 similar ads can perform differently for a variety of factors. 

None of the reasons for this could end up ever being clear for you. 

The ambiguity is something that must be okay with and learn to go with the flow while allowing the analytical side of your brain to do its magic as well. 

What I’m Disliking about Facebook Ads and Paid Traffic

Here’s one of the primary things that actually pushed me away from the practice of Facebook Ads. 

There seems to be far too much organization in the Facebook Ads platform; some people like that while others don’t. 

At the end of the day, it’s up to Facebook how they want to handle their ads and all we can do is try our best at letting the third-party software of an ads platform work in our favor at random. 

We can increase the odds of that randomness working in our favor, but it goes without saying at this point: testing is required and ad spend has to be something that you’re really okay with in order to collect sufficient market data and decide what your next steps with your campaign are going to be. 

This one detail really gets under my skin and I’m still kind of upset about this realization of this:

All Facebook Ads fall under 5 categories in terms of automated quality-checking in the most random of ways (and, unless someone from the Facebook headquarters can manually do something to help you along, there’s absolutely nothing that you can do to influence the decision-making that this software exhibits on your published ad). 

The Categories are as follows: 

5. Horrible

4. Not Good

3. Reasonable

2. Decent

1. Prime

I can already hear the groans coming from the peanut gallery, and I’ll be sincere in saying that I absolutely agree with the people that disapprove of this conduct as well. 

Your luck could be in favor of you for the publishing of your new ad – or not. 

You might get decent performance on your Facebook Ad in nearly all metrics, except for the one that you’ve been counting on this whole time:

• conversions
• sales
• money in your pockets

Think back to the discussion about using the same ad with a different audience – or only slight variations to the same ad and running that to the same target markets: 

• One will generate your desired result and one won’t
• Both will perform well
• None will perform well

That’s essentially your options – especially since Facebook is pushing your ads out to the markets you’ve designated (at least, as best as you told it what to do). 

Even with all of that work, you’ll still run the risk of not seeing a profit; that’s the bottom line truth here.

Maybe one of your Facebook Ads published hits a home-run (metaphorically speaking) and gets ran around to all of the higher-level, more relevant audiences and that brings in more revenue for you. 

This is why fabricating ad sets and a variety of ads for each of the attempts that you put into Facebook Ads are pivotal to your success on this platform? 

Sounds like work to me, which is why I still venture into the whacky and adventurous world of free traffic with local lead generation. 

Unlike Facebook Ads, your lead gen sites can feed you free traffic from search results (that you don’t have to pay per-visitor, per-click, per-conversion – meaning action, which could often-times be a sale if you’ve set that up correctly – or per impression). 

That means that not paying per visitor reduces your volume of monthly costs for your virtual real estate – which you can now rent out to small businesses who can give you a cut of the sales you bring them each and every month. 

It’s not a pay-per-lead model in terms of trying to pay for attention for another business, or for a crummy product that can only deliver a laughable 10%-15% of profit from every sale that comes through your Facebook funnel. 

Instead, you’re sending more business over to someone who could use it and they give you a sliver to deliver; that’s what I call genuinely passive since you don’t have to maintain the web property – unlike a Facebook Ad that requires tons of attention and more than once a day. 

Conclusion

If you’re seeing more and more people test the Facebook Ads training that is on the market for themselves, I think you’d be spot on in regards to the trend that these coaching programs are bringing. 

It is an extremely hot commodity to have this skill – you can command clients out of thin air for businesses you might partner with, or for the affiliate products or otherwise physical products you could intend to sell through dropshipping marketing approaches taught elsewhere online

Just like business owners who question me when I approach them with referrals from my lead gen sites, I often question the self-proclaimed experts that coach these online programs – I want to know what makes them a credible and reliable source for the information they’re trying to share with me in exchange for my hard-earned money. 

Not only am I a successful entrepreneur – which, I think, gives me a little different outlook than I might have had if I were still sitting on my apartment’s living room couch, freezing my tail off in the dead of winter, looking for a way to make more money online from home – I’m also interested in finding a coaching program that anyone can start and see a really passive income develop. 

Unfortunately, we just don’t know who to trust these days. 

I can assure that I trust Ms. Cat Howell and her abilities to demonstrate – as her credentials support – her expertise in running social media’s advertising campaigns for big brands and may have a thing or two to show you about what to do with your next Facebook ad. 

Howell has been known to cut through the noise and deliver very clear, no-nonsense training series that you can follow along with as she attacks each topic head-on – which is an approach I can sincerely appreciate. 

There’s something to be said about investing in the program of a quality mentor like Cat Howell:

• They’re genuine and believable when they teach and advise
• They know what they’re doing from personal experience and having done what they’re advising
• They know that getting good at something requires an upfront investment
• Mastery is a process (in anything)
• And leveraging momentum to go fast and acquire a high-income skill rapidly is what separates the okay Facebook Ads marketing people from the outstanding performers of Facebook Ads

All of the above leads to helping a student understand what’s going on and confidently have their methodology in order as they personally venture into the unknown land of Facebook Ads for the very first time. 

I’ve seen a positive return on investment (ROI) after investing in Facebook Ads that Convert (FATC) Academy, so I can attest to the validity of this coaching program. 

Without a mentor in the Facebook Ads game, you’re liable to miss one extraordinary detail that was a tip in someone’s Facebook Ads training that could have kept you from losing out on tens of thousands of dollars in ad spend that you could have otherwise avoided. 

If you’re still serious about leveraging Facebook Ads and using it for the purpose of getting money online for yourself, then feel free to establish your confidence and knowledge base with Facebook Ads that Convert by Cat Howell (FATC Academy). 

How Local Lead Generation is Taking Over in 2019 as the Best Online Business Model

One thought that crossed my mind included the potential crossover of skills that you could have by combining the training of Facebook Ads with the high-income, passive income generating skill of local lead generation with free traffic. 

Why am I still harping on the need to seriously consider lead generation? 

Doing so doesn’t eat away at the minimal profit margins that newest entrepreneurs tend to experience – and there’s no more room in the beginner stages to be cutting corners, so I don’t know why you would find it to be a great idea to spend more money online with Facebook Ads than you’d just as soon invest in our coaching program where free traffic is taught and leveraged for profits.

If you were to produce the same amount of leads from free traffic that passes through your lead gen site on Google search results, your profit margin would be bordering 100 percent upon the site hitting the top of search results. 

That also means no maintenance to keep the lead gen site superglued to the top of the results for the key terms that are bringing in more and more customers for the small business owner to reward you within monthly, passive income of a large and enjoyable nature. 

If you’ve been looking for a lifestyle that stems from financial and time freedom, then consider local lead generation – the same thing that helped me to get started in business in 2014 and quit my full-time job within 1 calendar year of launching my own online digital lead generation business – straight from my laptop. 

Why am I bringing up the issue of profit margin? 

With lead gen, you don’t have to pay for each and every lead that you are able to send over to your client; if you were to try and do the same thing with Facebook Ads, you’d end up still going into the whole – and potentially financially deep because of the fact that you can increase your ad spend and burn through a target audience quickly (and fast doesn’t always mean profitable). 

Therefore, more money can go into your pockets with the local lead generation business model. 

Also, you can generate more profits with fewer clients; fewer businesses that you have to arrange your time around means that you have more time in your days to enjoy doing whatever it is you wanted to do when you started getting involved in businesses way back when. 

I know that the “way back when” is like present time for you –

You are reading this, after all, and possibly deciding which program to explore further: Local Lead Generation or Facebook Ads. 

While fewer headaches can come from attempting to manage fewer clients that are all compensating you and your business model, think about how much time it must take to manage the campaign of one client. 

Especially if you’re brand new and still trying to figure things out, it could take you several chunks of time to figure out what each component is, does, and how or why you would want to select the things in your Facebook Ad to make it run different ways (including the way you want it to). 

As for the reviewing of your target marketing, the nature of your Facebook Ad copy (in and of itself), and other things; it’s not the most scalable business model – the more you get Facebook Ads clients to work with, you’re going to be stuck to your computer for that much longer in trying to figure things out. 

Lastly, there’s also the issue of what we’ve been talking about a lot here – not having a second job to your daily grind. 

With the lead gen business, I was able to establish one of my first websites in Lansing, Michigan, that is still paying me $750 to this day – and this is all I did with it on search results (see below):

You can’t really step away from a laptop for an entire weekend with Facebook Ads; you’d go broke in a heartbeat. 

Okay, that might have been somewhat of a stretch, but it’s not too far from the truth. 

If you’re not carefully attending to the Facebook Ads that you’ve set up brand new, you could be losing clients or owing money back for failing to deliver your services at the highest of quality for those who’ve trusted you to deliver on what you were going to do. 

So, I’ve been organically ranking lead gen sites and getting leads through free traffic, for years! 

I identify it as a stable and long-term solution to businesses getting more customers because they don’t have to take the time to watch a Facebook Ad’s performance metrics, and you don’t have to go back to maintain the lead gen property once it’s positioned right where it needs to be to get the phone ringing with cash ready to be sent over. 

Beyond passive income and high-profit margins, here’s what else you can anticipate with lead gen: 

• The ability to stack your income to the point that you’re making more than your local physician and an attorney in your local neighborhood
• Use a straightforward business model that can yield high-income and long-term returns: make more leads thru the internet and send them over to businesses so you can get paid well!
• Have that good, warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from helping business owners actually get what they’ve already been looking for – more customers
• Maximum control of the marketing process – Facebook isn’t telling you where you can and can’t be seen with your lead gen site, and they’re not charging you to send you to the sandbox where you don’t really get seen by anyone in your target market (and yes, it’s happened)
• Leverage the passive income of stacking your lead gen sites (and their profits) each and every month so you can walk away from a full-time job or just wake up late and stay in your pajamas to work on your business (if you really want)
• A joke of competition here: you’re not competing with affiliate marketers across the entire world for the opportunity get seen first in search results; instead, you’re getting the chance to hit a huge victory in a short amount of time with your lead gen site by beating out only 10 to 30 different local businesses for the chance to be the dominating force and take all the buyers in the market that you can now redirect to your partner in that city, and for that service
• While I’m advocating to join a coaching program that talks all about the world of lead generation for small businesses, the truth of the matter is that there are far too many businesses and plenty of business to go around that we could continue to grow our mastermind and mentorship here and it wouldn’t affect us very much
• Get to know the true meaning of financial freedom as we build up our assets that spit of cash flow so we don’t have to be a slave to our 9 to 5 any longer
• We can do this anywhere that there’s a city with Google and internet access, and we already know that there are several local service industries in just about any urban and metropolitan region of a major city so there are tons of industries that this business model can work for – if you can find a business owner that wants more customers, then we can show you how to make some money (and we show you how to find business owners too – so you’re not really alone here)

Oh yeah, and that lead gen site I was telling you about, that’s making me $750 — that’s real, too; see it for yourself here (see below):

If you’re interested in the business model that helps me make a multiple 6 figures every year on autopilot, granting genuine time and financial freedom, with digital assets that you own – and not having to pay a third party, like Facebook Advertising platform, to get seen by more targeted, free traffic that are using search results with high-buyer intent search terms, money in-hand and ready to buy to anyone that’ll solve their problem –

Then CLICK HERE and learn how our coaching program on how local lead generation can move you forward in your aspirations and get free traffic to help you do it. 

If you’re looking for a mentor that is beyond talented with his internet marketing skills, then you should be like Mr. Frank Kern when you grow up.

Hey, we have to have a little fun when we’re blogging, right?

I’ve been looking online for mentors for quite some time in order to find strategies and methods in which to increase my game in the digital marketing sphere. 

Since there are so many coaches out there claiming that they know how to make it happen for you and all you have to do is pay them tons of money to make it happen, what they don’t tell you is that they’re selling you information in exchange for the boat-load of cash that they’re trying to get out of you. 

That’s not all of the mentors and coaches out there, to say the least.

There are some really good ones.

When I quit my job in 2015, it was because a mentor named Dan was able to help me learn the high-income skill of local lead generation with free traffic to be able to make $10k in passive, monthly income within a year of starting the coaching program. 

I did it from the same lead gen site that’s still paying me $750 to this day, and it’s real passive income that’s still on the internet using free traffic (see below):

To this day, I’m still using that information to rake in a habitual $45k+ each and every month. 

Why am I putting this out there?

For a few reasons, actually:

1. To let you know that making money on the internet is real, and it doesn’t have to be as hard as others make it out to be
2. That said, you still need to invest some diligent effort, time, and resources in order to get good at something that can help you bring value to the marketplace and get paid for giving of yourself
3. I’m speaking from experience on this blog, and to remind you that you can do this too!

Part of being successful online means being able to have access to the eyes and ears of someone who has paved the way before you. 

For some, they need to learn a high-income skill in addition to learning how to run a business from a laptop by someone who has done that very thing.

For others, especially those that are already successful in their respective entrepreneurial endeavor, they are just looking for someone that can advise and help take their efforts to the next level. 

What does the next level mean?

It can mean anything the individual wants it to mean.

You got into business to be independent and live life on your terms.

Now that you’re here, you get to create the life of your dreams with the vehicle of business taking you to your destination – provided you commit to doing everything you need to do in order get the vehicle in motion. 

Mr. Frank Kern has been known by many as a resource to guide people toward getting their vehicle going when they don’t know how to start or progress at a certain hurdle in their business.

If you’re brand new, then getting started could be your biggest hiccup.

If you’re a seasoned businessperson, there are obviously different hurdles that you’re facing right now and could still use an experienced third-party’s vantage point on what you’re doing in order to progress.

Am I saying that any of this is a requirement? 

ABSOLUTELY NOT! 

As stated before, it’s your business and your life to do with as you please. 

What I am saying is that it’s probably a good idea to get moving forward with a little bit of assistance. 

Since the majority of people get involved with the laptop lifestyle bit of hope for a brighter future that stems from some form of marketing online, what better person for a mentor than the man that has committed to helping you progress in your internet marketing career.

Let’s take a closer look at whether this guy can be a great fit for what you’re needing in your business venture right now. 

Inner Circle by Frank Kern – Review

For a while, Mr. Kern has helped numerous people in digital marketing to figure out a way to achieve what they’ve been hoping to accomplish for quite some time.

And, in that quite some time, he’s actually produced a number of programs with one purpose in mind – to help the marketplace of entrepreneurs. 

It’s not every day that you find someone as genuinely good-hearted as Frank to see problems and find a solution to the problem. 

There’s nothing wrong with charging for the solution – after all, he needs to eat, too. 

However, if that solution can help get someone unstuck in their business and moving in the direction of generating revenue, then their investment in Frank’s solution can actually possess a numerical value that can be best described as a return on investment (ROI). 

In fact, Mr. Kern provides sales principles (among other forms of counseling and advising in marketing online) that may seem old school when you hear about them, but you’ll quickly learn that he’s able to craft them into a sensible and real-life application for our current era. 

I’d like to propose the following key points for your consideration regarding the Inner Circle by Frank Kern:

1. Close-Stacking

If you have an offer, chances are that it could use a little more kick when you’re pitching it to a prospective buyer. 

If you’re an avid follower of Mr. Frank Kern, you might recognize what this actually is that he is referring to. 

In essence, his revelation at the end of the conversation about important points that stir up emotion in the recipient can actually turn the sales conversation from a casual pitch to one that spins the offer into something that the prospective client simply cannot resist but to buy and get involved in what you’re sharing with them.  The Formula for the Ultimate Offer

2. This is definitely a higher level concept.  

In fact, it’s often used or referenced in programs or companies that are trying to close higher-ticket priced deals. 

Another name for this sequence of events is the Pitch Anything – to Anyone. 

While pitching can have a negative connotation to it, let’s take a step back and better understand what role salespeople play in the world of business.

Mr. Brian Carruthers, a person who has been in the Network Marketing and Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) distribution plan of compensation structures for as long as I’ve known him, has consistently pointed out to his marketing team (or any audiences that he’s been invited to speak in front of, for that matter) that when you’re in the world of working for a business – which is everyone, since businesses employ people –

You’re either working to make a sale, or you’re in support of someone who is out there every single day and trying to land a sale. 

They are the gatekeepers of cash flow and the people that keep a business thriving.

As digital marketers, you’re not necessarily the salesperson for a business that you’re partnering with, but you are definitely an instrumental role of responsibility in getting those conversations occurring. 

In order to make more money, you have to prove that you are more valuable than the wage that someone else thinks you are worth. 

By learning to pitch, you are increasing your personal skills to produce more income – for both yourself and the business that you could be lined up to help expand and grow. 

3. Going Big: How to Grow with the Internet’s Help in 6 Easy Steps (what
Frank likes to refer to as the magic steps of business development)

4. Positioning Yourself with Authority

This is something that I don’t think enough people really take the time to think about or realize. 

When you carry…

• Public trust
• Community credibility
• Industry mainstream branding
• The title of published author, or better – bestseller

…there’s a very good chance that the audience you’re targeting will begin to pay a little more attention to you – and may even help to make landing sales appointments even easier (if you do them). 

Those four keys (mentioned above) are what you can acquire within the Inner Circle by Frank Kern.

That’s just one of many things that this guy can offer you to help you improve your business and work ethic. 

In bonus content to the Inner Circle, I think I remember seeing something about mindset training; if you’re new to business it’s very important to get your mind right. 

I think it was the P90X program published by Beach Body that had a fitness trainer named Tony Horton that would always advocate that, during challenging and lengthy fitness training regimens, you really need to take a moment to “get your mind right.” 

In order to persevere in the world of entrepreneurship, nothing could be more spot on than this very claim. 

Even though the information is generally the same, I’m confident that there are several reason for Mr. Frank Kern delivering his Inner Circle Program for a few different barriers of entry:

• $1,000 every month for the biggest package and maximum access to resources you would need
• $750 for the middle-class entrepreneur that is either launched or could use some help but just doesn’t quite have the financing to get the greater package
• $500 in monthly membership fees which caters to those that are seeking just the bare bones of information to get started and move quickly into profit mode

That’s not to say that everyone should only get the $500.00 level membership and call it a day.

Remember, this guy has been around awhile and witnessed a lot of changes in how business operates. 

If anything, we should be knocking on the guy’s door and handing him our bank accounts so we can learn what he did to hit it big – and how he’s helped so many others that are trying to do what we’re doing so we can see the patterns and follow the path of least resistance. 

Okay, so the bank account statement might have been a little overkill, but it’s not too far off from the metaphorical truth to the value that Kern tries to bring to people that are seeking advice and need that extra nudge to move forward. 

When quality is of utmost importance in your efforts to get things going in business, you really can do right by investing in the resources made available through Frank. 

Where was a gentleman named Karl who hosted an interview with Frank Kern; he was actually one of Frank’s clients that was able to move his business from only four or five figures a month (on the left side of the decimal, for anyone who is reading this and thinking of criticizing the conversation here) to well over $5 million in gross revenue for the coaching industry that Karl was serving. 

How did Karl do this?

Simple; he invested in the wisdom and knowledge that Mr. Kern made available in the Inner Circle mentor and mastermind program. 

I’m convinced that Mr. Kern really knows what he’s talking about, demonstrating, and encouraging others in the internet marketing community (which is an all-encompassing umbrella that spans a large volume of sectors in the digital marketing community). 

Those involved in his programs, or have even been exposed to the email messages or marketing videos that Frank has published online, can also attest to the wisdom this gentleman has.

Why would I say that?

Frank has taken his digital resources and web properties from start-up and brand new pieces of virtual real estate – and turned them into the massively influential points of magnetic attraction for his brand that we’ve come to know today, and many of his followers only hope to one-day duplicate. 

Frank claims that it really isn’t that hard, but work is involved and it has to well thought-out, strategic efforts that encompass the 4 keys we discussed just above. 

Here are a few mastery aspects that Frank has utilized:

• Incorporating a pre-recorded webinar in a marketing funnel so he can simply be looked at by the targeted traffic as an authority with significant credible for what he does
• Mastering copywriting on the internet in order to craft an appealing, irresistible message that inspires people to take action on his paid traffic strategies

A student of what the digital marketing animal truly is, he tries to find unique approaches to achieve different and unheard of angles for psychological weapons that pierce through resistance or objections to land deals – over and over again. 

In case you’re wondering about whether Frank’s ideologies can work for you and in your specific industry, I can assure that they are very applicable to a wide variety of digital marketing industries and even the most obscure of sales needs. 

There are other sales mentors across the nation, and Frank just so happened to be ranked among the best. 

In no particular order, even though I’m writing a blog, here’s who I try to take pointers from:

• Jordan Belfort
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Jordan Knight
• Grant Cardone
• Frank Kern

Those are some notorious names in the internet marketing and sales world, and Frank deserves every bit of street credibility because he’s been in the trenches and earned his stripes just like every other name on that short list here. 

He may play the old-school card upon initial approach, but this clever son-of-a-gun has got the goods on appropriating old information to work to anyone’s advantage if they take action on the advice given. 

What else does he offer?

There’s a lot, but I’ll share with you a few more things:

• Email Marketing Recommendations
• Modern Day Sales Funnels
• Sales Strategy, Techniques and Standard Procedures that Frank Personally Uses (to this day)

When you’re looking to be in the know with digital marketing’s top dogs, people pay attention when Frank talks (notice I’ve often referred to him as Mr. Kern) and people respect him as the marketing giant that he is. 

Just like everyone in business though, he didn’t start out that way; he earned his way. 

Frank Kern’s Client Acquisition System in Review

I had to include another course that Frank offers because it’s just that good.

We’ve discussed that Mr. Kern has multiple courses out, countless resources for you to look into, learn from, and improve yourself upon, but nothing beats the ability to keep a business endeavor alive like learning exactly what it takes to rake more customers by the bushel. 

Here’s a brief look into what you could receive when you join the Client Acquisition System by Frank Kern:

• Backwards Planning – what some call Reverse Engineering

We’re not all engineers that get involved in the world of network marketing. 

From science to art, blue collar to white collar, and everything in between, the digital marketing world is filled with people who are mutually related on one simple thing: they want things better than they currently have it. 

Part of being able to get from point a to point b in the game of life and business is that you need to be able to have a clear understanding of where you want to arrive: business schools call that a vision. 

In a business communication class, I learned how this actually lines up: companies declare their values and mission because they support and drive their business operation to achieve the vision that they wish to see in this world. 

While businesses piece these things together from the early days of launching the company, we need to be able to establish a vision (at the very least) so that we can have a clear and direct line of sight of where to go. 

Once we have that vision in our sights, we need to now recognize where we currently are and begin to map out the exact steps required in order for us to arrive at our destination.

I get it, this is business and not a family road trip. 

However, there’s going to be a lot of deviation and distraction opportunities along your path; by reverse engineering your steps to get to where you want to be (which is also known as “backward planning” your road to success), you can then steer yourself back on to course with achieving your goal when something in the way of life events or unexpected turmoil knocks you off the beaten path. 

It’s more than just a singular achievement, however.

Most of us got into entrepreneurship and business because we wanted a better lifestyle in addition to simply building a business to have more money.  

I remember hearing Mr. Grant Cardone talk about how money shouldn’t be the end result, but what it can enable you to achieve once you have that resource – that’s what should drive our endeavors daily.

• Figure out what your prices are – and set them

• Locate your high-income skill and put it to work to bring in revenue so you can call yourself an entrepreneur with predictable cash flow. 

When I got started in local lead generation, I didn’t make it to $10k and quit my 9 to 5 with a nice passive monthly income at that size by writing down the mission, vision, and values of a company or even registering a company, to begin with. 

If you want to say that you have a business, then you need to have cash flow from customers that you’re providing value for. 

Once you have customers, then every other piece of the puzzle can fall into place because you’re now funding your business with cash flow from clients that you’ve acquired and continue to serve in an ongoing manner. 

What’s cool about my lead gen business model is that I only had to set up a lead gen site one time – like this tree service site in Grand Rapids, MI.  I only worked on that thing for a grand total of 6 hours and it’s been paying me $2,000 every single month since 2014. 

See it for yourself (see below):

The high-level skill that I put to work each and every day is bringing more customers to small businesses so they can pay me for life. 

If you don’t have a high-income skill yet, I’d like to highly encourage that you figure out what you love to do, or you can check out our coaching program where you can see the exact steps I took to not only quit my job inside of a year’s time…

You’ll get to see the same things that I did in that 1 year that I still do (to this day) to maintain my $50,000 per month side hustle – which gives me the time freedom to write a blog post like this for you each and every day. 

• Become the Most Valuable Business Person (MVP) in your marketplace with your high-income skill and you can be sure that you’ll always have people that need what you have to offer – and can afford to pay you handsomely for serving them

• Identify ways that you can connect – and have a conversation – with the people that can afford to buy from you in the method that causes the least amount of resistance for you two to get some quality conversation time and learn more about each other

• Figuring out what it takes – and then actually committing – to shift everyone that is in the marketplace that could buy from you out of the obscure space of not knowing about you or never having heard of you into becoming genuinely interested in your offer, product, or service

• Closing methods to land deals more consistently and some collaborate strategies that have never been seen before

The Client Acquisition System definitely has some meat and potatoes to what it’s dishing out. 

The good things about the Client Acquisition System

When there are good and bad things about everything, it’s worth taking the time to analyze whether the program is actually going to be a good fit for you. 

• With the interview-takeaway approach that you can learn more about in the Client Acquisition System, I really like that and a few other tips to close deals through the telephone (which means fewer problems in actually getting in-person face time – imagine making money from a distance)
• Sound coaching that is rather applicable to most industries – including that of service providers for local markets
• Sometimes it takes a while to work on warming up the people that either won’t be ready to buy from you or just acknowledge that things aren’t a good fit – at first.  Learn the tips and tricks that Frank – himself – uses to get people into a buying mood, slowly but steadily.  

What I didn’t like about the Frank Kern’s Client Acquisition System

• I like the grind as much as the next hustling businessperson.  However, the content seems rather broad to where I’m not sure where to start in trying to take the information and make it applicable to an industry that I would want to use the information for. 
• Maybe a plethora of case studies and more specificity in the illustrations of how this information can work would be a better asset to position this program as the end all, be all of the business development efforts
• Just like Mr. Grant Cardone talks about, the notion of omnipresence – being seen everywhere – is a stellar idea and I hope that most businesses can achieve becoming a name that someone else you didn’t know personally would utter on their blog (see what I did there). 

Since this is an internet marketing course, however, I just think that the ideal clients of this program would be better served if they were given higher-level techniques that they could learn and use immediately.

This included the idea of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and other things that aren’t just theory but can be used for the long-term when they’re done learning from Frank’s lessons and prepared to implement things into their own business

• Prospecting and lead generation skills could be further expounded upon.

Remember, I was running my own, successful digital marketing company when I stumbled upon Frank Kern’s program and decided to scope it out so I could learn from him and write a blog about the programs that he offers. 

At a base of $50,000 in profits every single month from free traffic in local lead generation for small businesses, you can be certain that I’ve got the time and resources to give Frank Kern’s programs a solid test. 

I just wanted to find out if the content with the course was going to be worth the squeeze and let you know if I would recommend to you to get started with your membership to his mindset mentoring platforms.    

It’s important to me, from a business owner standpoint, to know more than one method to generate traffic online and test them all out for myself. 

I can’t really do that if I were exclusively taking Frank Kern’s advice through his mindset training programs. 

That’s not to insult the guy; he’s done great things and really knows what he’s doing when it comes to working the industry’s techniques to his company’s and coaching program’s needs. 

As for the instructional side of what he provides for his following, I wish there were more. 

It’s that simple. 

You, as a business owner – especially a brand new entrepreneur in the online community, trying to start something from home with only a laptop, an internet connection, and an ambition for something better in your future – need to know what to try in order to get more attention for your business venture on the internet. 

That means being able to learn search engine optimization (SEO), paid traffic advertising in the digital arena (like Facebook Ads, Google Ads – formerly Google AdWords and known to many as PPC or Pay Per Click)…

That way, you can do what it takes to try and get more people into the spectrum of being a lead – or someone that leads to a potential sale for services or products through you and your business.

If you can’t fill up your pipeline, that means you’re not landing meetings or sales appointments; that’s step one for opening a business – you’ve got to be able to make a deal, land a sale, and serve someone to the highest level. 

In that way, you can now develop testimonials and leverage those success stories in order to acquire more customers because you’re not building trust and a good, solid reputation in the community. 

It all begins with one – and that one customer is acquired through digital advertising strategies online, which I wish were taught more in-depth in the Client Acquisition System by Frank Kern. 

Why Local Lead Generation Helps New Entrepreneurs Profit Quickly in 2019

I won’t take anything away from the guy; Frank Kern is a force to be reckoned with and noticed in the world of internet marketing. 

There are tons of things that he publishes and provides to those on the internet – especially in the internet marketing community – that can merit tons of positive value out of the coaching made available from him through digital recordings and online training access to in-person masterminds and other forms of coaching sessions with Frank. 

That said, the majority of his following already has a product or service that they can give value to the local community with – and they have thriving businesses that help to afford the expensive opportunities that Frank Kern makes available to anyone that can afford them – let’s recognize it for what it is; it’s a business. 

If you’re among the people reading this blog that actually don’t have a business quite yet, or you’re sitting on a couch reading this on your laptop and considering options to start a business, then Mr. Kern’s programs may not be the most awesome fit for you.

You’re going to do what you want, and I welcome you to make your own choices in life. 

From an experienced business owner that started from nothing, living in downtown Detroit, Michigan and working a corporate 9 to 5 that expected me to walk in deep snow during blistering cold, heavily laden snowy, northern winter months –

There was a time that I wanted my day job to pay me just a little bit more or advance me some cash so I could drive to work instead… Frank Kern’s programs can wait.

After being told no and being challenged to keep my mouth shut or I can kiss the measly $35k annual salary goodbye for talking out of turn to the owner of the company (all I wanted was to have a better, warmer commute twice a day)…

I wanted something better and started looking online for a way to make more money in a side hustle that wouldn’t interfere with what I already had going on in my work day. 

If you can relate to anything that I’ve just described, and you either want to quit your job, have more money coming into the household, or simply want more time freedom and less stress from how you’re going to afford to turn the heat on during the winter or put food in your cupboards…

Then maybe it’s time to look elsewhere than a program that only seems to work on mindset. 

If you don’t have a skill that you can bring to the marketplace, then you’re probably not going to go very far in the internet marketing world nor generating an income online from home on a part-time basis. 

If you want to learn a high-income skill that you can use to make money from home and try to do what I did – quit my full-time 9 to 5 corporate gig within the time span of a year since starting this lead gen coaching program, then click on those highlighted words and let’s talk about what you’re looking to accomplish. 

What I did to quit my job with this business model was ridiculously simple:

• Found a city and industry that could benefit from having more buyers
• Fixed up a lead gen site really quick and ranked it on search results
• Got free traffic on the web to help me make a ton of passive income
• Rinse and Repeat

This map listing is the byproduct of this method — this is what pays me the passive income I love living with so much, and you could do it to (see below):

This is my #1 online work from home pick to launch your side hustle business on the internet. 

When you’re dominating search results, as you could be (like in the picture above), you can essentially be paid handsomely because you’re doing what business owners already want to do with the internet: use it to bring in more customers!

That’s not just because the business model has been good to me, but because I’ve seen it work wonders for other people just like me – the average, everyday person that simply wanted something more. 

You’ll get to learn from the same guy that taught me everything I needed to know to now be job free and collect over $45k+ every month. 

Money isn’t everything, though.  Here’s what else this business model can give you that masterminds and mindset training – although good content that I wouldn’t shy away from –

It won’t help a brand new business owner to enjoy massive profits and the following added benefits to lead gen for small business:

• A rapidly expandable business model that you can continue to serve more and more clients in any city and any local business industry
• Follow a proven business model to make profits online since it’s exactly what Airbnb and Uber do: use the free traffic from search results (never paid traffic through digital ads) to consistently bring more buyers to local business owners – who pay loads of money and good tidings as their way of begging you to keep bringing them more customers
• PASSIVE INCOME and HIGH-PROFIT MARGINS so you can work less, make more money, and have the time freedom to enjoy the financial freedom (yes, this business model really can do that if you work on it the way we train in the coaching program)
• Mastermind with people who’ve been doing this business model for years with our Private Facebook Group so you’re in business for yourself but luckily never by yourself
• Work in Jammies and skip working for that day if you don’t want to – you’re in charge now
• Work while on vacation or let the passive income go to work in getting you more money while you’re on vacation; with free traffic, you can sleep while you get paid from the internet now
• Rake in more money than physicians or specialized, high-end attorneys in a year’s time – you’ll build up to it like I did if you want, but the juice is worth the squeeze – I’m telling you!

If you want to fire your boss or quit your 9 to 5 job (as I had), Frank’s course may not be the immediate fix to your situation or give you the strategies that you’re looking to put to work for you to make instant cash from the internet.

I’m not saying that the local lead gen business model is going to help you print money from opening your laptop – there’s work involved and the training is rigorous – but it’s still the easiest thing on the internet, and my blog posts have reviewed a lot of mentoring and coaching programs online thus far. 

You can read them if you want, or you can have a conversation with me about what you’re wanting out of your business ventures in the future – and how ranking something like this on Google can help you make more passive income than you’ve been able to in your whole life up to this point (see below)

That was proof of what this coaching program for lead generation has taught me to be able to accomplish.  While no one really cares where something is ranked on Google…

The business who is paying me $750 for limo rental service requests in Lansing, Michigan cares because they’re getting buying customers from that every month out of the year – and that’s why they pay me for my lead gen site that looks like this (see below):

Frank Kern really knows what it takes to break down marketing concepts and theories into digestible bits of information that we can appreciate and gain confidence in business with.  He’s a well-spoken gentleman and with outstanding demeanor, a wealth of knowledge, and guy that I think anyone would be lucky to have as a coach – when they’re successful in reach a good $20,000 in monthly revenue first.

If you’re looking to start a business online in tandem with his training, I think it could be a great compliment to a future entrepreneur; however, if you’ve only got the start-up capital to launch one business model from scratch, my advice is to go with lead gen sites for passive income that you can build upon every single month to expand your passive income on a part-time basis. 

With his tactics, you could probably land yourself some $20k in a monthly deal at some point in your career, but you’ve got to begin somewhere – and that’s what I did only a handful of years ago that helped me to quit the full-time, corporate 9 to 5: I got started with the local lead generation coaching program. 

We’re looking for someone who wants to get started with making money online.  If that’s you, contact me here and let’s chat it up. 

Thank you for checking out my blog. 

For those of you that are new here, I have made a top priority to get involved in coaching, mentor programs, and business opportunities through the internet to bring you the most comprehensive resource and silo of information. 

This has been a great asset for many entrepreneur-spirited people that are seriously considering launching a business or side hustle from their laptop in a very part-time, spare time basis without adding to their already demanding schedule the stress that typically comes from applying for a second job. 

It’s in this particular blog post that I’m going to deliver to you my 3 picks for the best affiliate marketing courses of 2019.

I have personally experienced each of these programs so I will be speaking to you from a source of genuine experience. 

What you’ll get in this episode of my blog articles includes:

• Why I think each program was worth their investment price
• My personal results (including the amount of money I have profited from using the individual programs’ methods exclusively)
• The bottom line for myself with these courses

Yeah, I like to not hold anything back in my blog entries, and anyone who has followed my regular postings is well aware of my style and character when it comes to delivering the goods on each program that I’ve spent my money and time investigating and trying. 

Why would I do this?

Well, for one, it’s nice to give something of value to the marketplace.

What better way to give than to experiment with online business start-up oriented programs that advertise claims of being able to help you to rake in your own sizeable income without much work from your home office – if only you get started with “them.” 

That’s a difficult thing for someone to chew on if they’re brand new to the entrepreneurial world or haven’t even made a buck off the internet.

How do you know that this can actually be possible?

Have these people (who are constantly pitching you) made money with the things that they’re trying to convince you that they can teach you how to do?

More importantly, how come these coaches have decided to open their minds and hearts to teach me a high-income skill? 

Why aren’t they just keeping this information to themselves and going about their day with the possibility of making more and more profits each day? 

Since they aren’t necessarily obligated to become a coach, I know that I couldn’t help but wonder what these people were up to; these were the questions that I had when I first began exploring the use of the internet to try and make some profits online only a handful of years ago. 

If you’ve also found this by simply opening your laptop or desktop computer and you’ve also begun searching the internet for a reliable, credible way to make more money at home, then you’re in good company. 

Here’s some brief insight into who I am and what’s up with me here – it’s always nice to know who you’re having a conversation with and I’m happy to share.

I’m actually no stranger to the world of affiliate marketing, but I once had to start in this industry in order to get to a point where I could competently have a conversation about this industry – to include being able to afford these high-ticket coaching programs that brag they could deliver the goods on what it took to make a responsible income from home. 

It wasn’t until the year 2017 that I had actually begun considering affiliate marketing so seriously that I decided to figure it out and find a way to turn a profit online. 

Now, in order for me to be able to afford the costs associated with this business model AND invest the time necessary to scope out 3 whole coaching programs – all suggesting that they knew what was up and what the right steps were in order to take affiliate marketing to the bank – I needed to have another source of reliable income. 

I haven’t worked for 2 years by this point in 2017 because I had amassed a reliable $30,000.00 in monthly, passive income with the local lead generation business with free traffic; a strategy I had learned from a mentor I hired back in 2014 –

I went through his coaching program where I had learned how to use free traffic to make money online; he’s a guy named Dan and he actually made a lot of money from this business model before ever thinking that this kind of information could have been packaged into a training course to teach others – like you and me – about how to do what he was doing. 

This business has been able to let me generate a passive income of $750 to $3k per lead gen site that I’ve put online to leverage free traffic and pay me monthly, for years, just like this tree service site from Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

Check it out (see below):

While local lead generation for small business is my top choice for working from home, I know you came here to learn more about affiliate marketing, so we’ll get there…

I just wanted to let you know that I’m able to afford the investment of these programs out-of-pocket and experimenting with the possibility of turning a profit while passive income streams continued to pay me as I spent my time learning affiliate marketing from each of these 3 mentors (that we’re going to talk about today). 

Why knowing about the local lead generation business is important is because there’s a huge departure in experiences when you’re generating profits on the internet with the use of paid traffic (in affiliate marketing) and free traffic from search results (like most people do in lead gen). 

It was important to me that I was able to see proof of success in affiliate marketing so I could write a blog about this and identify what has actually worked online. 

However, all that this business model – affiliate marketing – actually proved to me was that I now have a personal preference in not having to pay money in order to get my offer online seen by others, whether they’re going to buy from me or not. 

I get it, everyone’s usually thinking that there’s going to be good and bad aspects to each of these business models; I’d be lying if I ever said there aren’t drawbacks to each. 

However, as a business-minded person in 2019, it’s also vital to ask yourself how each of these online methods for making money can really be sustainable for the long-term. 

My opinion is that free traffic is the optimal choice for a business model for the long run. 

Why? 

It’s not to belittle affiliate marketing; in fact, I have met some people who do the affiliate marketing strategy very well – and I’m sure that I have talked about a couple of them in some other blog posts on this website. 

Unfortunately, by the end of this trial experiment with three different affiliate marketing training platforms, I have to admit that I still wasn’t sold on the process of marketing other people’s products for a fraction of the commission. 

When you’re finally operating your business 24/7 on free traffic and letting the internet go to work for you (instead of having to do your work on the internet), your lifestyle and mindset begin to shift; you start to see the world a little differently. 

• A business that you can run from anywhere in the world (affiliate marketing kind of has that)
• Your assets bring you money all the time (affiliate marketing might have this)
• Lead gen is a set and forget-type of a business (affiliate marketing isn’t quite that high-speed)
• Since the internet never sleeps, I’m getting money while I sleep (good luck letting affiliate marketing do that for you with its paid traffic strategies on an ongoing basis)

I’ve heard before – you can set up a paid traffic campaign and let it run while you sleep. 

In fact, some people even run paid ads and test things for a few days so they can gather more data about the marketplace; then, they’ll adjust campaigns accordingly. 

In other words, this is what you’d be looking at nearly every day if you tried paid traffic in affiliate marketing strategies — lots of blue-colored web browsers for several hours daily (see below):

Accounts getting suspended is just a part of the affiliate marketing experience when pitching your offers with Facebook Ads — if it’s a secret, then it’s not anymore. I’d rather you know this upfront.

I can assure that you that I’ve heard just about all the arguments to the contrary. 

It makes sense to get started with driving traffic to your affiliate offer with paid traffic strategy…

You get to have instant results through immediate traffic seeing your offer.

There’s no need to wait around and hope that people are going to cross your offer someday, eventually…

What’s something you have to do with the paid traffic of affiliate marketing that you don’t need to do in lead gen with free traffic?

Constantly review, monitor, and tweak your paid ads platforms for optimal performance. 

I’ve done both kinds of traffic personally; I’ve been there and done it! 

I’m just not that interested in spending my days worrying about my paid ads campaigns for the affiliate offers I’m running that I can’t wait to get home, open up my laptop, and begin looking at things just to make sure that they’re all okay and running according to plan. 

We can touch more on this in a little bit. 

The aforementioned reasons are why I’m beyond sold with the use of free traffic in the local lead generation business model.

It’s seriously why I make my top pick for 2019 that business model over affiliate marketing in general – regardless of what coaching course someone might decide to invest in. 

Some people have turned to me and suggested that affiliate offers can still reach a point of success with free traffic.

I agree – it’s very possible, and I’ve even accomplished that very thing with free traffic to an affiliate offer that I was able to put together an affiliate review of and rank online to make some okay cash every month. 

The drawback is that it’s become increasingly difficult to do online now. 

How come?

2 reasons:

1. The saturation of competitors who are constantly entering the industry is growing in more density as we progress in time – that’s my complicated way of saying that more sellers are jumping in and attempting to market similar products under the same strategies.
2. As Google – our fluffy and loveable 800-pound Gorilla – has updated their search results programming with the 2016 Panda update, the game has officially changed for affiliate marketers. 

With that, let’s get into my picks for the affiliate marketing courses that have landed the top 3 in my book – and if you’re quick, there still may be room in each of these programs for you to have your go at the training platform today. 

In Third Place, We Have Gerry Cramer’s Traffic Master Academy

Gerry Cramer is notorious for leveraging the paid side of things, especially with Facebook Ads, to get more and more attention to the affiliate offers that he’s looking to promote often and regularly. 

A serial entrepreneur in his own right, Gerry has actually established multiple training courses to help entrepreneurs – both experienced and young – to get their big start online. 

The three coaching courses that I’ve seen out of Mr. Cramer include:

• MentorMe
• Rise Academy
• (His Latest Installment in Coaching Platforms) Traffic Master Academy

In the MentorMe package of learning from Gerry, 1-on1 coaching is key to the success of the individual student. 

I know because I’ve seen one of his student’s success level and it was phenomenal; that same success student I’m talking about was the guy who trained me, named Nick Torson.

What I liked was that I was able to learn some key ingredients to the affiliate strategies that I had already known – and I really enjoyed learning from Mr. Cramer as the program went forward.

What threw me back was – even though I had made some money with MentorMe – my Facebook Ad account that I had opened and ran an ad for one of my affiliate offers with had been banned by Facebook. 

When I first saw it, I thought that this guy was a crook and I want my money back. 

It wasn’t cool or fair that I could pay all this and spend all this time just to get shut down on my very first ad account that I’d opened and ran an ad for under this so-called “guru’s” advice. 

The heat in me began to fizzle away when I discovered that Facebook and affiliate offers seem to be mortal enemies that don’t like working with each other in order to turn profits.

While, yes, Facebook is the owner of the Advertising Platform, it would stand to reason that more people can market affiliate offers because that simply means more people are running ads and paying Facebook for of their ads platform revenue for the year. 

The truth is that it’s a part of the affiliate marketing game in this strategy; your Facebook Ad accounts are going to get banned and that’s all there is to it. 

If you’re serious about working under the MentorMe program, then I’d recommend learning how to acquire more ad accounts, open them, and try your luck again in the affiliate marketing game because it’s just going to occur no matter what you do here with this approach taught by Gerry Cramer. 

To my amazement, and now that I think back on it, the method of opening more Facebook Ad accounts didn’t actually occur to me until it was taught in one of the other affiliate marketing courses that I had picked up along the way.  In other words, Gerry doesn’t even teach this method (at least when I went through his program, “MentorMe,” it didn’t it). 

I would be an ignorant goofball if I didn’t recognize the opportunity before us in affiliate marketing – there’s definitely room to grow and win some cash with marketing online, especially when it comes to paid traffic. 

If you’re looking for the fast money, then this just might be where it’s at for you. 

The catch that I see here – and have personally experienced through this training program – is that you’re entirely, and completely, dependent on generating traffic through the paid methods of the internet. 

In addition to the lack of ease in paying for your traffic (so your affiliate offer can get seen), because without traffic you don’t get a sale with this business model, you also have to appreciate the big risk you’re taking in leveraging the paid platforms; you’re at the mercy of them and when they change something or don’t permit your affiliate offer then it’s time to find another way to get attention online. 

Not to try and add an insult to the injury of what we’ve just been able to uncover with the affiliate marketing business model and the industry as a whole, we have to take into account that the paid traffic that we’re buying is going to cut into our profit margins – and there seem to be no two ways to look at this fact. 

It is a fact; when you spend money on a traffic ad, you are losing your margin for profit because paid ad spend reimbursement expenses are going to come from the profits that you’re generating. 

That’s just a smart way to do business – pay expenses first – but in the affiliate marketing model, your margins are far too low from the start, and they’re only going to get lower as…

• Time progresses
• More competition enters the space
• Prices get driven down in the products you’re marketing due to inflation and competition trying to get the edge over you
• Perhaps a company that you’re working with or for – especially in an affiliate manner – might change their commission structure and never notify you about it until you turn a profit, see your check, and have a problem with why you weren’t paid as much as you had anticipated receiving for all the hard work you did in helping the company to expand the brand awareness in the marketplace
• A quick word of caution: I’ve never heard of an affiliate program paying any sort of reimbursement to the affiliate marketers that associate with the product and push the brand out into the marketplace. 

To me, that last point means that the business really doesn’t care about you and that you’re a number to them. 

If you’re going to come out of pocket for personal expenses to drive somewhere and then be a marketer for a software company as a leader in a sales and marketing industry…

Why wouldn’t an affiliate company do the same thing to help you and demonstrate a sign of good faith or a vote of gratitude for believing in their company and their product so much that you’ve put your own name to their product and publicly went to bat to say that other people should buy this product as well. 

However, that’s not an option in this day and age – and while I hope that changes, I’m not going to hold my breath. 

What was cool about my mentor, Nick, was that he had a direct connection to Gerry and both of them were rather experienced in the industry of affiliate marketing at first.

After a little bit of discussion and demonstrating my willingness to work, I asked if they would come in with me on a side project that I was working on.

As a result, we’ve crafted an ad together – that’s me and two industry-leading experts: take a look at the sample ad for yourself (below):

One of the biggest takeaways that I was able to gather from working with two experts was:

In Facebook Ads, the image is the bread and the butter combined with a handsome piece of meat for an awesome ad sandwich. 

Here’s how we did it. 

First, we chose to pattern our image in the sense of Vector Art – which means segmenting the available space into separate divisions so we had more room to work with and could put more images on the ad. 

Since this is rather uncommon in the industry, this type of style becomes what the marketing industry would hope to coin as a “pattern interrupt.” 

The reason something like that is a key ingredient to Facebook Ad strategy – and the affiliate marketing platform of digital advertising overall – is because when people potential buyers pause to make sense of the unusual thing that they had just seen (even if it’s in a perceived and notional safe space like the social media account that they own), the trend more toward actually taking your desired action for them. 

That means that the clickthrough rates (CTRs) for our specific Facebook Ad expanded increasingly well. 

If you liked that little trick, I’d like to recommend that you give it a go for yourself in your next ad campaign. 

Another big takeaway that I had gained from two stellar experts in the field of affiliate marketing was:

The wisdom behind leveraging vector art for the sake of communicating with the intended audience of the ad. 

As humans, we tend to read in a pattern and attempt to understand what we’re seeing in a similar fashion – that is to say, left-to-right and top-to-bottom. 

What cool about this layout though is that when a person perceives this set of images arranged in this way – provided you’re intelligent with your vector art image choices –

It can be inferred that the person seeing the ad will either:

• spend time on it and attempting to reason what’s really taking place in the flow of the pictures (like a story might be told or a secret message lies within), or…
• they’ll simply click on the ad to hopefully find an answer behind the mysterious design of the Facebook Ad.  

That effort – to try and figure something out – stems from something that you’ve caused which is a psychological concept, known as loop opening for the audience. 

The event of causing dissonance within a person that’s reviewing your marketing might feel unresolved with the situation and take the action of least resistance with the hope of feeling resolved and whole – or simply no longer uncomfortable with what they’ve just experienced. 

In the word of digital advertising, simple strategies can be more effective.

In other words, instead of giving multiple directions in written form that direct the audience receiving the marketing ad to read, understand, and then put work into following the directions that were given, wouldn’t it simply be easier to inspire them to have something that makes partial sense, but it can be simpl to attempt to interpret, and then…

• Present something that will cause a slight bit of discomfort
• Arouse curiosity in the unusual thing they’re seeing
• Press their mobile phone screen or click a button on their computer to hopefully see and/or hear the thing that will resolve their confusion and help them feel good about something that momentarily just didn’t make sense for them

Whether or not the web traffic you’re purchasing buys from you after clicking on through your Facebook Ad, the exciting news is that you’ll know that your marketing strategy is working with its front end component. 

Now it’s important to understand the entire funnel aspect and to be able to compose a completely effective package of a marketing strategy that can effectively land a sale through paid traffic.

As you can see, Mr. Cramer has a solid idea of what he’s trying to accomplish with Facebook Ads and his affiliate marketing approach. 

That said, I am here to also report that I’m simply not running affiliate Facebook Ads campaigns or any form of paid traffic to affiliate marketing anymore. 

However, the tips and tricks that I’ve explored with Gerry and Nick have led me to try and understand what is possible with Facebook Ads in producing referrals for other kinds of business needs – such as:

generating leads for local businesses (like local lead generation but with paid traffic instead of free traffic) or in promoting the lead gen coaching program that I had learned from only a handful of years ago. 

• generating leads for local businesses (like local lead generation but with paid traffic instead of free traffic), or…
• in promoting the lead gen coaching program that I had learned from only a handful of years ago. 

In my own experiments with these types of advertising outside of affiliate marketing paid traffic, I’ve noticed a better success rate for small businesses and coaching programs. 

Why would I say that?

Let’s have a look at a couple of points that I’ve noticed in my campaigns ran long after discontinuing affiliate marketing paid traffic campaigns:

• If you own service company or the product that you’re attempting to pitch for and/or on behalf of, I’ve noticed a significantly higher return on investment (ROI) because the profit margins are simply bigger than affiliate program bits and pieces that you’re facing in the industry
• Bigger profit margins mean that you can continue testing more paid ad traffic campaigns because you’re making larger profits that can additionally cover the ad spend without breaking your professional version of a metaphorical piggy bank. 

Above all of that, just remember that it’s not really fun being compensated in peanuts marketing someone else’s stuff when you could be seeing an even greater return by going across the street (again, a metaphor) for your higher profits at a local service provider’s place of business –

Although, I would go over there just to shake hands; I wouldn’t work in their office when I can do my thing on my own terms out of my laptop anywhere in the world. 

Coming in Second was Stefan James of Project Life Mastery to deliver Affiliate Marketing Mastery

When you can learn a new skill but still be yourself while doing it, I’d say that’s an epic business model worth learning more about. 

With Stefan James, you get to do exactly that; you don’t have to become someone else in order to duplicate the processes that this expert affiliate marketing and digital expert is proficient in both doing and teaching. 

Further, if you’re still interested in — or passionate about — certain kinds of products and still want to make a pretty penny promoting what’s meaningful to you in your affiliate marketing approach to generating profits online, I think that Mr. James’ Affiliate Marketing Mastery is going to be an okay option for the future affiliate marketer inside of you. 

After all, there’s only one kind of you in this world so why not let the you within shine through in your marketing choices; especially if more than 10,000 people market the same product or affiliate offer, the market can still know your style and approach to helping them get the service or offer that they can benefit from. 

What does that really say about the marketing industry online, though?

To me, it means that your personal narrative is a story that others may be able to connect with – and that connection could help you to produce sales through the internet. 

Sometimes your target audience will still exhibit some resemblance of humanity with exploring products online – and therefore, you might stand a higher chance in those prospective future customers of yours buying from someone the trust, like or know, more than they’re going to cater to the other factors that marketing experts in college and high school teach:

• Good product reviews
• Lowest price
• Biggest bang for their buck
• Bonuses, discounts, promotions
• And so many more things that we could talk about, but won’t (at least, not on this blog post)

When you’ve got a personal story – especially a powerful one that can…

1. Uplift
2. Move
3. Inspire

You might be on to something that you can then leverage in order to turn a profit through selling with a deeper connection to people that might not have otherwise heard of you or about you. 

Imagine having that close of a connection with a recorded version of your story that lands you several thousand dollars in commissions – for something that you recorded one-time, long ago.  

I’m more than confident that this must have happened at some time in the past history of the idea of marketing. 

What’s rather epic about Mr. Stefan James’ training is that he actually does what he’s advising his students on – and I’m under the impression that this is a larger rarity these days than I want to believe. 

You can see it in his character and in his marketing; he’s authentic to the core with his affiliate product selling strategies…

It’s actually refreshing to see someone put their business and their own story out there to make sales; it seems less scuzzy and less about the profits and more about soiling goodwill and positivity in the marketplace – especially the positivity portion which is something that I don’t think we see enough of these days anyway.  

It’s pretty clear as to why Stefan has leveled up to close to the top ranks of the elite affiliate marketers – he’s a success because he doesn’t try to do it like anyone else except himself. 

Think of the following accolades and then ask yourself if you seriously wonder how he’s accomplished all of these things –

• Loyal and active following on YouTube, with subscribers numbering in the half of millions (just in one of the brands, Project Life Master)
• Multiple 6 figures – with a business built in his own way
• Playing the long-term game, his blog (which he’s been consistently building since the year 2012) is focused on personal development and can be found online for some common phrases in the self-help business industry with extremely high rankings; feel free to look it up: projectlifemastery.com

This guy steps out of his comfort zone regularly, which is why I believe he’s going places even after all of his current successes right now. 

In his program, he also advises on some nitty-gritty tips in the tactical methods employed with his online marketing choices, like:

• Collecting emails through a WordPress website
• Effective ways to organize your website to capture emails
• Founding a YouTube channel and consistently adding to it
• Leveraging email marketing to increase your regular reach and consistently pitch to a following that knows, trusts, and likes you, and is therefore primed to buy from you when you might ask them (not all of them will buy, but there’s no reason to think why some of them won’t – provided you’re pitching something that’s relevant, of interest, and beneficial or useful for them)

Normally, anyone would want to openly claim the desire to build their own business in an authentic way.

With the digital era, however, there seem to be a ton of shortcuts that business owners, marketing agencies, and the like are all attempting to accomplish and circumvent the journey to building a big company name. 

You don’t get that with Mr. Stefan James. 

A loyal following is a challenging thing to build – and most businesses want to build that but may not be willing to endure the work that typically is associated with such a thing… and it takes plenty of work! 

There are things that you need to do to build that following consistently, regularly, and authentically – and some people just don’t find those things too comfortable to do, so that’s why Stefan James has a loyal following but not a lot of students in his coaching program…

ublic speaking and sharing a personal side of yourself simply isn’t a thing that many people are willing to do these days. 

What does that mean for Stefan, though?

It means that his ability to sell just got a whole lot easier now that he’s put in nearly a decade’s worth of work in building his online reputation, building that following and the responsive email list, and connecting with people that he probably hasn’t ever heard of or met. 

Thus, his customer base could be composed of a vast number of people that he doesn’t know – and that’s okay in business because your reach can often bring about a positive impact to assist people that you may not initially know but could learn about as time progresses. 

When Mr. James aligned his business with what he believed to be his life purpose, money seemed to flow from the offers he made online – and the impact, along with the money, is probably why he’s doing so well online and enjoying the process as he indulges in his journey toward his entrepreneurial goals and endeavors. 

As I’m building this blog, I shift my focus toward some greater appreciation for his tenacity and dedication to building his online presence over time. 

7 years (to this day) is a long time to be writing his blog – and he’s no doubt got more in him to say and share with the world. 

I’ve heard that it’s far more important to have something to say than to follow the prompting or internal notion of needing to say something.

I don’t see that in Stefan James, the founder of Affiliate Marketing Mastery (and Project Life Mastery). 

Instead, I envision someone committed to a journey with a flexible, but clear, destination. 

With this blog – and public thanks to this guy – I’ve become interested, and maybe even a little curious, to find out if my writing and my blog will end up enriching, inspiring, or moving others for the better with entrepreneurship. 

I’ve said it before that part of the reason for this blog is to edify and educate others that are interested in starting an online business so they can get the full story of various programs from one such entrepreneur who had actually bought and tried their program. 

Perhaps my writing will have helped someone to evaluate their life choices and entrepreneurial options to lean toward making a choice that comes with a direction that fits their situation at the time – and hopefully, their future is also evaluated in that decision as well. 

What’s cool about Stefan James is that his approach and mindset in his affiliate marketing training course, Affiliate Marketing Mastery, teaches more than just how to establish a business and turn profits through the internet…

Instead, your laptop lifestyle becomes an enjoyable journey that inspires you, helps you to wake up each day and look forward to the adventure that awaits, and facilitates your ability to own a legacy that can last for a long, long time.

First Choice for Affiliate Marketing Training Online: John Crestani’s Internet Jetset and Super Affiliate

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing approach to learning how to generate web traffic with affiliate marketing, then you’re in luck because there is such an expert that goes after every style of web traffic.

I know… for a while there, I didn’t think there were any coaches that attacked affiliate marketing through more than one avenue of approach either. 

Delivering a more comprehensive coaching program in the affiliate marketing spectrum of training, Mr. John Crestani steps up the game in the industry with specific and clear training steps for acquiring traffic on the internet and getting those hard-to-reach buyers to see your offer from:

• Native Ad Strategies
• Paid Facebook Advertising
• Organic Ranking in Google Search Results / Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

FOR BEGINNER AFFILIATE MARKETING TACTICS:

At less than $50.00 to sign up and begin learning the particulars in his individual strategies, the starting roots of affiliate marketing is best learned through the Internet Jetset coaching course.

However, if you’re looking to get started fast and dish out the goods on your affiliate offer for a maximum return of profits, you’ll need to be seasoned somewhat to know what’s going on in the…

FOR EXPERIENCED AFFILIATE MARKETERS:

Super Affiliate System. 

Yeah, I really wouldn’t touch this unless – and until – you’ve been around the block a couple of times, and landed success online (meaning sold some things) with Crestani’s Internet Jetset training course or another coaching program that taught you the ropes first. 

A down-to-earth person, he is actually familiar with the gentleman that I hired 2 years ago to sit with me side-by-side and educate me on everything he knows to promote affiliate offers with Facebook Ads.

In case you think that this isn’t legit, I’ll report that I paid this friend of his, Mr. Carlos Cruz (pictured on the right-hand side of the photo you see up above here) about 5 figures for his time – meaning, five figures in pure profit on the left side of the decimal. 

Does he deserve that kind of attention and price for such a lofty request?

Well, after working with him, the proof was there and he knew the game better than any mentor I had learned from up to that point in my affiliate marketing career.

It was at this point that my affiliate marketing success through online traffic methods of generating attention to my offers starting to consistently bring in profitable revenue. 

It was actually quite exciting, to say the least.

Take a look at an ad that was quite similar to what we had run when working together (see below):

While money was rolling in with this offer – probably to the tune of $3k to $4k of monthly revenue – it was only anti-wrinkle cream that was getting promoted. 

What effort did this entail on my part?

• A few hours a day – and I’m talking the bare minimum that you could work if you were serious about making money in a strategy like this; I missed one day of staying on top of this and it was practically like starting all over
• Constant monitoring of my ad account, which took up tons of time in my day simply because I was always thinking about it
• Making adjustments regularly in each of the ad accounts that I had set-up through Facebook

Most people who read this have the initial reaction that so little time daily had rendered such a huge, monthly return – wow! 

From my perspective, I didn’t really need the money, per se. 

Instead, I was just running an experiment and learn what the results might turn out to be. 

Frankly, I would have regarded the volume of dedicated work that I had invested in those few hours daily as a full-time job and I just wasn’t about that anymore. 

Try seeing this from my perspective:

• Running a successful lead gen business
• Producing multiple 6 figures annually in passive income (meaning I don’t need a full-time job to survive now)
• One or two lead gen sites – done well – can provide that amount of income, recurring each and every month for the equivalent of less than a full days-worth of a time investment
• No more ongoing concerns about whether my lead gen site is doing its job to make me more money in a passive manner

Truth be told – affiliate marketing requires a person to dedicate a portion of their time – every single day – in order to maintain that steady, monthly income that they desire and earn through their patient and persistent efforts day after day. 

I really think it’s a job, and I have trouble seeing it as a passive side-hustle (even though others do it and speak highly of it all the time).

To keep the level of digital sales that you’re raking in, you can’t simply go off and take a vacation; that time away will be interrupted by your need to keep the money coming in by tending to your affiliate marketing approaches at last once a day – and for every asset that you have put online.

Whereas the lead gen business allows me to step away from my business as I please! 

The passive income allows me to do one project in one month, and then another project in the next month, and I could slowly, gradually, and easily expand my business if I were doing this gig on my own. 

Even though I’ve hired some help already, and they’re doing the habitual, daily tasks that I would normally be doing here, the reality is that lead gen lets me begin stacking my efforts and get results that I can build into a handsome monthly income month after month, year after year. 

In other words, I don’t have to keep working on the same projects day after day to keep that money coming in. 

If you’ve been looking for a true business that you can knock out a task once and get paid for years (for that one task), then feel free to check out our coaching program where we teach you how to do exactly what I’ve done over the last few years to not only escape my 9 to 5 but also develop a nest egg of over $45k per month. 

That wasn’t a dawning epiphany that I achieved on the first day of trying affiliate marketing, however. 

I didn’t know what the whole game was about – and I wasn’t going to until I had put all of this time, effort, and resources into the process to witness what returns were really possible with someone that started out not knowing a single thing about the online business method. 

It took me several different investments into different affiliate marketing training courses to finally realize that this is how much work affiliate marketing took, and it’s a job that I don’t want to have to do every single day. 

Eventually, I was able to see affiliate marketing for what it was and let go of the dream that this could somehow work on autopilot and I really could step away from the daily demands of the industry. 

In retrospect, I paid an expert approximately $10,000.00 for someone 1-on-1 coaching and mentoring to help me reach this conclusion. 

Carlos was great at what he does, and he knew I was serious if I was willing to shell out so much cash in order to get his attention and time on affiliate marketing. 

If you’re starting out in the online business world, most people won’t have a lucrative base of $10,000 that they can just shell out to someone and say “please help me.” 

Adding more to this notion of this not being for beginners is the fact that you really ought to know more about the industry before jumping into your first project and risking money that you probably couldn’t afford to lose in the business venture – since it simply doesn’t guarantee that anyone online will find your product listing and/or actually make a buying decision from what you’re putting out there. 

Why, then, am I still opening up and suggesting that John’s course is the go-to option for all of your affiliate marketing needs in knowledge, training, and strategy for success?

People still make money with this business model; if they weren’t, then a coach like this – an authentic one – may not actually exist or stay in the mentoring business online for much longer. 

Mr. Crestani’s courses are…

• Clear and comprehensive
• Affordable
• Informative on every way that you can – and should – be generating web traffic to your affiliate offers in your marketing approach

I have no doubt that some people are still going to end up giving the affiliate marketing world a try – long after I’ve written this blog and given my two cents worth.

While I’m not promoting the aforementioned programs – which means I doubt I’ll see a dime of the money you spend in any sort of commission when you get started with one of my recommendations above –

I still want you to have the most information of anywhere on the world wide web so you can step up your business decision-making skills with my reconnaissance efforts – and maybe save you money or heartache (or both) in the process. 

Additional Affiliate Marketing Trainings I’ve Explored

I wasn’t kidding when I told you that I’ve been around the block with this gig. 

Of the several courses that I’ve tried, here’s just a short list of the ones I’ve delved into (I won’t name them all – that’s not the purpose of the blog post)…

Here’s the list to simply build some credibility and show you that I know of the other coaches that are floating around out there and attempting to pitch their recommended strategy to future, interested digital entrepreneurs of affiliate marketing:

• Mike Vestil’s Internet Lifestyle Academy
• ODi Productions’ Affiliate Marketing Champ
• Sean Bagheri’s Aversity Gold Masterclass
• Luca De Stefani’s Affiliate Marketing Revolution

In the grander scheme of things, each of these courses provide a large number of the basics in affiliate mrketing that you must know to get started with your business venture from home. 

If that’s all you’re looking for, then I’d still go with my #1 pick for affiliate marketing training because it’s the most affordable, the easiest for people to make a buying decision with, and you can spend as much time as you’d like on it without (hopefully) breaking the bank before you see what’s involved in affiliate marketing and whether you’d want to try your hand at it. 

Even though I’ve disclosed a few more of the courses that I’ve invested lots of time and money into testing on my own, none of these on the short list here quite measure up to the value provided in the 3 courses I’ve listed up above in affiliate marketing courses that were explored. 

What’s Good, and What I Wish Were Different, In Affiliate Marketing

So I will admit that I’m human and can make the mistake of throwing some personal bias in some of these blogs unintentionally. 

Rest assured, I’m doing everything I know how to do to avoid skewing the results here and attempting to sway you in one way or the other on which affiliate marketing training program you’d best go into. 

One of the great things about entrepreneurship is that choices are entirely up to you to make and no one can tell you what’s right or wrong when it’s your show. 

That said, it’s important to get a better idea of what an experienced affiliate marketer sees as good and poor aspects of the affiliate marketing industry.

If you’re still considering participating in affiliate marketing, then be sure to read this section and get some rationale under your belt as to whether or not these are aspects you’re okay with handling prior to shelling out your hard-earned money in the business venture as a whole. 

Affiliate Marketing Pros

• With how everything in affiliate marketing can be set-up for order fulfillment requests by customers, you can focus all your efforts on one thing: getting targeted traffic to your affiliate link and published offer online. 

This means that your business has nearly all hassles that other business owners experience removed from the equation. 

Instead of assessing inventory, hiring and firing employees, dealing with overhead costs, etc., you can work more on the one thing that’s going to be bringing you cash and you would have focused on anyway when you got into business: getting more consumers buying from you and putting more cash into your, soon to be, fat bank account!

• Countless opportunities to find products to market with/for

When you can type in the words “affiliate program” for just about any sort of physical product out there – and some services even make something like this available for you – the possibilities and opportunities are virtually limitless. 

You are welcomed to try it in a Google search (free to you, just for reading my blog).

• Simple business model but challenging to become an expert within

Skill, experience, and some industry wisdom are what’s going to separate the great from the good here. 

Provided you have some guidance and effective training; you can set yourself up for the best possible bit of success that a newbie in affiliate marketing can see. 

Again, there are no guarantees, but it’s nice to know that you can still empower yourself by attempting to do all of the right things from the beginning. 

• Learn High-Income Skills

If you’re concerned about spending all of your time and catering your resources to one industry and lose your ability to become employable elsewhere, you can rest easy that what you’re learning as you train with affiliate marketing can be as applicable – if not more so – in other aspects of owning a business. 

In addition to work ethic and solid business acumen, you can also learn the affiliate marketing trade subskills of:

• Sales funnel building
• Digital mediums of marketing (like emailing)
• Paid traffic strategies (Facebook Advertising & Google Ads Platforms)
• Attempting to reach free traffic through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices

If you’re open to expanding the skills that you currently have, that can make you more effective to help and recommend solutions to business owners (especially since you’re going to become a peer among those people now that you’re starting a business of your own – even though it’s online). 

That also means that the value that you can bring to the marketplace skyrockets and you can charge great money for what you know and do for others – or just use these skills to expand your own bottom line. 

If they weren’t working, then affiliate marketers wouldn’t be in the game and the offers would be available. 

Cons to the Affiliate Marketing Style of Entrepreneurship

• The level of competition is astronomical

If you thought other forms of business were cut-throat and difficult, then you can intensify that by infinity to measure up to what all you’re going to face as an affiliate marketer. 

This is a hard truth for new entrepreneurs to grasp – and I’m not entirely sure why. 

My guess is that they believe the internet is so vast and plentiful that there are enough transactions with money going on that they can get a piece of the action from. 

Unfortunately, that line of thinking isn’t enough to actually acquire money online. 

However, you’d better be prepared for the reality check that your marketplace entails the entire world – an international level –

This means that your competition for sales can be affiliate marketers from Russia, India, Australia, and so many other countries that also have internet access and resources similar to the training that you’re thinking of investing in. 

The information is out there and you can take the time to find it, stash it away in an accessible place, and reach in to pull out some more information to learn from as you have the time and see fit. 

The coaching programs out there are nothing more than a compilation of the information and what the mentors believe are in your best interest to know going into the affiliate marketing space – albeit, they’re different because what worked for one person may not have worked for another. 

If you’re not prepared for the harsh reality of the level of competitiveness with affiliate marketing, then you’re in for a rude wake-up call when your first few marketing campaigns and digital advertising efforts may not go your way. 

• The products and services you market may not be the best thing on the market

Think that the product you’re marketing is the hottest thing simply because it’s available for you to market and turn a profit with? 

Sometimes, the things that you’re pushing into the marketplace you probably haven’t tried on your own. 

Unlike the typical drop-shipping business model, where you can sell physical products online (like with a Shopify store, Amazon FBA, etc.), there are some suggestions made on occasion that you could request samples of what you’re actually marketing. 

With affiliate marketing, you’re either a customer or an affiliate – and nothing is for free in this industry. 

When you’re selecting a product, often times the advice you’re given is to find what’s selling really well and do your best to get on that marketing trend before it goes away. 

Also, some of the habits that I’ve seen marketers use can make a newbie feel really scuzzy about what they’re actually doing with their marketing approaches.

If you’re praying on the insecurities of people, is that really ethical or is that simply good business? 

Having someone question their self-image isn’t the reputation that I want in the marketplace when I’m trying to push a product through to buyers.

Some people might read this and think that the bottom line is what matters; making more money is what business is all about, and if you’re getting people to buy then you’re growing and life is good. 

Some people may not think or feel the same one that others do when it comes to this kind of marketing approach. 

If you’re not sold on the product yourself, why would want to tell others about it?

Would you really go after an overpriced product that has never had evidence show to prove that it delivers the results that its parent company claims to? 

I know that I’ve given this a solid try – affiliate marketing, that is – and I think that I would prefer to do something that doesn’t make me sick at night thinking that I told someone to buy something that I didn’t think would serve them at the highest level. 

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in Affiliate Marketing is Harder than Ever

If you’re convinced that you’re the next expert in ranking websites to the top of Google search results and you’ll end up getting all of the business – and that customers looking to buy are going to see you first, resulting in your pockets overflowing with cash… think again! 

I don’t mind rocking your boat and raining on your parade here because this blog is about bringing out the truth and delivering an honest review. 

Google launched an update in or around the year 2016 and it severely affected all the affiliate marketers that were trying to game the system and have a secret, strategic advantage in the marketplace. 

While it can still be a valid claim that content is king, the reputation of your website that you’re trying to rank – through backlinks, that act as votes for credibility and trust online –

That is the most key ingredient to being found as the most relevant option for the search term you’re attempting to be found for. 

The less authoritative and credible your brand new affiliate marketing review site is – and brand new websites often are – the less of a chance you’re going to have at being competitive and really getting the chance to see how many sales can come in from being at the top of Google.

I say that because you simply aren’t going to be at the top of Google when other heavy hitters have built their site better (for longer). 

• High difficulty in running Facebook Ads to affiliate marketing offers

Facebook already loathes affiliate offers, so you’ve got an uphill battle ahead of you if you’re still looking at going into this industry and thinking that you’re going to buy your way to the 6 figure income that the newest online entrepreneurs dreamed of prior to getting started. 

In addition, your low margin of profits that you’re already operating on will sink even lower with your choice to spend money on digital advertising. 

Further, this is an expense that you need to factor into your annual taxes, and I don’t know of anyone that seriously wants to factor in more steps between them and being done with the government in any given year of being in business. 

How Affiliate Marketing Measures Up to Lead Generation and Free Traffic

If you had been around in 2014 and learned about these things, then you might have found it more appealing. 

In reality, you could have slapped together a quick site that you could get seen really fast with a little bit of idealized content. 

From that moment on, it was easy to depend on the income coming in from being found at the top of Google…

All that mattered was your ability to get there quickly and become the most authoritative-looking site. 

Welcome to 2019; you’re in the affiliate marketing house of difficulty now. 

You can’t just be found for the long search terms and expect to rake in a handsome helping of profits anymore. 

Google made sure of that with their 2016 Panda update. 

If you’ve got some authority and credibility to you now, there’s a different level of appreciation that’s going to come from the master of search engines (also known as Google). 

In the old days, you could get away with bringing up your credibility by using phrases that were found to infer a reference to the same thing.

Just to illustrate:

• Inexpensive dog collar

Versus

• Affordable dog collar

When you would write high-quality, authoritative web content identifying each of these phrases – especially in two separate articles – you ran a higher chance in the pre-2016 free traffic through search results era with both of those articles that aimed to be found for those two search terms above. 

When it came down to the bare bones of what mattered in those days, people would expand their websites out to add multiple pages, several hundred on occasion, and have each of those pages all talking about that specific subject or topic. 

It worked, too! 

The more relevant search terms you were found for that connected to each of those two ideas listed above, the more credibility your website got – and, as a result, you were found in the top spots online to get all the free traffic that Google could bring you. 

Quality may have lacked in this content writing back then, but quantity seemed to be the name of the game and the person with the most ended up winning. 

This resulted in low-quality search results online and Google wanted to clean up the search results; hence, the Google Panda update of 2016. 

In 2019, you can now take one well-written piece of content and get found for multiple search results with search term phrases that are very closely connected to what the topic of the page is about. 

More importantly, your authority of the website that you’re posting plays a significant role in whether you’re getting seen first (or not). 

When people in the affiliate marketing industry wised up to what’s taking place, their content quality and backlink strategies were things that they went to work on. 

Your ability to get an affiliate review site to the top of Google for any of these highly competitive search terms can require tons of time, resources, and patience as it takes me approximately 12 to 24 months to actually get something no one has ever seen before to the top of my targeted search key terms.  

It’s no wonder, then, that paid traffic for affiliate marketing (or any marketing efforts in 2019) has become so appealing. 

Your results can be instant, and you can immediately begin evaluating what you need to tweak and adjust in order to make more money (or at least keep your profits steady, in some cases). 

Why is this still not a good idea? 

• Your ad, landing page, and several other factors of your process need to be so locked on and dialed in that it’s going to take you some diligent research and time to find a good way to actually pitch your referral link to the market of targeted buyers
• Even then, you’ll not see stellar metrics in the beginning – and there’s no guarantee that any form of your advertising is going to improve
• Every action taken by your desired audience renders your ad an expense that you have to front

No matter what happens – up to, and including, not making any money from your ad spend – you still have to pay Facebook for your privilege of testing your ad on their platform with their compiled audiences. 

Facebook will eat up your ad spend no matter what, so even if you break even or at a loss, your profit margin (had you ended up in the positive for making sales) will continue to be so low in the long-term – with no predictability of your profits increasing (or actually realizing a profit) that burn out will often ensue with newbies in the affiliate marketing space. 

If it were me, I’d stick with free traffic so I can…

• Step away from operating my business for spare time (Facebook ads won’t let you)
• Allow my business to run on autopilot (Paid traffic requires constant attention)
• I can know that traffic will still come into my lead gen sites often (and I don’t have to pay for each and every visitor that comes through the free traffic from search results)

I’d like to invite you to seriously consider the same – and take it from someone who has been there and tried that. 

Top Choice for Business in 2019: Free Traffic with Local Lead Generation

If you want a business model where you can work on something one time and leave it alone to keep paying you over and over, then maybe lead generation is more of a business model that’d appeal to you. 

Yes, it’s true that I’ve been associating myself and spending some of my spare time dabbling in affiliate marketing – and I’ve even seen a little bit of a profitable return on the labor I’ve put into it – the majority of my time for the last 5 years have been invested into local lead generation. 

When you have a lead gen site up on the internet…

• There’s less competition (only 10 to 30 companies – as opposed to a world of affiliate marketers)
• Profit margins are nearly 100 percent of what is paid to you
• Passive income can become a reality

How do I know? 

That’s how I quit my job in the first year of exploring this coaching program on lead generation for small businesses by amassing a whopping $10k in monthly income without having a second job to stress me out every day. 

In case you haven’t seen the value in this opportunity yet – meaning, with local lead generation – take it from one of our coaching program members that are working hard on a part-time basis – and they’re young for the level of success they’re achieving in the online business world (see below):

How easy is this business really?

I’ll give you the rigorous involvement of my daily regimen for the entire first year of this business model.

Here’s what I did:

1. Found a market and industry I wanted to serve
2. Ranked a lead gen site
3. Banked the profits that came in from free traffic
4. Rinse and Repeat

Said another way, there are minimal competition and tons of money in local; the masses simply haven’t caught on to the trend that’s taking off today. 

How simple is this?  Well…

The limo lean gen site that I posted in Lansing, Michigan is getting free traffic to pay me monthly, and it’s been doing that ever since I started my online business with this model in 2014. 

Here’s how the results look when it’s a finished product and working for you (see below):

There aren’t that many digital information resources that people seem to rely on to tell them whether a marketplace or a local service industry is going to be a good idea to enter into business with; the tools are just not credible, but can often be found to carry accurate documentation. 

Often times, people want information that comes from data aggregators online, but the truth is that software is designed by humans – therefore, they’re subject to errors just like we are. 

As a result, some assumptions are made on the numbers that software like this illustrates and claims are made that this isn’t a good industry or market to go into. 

Trust me; if there are a wide variety of local businesses serving that one industry in a market, then there’s a reason that they’re doing well: there’s plenty of business to go around. 

We point out what it takes to find these kinds of these in our lead gen coaching program which we’ve temporarily opened up to share the exciting business opportunity with people like you – serious about starting a side-hustle from your laptop at home.  

How did I guess that?

Well, you’ve read this far, so why not come a little further and get the full scoop for yourself…

In addition to quitting my 9 to 5, amassing a hearty $50,000 in monthly, passive, reliable income, here are just a few more reasons to see the value in what tons of our coaching program members appreciate and get to wake up to every day now:

• A business model that you can expand any time you want – no marketing trends or volume of competition can stop you from doing what you want to do
• Duplicate the Airbnb and Uber model of business: generate leads and pass them off to service providers for a chunk of change that can go right into your pockets
• Help business owners with a real service that can benefit their bottom line and change the life of their family for the long-term
• You can feel good knowing that you’re helping your local community service-based businesses with what they’re already looking for: more customers
• Since most business owners don’t have time to investigate the online world of what it takes to bring in more customers, you can leverage the marketplace for them and profit off the service
• Small businesses always have a marketing budget – and you could be added to that payroll every month, which means your target audience for clients in your business model can almost always afford to hire and pay you for the life of your relationship in bringing them more buyers
• HUGE PROFIT MARGINS from simply bringing more value to a business than what they were making before you entered the picture and partnered with them
• Don’t want to work at 8:00 AM?  Stay in your jammies and wake up when you want.  You’re the boss now, and it’s up to you what you want to do and when you want to do it

There are new students entering our coaching program all the time and landing deals quickly – either because they already know someone who owns a business that they can help or they get to work and get results coming immediately by leveraging the skills we teach them…

By the way, that limo site still pays me like clockwork every month, and has for years, at a rate of $750. 

This is what it looks like (see below):

And it’s the skills that you have that can pay the bills for the long-haul; after all, you can now tell a client that you are the bill that helps them to pay all of their other bills. 

My #1 recommendation for an online business in 2019 is local lead generation and you can check out to begin building a sustainable, long-term, reliable 6 -figures in annual salary from the comfort of your home and the privacy of your own laptop. 

Let’s talk about your goals already: CLICK HERE!