“Systems Work, People Fail”
My mentor taught me the lesson, “Systems Work, People Fail.” The human body is the best piece of engineering is the most wonderful system. You eat food, it goes through the food pipe to the stomach, the healthy nutrients are absorbed by the body and the rest is excreted. Suppose, you had no stomach. Just suppose…
Similarly, your Affiliate Marketing business, or any business, as a matter of fact – the body – runs on several tools that make up the body. Without any of the tools I am about to mention in this post, your business could collapse. (You can argue in the comments box.)
Since I started Affiliate Marketing, I have used numerous tools and I have realized that to run an online business, you need to have a handful of systems in place.
Let’s explore each system and I would request you to check all the systems you have and note down the ones you should set up.
Affiliate Disclosure: I, Shubhamjeet Kumar, participate in various affiliate programs, and I will earn a commission on qualifying purchases made through the links on this page at no extra cost to you. I have worked hard to put together items that are high-end and helpful.
(1) Website
- The first tool that you must have in order to run an Affiliate Marketing business is your own website. Your website is one of the most important systems for running your Affiliate Marketing business.
- If you want to grow your business, you need to be found by the right audience. Through this, I imply that you need a website.
- The unfortunate COVID-19 has forced businesses to take the online route, however, “Why do I need a website?” is quite common. You can consider the below points if you have the above question:
- When you have a website, it establishes your credibility. There are many Affiliate Marketers in the world and your website is what makes you stand out. Through your website, you can clearly communicate your message and establish your authority. As a matter of fact, if you do not have a website, people may question the legitimacy of your business.
- Your website communicates to the visitors what your brand is about and the types of services and/or products your offer.
- You can get organic traffic if you have a website with high-quality content.
- Once you have the answer to the question, “Why do I need a website?”, your next question will be, “How do I create a website?” Let me walk you through the steps of how you can launch your own “house” on the Internet.
- Disclaimer: My aim is to present knowledge in as simple terms as possible. Hence, if I do not use technical jargon, please pardon me.
- To launch your website, you need to take care of 3 elements – domain name, hosting, and a platform where you will create your website.
- I will give the analogy of a house so you could understand easily what each of the 3 elements signifies. Suppose you purchase land to build your house in N-2 CIDCO, Aurangabad (you can use any address here).
- Then the land on which you build your house will be analogous to hosting. Your address, through which people can reach you, can be called the domain name and your house is going to be your website.
- Now, if I give you the example of my website, https://shubhamjeetkumar.com/ is my domain name, Hostinger is my web host, and my house is my website. I hope the domain name, hosting, and website are clear.
- Now, another question will arise, “Where do I create my website?”. I have created my website on WordPress and if you are a non-technical person, you can sign up on WordPress and create your website by using the built-in templates that you can customize however you want. You can also utilize the power of Wix and other emerging platforms.
- To break it down for you, you will need to have 3 elements in place:
- Domain name: You can get your domain names on the following platform – Namecheap
- Hosting: You can host your website on the following platforms – BlueHost, HostGator, WPX Hosting.
- Create Website: You can create your own online home on the following platforms – WordPress, Wix.
(2) Page Builders
- Page builders help you create, edit, and customize the design of your WordPress website. Without writing any code.
- Page builders are WordPress plugins that let you drag and drop elements on the page. You can drag and drop any element – image, header, footer, icons, text, social icons, buttons, videos, and so on – and make your web page aesthetically appealing.
- If you are someone with limited to no knowledge of code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/jQuery), a page builder will help you in the following ways:
- You can develop a website with minimum effort rapidly.
- You can avoid fees and the turnaround time of professional designers and developers.
- You can create a catchy website with limited or no knowledge
- You can, if needed, switch between various WordPress themes without a major impact on your website.
- In my paid course, the Website Creation Challenge, I will guide you to create and launch your own website in as little as 6 days. I have used the most popular page builder – Elementor – to create the home page of my website. If you want to save time and get a step-by-step guide to launching your own website, you can avail of my course and establish your Internet house in just 6 days.
- Apart from Elementor, other popular page builders that will enhance the beauty of your websites are as follows:
(3) Images
- As the cliche goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, images make your content more appealing. Images make your content memorable and easy to understand.
- According to a study, people remember 80% what they see and only 20% what they read.Research shows that 65% of people are visual learners. MIT found that the human brain can process images in only 13 milliseconds. Images remove language barriers as they are easily understood by everyone.
- Images do more than just making your design look more beautiful.
- As humans, images not only draw our attention but also spark emotions and hold us in. Hence, if your website has catchy images, there is a greater chance of people viewing and clicking through. Once people visit your website, images can improve theyr experience and help present information in an easy to digest way. Through appealing images, visitors are likely to get converted into loyal customers..
- Not only this, if you are an eCommerce company, images of your products can induce users to click and eventually purchase.
- If you love to use images on your website, you can use tools such as Photoshop. However, if you are not a desginer like me, you can use beginner-friendly and easy-to-use tools like Canva.
(4) Email Marketing System
- Email Marketing is the use of email to tell about your company, your products, and services to the subscribers (the people in your email list).
- Although many argue that Email Marketing is dead, it is a resource that generates around 40x in Return On Investment. That’s like investing ₹1/- and making ₹41/-.
- On the lighter side, what do you need to access glamorous social media? Emails! Without an email account, could you sign up on social media? (Answer in the comments box)
- Email List is your most valuable asset. I say that because you can have multiple chances of selling to your audience. Let me share an example.
- Suppose you have 10 people on your email list. You send an email (M1) on day 1 telling people about your product. No one buys.
- On day 2, you sent the second email (M2) sharing with your list the benefits of the product. Again, no one buys.
- On day 3, you send the third email (M3) sharing a case study of someone who used your product and got results. Although this is what people want to know, they do not buy.
- On day 4, you send the fourth email (M4) wherein you explain the refund scheme. Now, people know your product, they know how the product will benefit them, they know a person who got the benefits, and they also know that if they do not like the product, they will get a refund. 2 people are convinced and they buy the product. Suppose, the cost of your product is ₹5,000/-. Then in 4 days, you have made ₹10,000/- (2 sales of ₹5,000 each).
- The most popular uses of an email marketing system are lead form creation, automation, segmentation, follow-ups, etc.
- Email is the most crucial marketing tool and I use Moosend to run email marketing campaigns. Other popular email marketing tools are Aweber, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, etc.
(5) Webinar System
- The formal definition of a webinar according to Merriam-Webster is, “a webinar (or web seminar) is a live online educational presentation during which participating viewers can submit questions and comments.”
- The primary purpose of a webinar is to present a topic or a problem statement in a way that is engaging, relevant to the attendees, and solves their problem. Many businesses and entrepreneurs use webinars as a way to promote their products and services.
- Webinars are effective because they let attendees and presenters give, receive, and share information in real-time.
- According to Statista, “During a survey carried out among marketers representing more than 2,000 small business and enterprise organizations worldwide between January and December 2020, 99 percent of respondents said that webinars represented a critical element of their marketing plan. According to 89 percent of respondents, webinars outperformed other channels in creating qualified leads, while 78 percent of respondents said webinars helped lower their cost per lead.”
- My mentor Mr. Siddharth Rajsekar makes over ₹5,00,000/- in webinars on a monthly basis and his webinars help me to improve my business strategy.
- If you are an Affiliate Marketer or an online business and you want to improve your sales and scale your business, you can sign up for my free webinar wherein I will teach you 3 principles and 3 secrets of how you can make the aforementioned amount regularly. My training will help both, the beginners and pros.
- I use WebinarKit to scale my revenue. You can go through my paid course “Webinar Set-up Challenge” to set up your webinar and get more leads and sales.
(6) Payment System
- Revenue is the heart of any business and, after people buy your products and/or services, you should be able to collect payment other than cash. Without income, you will probably shut down your business.
- Thanks to the ever-growing technology, you can now collect payment digitally through direct bank transfer, check payment, and UPI payments.
- Payment Systems are used to settle financial transactions from the payer to the beneficiary. A common type of payment system, an operational network, links bank accounts and provides for monetary exchange using bank deposits. Some payment systems also include credit mechanisms, which are essentially a different aspect of payment.
- So, if you are a business that accepts payments online, you need a payment system to accept payments made on your website.
- In India, Razorpay is the most popular online payment platform. You can also use InstaMojo or PayPal to accept payments.
- Many entrepreneurs and online coaches, including me 😀 , accept payments online for products – online courses – and services – consulting.
(7) Learning Management System
- Approximately 83% of organizations currently use an LMS. In fact, the global learning management system market is expected to reach a value of $23.21 billion by 2023. But, with the evolution of technology, questions keep popping up about whether the LMS is dead.
- According to recent research, 73% of the respondents said their LMS use has risen in the past two years, indicating that LMS use is rising rather than remaining stagnant.
- But what is an LMS? Simply put, a Learning Management System is like an e-university where your students or enrolees can learn valuable information from the comfort of their homes on their desktops or smartphones.
- Through an LMS, your students will be able to access your materials from anywhere in the world. Another power of an LMS is that your students can revisit any material whenever they want. In a nutshell, an LMS is independent of location and time.
- If you were to conduct an offline class, once the class is over, the students cannot revisit what happened and they have to rely on their notes. With an LMS, they can revisit any lesson any number of times.
- Let me share a few statistics about the Learning Management System:
- 98% of educational institutions moved the majority of their classes to online courses as of April 2020. (Education Data 2021)
- 77% of learners feel that their LMS has had a positive impact on satisfaction, productivity, and teaching during COVID-19. (Capterra 2020)
- 23% of companies have been using the same LMS for over five years. (Docebo 2019)
- According to my research, the most popular LMSs among entrepreneurs are:
- Teachable
- Thinkific
- LearnDash (I illustrate step-by-step how you can configure LearnDash for your online courses in my course the LMS Set-up Challenge)
(8) Tracking Tools
- As an entrepreneur, Affiliate Marketer, and an online businessman, tracking your performance is paramount!
- You should be able to track your major traffic sources, the most lucrative channels, the number of times a certain post was viewed, the number of times a particular link was clicked, and so on.
- This is where tracking tools enter the picture. If you are an online course creator, you would want to get insights about your best performing course, the most popular days when people buy, the channels that drive most sales, and so on.
- Before becoming a full-time Affiliate Marketer, I was a web analyst and I understand the importance of tracking. Your website analyticswill help you understand the online customers, potential customers and their interactions with your website.
- If you are website owner, tracking tools will keep records of the number of pages visited, search engine traffic, and so on on an hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. This will also reveal how paid ads are affecting your revenue.
- Tracking tools will also enable you to track about visitor behaviour, such as, from where they visited your site, how long they stayed, if they were returning visitors or new visitors, which Search Engine they used, the keywords they searched on your site, and so on.
- You will also be able to find out the popular pages of your website along with their geographical areas – city, state, country – and language.
- The tools that I use to track my website performance is Google Analytics and to track specific links, I use ClickMagick. You can use Bitly, as well.
(9) Hub / Community
- When you start your business, you will definitely go through good times and extremely hard times. It is during those times that you could need help from like-minded people. They share their experiences that help you to grow and cement the fact that you are not alone in your struggles. This helps to build confidence and to grow on a personal level.
- When you have a community, you build trust in their hearts. When people trust you, they will buy anything you launch, just like Apple. Apple is not just a brand, it is a community of Apple lovers. Is the main reason why Apple has been able to survive for so many years.
- Being a member of a community allows you to nurture each other, offer advice, help, and grow together. A community is important, not just because what it can do for your business, but for what it can do for the people who make up you business.
- In an community, you can share ideas, work with like-minded people, discuss strategies, implement changes, etc.
- A community will be like your own extended family, where people learn from each other, help each other, support each other, and grow together.
- If you want to set up your own community, you can use any of the following tools:
- MemberPress
- Ning
- Memberful
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Conclusion
- Systems keep your business running and in this post, I covered the most crucial systems that you need to establish a thriving business.
- The systems are as follows:
- Website
- Page Builders
- Images
- Email Marketing System
- Webinar System
- Payment System
- Learning Management System
- Tracking Tools
- Hub / Community
- Of the above tools, which ones have you set up and which ones are missing? You can find the links to the tools in the post. Set them up and see your business grow.
