I know these are challenging times for all of us. COVID-19 is affecting every one of us differently, and as far as the protection is concerned, we just have to make sure to follow the local government's guidelines. Now, clearly more people are looking to earn extra income online from home while they're locked in - the number of messages I receive has suddenly got immense in the past few weeks.
Great thinking, because I believe that's the right way to move forward in the current climate. Will things get better soon? No!! Well, maybe. Who knows? Who can say the world economy will never collapse in the next 6 months?
I'm a positive person when it comes to my life. It doesn't mean I'm optimistic. I can always prepare for the worst, and whatever happens, I know I'll survive this. I'm determined to protect myself and my family from this hideous thing, keep securing ourselves financially, and help those who are around me as much as I can.
Today, I'll show you one of the most popular methods that are used by thousands of affiliate marketers to generate income online from home, which you can set up within a few hours.
Is There A "Legit System"?
The most common question I receive from my site visitors is "Which systems are legit?" The question itself is pretty ridiculous (sorry), as if there are a number of ways to extract money from somewhere hidden behind the internet market, some of which are legitimate while others are illegal. Somewhere within the world-wide-web (Come on, people, this is 2020!)
I can see where the false rationale comes from though. When scammers sell their "system", they often come up with crazy fake stories such as;
- "It has a secret script code that "mines" money, invented by Russian scientists."
- "There's a secret loophole behind the stock exchange that only 300 people in the world know about."
These scam products usually turn out to be an outdated, license-free online marketing guide that's never useful.
The truth is, many new online marketing hopefuls misunderstand the term "system" - there is no such a system that automatically makes money for you.
The Only "Legit Systems" Are...
There are different marketing methods. Business models. The only way to make decent money online is by running your own business. It's a business, so you need to understand (if you haven't already) that, you're only making money when someone makes a purchase of something. You have to make someone pay, which means there are two main things that you need to do;
- Learn the techniques and
- Use the right tools.
In other words, the ONLY "legitimate" make-money-online products are either;
- Online business training programs and/or
- Online marketing tools.
Many of them are sold 1 & 2 together as a bundle, i.e. training programs that provide ready-made tools such as landing pages, but those tools often only work if you pay extra and sign up with particular third-party service providers.
COVID-19 Survival Kit
Back to the main topic. We're all beginning to realize that the pandemic will have a significant impact on the global economy. My suggestion to you is that you start working online now to make sure you'll be at least supplementing your income for a while. And I mean "right now" because it'll take time, and you want it to take off before everyone else starts the same.
The "survival kit" will allow you to set up an affiliate marketing business today. Affiliate marketing is a business model that requires very little initial investment and enables you to earn a commission by promoting other people's products. So you can start from zero.
The kit should contain 4 essential tools/services that you should sign up with for your sustainable affiliate marketing, and there are 5 steps to take to set it all up, which I'll explain later. Firstly, here are the 4 tools/services;
#1 Wealthy Affiliate (All-In-One Web Hosting)
Free / $49 per month
Wealthy Affiliate is actually equipped with all-round platforms. It provides one WordPress website and the first 10 affiliate marketing basic training modules and full community support for free. The premium membership includes;
- Web hosting up to 10 WordPress websites, extra security, anti-spam, turbo speed, and SSL certificate.
- SEO keyword tool.
- Full training, weekly webinar, live chat, private messages, and community support.
The premium price of $49 per month is a bargain - you never find the volume of services for this price anywhere else.
What Wealthy Affiliate provides is a content marketing (blogging) platform. If you stick to this method, you'll eventually start making money without spending money on everything else. It's the most economical way in the long run and in all honesty, you could stick to Wealthy Affiliate solely and ignore the rest.
But if you want to go one step ahead of other Wealthy Affiliate members, give your website a more professional look, generate leads (email subscribers) quickly and make money quickly, then you will need the following 4.
#2 AWeber (Email Marketing Service)
First 30 days free / $19 per month
Building a list of subscribers is probably the most important job to make "real" money in affiliate marketing, because you need prospects who are interested in the niche products that you promote. So you need a tool that collects leads (=subscribers) and sends out follow-up emails to them on your behalf.
To this date, many affiliate marketers agree that no-one can beat AWeber - it's the best email/autoresponder service in the cheapest range. There are cheaper services out there, but they either don't let you promote affiliate products or cannot provide good deliverability rates.
The price starts from $19 per month after the 30-day free trial period, this is considered to be extremely reasonable.
#3 ClickBank (Affiliate Network)
Free
You can learn a lot about good affiliate networks and products to promote at #1 (Wealthy Affiliate training), but I recommend you to join ClickBank, because great products in a variety of niches are listed there, and your joining application will be approved instantly. This means that you'll be able to find the best products and promote them online as soon as you sign up.
*** You can learn how to use ClickBank from here:
ClickBank Affiliate - How To Use ClickBank and Make Money
#4 Thrive Architect
From $67 (one-off) or $19 per month
WordPress is fairly easy to use, it has all the basic features and it's great for individual bloggers - for writing. But for business purposes, you need a fancier, professional-looking design and layout and more importantly, landing page templates that are fully customizable. You do need a decent page builder, you really do.
Thrive Architect is a favorite drag & drop page builder among thousands of online marketers and small business owners because of its versatility and usability. It's a WordPress plugin, which means you can install it on your dashboard.
The price starts from $67 per single site license, including 335+ landing page templates. But I would recommend Thrive Annual Membership ($19 per month) because it includes all the plugins (10+) plus a fully customizable WordPress theme (Thrive Theme Builder).
"What? Will It Cost Me? I Thought I Was Getting Paid!"
It's an online business that you're going to run from home. So yes, it will cost you for these necessary web tools. You're not going very far with your business if you want it all for free - I have been there!
Besides, I didn't decide to write this post to sell you expensive tools that are not practically useful. All the tools shown here are the ones that I've been using for 4+ years. I've been using them because they're popular and offer the most reasonable price. I genuinely believe these tools are the best (and most money-saving) ones in the market right now, so whether trust me or not, is up to you. Because some other marketing experts have different opinions for sure.
It cost me $49 for Wealthy Affiliate web hosting + $69 for AWeber (because I have many subscribers) + $19 for Thrive membership = $137 per month. I also spend $350-400 on traffic services and advertising. My total monthly business outgoing is less than $600, and my average affiliate commission income is over $7,000. I don't mean to brag! But you see the investment on these tools is well worth spending?
5 Steps To Multiple Streams Of Income
So the plan is to get you to;
- quickly set up a simple 2-page website that generates leads (=build a list of subscribers) and promotes your affiliate products at the same time,
- advertise the site using solo ad traffic services so that you can make some short-term profits, and meanwhile,
- learn content marketing techniques for long-term, sustainable profits.
Step 1: Build a WordPress Website (#1)
It will literally take 30 seconds to build your website if you sign up with Wealthy Affiliate. All you have to do is to name your website and choose a theme. It doesn't matter which theme you choose on this occasion, because you'll be loading your landing page templates at Step 5.
Step 2: Sign Up with AWeber and Create a Form (#2)
2-1: Sign Up with AWeber
When you've signed up with AWeber, firstly fill out your account/profile details.
- 1Click "Manage Lists" from the top menu, then "Create a List" to set up your list.
- 2Fill out your company name (or simply your name), your website URL, sender name (how you want your name to appear - first name, full name, nickname) and your email address.
2-2: Create a Sign-Up Form
Now, you'll be creating a sign-up form and link it to your landing page as well as your affiliate product's page. The process is simple but we'll be going back and forth a little (Step 3 and Step 5-3). So you might want to leave this part for later.
- 1Go to "Sign Up Forms" in the top menu, then click the "Create Sign Up Form" button.
- 2You'll see a basic sign-up form that looks like this image below. Makes sure "Name" and "Email Address" are in the form - ignore everything else such as design options. Just click the button "Go to Step 2".
- 3Go to "Sign Up Forms" in the top menu, then click the "Create Sign Up Form" button.
- 4You'll see a basic sign-up form that looks like this. Makes sure "Name" and "Email Address" are in the form - ignore everything else such as design options. Just click the button "Go to Step 2".
- 5In the next screen, the dropdown menu just below "Thank You Page" should be set to "Basic Version". Change this to "Custom Page".
- 6Another box should appear below the dropdown box - this is where you put your ClickBank affiliate link - See Step 3 below. Paste your affiliate link in this box.
- 7Click "Go To Step 3".
- 8You'll be prompted to save your form. Save it.
The idea is; when someone signs up with you, AWeber will firstly send that person a confirmation email. When they send a link on the email to confirm the subscription, they'll be directed to your affiliate product page. So you are promoting your first product offer immediately after each person subscribes to you.
You're almost there! Now you're linking your AWeber form to your done-for-you landing page, which is explained at Step 5-3. So you may want to come back to this one later on.
- 9"Who will publish this form to your website?" Choose the top option "I will install my form".
- 10Click "Raw HTML Version".
- 11The box "Include beautiful form styles. Uncheck to get unformatted basic form." should be checked by default. Uncheck it.
- 12Highlight all the codes in the box. You'll be pasting it in your landing page form, shown at Step 5-3.
Step 3: Chose A Product From ClickBank (#3)
This page will show you step-by-step to sign up with ClickBank affiliate network for free, find the best products to promote, and to get your affiliate link.
Choose one product that you want to promote and copy your affiliate link. You'll need to paste it onto "Thank You Page" setting box, shown No. 6 of Step 2-2 above!
Step 4: Install Thrive Architect On Your Site (#4)
As I mentioned earlier, I would personally recommend you to join Thrive Themes' annual membership because it allows you to install many other plugins and fully-customizable WordPress theme builder which is new and equipped with a variety of professional-looking features. But if your budget is really tight, you could buy a single-site license ($67) or a 5-license pack ($97).
Step 5: Load Your Landing Pages and Link Them All Up
Now I have 2 x page templates that are done for you;
- Legal disclaimer page.
- Landing (lead generation) page - for your site visitors to sign up with you.
Let's get the boring stuff out of the way first - the disclaimer page.
5-1: Load Disclaimer Page
- 1In your WordPress admin dashboard, go to "Pages" > "Add New".
- 2Title the page "Disclaimer".
- 3Click "Save Draft" to save this page.
- 4Click "Launch Thrive Architect". A new tab with the visual editor screen will open.
- 5Download your Disclaimer page template from here. (It's a zip file - save it wherever in your hard drive. Don't unzip it.)
- 6In the Thrive Architect screen, click the gear icon in the right-hand menu.
- 7Click "Import Landing Page"
- 8A message will popup ("Are you sure you want to continue?") Click OK.
- 9Upload the Disclaimer file that you just downloaded. (zip file as it is - don't unzip it.) Your disclaimer page will be loaded.
- 10You need to give a little bit of tweak - where it says [your website name] - change it accordingly, e.g. "Ray's Site"
- 11Click "Save Work" - the green button at the bottom - and close this tab.
- 12Publish the page. (Simply click "Publish" button)
- 13Copy the page URL of this page. It should be https://yourwebsite.com/disclaimer, but you can view the page by clicking "View Page" at the top menu of your WordPress admin.
- 14Lastly (phew) - go to "Thrive Dashboard" in the left-hand menu. Several Thrive Theme options are listed. Choose "Smart Site" and click "Smart Settings".
- 15Under "Company" section, where it says Name, add your website name and save. Ignore the rest.
- 16Under "Legal" section, where it says "Disclaimer", paste your disclaimer page URL that you copied at step 13 above. Save.
5-2: Load Landing Page
Your disclaimer page is saved now, and you should know how to load a template onto Thrive Architect. Now, do the same with the landing page.
- 1In your WordPress admin, go to "Pages" > "Add New".
- 2Name the page anything you want. Let's just call it "Landing".
- 3Save the draft of the page and...
- 4Launch Thrive Architect.
- 5Download your landing page template from here.
Repeat the same steps 6-9 you just took for the disclaimer file. Now you upload the landing page file instead. It should look like this. (https://resources.cybercashworldwide.com/landing-page-sample-1/)
The header & sub-header copy is pretty generic, and it is about making money online - feel free to change it all in your own words, according to the product you've chosen from ClickBank at Step 3.
Click to save work, but don't close it yet - now you're connecting the signup form to AWeber.
5-3: Link The Form To AWeber
Firstly, you need to get your AWeber code, shown at No. 12 of 2-2. Copy the code and come back here.
- 1Click the area where the sign-up form is.
- 2From the left-hand menu, click "Main Options", then choose "HTML Code".
- 3Paste your AWeber code in this box!
- 4Click "Generate the form".
- 5It's all done - Save Work, and close your Thrive Architect editor.
Get Your Work-From-Home Business Started
Now your initial "survival kit" is set up, it's time to start your business. I'll explain what you need to do to start rolling. You'll be;
- Promoting your affiliate products and
- Keep learning affiliate marketing strategies.
Promote Your Landing Page
Now traffic. There is no magical way to drive a number of visitors to your site and get them to sign up. Along the way, you may find some traffic services that claim to provide "thousands of leads in X hours/days", but NEVER trust any of them. It's never gonna happen unless you pay thousands of dollars.
You can promote your landing page in any way you like, but solo ad traffic services are considered to be the quickest and easiest method for a new online marketer to build a list. Particularly for this type of simple page ("squeeze page") as it needs to be advertised to the right target audience, and also particularly for the wealth niche (i.e. "make money online") because there are hundreds of trusted solo ad traffic sellers out there.
A "solo ad" sellers have a huge list of subscribers (thousands to hundreds of thousands). They send out emails to them and promote your landing page on your behalf. Their subscribers will sign up on your landing page and become your subscribers.
Again, I'm only saying that using solo ad traffic is probably the quickest and easiest among other methods. You need to find trusted sellers, otherwise you'll be wasting your money. Try Udimi, where you can find good sellers based on the existing users' reviews.
Meanwhile, other ways to promote your landing page and drive traffic are;
- Posting a link on social media (obviously! And free.) Your campaign will only be taken seriously if you have good, engaging followers.
- Using paid ads - Facebook, YouTube, and Bing Ads. They're great. But they require more techniques to find the right audience, and not so much for such a simple squeeze page that I've introduced here. Once you get used to online marketing, I suggest that you start giving them a try. Training courses are available such as Commission Hero (Facebook ads) and Tube Ads Academy (YouTube ads).
- Traffic exchange / ad exchange site. Some have a good entrepreneurs' community and provide useful tools such as link tracker and banner generator. Try LeadsLeap. It's great to learn what other online business owners are promoting. However, I wouldn't bother promoting your landing page there or on any other traffic/ad exchange sites. Because the audience is all entrepreneurs who are busy promoting their own landing pages, they're unlikely to be interested in your campaigns.
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Learn Content Marketing Techniques
Building a list by using a simple landing page is a short-term strategy. You'll have to continually invest money in traffic services and get your audience to buy ClickBank or other products for a commission. The moment you stop your campaigns, your income will also stop.
For sustainable affiliate marketing, you'll start learning SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques and get your blog site ranked in Google. That's where people will find your site by organic search, and you'll start earning passive income. It won't cost you apart from web tools (website hosting and keyword tools). It's definitely the most economical way but it will take a while before your website takes off as far as the search engine ranking is concerned.
That's what Wealthy Affiliate (#1) is for to help you all the way. It's not just there to host your website, but it provides affiliate "Bootcamp" training courses to keep you on top of the game. Over 1.4 million members are registered, including 50,000+ authority content marketers who make money just by writing blogs. It includes;
- 5 levels of Online Certification Courses (50 lessons), plus 7 phases of Affiliate Bootcamp (70 lessons). Both include text + hundreds of recorded video tutorials.
- Live webinar every single week (52 per year.)
- Content writing tool + keyword research tool.
- Any questions - live chat is available 24/7.
- The biggest and most helpful entrepreneurs' community "in the world".
The global business concept is drastically changing, and this time it's changing forever, and very quickly. Now is the time you should set up your online marketing "survival kit" and start promoting your simple site as an immediate strategy while taking a good time each day to build your content marketing platform that makes money in the long run.
Very good post. I must congratulate you on teaching everything you know about. A few people approached me to help them make money at this difficult time but it’s not easy to teach someone with no knowledge from the start like using a spreadsheet, WordPress, Aweber etc etc. I can see you are genuinely trying to help people and I can see you struggle to put in everything in one page to make this as comprehensive as you can to make it work for them. However long it might take they will see success if they persistently follow your steps. You are doing a good job. JD
Hi JD, thank you so much for the endorsement! I think we should all know some alternative ways to survive whatever comes along. A “work-from-home business” is just an opportunity to go somewhere, just one stepping stone, I believe.
Thank you for the detailed instruction, Ray Alexander. Do you offer a personal coaching service? This is all so complicated to me and I need someone to take me through, preferably by phone or Skype. Please contact me, my Skype ID is
I need to ask a few questions if you don’t mind. I am free all morning/afternoon CDT. Thank you.
Hi Caroline, thanks for your comment. No I don’t offer a coaching service and I don’t normally give advice verbally. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact me via the form from the menu, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, normally within 6 hours or so. I wish you all the best.
This is like a serious business that comes useful when an urgent assistance is needed to help raise potentially thousands of dollars. In these difficult times with economy is at its the lowest I will be willing to make a partnership with some business minded person out there. The real question is, how safe is it and how long is it going to be valid? If everyone starts to work online and if everyone stops buying online, this may not work and this is my concern. I write this message because I’m seriously determined to survive Covid19 disaster and the following hyper inflation. Any opinions will be appreciated. Andrew.
Hi Andrew, thanks for sharing your thoughts. More business owners are going online year on year anyway, the markets would have gone that direction regardless of the coronavirus outbreak anyway. But if anything horrible such as hyperinflation happens…I’ve no idea! The price of a loaf of bread will become like $10,000, is that right? Then I guess we’ll start finding some other ways to survive. In terms of “making a partnership”, I’m not sure what kind of venture you’re looking for? Tell us more about it! I appreciate your comment.
Hi Ray, I read your post with great interest, and your landing page template looks great to me. How can you animate photos like that!?!? Can you use it on Thrive Architect? I’d love to know. I totally agree with you on learning new online techniques. We don’t know how long this will go on, it can be years or forever (I’m worried)… Everybody should know at least how to run a simple online business in case they lose your job and all the saving is dried up someday.
Great training, Ray. Thanks for your input.
Hi Tomasz, thanks for your comment. Yes the Architect enables you to do embed any videos, e.g. YouTube like that. Like you say, we never know what happens in the future. Make the most of the lockdown situation and try something new. Thank you, I wish you all the best!
This is truly inspirational. It has a platform that is full of lots of raw information that are
all useful for internet marketers. I have not used Aweber yet but what about Mailchimp?
Please check my work and evaluate it. Thanks.
Hi, thanks for your comment. Firstly, Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing services, unfortunately it doesn’t allow affiliate marketing / work-from-home niches. Secondly your site…I’ve had a look but it has nothing but banners, which makes look very spammy to me. Perhaps you can add some introductions and do the math (how much you’re willing to spend on traffic services and your income provisions). I wish you all the best!
Hey this is interesting. Are you saying that there is no company that offers a job
what about graphic designers ? They already work from home. It’s good for some but almost impossible for people like me with no experience. Everything seems too complicated.
Hi Leslie, thanks for sharing your thoughts, and thanks also for your email messages 🙂
The reality is, the world is continually changing. We all have to adapt to new way of making a living in recent years and, the coronavirus outbreak has given us the opportunity. Yes, some already work online, and others who don’t may have no choice but to start working online too. You’ve managed to leave a comment here (thank you), so working online is not as difficult as you think – I’ve sent you some free stuff which you can give a try. Let me know how you get on. Thanks for your comment, and good luck!