11 Affiliate Marketing Success Stories That Will Inspire You

One of my first niche sites was a financial blog promoting alternative investments. I started publishing in-depth, evergreen content that I hoped (with time) to rank in search results.

The site slowly started to rank in the SERPS for some target keywords. It took a while before earning any commissions, but kept at it. After about six months of blogging, it earned an affiliate sale that paid just over $2,000. I couldn't believe it.

Until then, I only had a few small wins with low ticket items, so to net $2,000 from just one affiliate sale, I almost fell out of my chair.

The following month, the blog earned another commission - again over $2,000. This was when I realized affiliate marketing was something I had to take seriously.

Some tips if you’re just getting started:

"It took me 9 months of hopping around and trying different business ideas before I finally landed on blogging and affiliate marketing.

I had finally found something in blogging that I enjoy and ties into my strengths, which is something you should look for when starting your own business...

And so began my journey of online publishing.

I took no courses on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or blogging, but instead simply created content for the world.

There were a lot of self-doubts, but after 6 months and 50 blog posts later I had finally made my first $1000 online all through organic traffic from Google.

Since then, my traffic and income has steadily climbed as I continue to focus on growing my blog.

The key here is to set aside all the distractions and keep growing what's already working.

Keep taking consistent action, share what you learn, and help others along the way.

The byproduct will be a thriving and growing online business that you'll be proud to call your own."

My journey in the affiliate marketing world started around mid 2018 after spending almost a year trying to make it online without any success. It took me about 6 months making my first commission of $4.5 from selling a social media software as an affiliate.

Even though I've had my first blog from the beginning of 2018 - it was still difficult getting good results from it. As I was still learning to better my copywriting and SEO skill.

During the last quarter of 2018 I decided to start promoting ClickFunnels. After seeing all the successes people are having with the program.

If they can do it, why can't I?

I went all in and started producing content heavily around ClickFunnels.

In January 2019 I had my very first breakthrough in affiliate marketing - making $500 in about a week. That was when the whole story changed.

Ever since it hasn't been bad. I've had good months of $3k's and bad months of a few 100's as an affiliate. But what I've discovered in this business is that no matter how small the amount of effort I put into it - it's never a waste.

The results might get delayed, frustrating or not close to come, but it builds up over months and years.

What I will always recommend to everyone who's starting out is sticking to a path, learning from the right sources and blocking every other thing that might sound as the 'new trick'.

I'm good in cranking out content in form of texts (Blogging) because I don't see myself as a video person.

You might be good on camera and not the writing type - then go with that and help people with your video content. Just do you and never try forcing yourself into what you aren't comfortable with.

Remember, this is a business of proffering solutions to people's problems, if you can figure out a way to help them in times of need - then making money online becomes so easy.

My biggest success story was qualifying for the ClickFunnels Dream Car award. This is given to people who have 100+ active ClickFunnels affiliates.

It took awhile to see results for me personally though. I had been promoting ClickFunnels for a couple years with absolutely no success on my blog. Even though I was getting traffic to a ClickFunnels review post, it was not converting at all.

So two big things really turned things around for me.

First, I started building my brand and audience on Facebook via my Facebook group and other groups where I knew the ClickFunnels community hung out. I started engaging with other like-minded marketers and building relationships. Over time, this led to making partnerships where I was able to find out about and invest in some valuable white label products.

Which led to the second thing that really helped, which is creating the most valuable bonus package possible to promote ClickFunnels. This applies to any product, but for ClickFunnels especially since it's a really steep investment for many people.

I bundled together bonuses I created myself with some of the white label products I invested in. And I added in my own personal coaching to create a really valuable ClickFunnels bonus package that would really incentivize people to take the trial and stay on for the long haul.

It took several months to tweak and test my offer to see what really worked, but once I did, the number of ClickFunnels' affiliates under me really started to grow.

Although they take effort to create, bonuses work. And you should include them with any affiliate offer you are promoting, no matter what. But make sure that each bonus you have ties into your main offer somehow. Don't overwhelm people with irrelevant bonuses. Everything you are offering needs to help the buyer in some useful way.

"It’s fair to say I got off to a slow start with affiliate marketing. Raced off the line at a snail's pace.

I wanted to learn EVERYTHING for free. Bouncing from group to forum and compiling the biggest “Watch Later” list YouTube has ever seen

I had a familiar routine of: Create blog, design logo, install plugins, get bored, delete blog.

Until I found my way. A wicked combination of Russell Brunson's simplified & inspiring marketing strategies and a 7 figure affiliate mentor.

This combo made me commit and push my comfort zone, finally start tackling my fears.

As I built momentum I achieved results, $1, $100, $500 and eventually my biggest sale of $2000.

I learnt two BIG things:

1. Share your journey even if you're a relative newbie. 2. You MUST believe that you will succeed.

As an introvert and overthinker I have battled self-confidence my entire life. Always willing to “try” but never believing I “can”.

In January 2020, my wife made me take a leap of faith and invest in myself. To stop doing everything free and commit to a coaching program. I was terrified of letting her down.

I didn’t believe I was good enough to succeed, but she encouraged me anyway - she had absolute faith.

I followed the training, asked questions, and learnt to ask for help when I needed it.

Eventually the content paid off and I hit my largest commission yet of $2000 (It still feels crazy writing that).

If you’re reading this….trust me, I’m not a happy clappy person. If anything, I’m a cynic, but please trust in your own abilities.

Every action you take should reinforce your own belief. It is a loop….

Action > Results > Belief > Action > Results > Belief > Action…

My biggest sales yet have been from people in my circle for a while. I didn’t pitch to them. I just shared my journey.

I wrote about my highs and lows, and at one point I received a message from someone I’d known a while... “Jon, your post made me cry…”.

Not the effect I usually go for, but her reasoning struck me.

I had written content from the heart that connected with her at the right time. She asked for the details and purchased. Boom!

Affiliate marketing is amazing, and when you connect with people and see how happy their decision makes them, it is by far the best monetization strategy.

"Although my passion is internet marketing, my core niche has always been selling on Amazon FBA. I've had success with a lot of affiliate programs for programs, softwares and services in that space, but my most interesting affiliate success story is how I won my Clickfunnels Dream Car.

The Dream Car is a popular goal for affiliate marketers and I wanted to win it. I didn't need a car but I wanted the recognition.

I did it and got to over 100 referrals (120 was my peak) in less than 2 weeks.

I did it by tapping into my existing audience of Amazon FBA sellers and promoting Clickfunnels to them in a way that I knew interested them.

I knew that at the heart of everything, they weren't just Amazon sellers, they were entrepreneurs and Clickfunnels is one of the tools that could help them in a number of different directions.

So, I created a private 90 day group. To join, you just had to purchase Clickfunnels through my affiliate link.

I don't offer private coaching so this was their only chance to really work with me 1 on 1.

I used scarcity and kept the program registration open for 14 days.

The rest is history.

My two big takeaways from this are...

"Seeking a way out of my 9-5, I decided to start my own business as a mental health clinician. While setting up my private practice I discovered that other clinicians wanted to get out of their 9-5 and were turning to me for answers.

I soon found myself recommending products to others, and solving problems for those in groups, hunting for a way out of their 9-5.

Now it sounds easy to enough to find solutions by recommending products you’ve used, however I soon realized that I needed a website, a place I could send my organic traffic that I was generating from the therapy start up groups. I’m actually really horrible with technology and had purchased a domain earlier in the year, however I couldn’t master WordPress.

WordPress was just too difficult to change certain aspects and features. I had canceled my account and vowed never to go back to them again. The solution came in the form of a 5 day blogging bootcamp.

It’s definitely the starting place for those that are new to making money online. The bootcamp had daily instructions from how to choose a domain name, to all the plugins to help you rank and grow your site. I plowed through the 5 days, I was pretty eager to get my blog up and running, (I had people to help).

I was able to pick a theme, get the site ready for visitors, running smoothly quickly.

So….I went back to posting on Facebook groups, replying to comments, and making friends. It was in my 3rd week that I returned to my car after being our for the day, to a notification from bluehost. I had thought they were sending the standard email regarding updates…..but turns out they were contacting me to inform me that I had made money! I was shocked, I think I read the email 3 times!

Honestly I hadn’t been expecting anyone to find my blog just yet. I hadn’t given my website link to anyone. I discovered that group members were finding my link on my facebook profile and heading to my website. It was magical!!! It was real. I had earned $65!! My blog was making money, YES!!

I quickly sought information on growing organically, and stepped up my content production. I had found a way to make money online."

"After trying many different online ventures such as MLM & Dropshipping, I quickly realized these weren't the business models for me. They weren't fulfilling, sustainable, or even enjoyable to work on.

One day when I was still dabbling and looking around, I came across a product called ClickFunnels. I had seen similar products and tried promoting them with "business-in-a-box" or "done for you" systems, but I failed. Instead of focusing on providing value and using warm/hot traffic sources, I was trying things to make money fast, and it flat out didn’t work.

Eventually, I found a little dinky site promoting ClickFunnels earning more than I was making from my 9-5! At that point, I was hooked. After going all in on one website and pushing out endless content, sales started to come. In my 6th month doing SEO and Affiliate Marketing, I made two sales in a week that earned me a total over $500. This is when I knew I had a clear route to success.

Since then, I’ve been focusing solely on Affiliate SEO. The power of building assets that work, even if you aren’t is extremely powerful! I’m focusing on stacking more and more digital assets, primarily for high ticket products that have big payouts.

If I had to start over, here’s exactly what I’d do:

"I started affiliate marketing back in 2014 through a high ticket program. It all started after I got a terminal redundancy package following being laid off from a government project that got closed down. I failed. I failed miserably for almost 3 years until I came across the affiliate marketing strategy of list building through offering low-ticket offers and then building a value ladder on the back end.

I tried MLM, Direct sales etc and none of that just fit my own style. Building a list and directing them to low ticket offers has been my most profitable and highest revenue raiser for sure. In the last 3 months, I have generated close to over $30,000 in affiliate sales alone just through my front end offer and close to over $20,000 in backend offers.

My biggest breakthrough was learning the art of building high converting lead generation pages and bridge pages. This really increased my conversions on my front end offers. I have a high profit margin or high ROI on advertising spend and operating costs.

I've done pretty well in offering various affiliate products available to promote on the Warriorplus platform. Sales pages that are highly converting etc are readily available there and no investment is required to promote any products.

High ticket products are Legendary Marketer and a direct pay high ticket program called Exitus Elite has been converting well since adding these programs into my offer.

I spent 97% of my online affiliate journey with no mentor. Which obviously led to spending wasted money on programs, and more importantly wasting my valuable time and energy. I didn't find a solid mentor until January 2020. I started following the process of what they implement and kept my approach extremely basic:

==> Stick to One Strategy and One Offer
==> Master one traffic source (for me it's Google ads and bing ads)
==> Master and Automate it
==> Then build upon your value ladder to your audience.

My biggest takeaways and recommendations:

"It took me more than a year and a half to make my first thousand dollars as an affiliate. I spent that time trying everything I could think of and attempting everything that I learned about.

One year later I made six figures.

I truly believe that every affiliate has to go through this period of time. Affiliate marketing is hard. There are a lot of moving pieces to put together to make it work. If someone is telling you differently, they are probably trying to sell you something.

I believe that I have been successful at affiliate marketing because I have the ability to keep on trying despite many many failures. I tried many many things that didn't work, and then when one thing did work I went all in on that thing."

Editors note: Spencer also runs multiple YouTube channels with large audiences, and is one of the most inspiring affiliate marketing success stories on YouTube that I could find. Check out Spencer's YT channel here.

"My Affiliate Marketing story begins in July 2017 with a YouTube Ad. I saw someone in a large house in Las Vegas welcome me into his home. He proceeded to go onto his computer and "reveal" how he can afford such things by clicking on the "affiliates" page at the bottom of big name websites. After a well crafted Webinar, I purchased the $2000 course that was offered and it did nothing for me. I felt like I got scammed...

I then found Buildapreneur on YouTube and binged Spencer's content. I found Spencer to be a much more relatable and genuine person, but was really gun shy about spending the $897 on his course. I then flopped around for 2 years making $5 and $10 sales here and there, but nothing significant. Mostly just bleeding money...

In January of 2020, I decided to invest in Spencer's Course and it got me the first small wins I was looking for. I was able to run small Google Ad campaigns for competitive keywords and the money started trickling in. I knew it would build over time, but I wanted faster success.

In February of 2020 I saw some people killing it on TikTok promoting Legendary Marketer. I found out that to promote Legendary, you needed to take their 15-Day challenge first so I enrolled sarcastically just to blow through it and get my link. I was blown away by what was in there and invested $2500 on the blueprints....

I then grabbed my affiliate link in April, and documented what I was taught by Legendary on TikTok. They taught me to run Facebook Ads profitably in niches outside "make money online." I gave surface level info (you're only allowed a minute per post) in my posts and referred people to the link in my profile (linked to Legendary) to learn more about what I was doing. I posted 3x a day, every day & actually demonstrated exactly how to build an affiliate funnel and get it to convert through a series of TikToks.

Because of this, I ended up gaining close to 7k followers in my first 45 days and I currently grow my list by 10 people passively each day. Because Legendary has a high ticket offer (and a few people took advantage of it) I made $2500 in commissions 100% organically in my first 45 days on TikTok. My TikTok Handle is @dombavaro."