- Bruce Paulson is a freelance SEO specialist who creates affiliate marketing websites.
- Paulson said his business grew as he put himself in the customer’s shoes.
- He said he poured more money into his business last year than ever before and it was his most successful year.
This essay is based on a conversation with Bruce Paulson, a 43-year-old freelance SEO specialist from North Carolina, about scaling his business. It has been edited for length and clarity.
In 2022, I made almost $203,000 in sales from affiliate marketing alone. Affiliate marketing is the strategy that has helped me increase my income.
I have owned and operated an SEO agency since 2015. For the first five years I only worked with clients, but I found it difficult to grow my business. While I was good at getting SEO results, which is getting a website to the top of Google searches, I wasn’t good at selling my SEO services.
But in 2020 I started learning how to create simple affiliate websites where you recommend a product or service and when someone makes a purchase you get a small payout.
When I first started doing affiliate marketing, I didn’t get it It
Not much happened at first, so for a long time I thought I was making websites and getting nowhere. I didn’t know how to make an offer to an audience or how a company would pay me for traffic from my website. When I first started, I slowly began to learn – and I’m still learning.
Affiliate marketing is about building an audience or traffic. If I have a website about stand up paddleboards that gets a lot of paddleboard enthusiasts visiting each month, I can buy a product, write a review about it, and possibly recommend the product to readers.
If readers like what I say, click on my company link and buy a paddleboard, I can earn a commission of between 3% and 10% of the purchase price.
After understanding affiliate marketing, I began to put myself in the customer’s shoes
I started thinking about the questions customers might have about a particular product and then wrote articles that answered those questions. If you get this right, you can get more sales.
Eventually I made my first sale and wanted to make more. So I created more affiliate websites. I’ve also tried a number of different niches from water sports, insurance and mortgages to credit cards, boats and healthcare.
I have affiliate offers from Amazon, Avantlink, ShareASale and other private programs
Accessing Amazon is pretty easy – all you have to do is publish public advertisements on your website. Avantlink and ShareASale are similar except that they have many companies that work with them and these specific companies need you to approve them by looking at your website and see if they want to work with you.
If I have a website about stand up paddleboards and I apply to a big company’s running shoe program on Avantlink, that company probably won’t accept me because my website traffic isn’t relevant to their market. But if I apply my paddleboard website to the Bluefin Stand Up Paddleboard program, I’m likely to be accepted because my traffic is relevant to that business and there’s a good chance that Bluefin’s exposure will lead to sales.
In the first two years of building affiliate websites, I probably spent more money than I made
I currently run six websites and plan to create more. There are many costs associated with any website. Expenses include buying a domain for around $20, securing hosting for $180 a year, and paying a cheap web designer on Upwork to create the first five pages of the site for around $300.
I could write articles myself for free, but it takes forever and they’re not the best articles, so for decent articles I’ve decided to pay $100 per article – I need at least 30 articles, but realistically it’s around 200 Articles on the websites . I pay a cheap web designer on Upwork to publish my articles at $10-15 per article. Additionally, I pay $2,400 a year for an Ahrefs account, which is a tool for keyword research, competitor analysis, and more.
When building affiliate websites, I need a certain interest in topics such as water sports, finance or digital marketing. If I’m not interested in the topic, I get frustrated and give up.
In 2022, I’ve gotten better at wondering what someone is really looking for when they search for something on Google
I got better at thinking about “the intent behind the intent.” This has helped me focus on ranking for more specific searches. Now, instead of trying to rank for “socks”—a term that gets a lot of monthly searches, is very difficult to rank for, and has a very low conversion rate—I’ll focus on ranking for Search queries like “winter socks that are warm”. and will keep my feet dry. The latter has a significantly lower search volume, is not that difficult to rank for and has a very high conversion rate.
If I rank #1 on Google for “winter socks that are warm and keep my feet dry” and recommend a nice pair of Smartwool socks, then I have a very good chance of closing that sale – and that’s my whole approach to SEO these days .
Success in affiliate marketing has made me more successful in attracting new customers
It’s counterintuitive not to put any effort into finding new work for clients and yet bring more people to me than ever before. This turnaround has meant I can turn down smaller jobs that don’t suit me and focus on working with companies where I can make a difference.
When I was struggling with my business, if I worked harder I would only fight harder. Now that I’m getting some traction, I have more energy. I get up early and even work weekends.
I’ve invested more in my business again this year than I could ever have imagined
Last year I spent $25,000 to join marketing mastermind group The Forge and it scared me to do so. While medical bills and college were technically more expensive, this is the most money I’ve ever willingly spent in my life — more expensive even than the $16,000 I spent on a 2007 Subaru Forester, which I still own drive daily.
I joined the Digital Business Mastermind group because the people who taught me SEO created it. While I’ve had some success with affiliate marketing, I thought it would be great if people who were way ahead of me would look at my business and tell me how I can improve it. It’s also cool to be around people who are positive and motivate me to work harder.
2022 was my most successful year financially. For the first time, I’m having some success with my business and I want to add as much fuel as I can to the fire. I think in a few years I will look back and have built something my parents can be proud of.
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