As I explained previously, in 2018, I bought a course that taught me a simple funnel strategy for affiliate marketing. It involved using Google or Microsoft Search Ads to send traffic (people) to my landing page and, from there, to the vendor’s page with the hopes of making sales. It was very straightforward, and it was also the main bread-and-butter teaching in that particular course. You can see the funnel here.

Spending money with Google Search Ads to send traffic through that particular funnel left me with a bad experience. The monetary gain I got from any sales I made was always less than the expense of placing the ads. However, for whatever strange reason, I liked using search ads. I don’t know, but it was like a “puzzle game.” I had to tweak and develop ideas to make it run profitably. Unfortunately, it was a game I always kept on losing.

To make a long story short, that simple funnel strategy didn’t work well for me. When I signed up, the course provided a structured, step-by-step recorded training plus a weekly one-hour live webinar. I still visit them occasionally to this day to gather anything that might be beneficial.

The Importance Of An Email List

During one of my random visits, I noticed they had expanded their teachings a little more. Finally, they mention the importance of building an email list and how the most successful affiliate marketers have one in place. Listening to them talk about that topic was interesting; they waited many years for them to talk about it, but I wonder why. Was it because too many of their students were not getting good results through that simple funnel they were teaching previously? It makes me wonder!

What I’m doing these days is building an email list with the help of a coaching program. Yes, it is a little more complex than the simple funnel I used in the past because it requires more components to set it up, but it is also not rocket science. If a person has basic computer skills, then he or she can set everything up with the proper step-by-step guide. Here’s a condensed list of what I’ve done thus far, although it is not necessarily the only method for building an email list.

• Create my domain name: marketalbert.com
• Connect my domain to my WordPress blog
• Designed my blog and created banners for subscribers and a book offer
• Designed a three-page funnel to collect email leads using a website builder.
• Give lead magnets (gifts of value) to subscribers who provide their email leads.
• Created several emails with valuable content to be sent to my subscribers
• Document my affiliate marketing progress on my blog
• Start bringing traffic to my blog using paid search ads

My Insecurities

The coaching program provides a solid step-by-step guide, so completing the setup is not that hard. However, I must admit that the section where my insecurities start to show up is the traffic section!

There are two ways of bringing traffic to my blog. The first method is doing it organically, which doesn’t require payments on my part but requires time. The second method is to pay for traffic. I felt like I didn’t have the patience or time to organically bring traffic to my blog, so I opted for paid traffic.

But now I’m back again with that feeling of my bad past experience. I don’t want to spend an arm and a leg to gain very little in return. In other words, I don’t want to overspend to build a tiny list of emails from people who are not fully committed to creating an affiliate marketing business for themselves.

My Pay Back Revenge Still Pending

From February to May 2024, I didn’t post anything on my blog. I was preoccupied with learning more about Microsoft Search Ads. I looked at different sources to clarify things I was confused about and learned many things on top of what I already knew. In April, I started a small test run of my ads and observed certain things I had to tweak. I cranked it up a little more in May and observed additional stuff I had to correct. I will continue in June and probably encounter other challenges I’m not even aware of right now.

There are many platforms to choose from for paid traffic, but with search ads, I still have unfinished business to take care of. As I mentioned before, I can be a little stubborn sometimes, and I might be shooting myself in the foot for not trying something different, but I want to give search ads one last try; if things don’t work out as I hoped, I will move on with a different strategy to bring traffic to my blog.

If I lose the Google/Microsoft Search Ads battle, that doesn’t mean I’ll give up altogether. Being a successful affiliate marketer is my main goal here, and other venues exist to help me reach my goal.

Warm Regard,
—Alberto