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“With affiliate marketing, all you have to do is promote people’s products and you’ll earn a commission!”
We hear this all the time online, from “gurus” and armchair online marketers who’ve never made any actual money online. And the truth is, while this statement isn’t exactly wrong, it grossly underestimates how difficult affiliate marketing can actually be.
When you first start affiliate marketing and don’t see the “quick results” that you were promised, you may lose hope and start to wonder whether it really works.
This is why it’s so important to have a mentor who’s been there and gone on to be successful! In this post, we’ll go over where and how to find an affiliate marketing mentor of your own!
What Is an Affiliate Marketing Mentor?
Behind most successful business owners in any field are experienced mentors who can guide them down the right path. Affiliate marketing mentors are just as important for affiliate marketers as a partner for an associate attorney in a law firm, or a journeyman electrician for an apprentice.
Think of an affiliate marketing mentor as someone with years of experience running their own successful affiliate marketing business – and who hopefully has the ability to listen to your challenges and share constructive ideas that help you build your business.
If you want to make money online by building a successful online marketing business without floundering and flailing around for years, finding an affiliate marketing mentor is non-negotiable.
An affiliate mentor will not only help you learn the most important basics of this business, but also help you navigate the biggest challenges in a rapidly-changing space.
What Makes a Good Mentor for Your Affiliate Marketing Business?
We’re living in an age where misinformation is rampant on the internet – and that includes in the make money online space.
Many so-called “gurus” and influencers try to sell their “expertise” without any actual success. Not only is this dishonest, but it can actually backfire on you if you try to implement bad advice.
To avoid falling for scammy mentors, here is a small checklist to help you work with the right mentor!
1) First-Hand Knowledge
Affiliate marketing is a complex space to make it as an affiliate marketer. While shortlisting affiliate mentors you might work with, one of the first things you need to check is whether they have founded their own online affiliate marketing business and whether they are currently running it successfully.
Without firsthand knowledge and experience, they probably don’t have advice worth listening to.
2) Experience as a Mentor
Many “gurus” have emerged in the make money online space. They claim to have taught thousands of students as well. However, try to find out whether these “gurus” have substantial credibility in not only building their own business, but also as a mentor.
Do they have any past successful mentorship experience? Do they have any mentees whose business transformed with their help? Ask these important questions before you close in on your choice of who will help you learn affiliate marketing.
3) Domain-Specific Expertise
An affiliate marketing mentor is highly needed because of their expertise in specific facets of affiliate marketing. You must choose a mentor who has either deep experience in your specific affiliate niche, your chosen traffic channel, or business model.
Do you want to learn more about drop shipping? Are you interested in promoting a high ticket affiliate program? Or do you want to start your journey with email affiliate marketing? For each of these domains, your choice of mentor may change!
4) Actionable Advice
Your mentor is always expected to guide you in an actionable way. If your mentor only spews melodic speeches with no actionable insights, feel free to assume that their knowledge is limited and their experience is fluffed up.
Actionable insights can majorly answer all the ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘where’ questions. But most importantly, they must answer the ‘why’ question behind every action.
5) Openness to Sharing
Your mentor is not supposed to be your rival. If they consider you to be your rival, more often than not, they won’t share everything they know or may do so halfheartedly. In both cases, the relationship won’t last long.
Look for someone with a collaborative growth mindset who won’t hesitate to share their “secret sauce” with you!
How to Find an Affiliate Marketing Mentor
1) Affiliate networks and marketplaces
When you join affiliate networks or marketplaces like ClickBank, you have the opportunity to get to know the major players in different niches. These players can give you in-depth insights about these niches to help you choose your niche(s) and affiliate programs wisely!
For instance, on ClickBank, you can find a product and navigate to the affiliate tools page. There, you’ll often find the contact information of the seller’s affiliate manager. These people have a wealth of knowledge, and their only goal is to help affiliates sell more – so it’s a win-win!
The bigger cherry on top of this cake is that many of these platforms offer free affiliate marketing programs to join and implement your learning on!
2) Online forums and Facebook groups
These days, a great route to meeting new people in the affiliate marketing space is through online communities, especially Facebook groups. If you regularly participate in these groups, you’ll be able to informally get mentorship by asking questions and seeing what the more experienced group members say.
Sometimes, these conversations can move to a DM and can lead to mentor-mentee relationship.
Here are a few platforms/communities that can prove to be gold mines for your affiliate marketing business!
- https://www.affiliatefix.com/
- https://afflift.com/f/
- https://stmforum.com/join/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/clickbank/new/
- https://www.warriorforum.com/
3) Affiliate marketing conferences and events
There is nothing better than meeting new people and learning about their affiliate marketing journey. One single conversation with the right person can give you insights that may chart the best course for your business.
You can also benefit immensely by attending affiliate marketing conferences and events and listening to experts talk. You may instantly click with someone and stumble into a great mentor-mentee relationship!
4) Cold outreach
One Google search can introduce you to numerous successful affiliates! Make your search more specific in terms of niche(s) to find your perfect mentor match. Most mentors have a detailed affiliate marketing blog filled with business insights specific to the affiliate space.
You can reach out to them via cold email to explore opportunities. You must focus first on how you can add value to them! A ‘give then take’ approach is most ideal in all relationships alike, including mentorship.
Here’s a cold email template you can use:
Hi (name),
I’m (your name) and I came across your website while researching possible products I can promote in (niche). It is a pleasure to get in touch with you and am curious to learn more about your journey to success in this space!
I’d love to connect with you sometime this week over a call or (insert favorite/mutual hobby). So, if you’re comfortable, let me know which of the following slots is ideal:
(Include 3 different date and time options, or provide a link to a calendar through a tool like Calendly)
I’m excited to hear back from you!
Regards,
(your name)
3 Tips to Write a Fiery Cold Pitch Mail
The above email template will work just fine. However, if you want to spice things up, here are 3 quick tips to increase your response rates:
A Curious Headline
Your headline must trigger curiosity in your reader to motivate them to read your email. Once they open your mail, you’re halfway there!
This could be something like:
- “Free to talk next Tuesday?”
- “Don’t miss out!”
- “Am I your next big affiliate?”
Just put yourself in their shoes and think about what would appeal to them.
Snappy Copy
Your copy must be crisp and pristine! Be on point and straight with your story. Delete unnecessary words, remove/replace long phrases, add shorter ones, and truly unleash the power of your pen!
Personalize Your Approach
Before shooting cold pitcher emails, make sure you’ve done enough research on your potential mentors and know a little about their personality. Subtle references to such information can trigger your reader into responding with ingenuity.
Who knows? Maybe you’ll strike the right chord and initiate a fruitful conversation!
5) Masterminds and Coaching
One of the fastest ways to get valuable “mentorship” is by joining popular masterminds or even enrolling in 1-on-1 coaching. These aren’t cheap – usually, they cost anywhere from $1,000 to $25,000.
If you have the budget to do so, don’t hesitate to sign up for these elite affiliate marketing training programs. Some of the more popular masterminds in our space include Flight Club, Mimosa Mastermind, and Copy Accelerator. You can see a full list on our Affiliate Marketing Conferences and Events page.
The reason these types of programs are so popular is because they really do help people learn how to build the business the right way and connect with experts, which can save years of struggle and thousands of dollars from being wasted on the wrong tactics.
6) Spark Campfire
It’s a bit of a shameless plug, but this very question about finding mentors is what led the ClickBank team to create our Spark Campfire community.
You can join the Spark Campfire Community for just $7 to get access to the legendary affiliate marketer, Perry Belcher, plus ClickBank’s own incredible in-house team of Spark marketing pros, Ben Harris and Holly Miran:
What to Expect from a Mentor
Now that we’ve answered “how to find affiliate marketing mentor,” let’s move on to the next step: What to expect from a mentor?
Having a clearer idea about expectations and boundaries with your mentor can help you to ask the right questions, get relevant tips, and increase the likelihood of affiliate marketing success!
Facilitate Independent Thought
You must expect your mentor to train your thought process so that you make faster decisions independently as time goes by – a “teach a man how to fish” situation is ideal.
If your mentor spoon-feeds you what to do every time you run into trouble, you won’t learn the business for yourself and your relationship may come to resemble more of an employer-employee, instead of mentor-mentee.
Go into the relationship with a mindset of collaboration, not dictation.
Identify Goals, Challenges, and Priorities
Your mentor can help you gain clarity on important business questions like:
- What are your goals for affiliate marketing?
- What challenges might you face while chasing these goals?
- How should you prioritize these goals?
- What steps should you take to minimize risks and maximize your return on investment?
- How do you find the right affiliate marketing programs and products for your business?
Based on the answers to these questions, your mentor will be able to help you chart the best course to a successful business!
Show You the Pond When You’re Thirsty
As the saying goes, “You can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
Your mentor can only show you the pond when you’re thirsty. They will guide you on how to do things, but in the end, you’re expected to execute the plan!
In other words, if you don’t do the work, you can’t expect results or blame your mentor for a lack of progress.
Exchange Value
All relationships flourish only when there is an exchange of value. You can expect your mentor to share invaluable insights that you can use to grow your business.
However, you should expect to provide value to your mentor too! If not with financial compensation, you should do it by expressing gratitude, sharing your testimonial online, and finding other ways to add value to your mentor’s business and life!
10 Affiliate Marketing Influencers to Follow
You may not be able to connect with a mentor directly due to lack of time, money, or access. And that’s totally understandable – everyone is in a different place in their journey!
But there is another way to get the information you need for your online business: consuming content created by some of the best affiliate marketing experts in the world.
One way to do this is with exclusive access to Perry Belcher inside of Spark Campfire. Aside from that, we have a distinguished group of influencers in the affiliate marketing and direct response world who we’ve rubbed shoulders with.
You can choose any combination of the following experts as “mentors” and learn plenty about building an affiliate business – all without even having to meet them!
1) Thomas McMahon
Thomas McMahon is ClickBank’s senior business development manager and a co-host of our popular Affiliated podcast. In his role, he helps businesses leverage ClickBank and affiliate marketing with eyebrow-raising results.
You can see Thomas on our YouTube channel, listen to him on our podcast, and see him in person at more than a dozen affiliate marketing industry events throughout the year.
2) Anik Singal
Anik Singal is an online entrepreneur and owner of “Lurn” an online membership and e-learning platform that has a collection of courses on entrepreneurship and marketing.
You can directly work with him by either spending an entire day with him (in person), consult him by the hour, or gain full access to him through live & phone coaching.
3) Alex Cattoni
Alex Cattoni is a famous female entrepreneur known best known for her unique take on copywriting, marketing, and entrepreneurship! She launched Copy Posse in 2019, which has been a wild success in the digital marketing community.
You can find her sharing insights on YouTube, critiquing clients on their copy, or taking a strategy calls!
4) Russell Brunson
Co-founder & CEO of ClickFunnels, Russell Brunson is a household name among entrepreneurs. He has written best-selling books on marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship, and much more.
Russell is a New York Times Bestselling Author, with over half-a-million copies sold! You can find him at a variety of marketing events or having lunch with a client.
5) Spencer Haws
Spencer Haws is the founder of NichePursuits.com, a blog focused on online business, marketing, and SEO. He is also the creator of LinkWhisper.com, a tool that has revolutionized internal linking for bloggers and website creators!
He spends his free time making memories with his 4 kids and sharing insights with his community through his podcast/social media.
6) Miles Beckler
Miles Beckler is a business coach famous for helping entrepreneurs launch and scale their online businesses using digital marketing. He has more than a decade’s worth of experience in the digital & affiliate marketing realm.
He shares quality tactics and insights on both, his blog, as well as his YouTube channel that boasts over 8 million views till date!
7) Adrian Brambila
Adrian Brambila is a serial entrepreneur and an ex pro-dancer. He went viral on TikTok for living in a van and sharing tactics that have allowed him to make over $100K a month by working with only 1 day of WiFi access a week.
He also talks about different affiliate marketing strategies and shares his investment experiences on his YouTube channel!
8) Robby Blanchard
Known as the #1 ClickBank affiliate in the world, Robby Blanchard has created a digital training program system called “Commission Hero Pro.”
Using this system, he is training many aspiring entrepreneurs build and grow their online marketing businesses. Robby likes to mentor aspiring people using his 3-step method. You will also find him dropping truth bombs at numerous marketing events.
9) John Crestani
John Crestani is known as “the original digital nomad” and is a world-renowned affiliate marketing expert. He started his business in 2012 and scaled it up to $500K a month while traveling.
John has now chosen to mentor a select group of marketers who share his ambition of turning clicks to cash using affiliate programs and paid marketing.
10) Rachel Pedersen
Rachel Pedersen, better known as the “Queen of Social Media,” is highly regarded in the industry for her social media expertise. She is known for her social media management programs to help busy parents make more time for the things they want to do!
She has built two multi-million dollar businesses with her husband and has an exhaustive list of testimonials that do justice to her “Queenly” status.
Affiliate Marketing Mentors Wrap-up
Like the 10 renowned affiliate experts we just mentioned, everyone finds a different niche, area of expertise, and target audience for their own business.
So, before choosing a mentor, you should ideally think about your own path. It may not be set in stone at the early stages, but you’ll be better equipped to pick the right mentor if you have a good direction for yourself.
Ultimately, by clarifying your end goal, you’ll be able to pick the right mentor and articulate your goals, challenges, and priorities. Then, your mentor can give you much-needed guidance in your affiliate journey!
For a little more information on how to pick a niche and get started with affiliate marketing, be sure to check out our in-depth ClickBank for Beginners guide.
Or if you’re ready to take your affiliate marketing education to the next level, learn more about Spark:
No matter your goals, we hope this post has helped you to shorten your list of possible mentors and zero in on the right plan for your business!
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