Digital Marketing

Everybody touts that affiliate marketing is the best way to secure a passive income. However, there are a few details that nobody tells you, and it means the difference between people pushing through the challenges of digital and affiliate marketing or giving up altogether.

Here’s the truth:

1. Passive income from digital marketing (and affiliate marketing) takes a lot of work
2. There are multiple moving parts to master before money rains down from the sky
3. It can take considerable time to start earning passive income

I believe integrity must rule when selling information to our audience. We’re dealing with human beings who may be vulnerable, anxious and struggling to pay the bills. They may have zero knowledge about sales and social media marketing, and they trustingly believe the advice of someone making a lot of money online.

Yes, digital and affiliate marketing may be the easiest way to make money online. Still, many people get stuck in the process because the gurus make it challenging to understand that it can be simple.

Indeed, it SHOULD be simple, but that doesn’t mean it is easy.

I come from a direct sales background. Back then, my entire focus was on building relationships with my clients based on trust and integrity, and nothing has changed for me on my digital marketing journey.

I want to do my best for people, not con them into buying expensive courses I haven’t used, purchased, or succeeded with. Yet so many have no problems with that.

Anyhoo, that’s my digital marketing rant over. Now, we’ll focus on how to get started and set yourself up for success so you can start making passive income later down the road.

Step 1

Choose a reputable marketing platform. I use Systeme because you can get started for free. I pay $27 a month and have email campaigns and sales pages set up on there for my digital marketing business. I’m also taking their certified sales funnel building course.

Customer service is excellent, and you can use the marketing tools without the pressure of a monthly subscription. I have just upgraded because I’m building more sales pages and adding more products and custom domains. I love Systeme, its ethos and its quality tools.

Step 2

Decide if you want to:

1. Sell other people’s digital products
2. Create your own digital products
3. Buy PLR products you can edit and make your own
4. Buy MRR products to resell for 100%
5. Buy a DFU Business

I am doing a mix of options. I ONLY promote programs I use and am happy with, such as Systeme. In addition, it’s best to promote products offering at least 25% commissions.

Step 3

Create a free lead magnet to give away to subscribers. Honestly, don’t offer some crappy PLR that you got for free. Buy a template you can edit so you can add value. Be happy to give away free stuff that offers a transformation for subscribers. Start as you mean to go and build trust with your audience.

Step 4

Create a landing page for your first product. A simple squeeze page and thank you page is acceptable. Systeme has multiple templates to make setting up your first page for free quick and easy.

Step 5

Create an email campaign relative to the free product. For instance, If your freebie is about faceless social media marketing, your email campaign should be relative to providing that information.

Don’t be in a rush to promote products. Warm your subscribers first by leading with value.

Step 6

Choose two or three social media channels to focus on. Pinterest is a fantastic search engine, and TikTok can be a great platform once you build momentum.

YouTube may be slower, but build a long-term content strategy around it because there are endless opportunities for digital and affiliate marketing add-on bonuses, like coaching, brand deals and more. You can build a faceless brand on YouTube and succeed.

Now, here’s the thing. Creating or editing PLR products is time-consuming, but I recommend ALWAYS making them your own, adding your own spin and increasing their value.

Your first sales page might take you several hours. You might fluff up when adding a custom domain or tags or automating the process. That’s absolutely normal. I put off doing my first sales page for over six months. When I finally did it. I felt ashamed and embarrassed because it was easier than I expected.

Conclusion

Setting up to create automated passive income from digital and affiliate marketing takes time and always takes you longer than you think. I’ve been working on my back-end set-up and product creation for over a month and am still not ready to go. I might be slower because I won’t sell mediocre products to my customers.

Everything becomes easier once you have your automated system in place. You can add more products in your own time. Additionally, you can promote your products on other marketplaces like Etsy, Gumroad and Creative Fabrica.

The opportunities are endless.

So, my apologies for my early rant. I hope you see where I’m coming from. Integrity, honesty and authenticity are the most critical aspects of building any relationship, whether a partnership or selling digital products online. I hope you feel the same way.

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page. If you make a purchase, I may receive a small commission.

The digital marketing industry is growing exponentially. It’s an attractive career move for most people because learning the steps to succeed as a freelance digital marketer is easy.

Digital marketing allows you to work independently according to the schedule you decide. You can choose your niche and work with diverse projects.

Ok, that sounds great. What’s the downside?

Like any freelance work, there are no health or pension benefits. Depending on your direction, finding paying clients could involve an ongoing hustle, and that is tedious as hell.

The more straightforward direction is to create digital products, but the caveat is you need to learn how to drive organic (free) traffic to your offers. You can build a faceless brand if you don’t like being on camera.

Pros of Being a Freelance Digital Marketer

• Independence: Choose when and where you work.
• Remote Work: It’s easy to fulfil tasks working from home.
• Flexibility: You can fit the work around your family, workouts, and routine appointments. No asking a boss for time off.
• Variety: Choose which projects you want to work on. Create digital products that interest you. Switch direction whenever you need a change.
• Income: Once you master digital marketing, it can become a lucrative career.

Cons of Being a Freelance Digital Marketer

• Lack of Daily Human Interaction: Most freelancers learn to deal with the solitary aspects of working from home, but if you are a person who enjoys being with others, it can be a lonely life.
• Constant Hustle: There’s no salary, so freelance digital marketers must plan ahead to ensure cash flow stays healthy. That’s not easy, and workflow can change in a heartbeat (firsthand experience of that!)
• Feast or Famine: Some months, the money flows in and others you may struggle to pay the bills.
• Competition: More people are discovering digital marketing as a career

Options for Getting Started

There are so many ways to start and grow your digital marketing business. Here are some of the ways I am doing it:

A Done-For You Business

The DFY business is my preferred option because it is the easiest for beginners

What I love about the DFU business model

1. It’s beginner friendly
2. It’s an affiliate model. You can earn up to 85% commissions with 2-tiers, which means passive income
3. No tech setup
4. No payment processors. The company takes care of every step of the sale
5. Paid weekly
6. It’s easier to “sell” because of these benefits

Master Resell Rights

Not everyone wants a DFU business. Read about the 3 most popular master resell rights products (I update regularly) or, if you want a low cost option that helps with your spiritual and personal development, read my article about the lovely Inner Bloom MRR.

In my experience, master resell rights can be harder to sell. There is no passive income. It’s full on work. The main benefit is the high-ticket option. I moved the DFY business it is easier for beginners to make sales.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t change my direction as a digital marketer for the world. I love the variety, and I’ve opted not to work with clients at this early stage. I’ve had three years of client work as a copywriter. That was enough for me!

My recommendation is to take the Google Digital Marketing Certificate Course. It’s a great foundational course that provides an excellent overview of life as a digital marketer. I’ve linked to all of their digital courses, which are all free.

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page. If you make a purchase, I may receive a small commission.

The disadvantages of faceless marketing can limit your income-earning potential. However, don’t worry. There are many faceless influencers making 7-figure incomes, so there’s no reason you cannot succeed.

5 Disadvantages of Faceless Marketing

1. It Can Take Longer To Gain Traction

Branding and marketing models rely on building trust with your audience, which is easier to achieve when you show up on camera daily. It can be more challenging to capture attention with faceless digital marketing, so it requires a bit more creativity to capture attention and inspire trust.

2. A Lack Of Personal Connection

Building a loyal following is tricky because people may find engaging with a faceless brand harder. Getting brand deals can also be more difficult because faceless marketing doesn’t have a person leading engagement.

3. Difficulty in Establishing Brand Trust

The lack of personal branding makes it more challenging to build trust. To overcome that, you must create a solid, recognisable brand that talks directly to your audience so that they feel heard and understood.

4. It Can Be Harder To Achieve Long-Term Sustainability

Faceless marketing can produce short-term success but may fail to achieve long-term growth and sustainability. It’s generally easier to produce content for faceless marketing, but the audience may lose interest unless you create a strong brand.

5. Consistent Branding

Before launching a faceless brand, you must have a cast-iron strategy and 100% clarity about your brand and its message. Some faceless brands are a bit wishy-washy, which dilutes the brand message and confuses the audience. It’s easier to get a personality to shine when your face is on camera consistently.

Overcoming The Disadvantages of Faceless Marketing

To address the potential issues of faceless marketing, consider the following strategies:

1. Clear and consistent messaging – be clear on your brand’s message. What do you represent? Who is your audience? Identify their problems and present the solutions.
2. Create a strong brand personality – Develop a strong brand, tell stories, and choose impactful colours and high-quality visuals to connect with your audience.
3. Consider creating an AI avatar – it’s reasonably easy and affordable to create an AI avatar, and it preserves the human connection, even though people know it is an AI.
4. Explore engagement techniques – incorporate polls and quizzes, keep up with trends, and be creative. Learn snazzy video editing techniques to keep attention.
5. To build trust, be open and transparent – present factual information with supporting data, and share human stories.
6. Diversify social media platforms – one video on TikTok might go viral and fall flat on Instagram. Every channel is different and needs a tweak to uploaded content. Explore different platforms to see which audience resonates best with your content.

Faceless marketing can be successful, but connecting with your audience requires more effort. Stay on point. Keep going and check analytics to see where you might be losing watchers.

You don’t need to go entirely faceless. You can incorporate some on-camera material. However, commit to a strategy and stick with it. Your potential options are:

• 100% faceless
• 50/50
• 80% faceless, 20% on-camera
• 20% on camera, 80% faceless

If you’re worrying about your appearance on video, use Capcut video editing software.

Capcut is free and can smooth out your appearance, add make-up, and even make you look slimmer. Though it’s cheating a bit, if it gets you on camera and helps build your confidence, then go for it.

Capcut also has lots of fun effects to keep people watching and you can add subtitles.

Learn to Create Captivating Video Content

• Study other people’s videos and learn from them
• Watch YouTube tutorials
• Take the TikTok & Reels Creator Course that I did

250 FREE Reels Just For You!

As a thank you for reading to the end, here is a link to 250 faceless reels. Use coupon code FACELESS. Enjoy. They are 100% FREE.

Conclusion

Social media can be time consuming. You don’t own your content and these platforms can shut you down any time they like. The best platform for  stress-free faceless marketing is Pinterest. Learn how to design pins like a professional graphic designer and take a low cost Pinterest course, such as SEO.

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page. If you make a purchase, I may receive a small commission.

Can you start digital marketing without a website? After all, building a website is a major hassle. Maintaining a website is a pain in the butt, but we’ve all become primed to believe we need a website to “do business.”

Still, is this true? Can we genuinely build a thriving digital marketing business without a website?

When I started digital marketing this year, my first thought was to buy a domain name and start a website for my new business.

My heart sank. I did NOT want a website.

Thankfully, the training I received convinced me a website isn’t necessary. After purchase, I got my link and, within 5 days, I had gorgeous Shopify store with over 200 products.

All I had to do was generate traffic; the course taught me that too.

This post gives you 5 top tips for generating traffic to your offers, most of which are free. Yay!

#1: Social Media Marketing

I heard you groan. Stop it!

Firstly, pick only three social media channels, for instance:

1. TikTok
2. Instagram (reach is appalling in 2024)
3. Pinterest – The Godzilla of Traffic

Use social media with the proviso that it’s a back up. There’s a real danger in relying on social media for all of your traffic. Instead, start a blog and build up your traffic with SEO content.

Pinterest is an incredible traffic source. Here is how to start a Pinterest account.

1. Claim your website
2. Upgrade to a business account
3. Have only six boards relevant to your business
4. Delete or make irrelevant boards private
5. Use vertical pins
6. Create highly visual pins on Canva
7. Use relevant tags
8. Use keywords in descriptions to read as sentences.
9. Add keywords to the board and pin descriptions
10. Post at least 1 pin daily
11. Create value – give people a genuine reason to click on your pin
12. Use relevant keywords in your profile
13. Create a banner (850 x450px)
14. Create a logo – I use a portrait picture

If you’re starting a new Pinterest account, you don’t need followers to make a successful business. Learn how to create pins that get attention.

Before you start, read my post about how to prevent Pinterest account suspended.

I link pins to my blog. My traffic to Wolfheart site is increasing and driving traffic to my offers. Much of my content is ranking in snippets and page one.

TikTok Without Dancing

TikTok can be an incredible traffic source. However, most accounts get stuck, rarely getting above 300 views per video, no matter how many times they post daily.

There are four tiers to the TikTok algorithm:

1. 50 – 5k
2. 5k – 10k
3. 25k – 100k
4. 1M – 1B

I did a Reels & TikTok Course, which helped me learn how to put a video together that gets noticed. The course teaches you how to get your content to go viral.

Here are a few tips:

1. Choose a specific niche
2. Have a great hook – evoke curiosity in the first 3-5 seconds
3. Complete the promise of the hook by storytelling
4. Don’t give everything away in the first few shots
5. Use 3-5 relevant tags for every video so TikTok understands your channel intent
6. Use secondary hooks if possible
7. Edit the fluff. Remove anything that could cause viewers to click off your video
8. Give your audience a “payoff”

Forget about vanity metrics like likes and follows. The most critical factor in TikTok success is watch time. Your entire content strategy must be to keep eyes on your videos.

TikTok rolls out new content to a small test audience. If that fails to get traction, your video will remain at level one, and subsequent videos will unlikely break through that wall.

Getting stuck at 200 views is frustrating, and too many people believe submitting more content will resolve the situation.

It won’t.

Instagram

Instagram audiences like to be wooed. They’re a fickle lot. The algorith is a bit pants, but it’s worth pursuing.

You can edit your TikTok content and share and create relevant posts on Instagram.

I’m not an expert on Instagram, but I understand your content can go viral with the same guidelines as Pinterest and TikTok.

You can also curate your video content on YouTube and start building followers there.

Recently, I stopped posting reels. I bought the Threads Unleashed training and now focus on building a following on IG Threads. It takes much less effort and I’m getting results.

#2: Email Marketing

Building an email list will be the most potent aspect of creating a 6-figure income from digital or affiliate marketing.

To get started, I’d advise joining a marketing platform. It’s free for up to 2,000 subscribers.

I had a free Systeme account for six months, and upgraded after doing the certified funnel builder training.

It’s a brilliant platform with 140k people in the active Facebook group. Many people share their sales funnel templates for free, which are easy to edit within your dashboard.

The platform also has an affiliate marketplace where you can find fantastic offers to promote.

#3: Lead Magnets

Ask yourself how many emails you have subscribed to that offered something for free. If you’re anything like me, I rarely register unless there’s something I want for free.

While creating a lead magnet yourself is good, it isn’t necessary.

You can purchase a low-cost PLR book or course, edit it and use it as your lead magnet.

Create an email campaign for your subscribers. Focus on providing value rather than the hard sell. You must build trust and loyalty with your audience before you ask them to get out their credit cards.

Personalise your email campaign to talk to one person. Use the words “you” and “your” so people feel connected. Use a storytelling format for each email, and avoid constantly telling your audience how much money you’re making.

Give your subscribers the best tips to help them solve problems, make money, grow their business, or whatever is appropriate for your business.

Don’t try and hide the fact that you’re selling. Be open when you’re promoting a product or course. Keep the content light-hearted and focus on the transformation.

What will people experience if they buy the course or product?

For instance, if people buy the TikTok course, they will learn how to go viral on TikTok, which is transferable to other platforms. After that, with hundreds of thousands of views, people will make money, find financial and lifestyle freedom, and have a bucket load of fun.

In time, consistently getting millions of views can lead to brand deals, and most companies pay at least $1,000 for one video promoting their business.

Share offers that you have used and are 100% happy to share. Take your focus off the money and ONLY promote courses and products that provide transformational results.

#4: Sales Pages & Funnels

Once you have a lead magnet to offer, the next step is to create a landing page and a simple funnel. I use Systeme, which enables you to build three sales funnels, 2,000 subscribers, a blog, one course, a coupon code, a community, and much more.

Hey, you can do the Systeme certified sales funnel bulder course for FREE!

The free version is incredible in helping you become familiar with marketing tools before you go all in on your marketing campaign.

One major bonus of using Systeme is that once you are happy with the platform, you can share it with others and make 60% recurring commissions.

Some people in the Facebook group are making $20k+ monthly simply from promoting Systeme!

I completed the funnel bulder course in July 2024 and have added funnel building to my services. I created my first sales funnel for Threads Unleashed, which you can get access to. The day rate for sales funnel builders is around £350!

#5: Free Advertising

Free ad sites aren’t great, but you can quickly produce an advert and expand your reach.

1. Create a title with a good hook
2. Keep copy concise
3. Focus on the transformation
4. Discuss the problems your audience has
5. Show you have the solutions

Here is a link for 75+ different free advertising sites. I haven’t found them particularly useful to be honest.

It’s better to build a website and drive traffic that way.

Conclusion

The most common question in Facebook groups is how to generate organic traffic. These top five ways to start a digital marketing business without a website are all you need to generate traffic.

Stay consistent. At times, it may feel like you’re talking to yourself. However, the more valuable content you curate, the more chance you have of driving traffic to your offers.

I’d advise you to start with the free marketing platform. Create a simple landing page and email campaign, and then off you go to produce and share your content.

Have fun!

Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page. If you make a purchase, I may receive a small commission.