Yesterday, I spent an hour on Google, trying and failing to find good affiliate health offers to promote for my new health list.
Sure, there are millions of “Bates Motel” health offers out there. They will gladly pay you a large commission if you send a gullible victim their way.
There are also millions of worthwhile health offers out there. But they either have no affiliate program, or they demand that you have a list of ~2M names if you want to become their affiliate.
On the other hand:
Last week, I found myself participating in a “JV Mixer”.
This was an affiliate deal-making event. It was in the Internet marketing and personal development niches, but I’m sure equal things exist in the health space.
This JV mixer consisted of people with 7-, 8-, and possibly 9-figure businesses, including big names that I recognized, all pitching themselves and trying to make their best case for attracting new affiliates to promote their stuff.
My point being, it’s surprisingly hard to find good affiliate offers to promote, at least if you’re starting out. On the other hand, there are big and hungry businesses who can’t find enough affiliates to promote their offers.
See the strange contradiction there?
It’s actually the same thing with copywriting clients.
When I got started as a freelance copywriter, I heard that businesses are starving for copywriters. Business want to throw money at copywriters. But businesses don’t know where to find copywriters to throw money at, or there are just not enough copywriters around who want money thrown at them.
Maybe you’ve heard the same claim. And if you’re a freelance copywriter, maybe you’ve been around long enough to call BS.
And why not? I mean, I got decent copywriting work in those first few years. But I never once saw a desperate business owner, running down the street, grabbing random passersby and pleading, “Are you a copywriter? God I need a copywriter right now! If only I knew where to find a copywriter!”
But as I’ve written before, I eventually discovered that yes, that incredible claim really is true.
I discovered it when I suddenly became to go-to guy for a specific format of copy (VSLs) in a very specific niche (real estate investing). It turned out there really are dozens of business owners, running successful businesses, ready to throw money at a good copywriter, if only they could find one. Fortunately, they found me.
So then the question becomes:
How do you go from one to the other? How do you go from being a scrub searching for affiliate offers on Google… to being part of JV mixers where owners of multi-million businesses try to recruit you as an affiliate?
How do you go from being a starving copywriter mass-applying to jobs on Upwork… to sitting back, and having potential clients emailing you every day, and asking politely if you have some time to talk to them?
There are tricks and tactics to do it. Some are common sense.
Some you can pay for.
Some you can extract from your own experience, if you’ve gone down this road before, like I have in my freelance copywriting career, and now in my marketing and copywriting influencer career.
But the thing is, all those tricks and tactics are secondary.
Because there is just one primary resource if you want to go from scrub to success, from starving to satisfied.
This resource is very plain. Very unsexy. And it’s lying all around you.
But with this resource, you can do without any tricks and tactics.
On the other hand, without this resource, no tricks and tactics will help you.
I’m talking about time. Simple stubbornness. Still being at it tomorrow, and the next month, and in a year from now.
Which is why, if you ask me, it’s not worth even starting a new project if you’re not okay with still being at it in two-three years’ time.
All right, so much for my plea for stubbornness. For today, at least. Tomorrow, I will be back at it, with another daily email.
In case you think if you think my years of experience working with 7- and 8-figure direct response businesses could be valuable for you… you can sign up to my daily emails by clicking here.