One of the most famous Filipinos in the Affiliate Marketing industry, Ian Fernando is one of Affiliate Marketing’s Expert. What’s really great about him is that despite the success he’s achieved he’s still very approachable and down to earth. He’s also offering affiliate marketing mentorship program, and he’ll pass on his expertise on whatever you need for affiliate marketing success. He’s allowed me to do an interview with him despite being busy with Affiliate Summit, here’s the interview…

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is promoting a product or offer and receiving a percentage or fixed payout base on the merchant or advertiser.

How did you started in the field of Affiliate marketing?

I actually started by stumbling on affiliate marketing. In the past I owned an ecommerce website and earning money via ebay. It was a lot of work dealing with the customers and tracking the product via snail mail. I needed something that was easier and less work. Affiliate marketing cut out all the support and the responsibility of having a product.

Why Affiliate Marketing?

As stated above, it cuts out the need of dealing with customer support or with the actual product. This in turns helps you concentrate on the actual promotion and marketing without the need to worry if the customer will receive their product. In essence it cuts out customer support.

Why Not Pay Per Click (PPC)?

PPC is just a method to promote the advertiser or merchant. PPC is just another source of traffic which we can utilize to drive traffic to the desired offer or item. It is far easier to use PPC than SEO because of the fact SEO takes too long to rank while PPC is instant traffic which you can analyze right away.

How do we start in Affiliate Marketing?

To start in affiliate marketing, I suggests chosing the right network. I suggests visiting AFFPinions.com and find the right network which you would like to work. By finding the right network they will help you better advance yourself. The network was the first who was some what like my mentor and they has helped me achieve my goals that is necessary to enjoy what I do.

Top 3 Lessons that you wish to share

• First lesson is to DO IT and stop reading blog and forums. You need to actually do something to learn from it. I personally failed several times and found it beneficial to me. By jumping into it and learning from my mistakes made it easier for me to understand what affiliate marketing was about.
• Another is to utilize the network and get them to help you. They are there to help you because if you do not make money then the network does not make money. So it is their responsibility to help you and guide you the right way.
• Keywords are important. It is important to think outside the box and think what may not be relevant to the main keyword. Even if the keyword is less than 2% related to the main keyword or offer, it may be that keyword that is making you the money!

What are the Highlights of your career in Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing has push my brand out there and have given me the opportunity to speak about affiliate marketing. It has also giving me the insights to market online. Their are multiple ways to market but it has giving me the understanding on how to look at traffic and how to properly analyze the traffic base on the traffic trends that I receive.

How do you see affiliate marketing in the next 5 years?

There are multiple things that is currently happening in affiliate marketing but I see it here to stay. I know more people are going to be more creative on how they promote and certain growth of offers will be more geared to buyers instead of actions. This will create more of a buyer experience base on the recessions, but also may deplete because we are currently climbing out of the recessions. Affiliate marketing is interesting because it is constantly changing, the way users promote and get the users attention is interesting. Especially how users get users to click the submit button.

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Thank you again so much Ian for allowing me to do the interview with you, if you’d like to follow Ian through his blog, you could visit him at http://IanFernando.com.