I’ve been a super affiliate for multiple companies, have won awards and have even been paid to attend private conferences over the years. Let me show you how to become one.
But first, what is a super affiliate anyway?
Its basically the 1% of affiliate marketers who are very successful at:
- Making affiliate sales overall, to the point they are doing it full time and making a passive income.
- And/or people who make the most sales for one or more affiliate networks and that network classifies them as a super affiliate.
Since I’ve accomplished both things, let me share my resume and tips for becoming one:
My resume: 9 times I was classified as a super affiliate:
1) 2 times I was awarded certificates by Clickbank.
Clickbank is one of the main organizations that I USED to work with full time and promoted multiple products of theirs. In the case of the 2 certificates (shown on the right), I promoted a diet program and estimate I earned multiple six figures in sales.
One of the times I achieved this six figure result was documented in this one page, six figure case study where I basically explain how I set up a one page website as an affiliate and drove traffic to it.
This case study is also explained in detail through the following tutorial on how to make money with 1 page websites.
To this day I firmly believe that these 2 certificates are worth more in value to me than any college degree I could have (I currently have a Bachelors in Business Administration, but I really think it’s worthless!).Â
In order to get even one of these certificates, one must make in my estimate (there is no official quota, so this is my guess) at least $100,000 in sales over a 1 year period.
From my understanding, these sales can come from any product you promote on Clickbank, it’s just a matter of total sales that counts here.
Keep in mind that since this network has MANY products to promote, ideally, promoting those which pay the most, would mean you could make less sales but still make the big money.
Now the first time I had gotten a call from Clickbank telling me I was in this program, I didn’t even know such a thing existed and with that certificate came other benefits:
- I had access to reach out to a VIP crowd within Clickbank to promote stuff to.
- I had other benefits many regular Clickbank members didn’t have.
- I was awarded my own assistant who would help me get insider scoops on new products to promote.
- And every single year, this contest is run and only 300 spots are available. If you land in one of these spots, you are one of 300 of the top promoters on Clickbank and are considered one of their top promoters.
2) 7 times straight, I was a super affiliate for a program called Wealthy Affiliate (WA).
After my Clickbank adventures were put on hold, I switched over and started promoting Wealthy Affiliate, full time.
After about 2 years of growing this specific site through their course called Affiliate Bootcamp I finally surpassed the goal of 300 sales (same as Clickbank), which entitled me to a free trip to Las Vegas in what was a private conference known as the Wealthy Affiliate Vegas Conference.
And I will say that this one in my opinion beats the Clickbank one because it’s on a more personal level. I actually got to meet, and become friends with the bosses of WA and to this day keep in touch with them.
I find the connection I have with this program is far better and frankly, their help and training is what initially helped me become a success with Clickbank, except at the time, I wasn’t promoting them, I was promoting within Clickbank.
Now as for sales stats, usually anyone who can make 300 sales for WA will likely be making $50k and above a year and I say this because that’s about how much my site makes from those 300 sales (see my income stats with Wealthy Affiliate here). And I have my own sales figures here which explain my specific sales figures if you’re interested in checking that out.
And that basically explains the 9 super affiliate case studies I have to share with you so you know I’m legit. And if you want to know more, here is my about me page where I share more stuff on this.
How to become a super affiliate yourself (follow my advice):
Tips for becoming a super affiliate (learn from my lessons):
If you can make a full time income as an online promoter or at least more sales than a regular promoter for a company, you are technically considered a super affiliate.
However, many programs like the 2 above which I cited have their own sales quotas which when reached give you that awesome title.Â
So what I would say in this case is that if you find a promotion that runs a contest, it’s likely one which gives you sales figures to reach and if you can do it, well done, you are one of the big dogs.
As of this article, you now have 2 promotions worth looking at for their own super affiliate programs:
Wealthy Affiliate. I would advise starting with Wealthy Affiliate as it has training to become a super affiliate in just about any promotion you do, including one for promoting WA specifically.
So if nothing else, THIS program is the best to learn this from.
Clickbank. They also offer a lot of choices and even training from their Clickbank University program, but if you want to do it the way I did it, learn from WA and then promote products on Clickbank, WA will teach you to do it the right way.
The 2 best ways to become a super affiliate (from beginner to pro):
Option 1 (for beginners):
If you’re a total beginner, you have to focus on creating a blog website in a popular evergreen niche market. By doing that, you can create a large website that funnels that evergreen audience to your page and then produce mass sales that way.
For example:
1) An evergreen niche market could be something like making a site on ways to work from home for stay at home moms (huge niche).
2) If you can make a site on this type of topic and get 20,000 visitors a month to it (totally possible).
3) And then on that blog promote something like Wealthy Affiliate.
4) And then out of those 20,000 visitors make at least 100 sales a month (also possible).
5) You’d already be a super affiliate, and would be making about $30,000 a month.
It would take about a year’s worth of hard work to make this type of project grow and get to a good point, but speaking as someone who has done it, it’s worth it.
Option 2 (for experts):
Using paid ads. These are faster ways to reach super affiliate status but they aren’t exactly easily (or cheap). Basically you set up ads for popular niches and drive masses of traffic to that page/s and then promote your offer there. If the ad is profitable, you’ll be able to make a lot of sales and reach super affiliate status way quicker.
For example:
1) You make a simple website (not even a blog) and target a popular niche like working from home (here are 50 other niches for reference).
2) You create ads on popular pay per click networks and are able to drive 20,000 visitors a month to the site through ads alone. However, because you are spending money for this, you are spending about $5,000 a month on ads.
3) You promote (again) Wealthy Affiliate and make 100 sales, which equal to the same $30,000 a month, so your profit is $25,000 a month.
4) If you can make this work, you can become a super affiliate, very quickly even.
5) It wouldn’t take you a year to get to this point, BUT it would take a lot of experience and testing to make this type of formula look like the example above.
I would be VERY careful with this option because unless you are truly an advanced affiliate marketer and have a large budget, this is VERY risky. I’ve been able to do it a few times, but I have in most cases not been able to make this work consistently. Read about my warnings using pay per click for affiliate marketing.
Are all super affiliate programs worth trying? No, not all are legit.
The above 2 programs ARE legit. However, over the years, I have run into many programs offering their own contests which were very illegitimate. Here’s some examples:
MOBE. They had their own contests for promoters, but it turned years later that the program was running a huge high ticket scheme and had to be shut down by the FTC.
Digital Altitude. Think of MOBE but perhaps even worse (see why Digital Altitude is bad). They too were shut down (also by the FTC).
I could go into other examples, but that’s at least 3 systems with their own promotional programs that I am happy I didn’t do business with and this doesn’t include the networks out there that actually do shady stuff like not pay their promoters or ones which are known to have a lot of scams on them (Clicksure).
And overall, any scheme like high ticket program are things I would never become an affiliate for, let alone a super one.Â
The big picture: Are you cut out to be a super affiliate?
The short answer is yes, but it’s a tough thing to achieve, because it requires a number of positive, and ambitious personality traits as well as education so that you actually are able to go through proper training and become one.
- There’s many lessons I learned from being one for multiple years, across multiple promotions.
- The first is that if you’re going to promote something and make a lot of sales with it, you have to.
My 5 final tips for becoming a super affiliate:
For me to achieve what I did, I had to follow those 5 tips and be really open minded in how I took risks to get more sales. By risks I mean trying out new ways to get traffic to my site, new sales angles and testing and more, but the core things which started the process were the above 5 I just explained.
Now while I am a rare super affiliate, since there aren’t many around, I can confidently say that I am nowhere near the most successful. I personally know guys who are super affiliates and make money online who are way more successful than I and I’ll have you know, they also follow those 5 tips I listed and all possess the traits I mentioned that are mandatory to have.
If you have these traits and are ready to do those 5 things, again, I’d start with Wealthy Affiliate here, because if you do all of this, you will be a super affiliate. That’s how I and many others did it.
Your post is truly inspirational and I appreciate your honesty. Like many of your readers I too am part of WA, and I have a lot of learning to do, but do you think promoting/reviewing items is the way to go based on your experience? I have a blog, but I am thinking promoting WA is the way to go. Would love your professional opinion. I have never used Clickbank and I am not even sure how they work – but I will definitely check them out on your recommendation. Congratulations on all your success and I know you will be in Vegas again this year. (Goals!!)
Reviewing products is ONE of the ways you can go when promoting WA or any niche topic you choose. Generally, products have less competition in organic searches so doing reviews on them can get you ranked higher. Also conversion rates for product reviews (at least for me) tend to be higher.
Thanks for sharing your story Vitaliy.
What impressed me most about your article was the simple but easy to understand way you laid out the content.
It is informative and comprehensive and above all, helpful. How much of that technique was WA learned and how much your own experience?
I think there are many people attracted to “shiny objects” in this business and ignore the study and hard work that is necessary.
Personally I find your article motivating and it has come at a good time for me when I am having to revise more than 50% of my content, over 100 articles.
I hope to see you in Las Vegas in a years time.
Before I found WA, I had to try and figure things out and it was a huge problem because I didn’t have any solid training to guide me. After finding WA and using the training, I found the learning curve to be less steep and results did come. The lessons I took from that helped me later do more things on my own beyond what WA taught but at the same time, it was thanks to their training that I was even able to reach that.
Hoping to see you succeed as well this year and yes I would love to see you join us all in Wealthy Affiliate’s Vegas Conference 🙂
Hi Vitaliy
Great post and thank you for sharing this with us. I never know that we can get a certificate from ClickBank like the one you had. Your journey really inspired me to do more and work harder in order to achieve my goal.
I join Wealthy Affiliate 2 months ago, but one of the reasons that made me upgrade to premium there was after I read your article about how you made half million from one blog with ClickBank. After having read that article, I know that making money online is possible and can be achieved if you put your heart into it.
I am still working 9 to 5 and aiming to quit my job and do this online stuff full time this year.
All the best for you Vitaliy,
Sam
Hi Sam thank you. I appreciate you sharing your goals and ideas and I’d like to add some personal tips since I was at one point in the same type of circumstance you find yourself in now. In my case, I was a student and lost on what to do in life but I was also in a hurry to do online marketing full time.
What I discovered after the fact (after years) is that while goals are good, rushing them is not a good idea and it is a GREAT thing that you currently have a job that’s paying you. I didn’t have anything stable at the time when I started online marketing and that made me rush the process, which often leads people to fail.
You should absolutely chase your goal of doing online marketing full time, but make sure that every step of the way that leads you into this end goal is done carefully, slowly and with quality. Don’t rush it, make sure you fully understand and put in the quality work, you will actually save your time time this way and get results faster.
Hey Vitaliy,
Another well written and extremely informative post. I keep coming back because I learn so much each time.
A couple of questions;
1) What is your criteria for picking a program or product to promote?
2) Do you setup your own website or email list for each product? One of the problems I see with affiliate marketing is that the owner of the product gets the lead, not me. How do you get around this?
3) I am just getting back into the IM space but in the past I had some success with JVzoo. Are they still around? What do you think of this site and products.
Keep up the great work.
Cheers,
Ian
Ian hi, here is what I think:
1) Generally any program that’s already legit, pays well, or pays good recurring commissions while having a high retention and any promotion that is something I know about and can sell, I will look at seriously.
Wealthy Affiliate has all these criteria I listed and this is why I promote them, but this is for my personal niche choice.
2) I don’t do email marketing anymore as I find it annoying and an extra hassle. I send people to WA and they manage the emails there, so it relieves me of having to have an extra job.
I get that for many promotions, it’s the vendor you promote for who gets the email, but one way around this is to sell people the same things, but offer bonuses. The way you do this is by having them buy the program, but telling them to opt-in to your list so they can get their bonuses after they purchase the product you promote.
3) JVZoo is still around and is still operating in the same poor way that I criticized them for. I purchase a lot of JVZoo products for reviewing sake’s, but find 9 out of 10 them are very poor.
Hi Vitaliy,
Your background in sales is quite impressive! I am sure that it required quite a bit of hard work. I am also trying to sell Clickbank products and have not discovered the product that sells like your diet program! Wow, half a million dollars! That is truly fantastic! Let me ask you this:
When you say start with the site first, how did you research your niche to determine the best one to get into?
I am also using the Wealthy Affiliate training program, but I am a bit slower, and a bit older, but still determined to get the results I want. I also was wondering what was the most important thing that got you the big jump in sales with the 2nd year of your bootcamp site? Were you using paid ads?
I am glad I read your review, and I will be reading many more of your posts, Vitaliy.
Thank you!
Chas
Chas hi, so when I got involved with Clickbank and the diet product that made that money, I was actually exploring Clickbank in general and wasn’t really an experienced affiliated, but at the time, a diet program on there, called Fat Loss 4 Idiots was selling very well.
I was instantly interested in it and even more so when I checked it out in detail and how it worked. I had knowledge on dieting and health related topics prior and this program seemed to hit most of the points I learned about, so it felt natural to promote it.
I started promoting it through Ezine articles.
I later made Squidoo lenses promoting it too.
Once those things stopped working, I then promoted it through Bing Ads.
Eventually though, that diet program went out of business and I am still shocked as to why…
Now regarding bootcamp, the reason my site grew so much in the second year was because I took the time to grow in the first and the results started to show in the second year. I followed the WA training and really got into it by blogging about make money online topics.
But because ranking takes time, this is why the results didn’t hit until the second year. So most of the results I had gotten were through blogging and SEO. Paid ads were later added in and they do bring in good profits themselves, somewhere between 10-20% of profits, BUT the main money maker is still SEO for my bootcamp site.
I would love to become a Super Affiliate for Wealthy Affiliate. It sounds like the perfect combination of training and hard work can get a person to that status! I am not much of a sales person, but I can easily promote things I believe in and I believe in Wealthy Affiliate! What is the best way to become a Super Affiliate for them? How many years have you been working with affiliate marketing? How long with WA?
Hi Karin, I began promoting them in 2013. I started my business many years earlier. The best way to get into promoting WA is through this course, which I also did.
Your performance is very impressive. Truly, a super affiliate.
10 years ago, I stumbled upon a site owned by Ewen Chia with the domain SuperAffiliates.com.
It too claimed to be a hub for learning how to become a super affiliate online. I wasn’t able to join the program because of the price which was quite high, but then later I discovered that the program doesn’t live to its claim. Perhaps, the man was able to rake in big money during the time when people weren’t as empowered as today.
I believe in what you said, and admire the company you recommend. It’s surprising that you have achieved that level of success in affiliate marketing with this simple site without shiny designs whatsoever. So, is it basically out of good keyword research and search engine optimization that you were able to achieve all those? Truly admirable.
Gom hi, with regards to what you asked towards the end of your comment, the answer is mainly yes, but that’s the action I took to grow my site. I also do paid advertising to drive more traffic to it, but it’s ultimately my knowledge and passion for this topic that fuels all of these things, and all of this I learned from Wealthy Affiliate.
Regarding Ewen Chia, you are talking to someone who is VERY familiar with his products and agrees with what you said. They are overpriced in my opinion and he does have a bunch of them online, and so far, I have not encountered one that I would recommend.
I love the comparison of Clickbank and Wealthy Affiliate. I have been a member of Clickbank for years, but never had the success you showed. Congrats, by the way! Clickbank has over 6 million products. So there are products for everyone. But you are spot on in that it takes lots of effort. The 5 characteristics you cite are essential to the success of becoming a super affiliate.
Thanks Glen!
I found this post very interesting for sure. You have covered a lot of ground in this and well done on picking up the awards for both Wealthy Affiliate and ClickBank, no easy feat at all.
Did you have to work hard to obtain them, I mean outside of the promotion aspect?
Interesting that you have mentioned two ventures which have now shut down, one of them being MOBE (I was with them) and the other Digital Altitude. Were you badly affected by them? I know many who were.
Overall I liked the post and you have outlined exactly what it takes to be a super affiliate.
Hi Dave, I stepped into MOBE briefly, but lost very little because I saw the scheme and I also briefly ventured into Digital Altitude, but also quickly got out.
One thing that I assembled from your article is that it took you quite a long while to achieve this dimension of accomplishment. This is vital to me, since I have been learning affiliate marketing for a while now. I understand that since this business isn’t an easy money scheme. I will concentrate now on the training at Wealthy Affiliate, and maintain a safe distance from the shiny object diversions out there.
Those shiny objects and my stubbornness were the biggest reasons why it took me so long to become a super affiliate and I do my best now to help newcomers understand those mistakes, so they can save time.
Hello Vitaliy.
Thanks for your article. A big well done on your accomplishments. It seems to me you have a gift for making money online, a rare gift.
I get that you believe in your 5 main steps, which I am trying on my Wealthy Affiliate site. Something however tells me you are a unique talent, otherwise you would not be a rare achiever. I would like to learn from you if you don’t mind. I would say you could be a great sharer of knowledge as you seem to have cracked it. Thank you for the help and once again, Well done
Craig hi, my success with WA and the other programs comes from the fact that I did the WA training and kept an open mind. Many people are too lazy or are too stubborn to follow through with their training and this impedes the success.
I may be a rare case, but it’s not because of some unique talent, it’s because of those tips I just gave and I know many who have achieved great results with WA as well through these same tips. Here are my results with WA and you can do this too, whether or not you promote them.
Your accomplishments are truly impressive. As such they provide me with the motivation to follow your example. I like your 5 basic tips for success.
But one thing that I gathered from your article is that it took you several years to reach this level of success. This is very important to me, since I have been learning affiliate marketing for almost a year part time, but have not made any money yet.
I realize now that this business is not a get rich quick scheme. I will focus now on the training at Wealthy Affiliate, and avoid the distraction of the latest shiny objects (other opportunities to make money online).
Carlos I think a big reason people see lag in their success rate is because they think about the get rich quick scheme and look for the programs which say they’ll help them to do it, but neither of those things are real, and the revelation you mentioned is the right one to focus on to see results.
Thank you for providing this resourceful article about super affiliates. Honestly this is the first time I’m hearing about an affiliate marketer surpassing the 300 sales within the space of a single year. Your achievements on Clickbank also inspire me. I will follow the tips you provided sheepishly and I hope it works for me.
Hi Clement, sometimes it’s wise to be sheepish about certain instructions, this is one of those cases 🙂
I’m in awe of your accomplishments. How you achieved so much is mind blowing and inspiring. I was really captivated to read the post and I must say I’m surprised. I thought you’ll give about 50 tips to be successful online. Looking at just five tips that made you acquire this much success has inspired me to always keep it simple.
I could definitely have listed more than 5 tips, but the truth is, these 5 alone encapsulate the other tips one could think about anyway 🙂