Who are you and what are you currently working on?
My name is Aidy Award and I am a curvy girl who kind of has a thing for stormtroopers. I am also the author of the popular Curvy Love series. Currently, I am working on my 21st book.
How did you get started in affiliate marketing? What keeps you excited about it?
I never really ‘got started in affiliate marketing’. I think a lot of entrepreneurs are missing out on affiliate income potential just on their own products. I write romance novels and can get affiliate income simply by selling my own books using my affiliate codes on my website or when I talk about them on social media, which are activities I would do anyway!
What is one piece of advice you’d give to a newbie affiliate marketer? And what is one piece of advice they should ignore?
Figure WHO your customer is and what they want. It’s too easy to get caught up in our own preferences and thinking they are exactly the same as what our customers want. Just because I don’t like something, doesn’t mean my customer doesn’t have a real want or need for it. Ignore the people who are adamant their way is the ‘magic bullet’. There is no ONE WAY to make your business work. Learn from everyone, experiment, and find the best route for you and your business to be successful.
What has been your favorite mistake? A mistake that in retrospect led to a great lesson and progress in your affiliate marketing?
I once spent a thousand dollars (that I didn’t really have) in a month on advertising a ‘free’ product (mostly by not spending enough time monitoring my spend). Eek. It’s not something I would normally do, but it did increase my sales because that product was a loss leader that got new people to try my books, and subsequently, even after I scale my ads back, I continued to make money on sales of my other books. I never would have tried a strategy like that to get my sales going, but in the long run, it ended up paying off.
What is one piece of software or a web service (besides Geniuslink) that allows you to be more effective as an affiliate marketer?
No matter your field of specialty, writing a book automatically gives you social proof for you and your business. Have you tried writing and self-publishing a book on Amazon, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Kobo, etc?
How do you continue to educate yourself as an affiliate marketer? What are some of your favorite resources for learning?
These days I get the majority of my up to the minute information in Facebook groups. I’ve joined tons for my niche and the best ones have people who talk and share industry information all the time.