Trucking is great – most of the time – but there are some issues too.
One of the most frustrating things about most trucking jobs, whether you are driving for a mega carrier or running your own truck with your own authority as an independent owner operator, is all the time that is wasted in between actually driving and generating revenue.
There is plenty of that time sitting at customers waiting to get loaded or unloaded.
Other times you are taking a break and just sitting in your truck at some truck stop or elsewhere for ten or more hours, with nothing to do.
There is a way for you to take some of that precious time and turn it into income production opportunities!
Affiliate Marketing
Let’s say you are sitting at a shipper for a couple of hours.
Instead of getting frustrated about it, learn how to get started with affiliate marketing and while you are sitting there working on building your own affiliate marketing business.
In case you don’t know – affiliate marketing is where you market other company’s products in exchange for a commission/fee when a sale is generated as a result of your efforts.
What efforts you take and how you go about it is up to you. One of the most common ways to begin is by building a website where you write articles and post content about a specific topic. That is referred to as a Niche or nitch.
It simply means you are focusing primarily on that one thing so that search engines can categorize it and help the people who are looking for information on that one thing be able to find it in a vast sea of ever-changing information.
For example – say you choose to focus on coffee makers and coffee for coffee drinkers. That’s a niche.
Likewise, you could focus on fitness – which as defined, is a huge niche, and a bit too big to be effective – so you would probably want to narrow that down to something much more specific. Let’s say fitness routines for new moms as one example.
From there you might drill down to weight loss to be more specific – and even more so with “Keto for losing weight” or How to Lose Weight Using Paleo Meal Plans…
You are getting the idea, and that’s what I want you to focus on right now more so than any specific niche – just become familiar with what a niche is and why it matters.
Putting Your Affiliate Marketing Business Plan Together
Here are a few things to keep in mind.
1. Affiliate Marketing is a business. Take it seriously and treat it like a business. Just like any business that is new to you, there will be many things you need to learn and then begin doing consistently and systematically if you intend to be successful. Also, understand this is why MOST people will fail! They seek fast easy money, get rich quick programs and chase other make money online (MMO) schemes and scams that simply do not work instead of just doing the real work needed to build a real business over time.
2. Time – Even once you get the idea and learn the basics and actually put in the hard work to make it work – it will take time before you start to see significant results. How much time? It depends, mainly on YOU. If you do everything you can and work hard – count on 3 – 6 months before you begin to see the needle move much. Then another 6 months to 12 additional months of hard work you should begin to see significant monetary progress within that time frame – if you are actually doing all the work you need to be doing. See why that does NOT work for the get rich quick crowd?
3. Training, Information, Resources, and Support – The easy way is to join me inside Wealthy Affiliate and get a total training program, excellent resources, and a huge active community of support. Do that HERE. The other way is to try to piecemeal everything on your own by Google searches and YouTube and a few eBooks along with a ton of trial and error. That takes far more time and frustration, and I do not recommend that method. A much better choice is Wealthy Affiliate. But in the end, you have to decide for yourself how to get it – but just know you need to learn a lot of new things to be successful in this business.
Once you have decided this is a business you want to build – and you have selected your method for getting information and training, the next step is to start building your first website.
WordPress is the way to go – so you will need a domain name, to choose a WordPress theme, a hosting service – and then get it all up and running so you can start building your content on your site. By the way – if you join Wealthy Affiliate you will have links and guidance on how to do all of this and more!
Content is going to be primarily in the form of articles and posts about the products you have chosen for your niche. One of the most effective ways to go about that is to write reviews and to do so using a template that you can repeat again and again.
So you get your site set up, write your first post, make it live – “Hello World!” so search engines can begin finding it, and then you keep on writing. Article and post after article and post. Keep writing.
As you add more content your posts will begin being found and indexed by Google and others and people will begin finding and reading your content.
In the beginning, don’t worry much about trying to monetize it – or make money in other words – that will come later. Just focus on continuous learning and on continuing to build out your content with more and more articles over time. Every week you need to be adding a new article – if not even more often than that – especially in the beginning.
Once you have your site built, and you have at least 10 good articles posted and ranked in google then comes the next part. Begin adding some affiliate links!
You do that by carefully choosing affiliate programs to sign up with and specific products to promote and market. Once you signup you will be given your own unique links for each one and when you put that link on your sites in your content and someone clicks it – the system will record that you are the procuring cause of that click. Then if they buy the thing within a certain time frame for that click you get credit for it and you get paid.
Pretty cool huh?
For example – this is MY affiliate link to promote Wealthy Affiliate – go ahead and click it now.
You will be taken to a signup page where you can join Wealthy Affiliate if you like – and you can even do so as a FREE member or as a PREMIUM member. Your choice.
If you use MY link then I get credit for you doing so, and if you do become a Premium member then I earn a commission. You can do the same, and then promote Wealthy Affiliate (after you learn what it is and how to use it and why!) and you can get paid too.
With such programs, you can earn ongoing recurring commissions. This is one of my favorite types of commissions to earn.
Another type is where you get paid only once per sale. For example, lest say you are into tiny houses and such things, so you blog about that. Maybe you have built a tiny house or tiny cottage, or tiny camper – and you installed a solar system on the thing.
You could become an Amazon associate/affiliate and put a link to where your readers could buy Renogy solar system kits and or components. When they do you earn a small commission for each purchase – but only once per purchase.
That same concept applies to millions of other products you can choose from to market too. The possibilities are endless – and more are being created or made available to you to market as an affiliate marketer daily.
One word of caution though – NEVER choose to market anything just because it pays a commission to you. Only promote and market products and services that you truly believe are a great VALUE to your readers and followers. If something is no good then skip it and find something else that works and promote that and only that.
I mention this because many new to affiliate marketing get excited and start looking for big-ticket items or items with otherwise high commissions and promote them all like crazy, even when they are junk. Some don’t even bother to research and learn the difference, and instead sign up to promote all kinds of crazy crap – and that is a serious mistake.
Remember – this is a business. Your affiliate marketing business.
As such it requires a big picture approach and more vision. You are working to build something that will bring in more and more money for you over the long haul, and eventually, get much of it to where it is semi-passive and even passive income. The only way to do that right is to do it right to begin with.
That means you need to build quality content – and above all – always honest content that tells the truth about the things you write about.
How to Build Your Own Business Empire
Imagine this… you begin with ONE site focused on one specific niche. You work hard for months to build the site, develop lots of quality content, get it ranked in google, promote it on other social media, and monetize it with quality affiliate links.
Finally, after many weeks and months of hard work, it begins to pay off!
Slowly at first, just a few dollars here and there, but still exciting as the money starts coming in. Gradually it picks up speed and as you write and publish more and more and get better at your craft in the process, the income continues to grow.
What do you do then?
Spend that money and buy something you want? Take a vacation?
You could. But I suggest you don’t do that – not yet at least.
Instead, reinvest the money back into your business. It is time to pick your second niche and start another niche site and repeat the process.
As your revenue continues to grow and as you make more and more money, there are tools and systems you can use – along with specific methods and tactics that allow you to gain more leverage and make more money. Then you can begin using more of that money to hire people – not as employees – but as virtual assistants, writers, designers, and other freelancers who can do many of the things for you – and continue to boost your revenue and your profit even more over time.
Simple? NO – it is not, nor is it easy.
That may be far different from the guru garbage you are used to hearing – and it is different because it is the hard cold truth. It is what you NEED to know, though not what most people want to hear.
I practice what I preach – and I want to build a mutually beneficial long term relationship with you, and I would love for you to buy from me again and again for years to come. Even better I would love for you to share my content with your friends and anyone else you think could benefit from it too.
The only way to build such relationships is to build trust, add value and to the best of one’s ability be very clear about the realities involved with building any business – online or off – affiliate marketing or other business opportunities.
While it is hard work, it is possible and you can make money online over time if you are willing to actually do the work and put in the time required.
As a professional truck driver – you already have the time. Now you know that you can begin using it better to make more money for yourself and your family – and make time that is most often normally wasted time become some of your most valuable income-producing time!
You can systematically Build Your Own Business Empire too, step by step by step – if you dare – and if you will actually do the work to make it happen.
How to Love Your Trucking Career Even More
I don’t know about you, but I love trucking. I always have and much to the surprise and confusion of many other people, I continue to love trucking every day and intend to keep it that way until I die. And who knows, maybe even beyond…
Anyway – one of the things that make sit so much more enjoyable is to have other sources of income production in addition to trucking!
There are other things too, like owing a home with no debt and not having car payments and many other things (all of which I can teach you how to do too if you are interested!) that can be learned and applied that make life so much BETTER.
When you pursue Trucking Business Success you think differently and take far different actins than the typical average truck driver does.
The more income your have, the less debt you have, and the better you are at using systems to help you achieve success and track manage and control your efforts on a daily basis the better life gets – both in trucking – and in all other areas of your life too.
Just remember if you want better results you must become better at doing the right things to help you achieve your goals.