Building an Affiliate Marketing Empire with Justice Wordlaw IV [TDI015]

Today we’re interviewing Justice Wordlaw IV, an affiliate marketer who has been able to build a really nice online income for himself and his family (and has a pretty cool name too).

Unlike many of our other guests on The Daily Interview, he doesn’t really like blogging.

In fact, he believes that paid traffic and e-mail list subscribers are a much faster and more effective way to promote a product.

Justice certainly knows what he’s doing, and he doesn’t hold back his advice in this interview.

Check it out (and leave us a comment when you’re done!). XZ7KKDBGWEUU 

(As always, questions from The Daily Interview are in bold.)

You’re an affiliate marketer, and you have a great blog over at JusticeWordlaw.com where you discuss a lot of great internet marketing tips and strategies. You’ve had a lot of success both with your blog and with other projects, but I want to learn more about how it all began.

Tell us about your journey – how did you get into internet marketing, and what’s currently the primary focus of your business?

I started by just coming across this guide on affiliate marketing and how to make money online. This report shared some ideas on creating a website, getting visitors and how to close those sales. I realized very quickly that I could make a career out of this if I really wanted to. That I could really make some serious money with affiliate marketing and building an empire online quickly and easily.

In 2013, my focus was just understanding how to build a more profitable email list and really focusing more on helping others duplicate what I’ve already done. Teaching people what to do and what not to do. Building a bigger and better email list was very important for me to learn because I knew that the money was in the list but also I could build a better relationship with my email community more than using any other platform.

What has been your greatest success (or successes) so far? 

Some of my successes would have to be:

1. Creating 3 Amazon Kindle books and averaging 2-3 downloads per day over the entire year of 2013 with each book. I never really understood automated income and downloads until I started to publish Amazon Kindle books.

I learned that if you put out quality consistent information and really have that information stand out and be useful to people they will just purchase it consistently.

2. Growing my income with one business to over $8,000/month in residual income by focusing my attention on top tier affiliate marketing programs. What I mean by that is not just promoting products that offer a low end commission of 30% off of a $97 product, but focusing my attention on higher end products that are $500 or more.

I realized if I focused more of my attention on that I would be able to hit my goal of $10,000 per month quicker and I did. I stopped pitching a lot of lower end products and focused on higher end products. I didn’t get as many product sales but I found the target market that I was interested in.

My value per customer increased to $386.41 over the lifetime of a customer. I’ve never had a value be that high before in my affiliate marketing career. So each time I had someone sign up with my offer on average I knew I was going to make at least $386.41 per customer which was an amazing feeling.

When it came down to traffic I started out using Facebook ads, but soon Facebook just started to deny every ad I put up because they thought it was a “work from home” ad and my justicewordlaw.com domain actually is booted from their platform.

I can’t even share blog posts. So I shifted my attention onto banner ads and solo ads which was the best decision I could do because I started to see quality traffic coming in on a consistent basis.

I focused on purchasing banner ad spots from top affiliate marketing blogs and driving that traffic to 2 separate landing pages and seeing which ones convert. The highest CPC (cost per click) I’ve had to pay so far was $0.87, which wasn’t so bad, and the lowest was $0.37.

This is my main source of traffic now. I only use Facebook ads for more engagement when I do videos and I want more traffic like that. I barely put links to offers on Facebook at all now. Most of my selling is done through webinars, email,, or whatever that company I’m promoting is using.

That’s really cool that you had the realization to go after higher value products as a way to grow your monthly revenue. Do you find there are different strategies when targeting a $500 product vs. a $97 product, as an affiliate? If so, what’s the main difference?

The one difference I found with targeting higher end products versus lower end products is the traffic.

You have to send more traffic to the offers to really get some attainable conversions. Your email ad copy has to be a lot different when targeting higher end products. You really need to be truthful and if you don’t have those products then don’t pitch them.  When you’re sharing information about them, and why people should buy from you instead of other people, they will know if you’re lying or not.

I just find it a bit boring now targeting lower end products. The refund rate is a lot higher and most of the people have the shiny ball syndrome and never take it seriously.

Targeting higher end products give you serious candidates that really want a $10,000 per month income. I’m not saying all people are like this and people that don’t purchase higher end products are lazy asses. I’ve just done my research.  I’ve been doing this for 4 1/2 years full time, and I’ve seen the same trends over and over again.

To make money with higher end products is very simple. Learn how to push multiple areas of traffic > solo ads, Facebook ads, Bing/Yahoo ads, banner advertising, magazine co-ops and learn how to write good honest ad copy and just keep increasing your knowledge. Maybe throw in some bonuses from time to time if you want to (but you don’t need to).

All successful people stumble at least a few times along the way. Which failure was most significant for you, and what did you learn from it?

My biggest failure I would say would be getting almost every ad I put on Facebook denied and then having my own personal domain blocked as well.

For an affiliate marketer, getting your traffic denied on one of the largest platforms is hard to consume. I learned that you shouldn’t put all of your traffic into one source (even though I knew that, it was still a shock) and to really diversify it all.

So, I purchased myself a really good camera (Canon T3I) and started to take good quality videos with audios – I started to leverage YouTube and Facebook’s media side of the business as well.

I learned that you must learn how to build your email list from three traffic sources. Never put all of your energy into one or two traffic sources. Now, I’m not a big blogger (because I just don’t like it) so you have to understand my traffic primarily comes from paid traffic.

Even if I use a free platform like YouTube or Facebook, I still use their advertising platform to grow my content faster than others.

4) What has your experience been like writing Kindle books? How does it compare to some of your other sources of income online?

Writing Kindle books has been a learning experience and I’ve enjoyed it all. I can honestly say writing these books I’ve used everything that I’ve learned in affiliate marketing so far.

I don’t really use Kindle for the income part of it on the front end, because it’s not that much money. Maybe if you have a huge audience, but for beginners, it’s very small.

I focus more on the quality content and the offers that I pitch within the book itself for the various affiliate deals that I promote that go along with the content that I’m sharing.

Since I published my first book I’ve been averaging between $25-50 per week. Sometimes it’s lower or higher depending on the time frame of the year. This past holiday season I was averaging between $75 to $100 per week because I consistently pushed my books with advertising and leveraged all the promotions that Amazon offered for authors to maximize on all of the tablets people were receiving for the holidays.

Let’s take a step back and look more generally at affiliate marketing and making money online. I know you have a lot of great advice to share, but If you had to take your best advice and put it into one sentence or phrase, what would that be?

Focus on building your email list for the first year. Be consistent and screw everything else! [Click here to tweet this]

What are your favorite online resources? 

• Evernote: I’m an Apple geek and like to have access to my notes everywhere I go, because I take myself on weekly field trips to see and watch what retailers are doing for their offline marketing. I like to see if I can incorporate that into my business. Using Evernote has really helped me stay connected between all of my devices that I own so I’m always in sync.

• GotoWebinar: I know a lot of people love Google Hangouts, but to me they seem childish when you’re asking someone to spend $1,000 on a product. That’s just my personal opinion. I like the program and how I can depend on this software to really be there when need be.

• HandBrake: I’ve been using HandBrake a lot in 2013 for converting large video files into smaller ones. I would be lost without this service.

• Vimeo Pro: The clean look of Vimeo is the best. Using YouTube sometimes when you want stand alone videos to me just doesn’t look right. The free version is great too but I like having my videos quicker. Plus it’s a tax deduction anyway so why not upgrade.

• Legal Zoom: I’m no lawyer or CPA but get yourself incorporated because when the money starts to roll in, you don’t want Uncle Sam digging in your pockets. You don’t hear this a lot because most people don’t take this seriously. But even before you start making money, you should take getting incorporated seriously. I didn’t for a very long time and it hit my pockets. (Note from The Daily Interview: Talk to a CPA first to see what’s right for your business!)

For someone who is just starting out creating a blog or attempting to get into affiliate marketing, what advice would you offer? What do you wish someone told you about when you first started?

I will tell you to find yourself a mentor that’s not an asshole, and pay them to teach you everything they know for 6 months.

Listen to what they have to say and do it within 7 days of them telling you. Don’t think your way is the right way, even if they seem crazy too. Just follow their direction.

If you can’t find a mentor, I recommend finding courses on that teach you how to build traffic (paid traffic primarily because it’s quicker), how to write ad copy, and how to find profitable products to pitch. Don’t worry about this blogging crap it’s a waste of time and you don’t need it. You need an income, not a WordPress blog. (Note from The Daily Interview: To each his own, of course…but we happen to like blogging a lot. 🙂 )

Any last advice?

Have fun and stay consistent with this journey. You’re crazy to think you can make money online and I love it.

Continue to think crazy and hang around crazy people. Go to 3-4 events per year and meet people.

You don’t need business cards – just go hang out with people. Even in your neighborhood, just get offline and hangout. Making money online is fun when you understand why you’re doing it in the first place. You might think it’s for the money, but it’s not.

I do this because I love spending time with my daughters and just hanging out with them. It’s that simple. So I choose to work my business like a corporation because I see the benefits of doing so.

Finally, where can people find you online?

Website: http://justicewordlaw.com/

Thanks for answering our questions, Justice! You’ve given a lot of great tips here (even if we may disagree about the benefits of blogging).

What has your experience been with affiliate marketing and/or paid traffic?  Leave a comment below!