The Barefoot Affiliate aka Michael Dubhthaigh

If you think there is great potential to earn an online income, you are right, and the most efficient way to do this is by having a blog. 

The potential is also there for many people, some who have been restricted from earning in the mainstream job sector, because of a disability,  lack of education or having a career cut short for whatever reason.

It is not a new concept.  Incomes in developing countries are rising,  as internet connectivity becomes more readily available to more people, and their attention is hooked on electronic devices. 

So the logic should follow that more companies will use affiliates to expand their reach into these countries to gather data and increase sales.

This involves a lot of things, but high on the list is good content and search engine optimization. (SEO). Both need to be of a high standard to reach a wider audience.

The other thing.  It is not hard for a company, even very small ones to set up an affiliate program. 

With more than $16.9 billion (yes Billion),  in online transactions in the last year why wouldn’t they?

Blogging

Affiliate Marketing is used by bloggers to monetize their sites. It doesn’t matter what a blog is about, it can be monetized. 

What do you like?, books, art, music, you might have a business you want to promote.

 I like writing content even whinging sometimes,  but you can blog on anything. The trick is being able to monetize your blog so that it works for you. 

My own beginning into affiliate marketing came about after after a huge downturn in our construction industry, and, about 3 years of bad decisions.

How much can you Make?

This is subjective. How long is a piece of string?

My logo says From Steel Caps to Flip Flops. It didn’t happen overnight though. Nor will it for you. 

Some people can make the transition happen more quickly than others. From my experience it depends on circumstances, time being the most critical. Money is hardly ever the issue.  

Geographic Freedom

There are many beautiful places in the world, what if you were able to have an extended stay and earn enough to cover all your recurring expenses at home.  

To be more precise. Across the world there are large disparities in incomes.

If you were to work in some country you really liked, you would ( most likely), barely earn enough to cover your weekly living expenses. 

Are Young people are at an Advantage

If they have no commitments and plan their trips they have overseas work opportunities to take advantage of.

While the young may have more work opportunities an older couple may be looking at business or retirement opportunities. 

What does this have to with Affiliate Marketing.

Everything I would suggest. Everyone I know travels on a budget (I don’t know any politicians). The same for a business, at home or at  some exotic overseas location, expenses first, then income which takes time to build.

Financial Freedom

You could be miles from anywhere and your affiliate site is still working. That little bit of supplementary income lets me afford things that I never budgeted for. 

I am sure you can relate to my travel analogy above. 

I like to travel, but you can see the point of how money coming from a passive business does help in life,  without the stresses and worries normally associated with living in the modern world. 

Where I was a few years ago.

Things had been good.  I was earning a six-figure income, I had a lot of leave due and had taken a trip to South America.

Machu Picchu had been on my bucket list, ever since reading about it one rainy day when I was about 14. 

But time moves fast, and in the ebb and flow of life, marriage, kids, work, divorce, work, it seemed like a wish never to be fulfilled, until one of my daughters said “Dad, just do it”.

Unemployed

When I returned home many of the contracts, we had tendered on had been cancelled.

The mining industry the area depended on had slumped, and many of the industries that relied upon it, had closed shop and moved on.

After an enjoyable extended holiday, I was now unemployed. The work wanted pages were full of ads by people wanting any sort of work, at any price ( a race to the bottom).  My contact list were as desperate as I was for work.

My generosity for giving at holiday’s or relatives birthday’s diminished to cards only.  The only income I had, came from a few bee hives I kept as a hobby.

Eventually I took a job as a truck driver.  I could have moved to another town, found some building elsewhere. But stuff it.

Working with construction companies is living the life of a Gypsy. Time to stop still do something for me.

Why I did that Is no longer a mystery. We are programmed to have a job. If ( like me ), you have been a salaried or wage employee for a long period of then, it is like an addiction and hard to break free from it. 

A status thing. I have a job.

Working for yourself is deterred by any number of bureaucracies, who demand you have registrations, licences, numbers, and reporting schedules, checks for insurances’s and compliance, even telling you what hours your business can open and shut.

For many wanting to make a small fortune they have to start with a large one. 

I am not about making or losing small or large fortunes. Most of us go through life having abundance for a while then nothing, then somewhere in between. It is what it is. 

Breaking Free of Self Limiting Beliefs

What we seek most is smoothing. Smoothing of lifes ups and downs. Smoothing of finances. It isn’t going to happen. What needs to happen is to change your belief system.

We are encouraged to limit ourselves by government, friends and relatives. We take their opinions and adopt their limiting attitudes. 

That is not good for our mental or physical health.

After nearly 3 years of a mostly nocturnal life of oncoming headlights

The solitude only broken by the occasional chatter on a two way. I arrived home one night, and of the next 3 days, I have only vague recollections of being in a very dark place.

I remember being on my lounge, I don’t remember having the T.V. on, I remember looking at rain through the window, but really I don’t remember much at all over those 3 days.   

On the third or fourth day work called to see why I hadn’t been in, I said “I was not in a good place, it is very dark”.  I was sacked.

Being sacked, as anyone who has lost a job would know, also means you lose the two things we rely on but sometimes take for granted,  Predictability and Stability.

Bees

At the time I was pretty much over everything. Sick of being run ragged working for others. 

So, count the options, it was time to get serious.

I was getting back to near my normal self, and I decided to expand on my Bee Keeping hobby, they had been a good diversion from the daily (nightly) grind and also provided a small side income. So lets up the ante, and get real about this.

I packed my bee tools and suit and went to check on my hives.  It wasn’t good, some hives were struggling with infestations of hive beetle.

The humidity was high and their food stocks were not what they should have been.

I had robbed ( harvested honey ), the hives about a month earlier and everything being good at the time I left only a bare minimum for the bees, with good conditions they will pick their food stocks up in no time. 

After a few hours of cleaning hive beetle traps and setting new bait, clearing the ground around the hives and other maintenance. I went and visited some farmers to see if could put bee hives on their land.

I was feeling good after a productive day.

Anyone who knows anything about Bees knows there is work involved.

They are busy, you need to keep with them. Making hive boxes. the tedious task of making frames and putting on wax, pest control, transporting them from one site to another, harvesting, extracting frames, bottling the honey, storing extracted frames properly.

A couple of weeks later a cyclone tore through the area wiping out my hives, and wrecking the properties where they were situated.

Back between a rock and a hard place, I found work again in the construction industry, but with all  the new rules and legislation my work load was very different to what I had been used to.

Coherent, logical work flows delayed because of obscure permits required for the movement of anything. Plus the money was about the same as when I last worked in the industry.

More work same pay packet.

Net Surfing

Surfing online one night I came across Wealthy Affiliate. I had a look at what they were offering and decided it was not one of the hundreds of scams infesting the online world.

I read their offer of Four Easy Steps to get you Launched Earning an income Online. The link here

I was determined not to let the events of the past few years overtake me again.

A couple of days later I committed to Wealthy Affiliate.

Many of us just go with the flow and never make any real effort to change our self limiting beliefs.

But it was time for me to get serious about changing and getting off the mainstream economic roundabout.

I took predictability and stability for granted.  Like, I had just come back from my adventure in South America and thought I would settle back into a normal routine.

Instead, when I got back home, there was nothing here for me, life had moved on.  Although initially I wasn’t too worried, I could do things on my own behalf until something came along.

Trying something Different

There are many options for earning an income online, I had tried E- Bay in the past with limited success, but the internet had developed a lot more in the years since I had done that. 

The offer of teaching me how to capitalize on any idea, interest, or passion that I have, or what I can do to help others. 

Maybe there is a lesson here. If you have predictability and stability you don’t have freedom, maybe just a limited amount of freedom.

If you have uncertainty, then you are stepping out of your comfort zone into something different, that could lead to unlimited freedom?

A look at Wealthy Affiliate

With Wealthy Affiliate absolutely everything about your learning experience is live and interactive.

You can engage and communicate directly within the lessons and get help with any questions that you may have.

Live Chat, Live Classes, Live Interaction, and Live Expert Help are all big components of my educational experience at Wealthy Affiliate.

It is a very active community that helps me be the best I can possibly be. Everyone deserves to feel good.

Wealthy Affiliate offers 2 free websites which have what every other web host and website builder in the world does not have.   

Training, support, and tools that I absolutely need to achieve greatness.   

This is not the only value I got from wealthy affiliate.  It is full of tips and visual learning and is inclusive of people no matter they live, with one or two exceptions.

People with limited education and IT skills  who have become members of wealthy affiliate,  in a short time have done amazing things 

I am not saying you will become a millionaire, but if you have some income coming in (passively), then you are doing a bit better than most others who are continually on a budget.

Whether it be travelling or just surviving at home.

First I had to decide that I wanted to make a change. But, with more than $6 billion in online transactions last year, blogging  is only going to get bigger.

You don’t have to take my word for it.   See for yourself by clicking here.

Michael.

These Days,

I share experiences good and bad, and work at upgrading my self conscious and redesigning my environment.

TEFLEN and TEASOL accredited.   Contact me.  bravo26au@gmail.com

copyright©2019 The Barefoot Affiliate.

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