Interview With Marek

“I can’t stress enough how important learning and adapting to the constantly evolving SEO situation is in this business.”

Tell us your name, a little about yourself and how you came to be an affiliate with HN.

My name is Marek Boczarski. I’m originally from Poland but I’ve been living in the UK for the last 10 years. I became a HN affiliate in 2013. At that time I was just starting with affiliate marketing and HN was one of the first networks I joined. Before joining HN, I had bought a coaching program that taught me all the basics of internet marketing. During that training, I was introduced to few affiliate networks and HN was one of them.

 

I am a big fan of proper training and during the last few years I’ve invested in several courses and always learned something to improve my skills and grow my business. Some of these courses were expensive but worth every penny. I guess in this business you get what you paid for. That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn for free as there is a lot of info everywhere, but if you want to progress quickly, it’s better to learn from someone who is already doing well and knows how to teach this stuff.

What’s your favourite thing about being an affiliate marketer?

Freedom – this is definitely my favourite thing about being an affiliate marketer. I was working as an employee for several years and now I really enjoy the freedom of working for myself and on my terms.

 

Another thing I really like is flexibility. I can work any time that suits my lifestyle and from almost any place with internet connection. During the last year I took some long holidays, but I took my laptop with me so I could work when necessary.

 

Obviously, I also don’t mind making good money from my affiliate business!

How do you keep yourself motivated and what drives you to continue working on your affiliate business?

My affiliate business is my only income now so I don’t need any special motivation to work on it! I have a family to care about and provide income for. This is enough to drive me to work on this business.

 

The results I’m getting from my business make me work even more. When you see the results your work is bringing, you are encouraged and inspired to work even more. I know that most people who try to do internet marketing struggle at the beginning when they don’t see any substantial results. Many people quit at that stage, but only those who persevere have a chance to make it in this business.

What gave you the courage to quit your job and become a full time affiliate, and what advice would you give to others considering the same thing?

To be honest, I was considering quitting my job for some time before I actually did it. I wouldn’t say it was a spontaneous decision that required courage. In my case, it was more following the plan. For some time, I was making enough money to replace income from my day job. So when I saved enough to feel comfortable without the day job income, I decided it was the right time to quit.

 

There isn’t one piece of advice for people who want to go full time online, as everyone has a different situation. I think it’s easier for a single person who has responsibility only for him/herself. In this case, I would advise starting doing internet marketing as a side project, but after seeing some results, give it a shot full time as soon as you can.

 

In the case of people like me who have families, it’s better to plan long-term. It’s not an easy way to manage two jobs basically, but there’s no other option in my opinion. Do your affiliate business at night or in any spare time and when you get some results, start reinvesting that money in the business so you can progress faster. When you have some extra money, try to outsource as much as you can as this can really speed up the whole process. When you get to the point where your online income brings enough to live on, save that money for the next few months and then you should be ready to quit your day job and go full time online.

What is your main method of promoting and why do you favour this method over others?

I mainly use SEO to promote my websites and affiliate products. I used to do some PPC in the past, but when I started getting better ROI from SEO I stopped as it required constant management. If you don’t monitor your PPC campaigns you can start losing money instead of making it. PPC could be a great way of making money but at the moment I prefer and concentrate on SEO.

 

I prefer SEO as my method of promotion because it’s something I have learned during last few years and I feel confident doing it. I have the strategies that work for me so I keep doing what brings me results. In the past, I was making a lot of mistakes and was penalised by Google several times. During the last two years, I have seen a steady growth of my business as I try to deliver the search engines what they want. At the moment, Google is not doing any major shifts in the algorithm, so I am able to adapt and modify my approach and continuously rank my websites.

 

I think Keyword Research is a crucial component any affiliate marketer should try to master. Knowing what keywords are right for you to promote is a be or not be in affiliate marketing. I’m using few keyword research tools to get the most comprehensive information on my niche. I think that a proper keyword tool is worth investing in for every internet marketer.

 

The next step is to create great content that naturally includes your chosen keywords. It is getting more and more important to use only high-quality content on your money sites. Google is taking into account factors like bounce rate and the time visitors spend on your pages. That’s why it is very important to deliver content that is interesting for people searching for information in your niche, and at the same time is pleasing Google. I basically don’t use articles shorter than 1000 words anymore, and most of my the best pages have much longer articles on it.

What factors do you take into consideration when choosing a new brand to promote or deciding whether to promote a newly launched merchant?

When I’m deciding about promoting a new product or merchant, the first thing I consider is the niche of the product/merchant. If the new offer is in the niche I already have on an existing website it is a big “yes”. However, if the niche is more specific and I currently don’t have a website that I could promote it on, I check the product and niche keywords to estimate the market potential. If I see that the market has several products and big potential I am inclined to build a new website to promote in this niche.

 

Another factor I would check is potential earnings. Keyword research is essential at this point as you need to establish how much traffic you could get and what would be the selling potential when you rank your site on the first page in Google. Also, the price of the product is very important. You must sell more cheaper products to get the same money you could make from selling just a few expensive ones. Therefore, I prefer more expensive products that pay good commissions.

 

Obviously, I prefer to promote products or merchants from affiliate networks I’m already using and have good experience with. That’s why I am a long time HN affiliate and plan to be for many more years. Only if the product and niche are very compelling to me with good earning potential and low competition level would I try to join and promote from new affiliate networks.

There are many plugins for affiliate marketers to utilise on their websites. Which is your favourite plugin and why would you recommend it to others?

I use several plugins on my websites and all of them do something to improve my website. However, at the moment the one plugin I like the most and use constantly is Yoast SEO. This plugin helps me to optimise my on-page SEO. I write my meta titles and meta descriptions in Yoast and I get immediate feedback on length and keywords from the plugin.

 

You always should write your articles for visitors but you must also optimise them for search engines. Therefore, plugins like Yoast are great help for folks like me. Yoast also has other very useful functions. For example, it can help to get rid of many duplications that are created automatically in WordPress. However, this is not a time and place to write a Yoast manual! I can only recommend to fellow marketers that are not using Yoast already, to take a look at this useful plugin.

Describe your typical working day as an affiliate?

My working day as an affiliate has changed completely since I quit my day job and became a full-time internet marketer. I used to work on my affiliate business mainly at night after work and after my children went to bed.

 

At the moment, my main working time is between 9am to 3pm when my older son is at school. I schedule my work to fit my family life. Now I’m taking my son to school every morning and bringing him back in the afternoon. So I have 5-6 hours during the day to work on my business but sometimes also take more time off when I need to do something else or just spend some time with my wife and younger son. Of course, sometimes when I want to do more stuff quickly I also work at night between 8pm and 12am.

If you were to start your affiliate journey again, would you do anything differently and why?

I wouldn’t do many things differently if I had to start again. I think the process of learning and making progress would be more or less the same. Of course, I would change some details to not make the same mistakes, but I think mistakes are part of the learning process and you just can’t get rid of them. The important thing is to learn how to do everything better and to not make the same mistakes again. That’s why I think constant learning is necessary in this type of business.

 

I would definitely start taking good training from someone who is successful and is doing what I would like to do. Tony Robbins once said, “If you want to make progress, find someone who is already in the position you want to be and model this person”.

 

The concept of starting again with the knowledge I have now is completely different than what people have to go through when they are starting for the first time. I would obviously try to avoid all the mistakes I made previously.

 

I would start with good quality and long articles. When I started I was publishing all different stuff and was penalised by Google. I would also avoid low quality link building and concentrate on gradually building high quality links that are really making a difference.

 

From my experience, I can’t stress enough how important learning and adapting to the constantly evolving SEO situation is in this business. Therefore, my advice for beginners is to learn and try because it doesn’t matter where you are now as every successful marketer has started from zero. It is up to you to get where you want to be, but it is much easier to get there using knowledge of people who are already there.

What are your goals for the future and do you see yourself continuing as an affiliate marketer in years to come?

I want to grow my affiliate business in the coming years. I want to keep improving my existing websites and also build new ones in new niches to diversify my portfolio. I definitely see myself as an affiliate marketer in years to come. I really enjoy all the benefits this type of business provides and can cope with any inconveniences.

 

The one direction I want to go with my business is definitely more outsourcing. At some point, you are not able to actively work on all your projects. At the moment I would be making faster progress if I was outsourcing more. I want to free some of my time to focus more on ideas and research but to delegate tasks like article writing, link building and web design to others.

 

The year 2016 was great for my business as I quit my job and became a full time internet marketer. I also made big progress in my earnings compared to 2015. I wish for myself that 2017 will be even better and that I continuously grow my business to new levels.

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