7 Quick & Long-Term Streams of Income – Part 3

Idea number four, to help increase your income, is being an Amazon affiliate. So the concept here is that you link to books, products, and other things you like.  Amazon gives you three to ten percent. It could be that something you just add on your counseling blog.  You write a blog post with fifteen products that help your mental health during the coronavirus. Then you link to different products within there. You always want to put in there something like:  “there are Amazon affiliate links within here, where we get a small percentage. This helps us stay afloat during this rough time. Thanks so much for using our affiliate link. ” You want to make sure you use something to disclose it. I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago about the refrigerator that I had in my lobby. It was one of those mini-fridges. It had a cool glass front.  I used an affiliate on the blog post.  A couple of people bought refrigerators through my affiliate link. From that, I got a big five percent of the cost of the refrigerator. So if you’re talking about the Gottman’s work, or if you’re talking about other books you know, you can link to that.  The cool thing is, for 24 hours everything else they buy on Amazon you get a percentage of. So if they end up buying a whole bunch of puzzles for their kids or a whole bunch of other things, while they’re hanging out at home, you then get a percentage of that as well.

The time to implement it takes about a day.  I’ll walk you through how you apply to be an Amazon affiliate. In a typical month, when we aren’t aggressively promoting something that’s not our primary way of bringing an income, we typically make thirty to fifty dollars a month. But we are not active at all in doing this. We’re not actively writing blog posts about it.  It’s more if we recommend a book we’ll put that link in there. But if you were aggressively doing that, who knows, with people ordering so much on Amazon, you could get so much more. If you’re active in your blog or Instagram, especially now, it could be much much more.

Let’s talk about how you would do that. First, you gotta sign up for Amazon affiliates. If you scroll to the very bottom of Amazon, you’ll see the become an affiliate button. You will apply there. Once you apply, you will have the ability to make links. Then, for instance, if I’m on the Gottman’s Eight Dates book, once you’re an affiliate, up at the very top it pops up. It asks if you want to get a link for this book or do you want to have the actual product. The product is where it looks like you’re buying it from Amazon.  I think that looks kind of cheesy on a blog so we always just do the link.

Then you’re gonna create great content. You will write blog posts, Instagram Stories,  and do Facebook lives. You will also trend jack, and point to your page.  Trend jacking is where you take a certain thing that is already trending and use that trending topic to point back to something from your perspective. Right now trending might be coronavirus or homeschooling. You’d say homeschooling, you’d use that hashtag, and you might write something from your perspective. From the psychological perspective, that you come from, write a blog post about these things that are trending. Maybe every day for two weeks you write a blog post on something that’s already trending.  That will then get the attention of the media. You can then go in to help a reporter out and you can pitch yourself to national media and give quotes. It’s gonna help you in a number of different ways. On your blog post use your affiliate link to the products. For example having a blog post titled:  “Seven Kids Books to Reduce Stress and Anxiety”, those are things that people want anyway. They’re already purchasing those types of things, so you might as well get a referral. From that, then promote your post.  Grow your audience on Facebook and Instagram with SEO.

Also, use Google snippets. Google snippets are when you type in how to change a tire on your car, you’ll see that little snippet of: first stop your car, second use a jack – it’ll raise your car,  third take the tire off, fourth put the new tire on, fifth reduce the jack down.  Learning how to write in a way that Google will say, “oh I want to use that as

a snippet” is really good. Just the other day I was talking to someone, I believe and he’s an expert from SEM Rush,

around Google snippets. He said “how to reduce anxiety, there’s no one that has a Google snippet for that”. I thought “how is that not a Google snippet yet”. So doing that you’re gonna attract more people.  Always think in terms of the pain and the people.

Time to implement is usually two to four weeks. This could be an eCourse, ebook or automated email

sequence. Typically income, I would say if you’re charging a hundred dollars for this eCourse, ebook, or email sequence, if you get five people per month. that’s an extra five hundred dollars.

First brainstorm.  If clients came highly prepared for work with you, what would do that?  This can be a bonus for

clients or a down-sell if they don’t convert into doing counseling. Think of all the people that reach out to you for counseling that don’t follow through with it. I would say for most practices at least half of their phone calls are people that end up not working with you. If you can find a way to down-sell them into something else that’s a great way to grow your income and to still help people.

Next you’re gonna create the content. Are you making an eCourse, email sequence, or an e-book? Brainstorm the main points. Think about the five to seven core, pillars we might call them. Brainstorm those main points. Ask clients what you wish they knew before therapy and start creating. Then promote the idea. Focus on your original story or origin story of how people came unprepared. Connect with Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, admins, podcasters, and other influencers. People are craving experts right now to give content, especially online. It is so important to be able to get that good content out there.