How One Affiliate Marketer Bootstrapped His Way to Success

Alec Rose grew up in Cork—Ireland’s second largest city. But since 2015, he’s been living in the UK where he found himself in the corporate world offering financial advice. Building websites as a side project during this period, Alec was able to pursue his online businesses full-time at the end of 2020–effectively establishing him as an accomplished affiliate marketer.

Alec dove head-first into the world of affiliate marketing in 2017. After doing some extensive reading and research, he discovered that the RV industry would be a good, not-so-competitive niche for him to center his first website around and make his debut as an affiliate marketer.

Tips for Bootstrappers

However, when Alec was creating his first website, he found himself bootstrapping; meaning, he didn’t have funds saved to help him grow and scale his RV website business. “I didn’t have enough money to pay writers at that time to outsource stuff,” Alec explains.

So if you are thinking of bootstrapping, Alec recommends having an interest in the area you’re pursuing. “It becomes very difficult to write about random things, like RV showers—which I had no interest in,” he describes. Although he was able to gain a little bit of traction while doing his own writing, he couldn’t build at the scale possible with professional writers, and he wasn’t getting enough money doing his own writing to begin hiring them.

If you’re going to choose a niche or industry that you don’t have a strong personal interest in, it may be more challenging to scale your business. Still, having some money saved up to outsource duties like writing gives you a better chance at creating something effective and successful.

Ultimately, Alec’s RV website business was a failure. Eventually, however, he decided to create another website—one he had more of a genuine interest in—known as Today Testing. He would go on to sell this website for 6 figures in 2021 through FE International.

For more information and guidance about selling an online business, check out our post on preparing your affiliate business for sale.

Affiliate Marketing Tips

“From an SEO perspective, my goal has been to completely cover the topic,” says Alec. If you’re interested in becoming a successful affiliate marketer, perhaps it should be your goal, too. “If you’re writing about a particular software, you [should] write an article on every keyword variation of that software that you can find on Ahrefs,” he explains.

What’s more, “if you type the software into Google, you’ll see related searches at the bottom [of search results].” Alec suggests taking those related searches, writing about each one and internally linking all those articles to your main.

“That’s how I completely dominated the topic,” Alec elaborates. In doing so, Google will start to view you as an expert on the subject.

Alec also recommends other affiliate marketers use the Chrome extension Keywords Everywhere. This handy extension will show the search volume for anything you type into Google—a feature that can be helpful in deciding which keywords to explore in your content.

For Alec’s second website, he found himself with funds earned from recurring affiliate fees and a desire to “hire very good writers and pay a premium for them.” One key hire he made involved a renowned writer who was an expert in sales copy.

The product offering for Alec’s second site was more expensive, so it wasn’t exactly a simple task to convert people into customers. “But if you do convert them, it’s a lot of money,” he explains.

“So I earned that money back from [my writer] within a month or less. [It was] one of those decisions where you’re going to have to spend money to make money,” he says. Therefore, other affiliate marketers should be prepared to make necessary investments that will ultimately create greater income down the road.

Moreover, Alec emphasizes the importance of reaching out to make personal relationships with the software companies that you’re working with.

“I was able to negotiate longer pre-trial periods, and I was able to get our discounts through reaching out [via] email and creating good relations with these people.”

In some instances, Alec had a longer pre-trial period than anyone else online—simply through forming positive relationships with software companies he worked with, which immensely helped him as an affiliate marketer.

“That was critical for some of the platforms I was working with in terms of driving sales. So I recommend reaching out ideally to the affiliate manager because they’re incentivized to help you. But if not, try and find someone on the sales team. If it’s a smaller company, reach out to the CEO,” Alec advises.

When He Realized His Website Was a Success

“I think it was when I implemented pop-ups,” Alec says, that he first realized his site was really picking up traction. After noticing lots of other sites using pop-ups, Alec decided to try them on his own site—a decision that paid off immeasurably.

He used these pop-ups to tell users about free trials, and he claims it was night and day in terms of the sign-ups he was getting.

“For anyone who has websites, there’s serious power in [pop-ups]. You [might] think, ‘why does a pop-up matter to these people reading the article?’” But the truth is it does matter, and Alec found it to be a true turning point for the success of his website.

“At that point, I started making four figures from one software from recurring fees. So that was the point where I knew I would redo this with other software, use the same tactics, use pop-ups and completely cover the topic,” Alec elaborates.

Advice for First-time Website Builders

Ideally you have an underlying interest in the niche you’re pursuing, suggests Alec. “And then I will say you need to outsource tasks as quickly as you can, as your finances will allow. So you’re not going to scale a business that easily if you’re doing everything yourself. You [should] outsource writing unless you really enjoy it,” he says.

Alec also recommends building a team of highly competent workers who will tackle the tasks you don’t have the time or desire to fulfill. So if you’re faced with a task that is painful, like content uploading, you can outsource it quickly—that is, if you’re willing to spend a bit of money. “Which you need to be able to do in this business,” states Alec.

Alec also recommends not expecting to make money early on. “I didn’t make a penny for over a year, but you learn from your mistakes and it’s a bit like going to the gym,” he points out.

“People will want to get results quickly. If they don’t see physical results in the first few weeks, they tend to give up. They need to be prepared to stick it out and look for indicators that are not just purely financial,” he describes. 

Instead of focusing on income early on, Alec recommends looking for increases in impressions on your site, making page one on Google, etc.

“You just have to be leaning into those things in the early stages because it is very difficult to make money really quickly from something that you have no experience with,” he advises.

Advice for Entrepreneurs Who Want to Succeed in the Content Space

Coming from his background as a bootstrapper, Alec says it’s critical to be aware of shiny object syndrome—or jumping from one business to another very rapidly.

“When you’re first looking at online businesses, it can be kind of exciting to see there’s so many different ways of making money online,” Alec points out. So it’s critical to not get easily swept up in one business ideal, followed by another and another.

“You just need to focus on one thing. Because there are a lot of ways to make money online, so just try and focus on one thing and become an expert in that field,” he states.

“I would proceed with a bit of caution and progressively build up towards leaving your job,” he advises. “I moved to 4 days a week in my corporate job, giving me a full workday to focus on my business which was critical to my website’s growth.”

Additionally, if you’re building a site business as your main source of income while working a full-time job, be prepared for your schedule to change and for sacrifices to be made. “This means sacrificing things that you used to do. For me, it was watching TV after work or watching a football game. So you just need to assess how you’re spending your time,” says Alec.

Ideally, you’ll have some money saved up before turning to your online business full-time. But Alec is proof that bootstrapping can pan out successfully. If you’re interested in becoming a successful affiliate marketer, there is ample advice and inspiration to be found in every phase of Alec’s ever-unfolding story.