Meet R.J Weiss, a certified financial planner who started his journey into blogging with his first blog that went up to 100k monthly visitors. Next, he started another blog, The Ways To Wealth, a personal finance blog. Today, it gets 250k pageviews a month and makes $10K/month in profits.
RJ’s 60% of the total income from the blogs comes from affiliate marketing. That sparked our interest and we decided to dig deeper into his affiliate marketing techniques.
In this interview, we will focus on key tips for affiliate marketing beginners, and get RJ’s affiliate marketing insights and content optimization strategies so that you can tweak your processes to increase your success.
Cloudways: Hi R.J. Thank you for taking the time out for this interview. Let’s start with a traditional question – who is R.J. Weiss? What’s his story?
RJ: I’m the founder/senior editor of The Ways To Wealth, a popular personal finance website that has reached over 8 million readers since its launch in 2016.
Before starting The Ways To Wealth, I spent a decade in the financial services industry, working with high-net-worth individuals and business owners.
One of the reasons I started The Ways To Wealth was to share the ideas and concepts I learned as part of that work with a broader audience.
Regular people who are just trying to build a stable financial future have the most to gain from implementing the types of wealth-building strategies I levered in that role, but they don’t always have access to high-quality financial advisors who can point them down the right path. My site helps to fill that gap.
I’ve lived my whole life in the Chicago area surrounded by close friends and family. I’m a husband and a father of three young kids.
Cloudways: How (and why) did your start blogging?
RJ: I started my blogging adventure back in 2009. Like many people at the time, I read The Four Hour Work Week and got inspired to start a lifestyle business.
I’m proud to say that I accomplished that goal. It only took me eight years, and a lot of failures, to get there!
My first website was a way to share what I was learning as I studied to become a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. I ran it for a few years and got some decent traffic, peaking at 100,000 monthly visitors. But because I didn’t know how to effectively monetize the content, I ended up selling the site to focus on other projects.
But I learned a lot from running that site. It taught me that I enjoyed marketing, and it was fulfilling figuring out SEO and other ways to build traffic.
At the time, I was working at a smaller financial services firm with no marketing department. So I kept volunteering for different marketing roles within the company. Things like updating the website, running the blog, managing the email list, and optimizing the site for local SEO.
Running the marketing for the firm taught me many valuable skills over the years. And when the firm started to discuss selling, I launched The Ways To Wealth as a fallback plan in case I didn’t want to work for a big company.
And after having spent a few years learning everything I could about digital marketing, I had a much better idea of what it took to grow a blog.
Cloudways: Your blog “The Ways To Wealth” has scaled up to 250K views per month. Was this just luck or the result of a well-defined and executed strategy?
RJ: I like how Jim Collins describes the importance of return on luck in his classic book Great By Choice. His research found that successful companies weren’t luckier but simply took better advantage of the luck available to them.
When I launched The Ways To Wealth in 2016, the primary traffic driver was Pinterest. At the time, Pinterest was far easier for new publishers to leverage, and the platform sent a significant number of readers to my site.
If it wasn’t for Pinterest and how their algorithm worked back then, I’m not sure The Ways To Wealth would be around today. So, I definitely benefited from the timing aspect.
Besides Pinterest, I started using Facebook Ads to drive traffic early on. As most people know, Facebook Ads have risen in costs each year. As such, this strategy has become a lot more difficult over time.
So, I benefited from the opportunities that were available when I started. However, sometimes half the battle with marketing is finding these little-known pockets of opportunity. This is why I devote time to experimenting with different marketing methods.
Finding just one under-utilized traffic channel is sometimes all it takes to scale a blog fast.
Cloudways: How can The Ways to Wealth be of benefit to the audience that needs to set up a side income to meet household expenses, especially during and after COVID-19?
RJ: We’ve seen an increase in traffic to most of our pages on ways to make money online — especially our page on online jobs, which has always been one of our biggest generators of search traffic. Other pages that have jumped are on making money quickly and high-paying entry-level jobs.
These are not all new pages. In many cases, we’ve spent years revising and refining them to make sure they deliver real value for readers. And I think that work is what has enabled the site to help people during this difficult time.
For these types of keywords, unless you’re a very large website (think Forbes or U.S. News), you’re going to have to work your way to the top of the search results. Google isn’t going to start you there.
And that’s understandable because when it comes to people’s jobs and livelihoods, there’s a lot on the line. Google wants to make sure it’s delivering high-quality, accurate information that has been vetted by readers over time.
Cloudways: What is the importance of affiliate marketing for your blog?
As it drives around 60% of the site’s total revenue, affiliate marketing is quite important!
I find affiliate marketing to be the most natural way to make money with a website. If I work to develop the trust of a reader, and they sign up for something I recommend, it can be a win-win all around.
Cloudways: Our readers, particularly affiliate marketing beginners, would love to know what affiliate marketing tactics you use on your blog.
RJ: My three primary traffic generators are:
- Google search
- Facebook and Instagram ads
The tactics that work are different depending on the platform.
For Google search, I’ve found going after keywords with high purchase intent is critical for driving traffic that converts. Often, these keywords have little search volume. However, they convert, and therefore they often drive more revenue than posts that get more traffic.
For example, writing up a review on a certain product or service may drive only 100 visitors per month. But those visitors are very high intent and thus convert at a high rate.
A few examples are keywords with the terms “review,” “alternatives to,” or “best.” These types of searches occur when someone is actively looking to make a decision.
When it comes to Facebook, I find that what works best is creating very valuable content that gets shared. This is what then brings down your ad costs, which makes it a lot easier to drive profitable traffic.
Pinterest is a great way to build your brand and email list. Certain types of content tend to do well on Pinterest. In personal finance, I’ve found that budgeting, frugal living, and saving money articles perform best.
Most often, these are not high-intent keywords. However, seeing that the person who clicked on Pinterest was interested in this type of content, it’s a good way to get people at the very top of the funnel.
So, in other words, it’s not like on Facebook, where I’m looking for an immediate ROI. Rather, I’m looking to build a long term relationship with the reader.
Cloudways: What are the main areas where affiliate marketers should focus on at the beginning of their careers?
RJ: Long-term, I recommend organic search for most affiliate marketing as a traffic channel. Understanding the ins and outs of SEO is a very valuable skill in today’s world.
So if I were starting from scratch today, that’s where I would devote a lot of my resources. Then I’d create a content plan around articles where I can produce content that’s 10X better than anything else in the market.
Yes, this would be a lot of long-tail keywords. But my mindset would be that I’m training Google to trust that my site does a fantastic job of answering searchers’ questions. Once Google has trust that I am indeed doing a great job of answering searchers’ questions, I’d then go after more difficult keywords.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of great information out there on SEO. For example, Cloudways has some excellent beginner guides. I also often recommend new bloggers read an article a day on Brian Dean’s Backlinko blog until they finish the entire back catalog.
Cloudways: Can an affiliate marketer replace SEO with paid marketing?
RJ: Affiliate marketers can and should test out both methods to see what works best.
There are so many variables in play when deciding what your best source of traffic will be. This includes your niche, your skills, your budget, and the offers you’re promoting.
There are cases where it makes sense to focus more on paid, or to focus entirely on SEO. Some sites, like The Ways To Wealth, benefit from both.
An easy way to answer this question is to see what your competitors are doing.
Use tools like Facebook Ad Library to see whether they’re driving paid traffic. Look on their website to see how much they’ve invested in content. If it’s working for them, it will likely work for you.
Cloudways: How do you see affiliate marketing in the hosting industry? What factors should one consider when selecting a hosting provider to promote?
RJ: The first word that comes to mind is “competitive.”
You have some of the best affiliate marketers around going after terms like “best hosting.” So, driving targeted keyword traffic for hosting-related terms is not a game I’m willing to get into.
That said, when you start a blog, one question you get in your inbox consistently is how to run a successful blog. And this is something I’ve found to be true no matter what you blog about. So, this is an opportunity to create value for your readers by sharing what you know about blogging.
And if you want your readers to actually succeed, you’ll recommend a reputable hosting provider that makes it easy for beginners to get started.
Cloudways: For an affiliate marketing campaign, would you prefer well-optimized content (and SEO) or spending on performance marketing (PPC) campaigns?
RJ: I find the mistake a lot of people make is treating this as an either/or question — that you should be doing either paid or organic.
Why not do both? Both are excellent traffic channels.
I’ve had to learn the hard way what happens when you rely too much on one way to generate traffic. Google changes its algorithm all the time. Facebook changes it’s ad guidelines. Google Ads are always getting more expensive.
When you’re relying on a platform for traffic, it’s important to understand that there are no guarantees. What works today may not work tomorrow.
That said, I’ve found performance marketing to be a great way to test if an offer will do well. If it performs well with paid, it makes sense to invest in SEO — which often takes more resources to start seeing traction.
Cloudways: To what extent are Facebook Ads essential for affiliate marketing?
RJ: Many affiliate businesses have succeeded without Facebook Ads. So, it’s not essential by any means.
But can it be a great traffic channel for a lot of affiliate marketers? I believe so. Facebook Ads are definitely worth testing out.
One of the easiest ways to do so is:
- Go to “Your Published Posts” inside of Facebook Analytics to see which posts on your site’s Facebook Page generated the highest click-through rate.
- Boost those posts to a larger audience (I like to start with 1% lookalike audiences of visitors to that page).
- Even on a budget of $10 a day, you’ll learn whether you can get the ROI necessary to scale the campaign.
Cloudways: What does your typical day look like?
RJ: I’m an early riser, often getting up around 5:30 in the morning. This gives me a few hours before the kids get up to get my mind right. During this time, I’ll journal, think and plan out my day.
My workday then starts at around 8:00, which is the time I’d typically come home after dropping my oldest child off at school. I say “typically” because we’ve been on “stay at home” order in Illinois for a few months now.
I then keep a pretty strict morning schedule of two 90-minute blocks of uninterrupted creative time. It’s here where I’ll do my more focused work, which consists of writing and editing.
At around noon, I’ll get in a workout. As of late, I’ve been doing my workouts in my backyard with my kids — which has been quite fun.
I devote the afternoon to the administrative side of the business. This is when I’ll touch base with affiliate managers, dive into my inbox, and communicate more with my team.
I have a hard stop at 4:30, when my wife sends the kids into my office to pull me away from work.
After playing with the kids for a bit, I enjoy cooking dinner, as I find a lot of relaxation in cooking a family meal.
Then it’s a matter of doing the bedtime routine with the kids and getting to bed myself shortly thereafter, to do it all over again.
Cloudways: Let’s step away from work. What do you do to relax and unwind?
RJ: As I’ve alluded to quite a bit, being a father of three young kids (ages 7, 4, and 1) takes up a majority of my time outside of The Ways To Wealth.
I’m not going to lie: it’s a lot of work. But, as most parents would say, there is a certain sense of fulfillment in the work.
I’m a member at a local CrossFit gym (which is currently closed), but I would typically go to a class at 12:30 to get my out of the house at least once a day. Living outside of Chicago, the weather from late fall through winter doesn’t make it easy to get out of the house, so I find it helpful to have something on my calendar that encourages me to get away from my computer.
We also like to travel a good amount as a family. Last year we went to Florida, Colorado and California. I consider these breaks from work vital in order to keep the daily discipline needed to run a site when at home.
On a daily basis, I enjoy cooking and ending the night reading a good book.
Cloudways: We would love to see your work station. Would you share a picture?
RJ: Here’s a side shot of my desk. I alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day. And the couch is an integral part of the workstation — often used to take a quick afternoon nap.
Cloudways: Who would you recommend we interview next?
RJ: I’d love to see an interview with Bernard Huang, the founder of Clearscope. He doesn’t do many interviews on SEO, but when he does, I definitely listen.
