I have a question for you. And, he has decided to reveal his secret of success.Can you make a living working online on your terms?
He was once like a lot of beginners - clueless and uncertain
The answer is a big YES - and here's the proof! about his future. However, with hard work and dedication, he
achieved what many dream of.
Today, he is a proud affiliate of Cloudways, a professional online
course developer, and a digital guru who is helping others tap
In online business, ideas can be a hit or a miss. You can't be cer- their potential for success and growth.
tain if you are going to make it big.
Although Duston gives credit to his father (and his business)
This is an inspirational story of Duston McGroarty, an affiliate for introducing him to digital marketing - we believe it was the
marketer who recently made more than $30,000 by selling his recession of 2008 that truly changed his mindset.
online courses in just 50 days.
Duston & Rusty Ol' Direct Response Marketing This was the first ad that Duston's father created. The price Entering the Affiliate Industry: Finding aof running the ad was $150 and it brought in $5,000 in just a Product to Sellmonth. This was way back in 1980. It was the first lesson of direct
response marketing (DRM) for Duston's father. Around 2013, Duston began dabbling into affiliate marketing.
During those early days, he didn't have any products of his ownHe introduced Duston to DRM when he was just 10 years old. to sell. What he had was the two skills any person needs for suc-After high school, he worked in the lumber industry as a sales cess in affiliate marketing:representative. The 2008 recession forced many of the lumber
companies to go out of business. Duston knew it wouldn't be • He was good at building email lists.
long before he would have to look for another opportunity. He • He knew how to drive traffic to a website.
decided to join his father's business. These are two basic skills every marketer must learn in order to
"My dad had a very successful online business in the gardening be successful in the affiliate game.
niche. He offered me a full-time position overseeing the internet
side of his business,' which I gladly accepted," says Duston. The Secret Strategy That Always Worked
For Duston, what worked was the opposite of what other mar-Over the next couple of years, he learned all there was to learn keters were already doing. Thus instead of just driving trafficabout digital marketing and making money online. There wasn't straight to offers and hoping to earn a commission, he focuseda book he didn't read on digital marketing at that time. He spent on building an email list first. He sent his subscribers useful,every waking hour learning digital marketing tactics. relevant content, and then, when he pitched an affiliate product,
they bought it. In marketing terms, we call it 'warming up' the lead. The strate- website from scratch?
gy banks on the fact that after receiving value from the source,
the subscribers trust the source and are more likely to buy the Duston did a detailed review of his courses and found out that
offered products. 'Every single one of my courses completely skipped over the
"beginner stuff".
Duston knew that lead generation and email list building are two
processes that pay off in the long run. He used these processes Finding the Gap In the Marketin different niches including finance, insurance, and home ser- It was a new opportunity for Duston. He hadn't done anything tovices. cater to this 'beginner level' audience, and surprisingly neither
has any other trainer. It was the GAP that he could fill.Selling What Matters: Affiliate 30-DayCourse He jotted down all the steps a beginner has to go through for
Duston noticed the lack of training courses that focus solely on setting up an affiliate website. "[...] purchasing a domain name,
affiliate email marketing. "I created a few courses on this topic pointing the domain to your web host, installing WordPress,
but there was something that even I had missed," Duston told adding and customizing a WordPress theme, setting up an email
Cloudways. autoresponder, adding an email form to your website, and so
much more… all while keeping the website and email list focused
In August 2019, one of his email subscribers wrote to him and on promoting affiliate products."
asked a question that completely threw him in a loop. Thequestion was this: did any of his courses included step-by-step
instructions on how to set up every single aspect of an affiliate The final product? Affiliate Ground Zero (AGZ) 30-Day Boot fective FREE traffic strategies that provide quick, high-quality
camp traffic to brand new affiliate sites.
Ingredients for a Popular Online Course
Duston came up with the idea of a 30-day virtual boot camp
idea by researching the reasons behind the student churn rate.
He found out that most of the students faced issues while imple-
menting what they learned.Finding an Ideal Audience
Next, Duston had to find the perfect audience for his course. "They were getting overwhelmed by the huge volumeSince it was a course for beginners, anyone who was interest- of information I was throwing at them,"ed in learning about affiliate marketing was the right fit for the Duston said.
course. The ideal student profile would be someone wants to
create and launch an affiliate website from scratch in just 30 Each video lesson in Duston's course ranges from 25 to 90
days. minutes and includes a homework assignment to be completed
before moving to the next lesson.
While developing the course material, Duston asked several
experienced marketers to go through the training material and Dividing the course up into 30 "bite-sized" chunks, not only al-
they loved it! lowed Duston's students to understand more, but also to imple-
ment what they had learned without feeling overwhelmed.
The course's USP played a vital role in the success - three ef- Overcoming the Challenge, One Step at a For Duston, the biggest attraction was the advance payment. He
said,Time
Duston had just one challenge when it came to marketing the "One of the coolest things about running a 30-day bootcourse. How to make it appealing to both beginner and experi- camp like this is, you can get paid in advance to createenced affiliate marketers. it! Even cooler than that, you only need to create one video lesson per day. That's exactly what I did. I startedThe challenge was to include the content that was right for both out creating the Day One video lesson the day before Isets of learners. The content must hold the attention of the ex- released it, to get a bit of a head start."perienced without being too "dense" for beginners. he exclaimed.
Recipe for a Million-Dollar Course Later, he decided to create the videos the same day they were
released.Ingredients for a perfect course
Download Here
The MONEY KEEPS POURING IN… • Send one video each day
• Each video to be of 30min to 90min The best advantage of creating a course is the recurring income • Use Teachable or Udemy or a similar platform even when you are done creating the course. It is a PASSIVE • Use screen capture tool for easy creation PIPELINE. • Use clickfunnels for site landing page
So what are the lessons of this success story? Lesson #1: What makes people Email lists are assets
BUY - Value Trumps Price Email lists are perhaps the most important asset of an affiliate
marketer. You can use these lists to promote your own products,Duston says that only 20% of people make decisions based on affiliate products, even make them available to other marketersprice. The rest give importance to value. According to him, per- for advertising their product through your email list.ceived value trumps price any day of the week.
Lesson #3: Choose the Right FitHe says, "in a niche like affiliate marketing, or anything related
to making money, it's fairly easy to justify charging a premium Duston already had an audience. Do you think he could haveprice. Just compare how much money they could potential- achieved this magnitude of success if he was not able to find thely earn from the knowledge they gain from going through the right audience for his course?course."
Duston's Method for finding the right audienceLesson #2: Email Works the Best The majority of Duston's email subscribers found him by search-
The surprising thing is that Duston used only one channel to ing for something on Google and then landing on his blog.
promote this course - EMAIL. "I have over 100 blog posts on there now with topics ranging
Practice what you preach from affiliate marketing to making money online to driving traffic
and more," so, to promote the launch of AGZ, Duston only sentHe first developed an email list of about 4,000 subscribers. between 8-10 emails spread out over 12 days.These were the people who bought his course. And, that's what
he taught in his course. Emails Should Not Be Promotional Whereas Duston earned a handsome sum selling his course,
becoming a Cloudways affiliate virtually guaranteed him moreDuston's emails are not typical promotional emails. They're more income and success.story-based, 'kinda quirky', and unconsciously persuasive. You
can see his email newsletter archive here. Check out for yourself.
Each email links out to an order form where users could register
for the course. Duston also uses social proof purchase notifica-
tions on all of his order forms. It adds a sense of security be-
cause they can see other (similar) users trust the product.
Duston Boosted His Earnings withCloudways Affiliate Program As you can see, he has earned over $2,000 in just two months
after launching the course.
"I feel like I've literally tried every hosting company out there and
Cloudways is hands-down the best one I've ever used. I'm very,
VERY picky about the affiliate products I promote. I won't just
promote anything. It has to be something I use myself and truly
believe will help other people. Cloudways is exactly that," DustonSource: Join Cloudways Affiliate Program says about the Cloudways managed hosting solution. As an affiliate marketer, there are certain aspects Duston looks You can see a screenshot of his lesson below. In the "Homework"
for in a web host. For him, the most important factors are speed section, he mentions his affiliate link and promo code.
and page load time. The success of any affiliate campaign, es-
pecially if it is running paid ads, depends on the speed and load
time of the website.
Apart from speed, Duston wanted the flexibility of adding and
removing sites on the go, creating new servers when needed and
choosing the right server configuration for his projects.
"If I'm setting up a new WordPress blog, I want my server to be optimized to run WordPress to its fullest potential," Duston explained his reason for choosing Cloudways. Screengrab of Duston's Course Affiliate Ground Zero Bootcamp
Why Cloudways Affiliate Program? Moreover, to make more profit, he has segmented the course
Duston's training course is centered around building an affiliate into multiple tiers.
website. The Day 4 video lesson is titled 'Build Your Foundation'
and that's where he shows how to set up a website with Cloud-ways. Duston's Students Love Cloudways
Here's what one of Duston's students has said about Cloudways.
"My website would go down anytime I sent an email to my list
that included a link to my website. That's never happened, not
even once, with Cloudways. Cloudways delivers on its promise
EVERY SINGLE TIME!
The biggest thing his students like about Cloudways is that it
works exactly as expected. His students reported problems with
his previous hosting affiliates, but after joining Cloudways, there
Source: AGZ screengrab are not any complaints.
If Duston's customers opted for the $497 upsell, he requires them Result: More Gains for Everyoneto sign up for Cloudways using his affiliate link and then add him
as a team member to their server. As a result, he would earn from The boot camp format delivers an experience that eases knowl-two streams - one, the upsell, and second, the affiliate commis- edge assimilation and offers information that isn't found any-sion from Cloudways. where else online. Duston says,"I can rest easy knowing they're set up with Cloudways Duston says,
as their web host. It's a recommendation I feel 100% "I've yet to see another affiliate marketing course confident making to all of my students." geared towards building email lists and delivered in 30-day boot camp format like this." But was his course actually WORTH IT? early on a campaign.
That's where the social proof comes in. • Every step of the process is a learning experience. You take something away from each experience and improve incremental-
ly every time.
• Don't create courses based on what you THINK people want
to learn. Instead, ASK them what they want to learn first, and
then create your course around that.
• Choose a hosting partner that you LOVE! Duston chose
Cloudways as he has tried several hosting providers and Cloud-
ways is hands-down the 'best' one he has ever used.
In just 24 hours, his student added 258 subscribers to his system. Duston's Earning Report: Course EarningsAnd, what happened next? A BOOMING CONVERSION RATE OF + Cloudways Commission73%!!! In the last two months, Duston has earned over $30K by just
selling a single course.Lessons for Affiliate Marketers: WhatDuston Wants You to Know
• One of the biggest mistakes affiliates make is giving up too His Cloudways affiliate earnings were $2,000 that he earned
when his students started using the Cloudways managed hosting
platform.
Special thanks to Duston McGroarty for his time in answering our
questions in detail and for the picture-proof of his earnings.
If you are interested in learning more about Duston, visit his
website.
The total value shown above is from the initial sale of his course.
He made 78 sales at $297/each. The rest was from his upsells,
where his students asked him to build a website for them. He
sold 16 of those packages at $497/each.
Download Here
