Colin Dijs is the first interview in our Super Affiliate series. Colin has built up a great reputation as an affiliate marketer who not only produces educational videos on YouTube but also runs a very successful affiliate marketing business. Find out how he quit his call center job to go on to earn over 250k per month with affiliate marketing.
Where are you from and where are you based now? I’m from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I used to live in Canada for about 2 years when I finished my Bachelor’s degree in International Business.
How old are you? 27
When and how did you get into affiliate marketing, and what were you doing before? I’ve always been involved in entrepreneurship-style activities. My biggest success was around 17 years old when I bought World of Warcraft trading cards from the USA, had them shipped to Amsterdam, unboxed them for YouTube videos and sold the valuable “loot” cards. This made me about 700%-2000% ROI per shipment by doing calculations based on the odds of pulling a “special” loot card.
While finishing my studies I drop-shipped iPhone cases, had a kids smartwatch store and did Print-on-Demand. Mainly, with the e-commerce activities, I used Facebook Ads and did 10k in sales in my first month. But I realized after the first month that I hated dealing with “annoying” customer requests and quit e-commerce.
One of my connections got me into affiliate marketing with Facebook Ads. I hit it off quite quickly, with conversions on the first day! I replaced my income from my day job and then quit when I had a stable 10k revenue per month. Thereafter, my results accelerated quickly.
Tell us about one of your biggest successes as an affiliate marketer? As soon as I quit my job and could fully dedicate myself to this business instead of working 52 hours a week in a call center, the results went up dramatically. From 10k to 100k to 250k the following month.
Tell us about why you started your Youtube affiliate tutorials and what kinds of things do you feature? To be 100% real with you I heard there was a lot of money to be made with info products and they had insane profit margins. I added it to my business as an additional income source. However, that being said, I knew the market was huge as there is little to no people showing you the actual methods being used, if they do at all it’s extremely outdated information.
The YouTube thing grew into something beyond my imagination and now in 2020, it’s grown into a full education company called “Agency 3980” where we teach affiliate marketing. All verticals, all traffic sources, I have an entire team dedicated to daily coaching for students. It’s been an amazing experience so far for us as well as for the students.
How do you promote your tutorials to affiliates? It’s all organic traffic from YouTube and a huge part is word of mouth.
Tell us all about Deberoo… Deberoo is an affiliate marketing software company where we invested in its development throughout 2020. It will go live on January 1st, 2021. The Deberoo Suite is a full-stack affiliate marketing platform. All required software is in one place, landing page builder, tracker, spy tool, cashflow manager and many more useful tools.
What’s the best piece of advice you can give to a newbie wanting to start in affiliate marketing? Make a plan and follow it. Don’t just “try” something, just do it, commit to your goals and work your ass off. Results will NOT come overnight. Anyone telling you it’s “easy” to make money online with affiliate marketing is full of shit. However, there are some guidance materials like my tutorials that can make the path a little easier. All in all, business is hard and that makes it great as so many people are not willing to do what it takes. Therefore you get exceptional rewards if you push yourself.
Do you have any tips for what will be big in 2021? My team and I are already preparing all the materials for Quarter 1 2021. The nutra vertical will be booming! It’s a huge opportunity every year to get people to buy through their newfound goals.
Being so successful, tell us a bit about what your lifestyle is like being a Super Affiliate… I’m not your standard affiliate I’m afraid. I see myself more of a businessman building a business empire. I don’t party, I work. I’m still young and want to give it all I have right now. I work Monday to Saturday, six days a week. With Sunday off. Furthermore, I go to the gym 5 times per week. I like to wake up at 5 am so that I’m in the office way before the employees come in. I can really brainstorm and work hard during those first 2 hours. As soon as the employees come in, things get chaotic and meetings go back to back.
Starting out as an affiliate and then growing my business into a 26-man team has been a real struggle but very rewarding. Looking back to two years ago, when I was a single affiliate, the journey has been great. Whether you want to be a single affiliate, make as much money as you can to party and live the dream, live in Bali or Bangkok or you want to build a business empire like myself. Affiliate marketing can offer you that opportunity!
Find out more about Colin
Colin Dijs on Youtube
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