https://www.cloudways.com/en/

I have a question for you.

Can you make a living working online on your terms?

The answer is a big YES - and here’s the proof!

In online business, ideas can be a hit or a miss. You can’t be cer-

tain if you are going to make it big.

This is an inspirational story of Duston McGroarty, an affiliate

marketer who recently made more than $30,000 by selling his

online courses in just 50 days.

And, he has decided to reveal his secret of success.

He was once like a lot of beginners - clueless and uncertain

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

their potential for success and growth.

Although Duston gives credit to his father (and his business)

for introducing him to digital marketing - we believe it was the

recession of 2008 that truly changed his mindset.

Duston & Rusty Ol’ Direct Response Marketing

This was the first ad that Duston’s father created. The price

of running the ad was $150 and it brought in $5,000 in just a

month. This was way back in 1980. It was the first lesson of direct

response marketing (DRM) for Duston’s father.

He introduced Duston to DRM when he was just 10 years old.

After high school, he worked in the lumber industry as a sales

representative. The 2008 recession forced many of the lumber

companies to go out of business. Duston knew it wouldn’t be

long before he would have to look for another opportunity. He

decided to join his father’s business.

“My dad had a very successful online business in the gardening

niche. He offered me a full-time position overseeing the internet

side of his business,’ which I gladly accepted,” says Duston.

Over the next couple of years, he learned all there was to learn

about digital marketing and making money online. There wasn’t

a book he didn’t read on digital marketing at that time. He spent

every waking hour learning digital marketing tactics.

Entering the Affiliate Industry: Finding a Product to Sell

Around 2013, Duston began dabbling into affiliate marketing.

During those early days, he didn’t have any products of his own

to sell. What he had was the two skills any person needs for suc-

cess in affiliate marketing:

• He was good at building email lists.

• He knew how to drive traffic to a website.

These are two basic skills every marketer must learn in order to

be successful in the affiliate game.

The Secret Strategy That Always Worked

For Duston, what worked was the opposite of what other mar-

keters were already doing. Thus instead of just driving traffic

straight to offers and hoping to earn a commission, he focused

on building an email list first. He sent his subscribers useful,

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-

gy banks on the fact that after receiving value from the source,

the subscribers trust the source and are more likely to buy the

offered products.

Duston knew that lead generation and email list building are two

processes that pay off in the long run. He used these processes

in different niches including finance, insurance, and home ser-

vices.

Selling What Matters: Affiliate 30-Day Course

Duston noticed the lack of training courses that focus solely on

affiliate email marketing. “I created a few courses on this topic

but there was something that even I had missed,” Duston told

Cloudways.

In August 2019, one of his email subscribers wrote to him and

asked a question that completely threw him in a loop. The

question was this: did any of his courses included step-by-step

instructions on how to set up every single aspect of an affiliate

website from scratch?

Duston did a detailed review of his courses and found out that

‘Every single one of my courses completely skipped over the

“beginner stuff”.

Finding the Gap In the Market

It was a new opportunity for Duston. He hadn’t done anything to

cater to this ‘beginner level’ audience, and surprisingly neither

has any other trainer. It was the GAP that he could fill.

He jotted down all the steps a beginner has to go through for

setting up an affiliate website. “[...] purchasing a domain name,

pointing the domain to your web host, installing WordPress,

adding and customizing a WordPress theme, setting up an email

autoresponder, adding an email form to your website, and so

much more… all while keeping the website and email list focused

on promoting affiliate products.”

The final product? Affiliate Ground Zero (AGZ) 30-Day Boot

camp

Finding an Ideal Audience

Next, Duston had to find the perfect audience for his course.

Since it was a course for beginners, anyone who was interest-

ed in learning about affiliate marketing was the right fit for the

course. The ideal student profile would be someone wants to

create and launch an affiliate website from scratch in just 30

days.

While developing the course material, Duston asked several

experienced marketers to go through the training material and

they loved it!

The course’s USP played a vital role in the success - three ef-

fective FREE traffic strategies that provide quick, high-quality

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.

“They were getting overwhelmed by the huge volume

of information I was throwing at them,”

Duston said.

Each video lesson in Duston’s course ranges from 25 to 90

minutes and includes a homework assignment to be completed

before moving to the next lesson.

Dividing the course up into 30 “bite-sized” chunks, not only al-

lowed Duston’s students to understand more, but also to imple-

ment what they had learned without feeling overwhelmed.

Overcoming the Challenge, One Step at a Time

Duston had just one challenge when it came to marketing the

course. How to make it appealing to both beginner and experi-

enced affiliate marketers.

The challenge was to include the content that was right for both

sets of learners. The content must hold the attention of the ex-

perienced without being too “dense” for beginners.

Recipe for a Million-Dollar Course

Ingredients for a perfect course

• Send one video each day

• Each video to be of 30min to 90min

• Use Teachable or Udemy or a similar platform

• Use screen capture tool for easy creation

• Use clickfunnels for site landing page

For Duston, the biggest attraction was the advance payment. He

said,

“One of the coolest things about running a 30-day boot

camp like this is, you can get paid in advance to create

it! Even cooler than that, you only need to create one

video lesson per day. That’s exactly what I did. I started

out creating the Day One video lesson the day before I

released it, to get a bit of a head start.”

he exclaimed.

Later, he decided to create the videos the same day they were

released.

The MONEY KEEPS POURING IN…

The best advantage of creating a course is the recurring income

even when you are done creating the course. It is a PASSIVE

PIPELINE.

So what are the lessons of this success story?

Lesson #1: What makes people BUY - Value Trumps Price

Duston says that only 20% of people make decisions based on

price. The rest give importance to value. According to him, per-

ceived value trumps price any day of the week.

He says, “in a niche like affiliate marketing, or anything related

to making money, it’s fairly easy to justify charging a premium

price. Just compare how much money they could potential-

ly earn from the knowledge they gain from going through the

course.”

Lesson #2: Email Works the Best

The surprising thing is that Duston used only one channel to

promote this course - EMAIL.

Practice what you preach

He first developed an email list of about 4,000 subscribers.

These were the people who bought his course. And, that’s what

he taught in his course.

Email lists are assets

Email lists are perhaps the most important asset of an affiliate

marketer. You can use these lists to promote your own products,

affiliate products, even make them available to other marketers

for advertising their product through your email list.

Lesson #3: Choose the Right Fit

Duston already had an audience. Do you think he could have

achieved this magnitude of success if he was not able to find the

right audience for his course?

Duston’s Method for finding the right audience

The majority of Duston’s email subscribers found him by search-

ing for something on Google and then landing on his blog.

“I have over 100 blog posts on there now with topics ranging

from affiliate marketing to making money online to driving traffic

and more,” so, to promote the launch of AGZ, Duston only sent

between 8-10 emails spread out over 12 days.

Emails Should Not Be Promotional

Duston’s emails are not typical promotional emails. They’re more

story-based, ‘kinda quirky’, and unconsciously persuasive. You

can see his email newsletter archive here.

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 with Cloudways Affiliate Program

Source: Join Cloudways Affiliate Program

Whereas Duston earned a handsome sum selling his course,

becoming a Cloudways affiliate virtually guaranteed him more

income and success.

Check out for yourself.

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,” Duston

says about the Cloudways managed hosting solution.

As an affiliate marketer, there are certain aspects Duston looks

for in a web host. For him, the most important factors are speed

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.

Why Cloudways Affiliate Program?

Duston’s training course is centered around building an affiliate

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.

You can see a screenshot of his lesson below. In the “Homework”

section, he mentions his affiliate link and promo code.

Screengrab of Duston’s Course Affiliate Ground Zero Bootcamp

Moreover, to make more profit, he has segmented the course

into multiple tiers.

Source: AGZ screengrab

If Duston’s customers opted for the $497 upsell, he requires them

to 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

two streams - one, the upsell, and second, the affiliate commis-

sion from Cloudways.

Duston says,

“I can rest easy knowing they’re set up with Cloudways

as their web host. It’s a recommendation I feel 100%

confident making to all of my students.”

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

are not any complaints.

Result: More Gains for Everyone

The boot camp format delivers an experience that eases knowl-

edge assimilation and offers information that isn’t found any-

where else online.

Duston says,

“I’ve yet to see another affiliate marketing course

geared towards building email lists and delivered

in 30-day boot camp format like this.”

But was his course actually WORTH IT?

That’s where the social proof comes in.

In just 24 hours, his student added 258 subscribers to his system.

And, what happened next? A BOOMING CONVERSION RATE OF

73%!!!

Lessons for Affiliate Marketers: What Duston Wants You to Know

• One of the biggest mistakes affiliates make is giving up too

early on a campaign.

• 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.

Duston’s Earning Report: Course Earnings + Cloudways Commission

In the last two months, Duston has earned over $30K by just

selling a single course.

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.

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.