Welcome to the interviews with super affiliates series where we post our chats with affiliates that are doing really well and making a good living using affiliate marketing. These interviews are part inspirational, part educational and totally interesting! Enjoy today’s interview… In this post we’re interviewing Hesham Zebida.
Hesham has has been working in the WordPress affiliate marketing scene for over 10 years and is well known for a number of his big website projects and WordPress themes and plugins.
He’s the owner of a number of large multi-user blogs in the WordPress and internet marketing space and has also developed some really great WordPress plugins (such as WP Reviews/Author hReview).
1. For those that don’t know, can you tell us about yourself and what you do?
I am Hesham Zebida, a blogger who turned to be a web developer and internet marketer. I’ve been working with WordPress since more than 10 years now. In this long journey; I’ve developed a couple of products towards WordPress, which mainly helps internet marketers in several ways.
2. How do you use affiliate marketing in your business and on your sites?
I depend on affiliate marketing big time as part of my online business and I’ve got a decent share of my income coming from different affiliate networks that is dedicated to WordPress related premium products, thus I built a few sites to review and promote those products.
3. What is one thing you can point to that you’ve done in the past that really had a really positive and lasting effect on your affiliate marketing and made your income take off?
I’ve got some success in the past with affiliate marketing, I used to do a lot of product reviews, mostly WordPress designs, plugins and other related products, hence I’ve developed my own reviews and ratings plugin for WordPress which includes markups for rich snippets to make it easy for me to add these snippets to all my reviews and enhance its performance and conversion, and it really worked very well.
4. How much time do you invest in your affiliate marketing strategy now compared to when you first started?
Affiliate marketing was getting around 50% of my time, but after one year of releasing a premium paid version of my plugin, it started to take off, and turned to be one of the top reviews plugins being featured on a few popular sites and by members recommendations, it’s now serving several WordPress powered sites and doing great job.
Now, instead of continuing with doing affiliate marketing itself, my business model has changed a little, I moved to help out affiliate marketers. with their SEO and conversion.
So, you can say I am pretty much working full-time in this project right now.
5. Whats your number 1 tip to new affiliate marketers?
Affiliate marketing could be a great way to earn a living, there is a lot of money in this business, really. Try to deliver something unique, and always be honest about what your do in your business, this will keep you going for longer than you expect.
6. If you had to start again tomorrow, what would be the first thing you’d do to rebuild your affiliate marketing empire?
Like many other affiliate marketers, I’ve taken a lot of time testing several products and trying to discover what works best. It took me so long to develop my own strategy, and wow.. If I could go back in time, I would do things in a different way, let’s say the right way!
As for today, I still have a lot of challenges to deal with, especially increase my affiliate program’s members.
7. Where can people find out more about you? Plug your site 🙂
You can get in touch with me via my personal blog over at zebida.com or on Twitter @hishaman