bruno-nwogu-interview-with-selar

#CreatorStories: Is Affiliate Marketing a Scam? The Affiliate Marketer Who Went From ₦4500 to ₦10M Monthly

#CreatorStories showcases the honest personal experiences of digital creators who monetize their knowledge of a skill and sell it on Selar. We share these stories every week to inspire you to create and sell a product out of your wealth of knowledge and be a part of the digital creator economy.

This week, we turn the lights on Bruno Nwogu, popularly known as The Einstein of Marketing. Bruno is a 7-figure affiliate marketer who after a series of frustration, helplessness, and sapa moments, decided to read the affiliate marketing book he bought and didn’t open for over 10 days, and his life changed forever. 

Everyone would like to get to know Bruno Nwogu, The Einstein of Marketing.  

Can we meet Bruno?

Bruno: My name is Bruno Nwogu popularly known as the Einstein of Marketing. I am passionate about sharing information that helps people move forward in understanding marketing. I came from a place where I didn’t like marketing to where I became good at it. So Bruno Nwogu is the guy who takes you from hating sales and marketing to loving it and becoming so good at it that you make a lot of money selling your stuff. 

Tell us about your upbringing, what you studied in school, and how growing up was like for you? We all know you as a six-figure affiliate marketer. 

Bruno: First of all, it’s an “eight-figure affiliate marketer” and not a six-figure lol. Prior to 2020, I hated anything called sales and marketing. I studied statistics in school and I consider myself to be a logical person. Physics and Geography were my favorite subjects growing up. I grew up in an average family, I’m the firstborn of three, I have a brother and one sister. My parents are doing okay for themselves. My upbringing was pretty normal, I grew up around very good influences and that has helped me to make the right decisions while growing up. There’s really nothing spectacular about my upbringing. 

What was your career journey like before affiliate marketing?

Bruno: Before I started affiliate marketing, I had finished school and NYSC (National Youth Service Corps). I was studying statistics at the Federal University of Technology Owerri (FUTO). I had one and a half extra year because in my final year I questioned the essence of school, I was taking a shit of school and I really never liked it [Laughs]. I came out with a third-class after spending one and a half extra year. I was supposed to graduate in 2015 but I didn’t come out until the mid of 2017. I finished NYSC and I started working in a gym. The gym was on the island, and I was going from the mainland to the island and I was earning 40k but I was spending 30k on transport alone. So at the end of the month, I’d take 10k home. I was working for 7 days, three times a week. I was doing it because I just wanted to do something. I thought that if I kept myself around people who were wealthy and successful, maybe one of them would pick an interest in me, then I’d meet my destiny helper. But life had other plans for me.

How did you get into affiliate marketing? Did you have any “Sapa” moment that made you say “Noooo, I gats find another way to make this money?”

When I was growing up, my mum used to encourage me to sell things but I never listened because I didn’t consider myself to be an entrepreneur. Frankly, I thought I’d be a computer scientist or a programmer, or a hacker. I liked the idea of hacking. But the good thing is that now I don’t hack computers, I hack human beings. So I’m still doing both of them. My mum tried to teach me to make something to sell but I didn’t understand how that worked. However, I understood something else and my mum was the inspiration for that.

Growing up as a kid, my mum was never really around because she worked a 9-5 or you could call it a 5-9 because she left early in the morning and came back late at night. So sometimes, we go days without seeing her at home, thanks to Lagos traffic and the nature of her work as a bank manager. I realized that even though she was earning enough money, she didn’t have the time to spend that money. So for me, I wanted to make as much money as I can make and be free to live and enjoy that money. That was a guiding compass for me for what I wanted in life. Though I hated sales and marketing, I just knew I wanted to be free. 

COVID happened and I was out of my gym job. My friend had told me about an online business I could do since we were in a lockdown with no jobs and people needed to find a way to make money. I wanted to be a data scientist so I started studying Data Science. 

Everything changed on  July 25th, 2020. On that faithful day, I was with an iPhone 7 a friend gave me as a gift. I used 3k to buy a pouch and screen guard. It was my all and all. I was going to church that morning and I brought out the phone to tweet, before I knew it, a hand just came from the window and snatched the phone. It was gone like that. I thought to myself, this is the third phone in two years that was stolen from you. Are you sure your village people are not following you? 

I was so frustrated and in that frustration, I asked myself a question. “Bruno, right now in your life, can you see that there’s no way you know how to make money, at the snap of your finger?” That was when I realized that poverty is not a lack of money, it’s a lack of money generating capacities. Being poor is being unable to create money when you want. So it’s not a matter of lack of funds as it is a lack of capacity and ability to create those funds.

At this point, it dawned on me that I can’t make money. The first rule of progress is to be true to yourself. That way, you’ve accepted what you are. I also realized that the wealthiest people we know have two things in common; Information you don’t have access to that has now produced in them a skill that has made it possible for them to create wealth. 

When my friend told me about Affiliate Marketing, I was discouraged, I honestly wasn’t interested because of the marketing part. Later, I decided to see how it went. I bought the Affiliate Marketing course on July 9th, 2020, and I didn’t open it until July 20th. I read the course and realized that I understood everything it talked about. While everyone was seeing the surface, I was seeing what was happening beneath. I had become a geek in human psychology and behavioral psychology because I naturally enjoyed studying them and that helped me understand Affiliate Marketing better. 

When did you earn your first money (commission) from Affiliate Marketing? 

Bruno: On July 20th, 2020 I made a few posts about Affiliate Marketing and made ₦4,500 from two sales. That was the moment everything changed for me. I realized that I could be in my house with just a phone and make money. 

How has the journey been for you? 

Bruno: When I started the Affiliate Marketing course, my goal was to make 200k every month( from July to December) and then make my first one million Naira in the same year, 2020 which would be 20X my monthly salary to enable me to pay off the loan I took to buy a phone. 

I was surprised that I just discovered how to make more than 50% of my salary in a day. I continued and at the end of two weeks, I made ₦104,400. One month after I had started, I made 1 million Naira in one month without doing any form of paid advertising. I kept doing that every month for like 3 to 4 months which now made me win a car from a specific Affiliate marketing platform. I was unaware of the contest and wasn’t even selling to win. It was when they announced that I was close to winning, that I put in more effort and that was my “aha” moment. 

Is it possible to start Affiliate Marketing with no money? 

Bruno: Absolutely yes. I tell people that you can. You just need to be willing to spend a lot of time and energy. If you can’t spend money, you have to spend your time. If you want to start Affiliate Marketing by yourself without paying for any course or tutorial, you can, it’s just more difficult.

Affiliate marketers are the loudest people online right now. Some of them post their weekly earnings online all the time, to tell us that Affiliate Marketing is the surest way to make money. So, we want to know, Is it that easy to make money from Affiliate Marketing? 

For me, I’d say Yes. This is from my experience because I approached it from a different perspective. Not everyone who does affiliate marketing succeeds in it. It’s the same way everywhere. Every top-performing affiliate marketer puts in the work. One thing you learn in marketing is that you sell the destination. If someone gave me a pattern or a long list of things to do before making money in Affiliate marketing, I’d have run away. So my ignorance about not knowing what to do really helped me make money in Affiliate Marketing. 

What challenges did you face when you started Affiliate Marketing? 

My challenge in Affiliate Marketing has been selling to the Nigerian audience. A lot of Nigerians don’t know how to read, understand or comprehend. I have difficulty passing the information to most Nigerians. Also, a lot of people are mentally lazy, nobody wants to think. That’s why I teach my students how to think.

How did you navigate these challenges? 

I’ve realized that there’s nothing I can do. I can’t magically make people understand something so I just sieve the people that come into my space. I do that by giving much value upfront. So when you come to buy, you buy because you feel indebted to me.

Did you ever feel like giving up at some point?

Not really.  I’m a digital creator, not just an affiliate marketer. I have three courses online giving value to people. So, there’s nothing to want to give up on. 

You’ve successfully built a large audience through affiliate marketing such that everyone wants to be identified with you. What would you say is your “jazz” for getting to this point as an affiliate?

I learned from Gary Vee that the longer you delay the ask, the bigger the ask you can make. To be honest, my desire is to never have to sell anything to make money. I love to give out content, it’s where I get my dopamine hits. I’m addicted to creating value so much that I’ve wired my brain to move from thinking about addiction to thinking about creating. That’s why I’m always creating value. My goal is to do this for many people and never have to depend on the proceeds from it.

When did you decide it was time to monetize this knowledge you have about Affiliate marketing, including the tricks and strategies. 

That just happened. I didn’t think about it. I realized that I was getting results but the people I was selling to weren’t getting results. I have a community of people coming in to ask about Affiliate Marketing. I have a telegram group with over 6000 members. And as much as I had a community I was already part of, I saw that many people weren’t getting the results. So, I realized that sometimes people don’t just need a course, they need a coach. Also, after I won the car from my Affiliate Marketing Community, a lot of people met me to know how I did it. To chase them away, I jokingly asked them to pay 10k for me to teach them. (Laughs)To my surprise, people were willing to pay for it. So I added more people to the group. Subsequently, I noticed that the content I shared still wasn’t enough for some people. That led me to create the Affiliate Marketing blueprint course. Many people went for it. Over time, I noticed there was a demand for my time. So I put a price to it to make them value it.

What is your sales strategy that other digital creators can employ?

For you to sell very well, you need to build an audience first. People wanted to succeed in affiliate marketing and the course they had just wasn’t enough. So, I took their problems and held various webinars addressing their issues and provided a solution. In the end, I asked them to pay for the pre-order course where they’d get a more detailed solution to their problem and they were willing to pay even without having the main course. That was when I realized that this was going to bang! Part of my ideology is this, before you build a product, sell the product. Before you sell the product, build an audience. It’s much easier to sell to people who already trust you.

So, how much do you make from affiliate marketing now? Preferably weekly? 

At least seven figures monthly, and this is passive. In other words, I am not doing anything. My affiliates are the ones promoting the course while I make my profit as they make a sale.

What advice would you give to digital creators in Africa to help them boost their digital product business?

Leverage the power of community. If you want to sell a lot of your products, be a part of your community. I am accessible to my community, I provide for them and answer questions for the community. Because I am accessible, the level of trust is stronger and I can easily make sales.

So what’s next for Bruno? Would you continue with affiliate marketing or do you have other interests? 

I want to pursue affiliate marketing and see how it goes. I want to be the guy who helps people who struggle with sales and marketing to become experts at it. I do that by helping them understand human behaviors, how to trigger certain actions in human behaviors, and how to get certain responses from anybody anywhere. I want to build a brand around it. Where I came from, I didn’t understand human behavior or selling. But the moment I understood it, It became a superpower. And I want to share that with the whole world.

As money comes from there, we use it to sort out life’s challenges. I also intend to build a business, a software company around affiliate marketing that solves a specific problem for a group of people and deliver value to them in whatever part of the world.

What would you tell affiliate marketing beginners right now? 

Don’t give up. Also, get my Affiliate marketing blueprint course and follow me anywhere on the planet. I can’t get to everyone because I’m limited by the forces of nature, physics, and time. So I create content to help as many people as possible with various problems and give them results. But if you want special access, there’s a price to pay for that. Generally, consume lots of valuable content and act on it.


Don’t be left out! You too can start your journey to making millions through the Selar Affiliate Marketing Network.

It’s very easy. All you need to do is;

  • Sign up on the Selar Affiliate Network.
  • Subscribe to our yearly plan to access the Affiliate Network – NGN 1,000.
  • Browse our fantastic catalog of products and choose the product you want to be an affiliate of.
  • Get your affiliate link, recommend it to people, make a sale and earn a commission.

As Bruno said, you can make money with just your mobile phone. So, get started now!