Tap Massive Leverage: How To Gain Access To Inner Circle Top Affiliates
If you plotted the growth of my business the chart would look like a steadily increasing line, punctuated by a handful of spikes a couple of times a year.
The first big spike in growth occurred in 2007, which was the first launch I ever did of the Blog Mastermind coaching program. Every aspect of my business grew during that two week period. My email list tripled in size and my income increased by almost the same margin.
Going forward, each new spike came thanks to some kind of launch. Whether it was a new product, closing access to a product or reopening of a closed product, each time I did some kind of launch campaign, the growth numbers shot through the roof.
This is obviously an endorsement of the launch process, and we all owe Jeff Walker a debt of thanks for bringing this style of marketing to our industry, however it’s worth taking a closer look at why the launch works.
The 80/20 Rule Of Product Launches
The launch process is a complex and subtle beast, which on the surface appears relatively simple. You release some great free stuff, have your affiliates promote it like crazy, open the doors to your offer with some kind of limitation, sell heaps, make a ton of money, and bamb!… done.
Once you do a few launches you start to see how intricate the variables are, and how important the psychology behind the process is. Everything needs to connect, to be coherent, to reinforce the same message, create excitement and flow together.
As daunting as that might sound, the process is actually quite forgiving, as long as you get a few variables right. You can “stuff up” many aspects of the launch process and still succeed. You can forget to do things, use lazy copy in your emails, and even leave parts out altogether, as long as you have the most important variables.
So, what are the 20% or less of components that go into a launch that count for the 80% or more of results? Here’s how I see it…
How You Can Become A Dominant Affiliate
The last week if you’ve been reading this blog you know I’ve recommended two courses, both of which I am an affiliate for. In this situation both products I’ve promoted before, so they’ve proven successful, however they are very different in many respects, for example…
- One product offers a $1 trial and then is $67 a month with 50% commission
- The other product has several pricing points, however starting at $897 and hence the affiliate commission is at least in the several hundred dollars range per order (as much as $1250 commission per sale)
- One product is limited based on time (one week)
- The other product is limited based on space (200 people maximum)
- Both products offer affiliate prizes if you make a certain number of sales
Looking at this data you might wonder which product is the best to promote? Which will make more money?
Those questions are difficult to know if you’ve never promoted these kinds of offers before, but since I have I know that I will sell a handful of the high end course and several hundred of the $1 trials. It’s a moot point for me as to which one I will promote as I agreed to support both people months ago because they supported me and we have a relationship I want to maintain. That is always the most important concern for me, not the potential for profit, although that’s a motivating factor too.
In your case you need to build up your understanding of what offers work best to your market, so you need to test. The first time I ever promoted a product that cost over $1,000 I made two sales. I netted about $1400 in commission, which was by far the largest affiliate income return I had ever made with my blog at the time. This was about when my blog was 9 months old.
Before that I had tested smaller affiliate products and made a few hundred dollars worth of sales, so I was liking the large commissions from the higher priced items, however you can just as easily make zero sales too. That’s the thing I’ve found with high priced products. You don’t need to sell many to make good money, but it’s tougher to convert people, for obvious reasons. That’s why I like to promote products across the board, from free trials to several thousand dollars, so you have a good feel for what your audience responds to.
Of course price is not the only concern, the offer is actually more important. I’ve promoted many lower priced products that don’t convert as well as much more expensive items because of how well the offers match what my audience want. Understanding your people is the most important thing, so run some tests and see what the biggest sticking points for your audience are and then give them good products to solve those problems.
Why Promote This And Not That?
Advanced Affiliate Marketing Strategies For Bloggers
Affiliate marketing is, and will likely always remain, my favorite method for making money online. At the risk of repeating myself, here’s why every blogger should get into the affiliate marketing game -
- You make a margin per product sale that is often as good or better than the person or company that produces the product
- You don’t have to do any product fulfillment, handle cancellations or any customer service whatsoever
- You have a huge range of products to choose from in most mainstream product categories
- You can enter new niches any time you like with zero switching cost, simply by finding a new product to promote as an affiliate (this is for those of you who like variety)
- If you have a product of your own, one of the best ways to get affiliates to promote your product is to make sales of their product as an affiliate first (this is a big one!)
I could go on, but let’s state the obvious and most important aspect: Affiliate marketing is great because you can make very good money for very little effort.
Don’t get me wrong, it requires effort to get to a situation where you can make money as an affiliate, but once you are there the actual process for making money is very, very simple. It’s as easy as writing a blog post or sending an email.
It’s Like Printing Money
I remember about four years ago reading all those hyped-up sales pages from Internet marketers, and I come across the phrase “it’s like printing money”.
I’ve never been a hater of sales copy, although obvious hype agitates me just like anyone else. I certainly believed that some people were enjoying a situation where they could just send emails and make big money, but I was personally very far away from that. Jealousy mixed with depression about my own results, were the dominant emotions I felt at the time when I read what other people were achieving apparently so easily.
My first attempt at “printing money” as an affiliate was with my blog when it was about six months old. I put in a couple of hours to write a blog post about Perry Marshall’s Definitive Guide To Google AdWords and managed to print about $20 in commissions – one sale.
I was disappointed given it had taken me six months of consistent work on my blog to make that $20, however I was also encouraged. I could see given enough time and energy, that $20 could be $200 and then $2,000 and even $20,000. Today I have the audacity to believe it could be $200,000 one day too.
Fast forward to the year 2009 and the first six month’s of affiliate promotions have gone like this…
How Not To Approach A Potential Joint Venture Partner
Let me state an obvious fact about Internet marketing:
Joint ventures (JVs) are the quickest and most effective way to make a lot of sales and/or bring in a ton of targeted leads.
The reason this is the case is fairly obvious. You get someone who already has access to and a relationship with a large audience, who then recommend your product. The combination of distribution and trust, two of the most critical factors for online success, makes this marketing method hard to beat.
The only thing that beats a good JV is an internal promotion where you personally have distribution and trust, in which case the connection between you and the product itself is seamless – because it’s your product you are recommending – there is no disconnect in the mind of the audience, like there is with a JV or affiliate promotion.
Unfortunately building your own audience and establishing trust with them takes time, so if you are in a hurry, going the JV route is the best option. It’s also the quickest method to expand reach, so this is a technique you simply have to get on top of if you want to really explode your business online.
How Not To Approach People
I’m approached every week by people looking for me to promote their products. I’ve also been rejected more often than I’ve had success with my own JV approaches, so I know what works and what doesn’t from both sides of the relationship.
I often receive template emails suggesting I promote a product, which I delete before reading beyond the first paragraph. Other approaches come from genuine people, who appear on the surface to have a great product and are sincere in their intentions, yet unfortunately this approach usually fails too.
So what exactly does it take to convince someone to promote for you? Let’s take a look at the dos and don’ts of seeking joint ventures.
Can You Make Money Online Without Lying?
I wanted to use the word “honesty” in the title for this blog post, but I expect the word “Lying” will pull more attention. However don’t let that mislead you, this article is about using honesty in your marketing, not lying.
At the start of September you may recall StomperNet offered their Stomping The Search Engines 2 course for the cost of shipping if you were willing to try their new print newsletter. They made money off this offer because of the multiple upsells involved during the ordering process and the potential for rebills if customers decided to stay subscribed to the print newsletter.
I had no problem with this offer, in fact I thought it was a good deal and promptly blogged about it and sent a notice to my newsletter too.
Besides a brief hiccup that killed the opening day, StomperNet did well, and many of you, my readers, grabbed the offer.
A few days later Brad and Andy at StomperNet decided to up the ante a little and with the help of many of their top Internet marketing friends, put together a bonus package that was, well, a little over the top.
Guys like Ed Dale, Jeff Johnson, Jeff Walker, Rich Schefren, Mike Filsaime, Paul Colligan and Shawn Casey (and others) gave everything from teleseminar downloads, audio files, free months in coaching programs, reports and more on top of what was already offered by StomperNet, just for the cost of shipping. That offer has since passed, though you can still buy the course and trial the first month of the newsletter if you pay for sending it to you.
