Transcript
What's up, everybody? In this video, we're gonna go over 10 things that you can do to immediately boost your commissions as an affiliate marketer, but most people aren't doing them.
Okay, let's get into it.
Number 1: Meet with Your Affiliate Manager
I hate having meetings. One of the reasons why I love affiliate marketing is I usually don't have to do very many meetings, but having a basic little meeting with your affiliate manager for the big products that you promote, assuming they have one, can be amazing, it can be amazingly helpful. You'd be shocked at how much information they'll give the people that ask for it. They'll show you things like what content's performing best, what things that they see are working for other people. It's crazy how much value you can get with just one meeting from an affiliate manager. And, also, once they see that you're actually interested, they're gonna hook you up. I have people that promote products for me and the ones that ask me for help, I give them help and then some. Things like custom sales pages and discount codes, stuff like that. It really can't be understated if the products that you promote have a dedicated affiliate manager, and the big ones all do, ask them to chat. Also, a lot of times they do like monthly webinars for the affiliates, and most people don't show up, but you can take 30 minutes and it can dramatically improve your commissions going forward.
Number 2: Do Things That Improve Retention
I know I said I was gonna help you boost your affiliate commissions, so you might be wondering, well, what does retention have to do with that? We're talking about making commissions. Increasing the average LTV of each of your commission sales is just as good, if not better than making new sales. If someone comes in and they start with a product and they stop using it 'cause they don't understand how to use it, you're not getting paid. You're gonna get a bunch of trials, but if they don't know how to use it, you're not gonna get paid. So, some of the highest paid affiliates don't actually drive more sales, they keep more sales. So, if you can increase the LTV by creating, say, a mini course, showing how to do it or creating content on your channel that you know is not gonna sell anything, but it is going to provide value. And it's gonna provide value to the people that are already using the software. So for example, I've created videos about ConvertKit. That's one of the products that I promote in the affiliate marketing space. So, if I do a video like, "Four Secret Things That You Can Do in ConvertKit", that video isn't gonna sell many ConvertKit 'cause the people that want that are already buyers, but it might help with retention. It'll help me, it'll help other people maybe, if I didn't get the sale. But it's good practice. You can't just always be creating sales-focused content, you need to help with retention. And that is your job, especially since you have the followers that bought, they're looking for you for advice so you should be creating that type of content.
Number 3: Master What You Promote
You should be using and buying whatever it is you promote. If someone wants you to promote something, you should buy it. I know that sounds crazy to some people, they're like, why would I pay for it if they're gonna give it to me for free? And most places will give it to you for free. But if you have the chance to buy it, you should buy it 'cause it's gonna give you this heightened sense of like empathy and a better understanding of the software, or the product. I say software 'cause I love promoting software so much. But, whatever it is, if you buy it, you're gonna analyze it differently, right? If something's a thousand bucks, you're gonna see it all, you know, this is cool, this is great. But if you actually spent a thousand bucks on it, you're gonna see it differently. You'll see if it's actually worth that and you'll start to see other ways to maybe, either make your money back, get your time back, whatever it is, you'll see it differently, okay? So, master what you promote, and I do recommend that you actually pay for it. It hurts a little bit, but it'll pay off in the long run. It's not like just some altruistic thing, it's actually good for business. It will make you aware of different things about the product that you might not have been aware if you just got it for free.
Number 4: Host Live Webinars
I don't like doing webinars, just like I don't like doing meetings, but they do so well, especially if you can get the creator of the product that you're promoting to come on the webinar, and not just be a big sales pitch, but also kind of dive into why the software or product is so great. You can also sell on them and you can use them, repurpose them on your YouTube channel, repurpose them on social media. It's so, so powerful. Even if you only get 10, 20, 30 people on the live show, you'll have that asset forever as a replay, assuming that you make the replay available, I always do, I think that that's smart. Some people like to say you have to show up or it goes away. I kind of like to just keep the replay. I'm not gonna do a two hour webinar and then lose it to the ether, but that's just me. Okay, so, doing that will help tremendously. They'll get to see the person behind the product and that's really gonna help with sales. It's gonna help with the trust, it's gonna be good for you, good for everybody.
Number 5: Build Amazing Bonus Stacks
A lot of people either don't do bonuses or they do them really lazy. They exaggerate how much they're worth or don't really make things that are improving on the offer. So, when you make a bonus, you wanna make sure that it's relevant to the offer, it improves the experience, it either makes it easier, faster or better. So, whatever the main product is, if it's something related to fitness, your bonuses should be related to fitness. It should be related to that product. You don't wanna do like a hundred dollar Amazon gift card that, you know, might work 'cause everybody wants an Amazon gift card. But as far as boosting conversions and keeping people from refunding the software or product, whatever it is, you want them to be highly relevant, right? So, take time, build those stacks. Sometimes it means buying assets such as third-party, white-label softwares that you can give away, or third-party discounts that you can get people connected to. There's a lot of things that you can do to build a good bonus stack. You just have to put in a little bit of effort. And once you find a good one, it can last for a long time.
Number 6: Take the Time to Write Amazing Sales Copy
One thing that I've noticed is that the people that are best at sales copy, they just put in the work. I know a lot about writing sales copy, but some of the stuff I write will just bomb because I was lazy about it. I didn't actually put in the work. I didn't sit there and read it out loud to myself. I didn't go through each line and say, is this helping or hurting? Is this keeping someone on the page? Is it making them go down to the next line? So, actually putting in the time and effort to write great sales copy is going to show through. But most people just rush through it. They wanna get the email out or they wanna get the ad out so they don't put in the time and effort to run good sales copy. So, you can read all the books in the world about copy, but you have to remember to actually go and implement them. And it takes time, even if you know the topic and you're amazing at copy, it takes time. That's why people pay copywriters big bucks because they put in that effort. I could write an email right now in 10 minutes and send it. But I'd rather, if I wanted to really, really crush it, I might hire somebody or spend hours on it myself to make sure it's really, really good. This is especially true for things that you have, like an email automation, make sure that those are fire, like those should be really, really, really good emails.
Number 7: Run Retargeting Ads
So, even if you aren't a paid traffic type of affiliate marketer, there's so much value in running retargeting ads. You're able to take, think about it like this. We have a unique advantage. If you're a content creator, people that land on your blog, or your YouTube channel, or whatever it is, you've immediately turned them into warm traffic. One, because they recognize your face. Number two, because they were on the page already so they've targeted themselves, they've pulled themselves out from the herd and have shown you, hey, I'm interested in this. So, for example, if I'm running a review post to a product, anyone that's been landing on that page, if I pixel them and run ads to them for the product or for a lead magnet that gets them into a funnel that is incredibly valuable, and that's something that we uniquely have as affiliate marketers that create content is we can actually use our own brands and the fact that people recognize us just from that quick, little interaction, it's crazy. The difference between having seen someone once and having never seen them is huge. If you see an ad from somebody that you had seen just one time, it's going to resonate a little bit different than if it's someone you've never met or someone you had never seen. So, just having read like one blog post that you enjoyed, if that person sells something, you're way more likely to buy. That's my personal experience anyway, let me know in the comments if you disagree with that.
Number 8: Stop Dividing Your Time Evenly Among All the Things That You Promote.
The 80:20 rule is applicable in affiliate marketing, if not even more like, 10:90 or 5:95. Most products aren't gonna sell well to your audience. So, find the ones that do and hammer on those. Make those the focus. Don't try to sell everything to everyone, narrow it down to what's actually converting and double down on that. Don't divide your efforts evenly across all the products you wanna promote. Some things aren't even worth having an affiliate link for if they take away the focus from your other bigger, higher converting offers.
Number 9: Update Your Old Content.
I know this hurts 'cause nobody likes to go backwards. You kinda feel like when you write a post, you're like, ah, thank God that's done. Or, you film a video, you're like, ah, that took forever, glad I never have to touch that again. In reality, that's not how organic traffic works anymore. You have to update stuff. You can't just rest on your laurels and expect that a good post that you wrote, or a great video that you filmed is going to be good for eternity. It's just not. Other people are gonna do what we call the skyscraper approach where they're gonna take your content and improve on it in some way, get more backlinks, whatever it is, and they're going to outrank you and take that traffic and take those commissions from you. So, you have to constantly be updating your old stuff.
Number 10: Outsource the Little Things.
You need to be spending as much time as possible on the big things, which is like assessing offers, running split tests, coming up with good promotions, seeing what is working with your audience, stuff like that, big picture stuff. You shouldn't be responding to emails, you shouldn't be doing live chat support on your site. Those are things that you will outgrow and it's your job to outgrow them as quickly as possible and to get the right people in there doing them so that you can focus on the high ticket things, or the bigger picture things. You can outsource email, the problem is is that it hurts at first. It's very hard to let go of that, trust me, I've done it. It takes a long time upfront and you might feel like, what's even the point of doing this? This person's gonna take forever to train, they're an idiot, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is. You have to stick with it. Outsource the little things that will focus your time on the bigger things that matter. And that is just as applicable in affiliate marketing as it is in any other business. All right, guys, those are the 10 things that I think will boost your affiliate commissions, I know will boost your affiliate commissions, but most people are afraid to do them. I'll see you in the next video.