Create Your Affiliate Program

I’m back with my monthly “Favorite Things” post to share with you for September. If you’re new around here, I also want to say a big WELCOME! And secondly, know that this post is a monthly glimpse into what I’m doing and buying for my own business.

As always, I hope you’ll enjoy reading through this post, and will take time to check out all the resources available to you! 

Favorite Business Resources

Create a $9 product this week – it’s easy and this strategy will show you how.

One of my favorite things I’ve ever created in my business is this: a little extra moolah.

Set up a tripwire to start earning when people opt in for your email list.  Here’s a template for a tripwire page I love.

Need to set a budget for yourself so you can keep more of the moolah you earn? Access this template.

Have you checked out The Productive Entrepreneurs Club?  Lucy is one of my favorite online entrepreneurs and I know her membership is so needed!

Get Ready for Black Friday

Recently on the blog I shared the 4 Steps to Skyrocket Your Black Friday Sale with Affiliates.  This post is a must-read if you want to increase your sales during Black Friday.

Speaking of Black Friday…. Head over here to learn How to Actually Get Your Affiliates to Promote Your Black Friday Sale.

Want to know how to pitch potential affiliate partners? Grab this template.

If you’re unsure of what emails to send to your affiliates about your Black Friday Sale, or when to send them, sign up for the Prep Your Affiliates for Your Black Friday Sale Template Pack.  This template pack gives you the exact emails you will take and customize and then send your affiliates for your Black Friday Sale so that you will be ready to hit the ground running with affiliates to sell more of your courses or products this holiday season!

** Please note – this post contains affiliate links, but I only recommend products and resources I use and love myself!

If you are running a Black Friday Sale this November, and plan to have your affiliates promote your sale for you, running an affiliate contest is one of the best ways to incentivize your affiliates to actually promote for you.

And I’m not talking about a big complicated affiliate contest.

Keep it super simple!

I would give out four different prizes. 

The first two prizes I would give out to the top two affiliates:

Most Clicks Award ? – give this prize to the affiliate who gets the most clicks on their affiliate link during your Black Friday promotion period.  Your affiliate tracking tool will tell you who wins this prize. 

Most Sales Award ? – give this prize to the affiliate who referred the most sales to you during your BFCM Sale. Your affiliate tracking tool will tell you who wins this prize. 

Since not all of your affiliates have the same audience size, some of your affiliates might not even try to promote if they think there’s no way they have a chance of winning because they have a small audience.  

However, there are two prizes you can give out where your affiliates will have a chance of winning regardless of their audience size:

Most Promo Award ? ~ give this prize to the affiliate who emails their audience the most or shares your Black Friday Sale on social media the most.  To track, simply make sure your affiliate forwards you the emails they send out or tags you in the post.  You’ll have to do a little manual work to see who does the most, but it will be worth it! {If you have a lot of affiliates, create a form where they can submit their promo’s too and calculate it that way.}

Most Original Promo Award ? ~ give this prize to the affiliate who does the most creative promo for your Black Friday Sale! Did they make a creative reel or send a fantastically original email about your sale? The ideas are endless so this is a fun prize anyone can have a chance to win! Again, you’ll have to do a little manual work to see who does the most creative posting. If you have a lot of affiliates, create a form where they can submit their promo’s too and you can pick a winner that way.

What should the prizes be?

Totally up to you!

During my last launch, I gave out gift cards to Wondermint Goods and Everything Done to a T to my top affiliates because I love supporting small businesses.

Your prizes can be items from your favorite shops, credit to your business, a one-on-one session with you, or even cash {because everybody loves making a little extra cash.}

Want some support with your Black Friday Sale?

Grab the ? Prep Your Affiliates for Your Black Friday Sale Template Pack ?  that gives you the exact emails you need to send to your affiliates to invite them and excite them to be a part of your Black Friday Sale!  

With this template pack, you will take and customize the emails and then send your affiliates for your Black Friday Sale so that you will be ready to hit the ground running with affiliates to sell more of your courses or products this holiday season!

Grab the ? Prep Your Affiliates for Your Black Friday Sale Template Pack ? today!

Are you running a Black Friday Sale or a Cyber Monday Sale?

One of the fastest ways to skyrocket your sales this November will be by having your affiliate partners promote your BFCM Sale for you! 

But you cannot wait until November to tell your affiliates about your BFCM Sale…chance are if you do, they will have already decided to promote something else, be too busy with all the holiday things to pay your affiliate emails any attention, or they won’t want to spend the time throwing together promo emails for your BFCM sale last minute.

So while it might seem a tad early to be talking about Black Friday in September, what you do this month can help your BFCM Sale be extra profitable come November.

Let’s take a quick look at what you need to do to make sure everything is in place for your affiliates to promote your BFCM offer:

? Step 1: Decide on your BFCM Offer

What will you ask your affiliates to promote for you this BFCM?  Decide not only on the sale you are running, but also what the dates are that your affiliates should promote the sale for you so that you can clearly share this information with your affiliates in advance.  

? Step 2:  Make sure your affiliate tracking is set up

Once you know what your affiliates will be promoting for you, make sure that the affiliate tracking is set up so that any sales made during your BFCM Sale are appropriately attributed back to your affiliates correctly.

{Don’t have your tech set up? I’ve got you covered here.}

? Step 3:  Create your affiliate promo materials

Make it easy-peasy for your affiliates to share about your holiday sale by giving them exactly what they need to promote.  Provide them with social media graphics, email swipe copy, and social media swipe copy that they can take, copy and paste, while the commissions roll in!

 Step 4: Email Your Affiliates + Get Them Excited to Promote!

In October {yes, October}, you need to email your affiliates to let them know the details about your upcoming BFCM Sale.  However, it’s not enough to just email your affiliates one time about your BFCM Sale and hope they’ll promote for you.  Instead, you need to email your affiliates multiple times, and do so in a way that gets them excited to promote for you.  {And they should be excited, because they are going to earn some nice commissions for promoting for you!}

If you’re unsure of what emails to send to your affiliates about your Black Friday Sale, or when to send them, I can help.  I’ve put together the  ? Prep Your Affiliates for Your Black Friday Sale Template Pack ?  that gives you the exact emails you will take and customize and then send your affiliates for your Black Friday Sale so that you will be ready to hit the ground running with affiliates to sell more of your courses or products this holiday season! 

> > > Check out the Black Friday Template Pack Here.

There are five Friday’s in September… What if you spent each Friday working on your affiliate materials for your BFCM Sale so that by the end of September, you are ready to onboard your affiliates and make bank this Black Friday?  

Or choose one Friday and knock out all your prep in one fell swoop?  

Either way, just make sure you take the time to prepare for your Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sale in advance and that you take care of your affiliates!

I’m back with my monthly “Favorite Things” post to share with you for August. If you’re new around here, I also want to say a big WELCOME! And secondly, know that this post is a monthly glimpse into what I’m doing and buying for my own business.

As always, I hope you’ll enjoy reading through this post, and will take time to check out all the resources available to you! 

Favorite Business Resources

? MEMBERVAULT 44 DAY FREE TRIAL

Did you know you can get a 44 day free trial of MemberVault if you sign up by Aug 31st? I use and love MemberVault for my template shop, and can’t recommend them highly enough. ? Sign up for the extended trial at https://membervault.co.

? XOXO TEMPLATES – 40% OFF THIS WEEK ONLY!

My friend, colleague, and VIP Day client Sidneyeve of XOXO Templates is hosting a 40% off End of Summer Sale on her gorgeous Canva templates!

Here’s just some of the templates you can find in Sidneyeve’s shop for 40% off:

☀️ Course Roadmap Diagrams: Make it easy for us to get excited about what lies ahead!

☀️ Warm Welcome Slides: Encourage a feeling of belongingness and help newbies get oriented!

☀️ Creative Course Workbook: active learning for the win! 20 different checklists, journals, trackers to boost engagement!

Check out more templates and shop the 40% off ☀️End of Summer Sale here ??

? MISC. BUSINESS RESOURCES I AM LOVING

This $9 strategy has now made me over $1000 the past few months and has been my favorite purchase of 2023 so far.

Need to set a budget for yourself? You need this template.

Don’t have a freebie set up?  You might not need one to grow your list… Read more here.

Want to run a flash sale on any of your digital products? This toolbox has exactly what you need.

>> Shop Elizabeth’s Everything Page here.

? A LITTLE EXTRA MOOLAH

Last week on my business anniversary I announced a new digital product: a little extra moolah.  This is a PDF download where I’m sharing 3 simple ways I use affiliate marketing in my own business to earn between $200 and $500 per month.  Check it out here – it also includes a list of 35+ affiliate programs you can join TODAY!

? AFFILIATE PROGRAM TEMPLATE SHOP

Want to know how to pitch potential affiliate partners so that they say YES to partnering with you? You need this template.

Already have affiliate partners?  You need to be emailing them a newsletter every month.  Grab these templates to make this easy peasy.

Recently on the blog I shared about my favorite moments from the Ultimate Product Party… Go here to read about this awesome event.

> > > Shop all the templates I have available here.

** Please note – this post contains affiliate links, but I only recommend products and resources I use and can vouch for myself!

One of the most common questions I get from product sellers and course creators is this:

Who should I ask to be my affiliate partner?

One of the first places I recommend people start is inviting their customers to become their affiliates.  And in this blog, I’m going to cover 3 reasons you should absolutely ask your customers to become your affiliates after they have left a review or testimonial as well as what the benefits to doing this are!

Reason #1: You’ll get amazing testimonials from your customers

The first step in inviting your customers into your affiliate program is asking them for a testimonial or review of your product.  Once you’ve done that, you will send them down one of the two pathways to invite them to become an affiliate, depending on if they submit a testimonial/review or not.  {I cover this here.}

The good news is that even if they do not sign up to become an affiliate for you, you will still have their review which you can use on your website and in your promo materials.  Social proof is so important, because it helps new potential customers connect to your brand easier, and it can also help create more customer loyalty with the person who writes them.  

Reason #2: It’s a faster way to get your business in front of new audiences

When you invite your customers to become your affiliates, you aren’t having to spend hours researching potential affiliates, engaging and networking with them, writing a fantastic pitch to them and tracking the follow up emails needed.   

Instead, you save so much time by inviting customers who already have used your product/course to share their experience with others as your affiliate partner.  What this means is that you will get your products/courses in front of new audiences faster.  

And by automating this process {I also cover this here}, you aren’t adding more things to your already overwhelmed to do list.  Instead, your customers are out there promoting your products and bringing in new sales for you, while they earn fun commissions in the process.

Reason #3: No Facebook ads needed

If you think that in order to make more sales you’ll eventually have to figure out how to run expensive Facebook ads, I invite you to think again.  With affiliate marketing, you don’t have to run facebook ads if you don’t want to.  Instead, you can have your customers become your affiliates and then when they refer people to you, you pay them out commissions.

And if you do want to run facebook ads eventually, use the money you make from your affiliate’s referrals to fund your Facebook ads budget. #winwin 

Ready to invite your customers to become your affiliates? 

Grab the Invite Your Customers to Become Your Affiliates Template Pack here.  These are the exact templates you need to send customers to get those reviews and testimonials to turn them into your affiliates!

I recently had the opportunity to head to Nashville, Tennessee to attend the Ultimate Product Party, a 2-day conference for product sellers. Even as a service based business owner who works with product sellers, I had SO MANY TAKEAWAYS from this event.

In this blog post, I’m going to be sharing some of my favorite moments from the conference.  While I won’t highlight all of the speakers and roundtable leaders, I do want to emphasize this: EVERY SINGLE PERSON was amazing. All of the speakers were awesome, I learned a ton from every single roundtable I went to, and all of the keynotes were just top notch.  So, while I won’t mention them all below, know that they were still 100% amazing.

Okay, now onto some of my favorite moments from the Ultimate Product Party.

Ciara Bennett’s Opening Keynote

Ciara Bennett with Vintage Oats was the opening keynote and omgosh, her personal story was AMAZING. It’s always so amazing to hear stories of women who triumphed when the odds were stacked against them, and Ciara is one of those women. I found her story really inspiring and encouraging as someone in a growth stage in my own business.  

Follow Ciara over on Instagram here. 

Amanda Dare’s Breakout Workshop on Business Funding

Amanda Dare with Women Owned Wallet did an amazing session all about money and how to fund your business.  One of the things she said that really stood out to me, and I think can apply to so many different business scenarios is this:  

Don’t do what helps you today; do what helps you in 3 months, 6 months, a year…

In other words, be future focused and don’t think so much in the “right now”. I know I can get so shortsighted sometimes, and so this was a great reminder to really focus on the long term plans I have for my business. 

Check out Woman Owned Wallet here.

Q&A Panel on the High High’s and Low Low’s

Sometimes in business, especially I think as a solo entrepreneur, it can feel like I’m the only one dealing with the business struggles I go through.  So, when this Q&A session happened, it was honestly so refreshing to hear that – surprise surprise – other business owners deal with struggles too. I especially appreciated Monica Little’s stance on how problems can be opportunities. It doesn’t always feel like that in the moment, but I do like how she suggested looking at them as opportunities to solve things.

I received an email this week from Allison Carter {co-host of Ultimate Product Party} that said “what are you too scared to say??”

When it comes to my business, there’s not really a lot I am scared to say because affiliate programs aren’t really that controversial lol ….

…But I am sometimes scared about being too repetitive with the things I do say. 

But here’s the thing I am always saying because I wholeheartedly believe this:

If you have an online course, sell products (digital or physical), or have group programs…

You need an affiliate program.

And if you don’t have one, you’re losing out on lots of potential sales a.k.a you’re not making as much money as you could be.

Chances are you’re following me because you’re interested in starting an affiliate program so you can double your course or product sales…

… and maybe you just haven’t taken action yet…

… or maybe you’ve kind of piece-mealed things together but haven’t really done anything with your program yet….

If any of these describe you, I want to share the following 9 reasons an affiliate program is a must-have for course creators and product sellers like you!