Create Your Affiliate Program

One of my the things I love doing here at Create Your Affiliate Program is to share the behind-the-scenes of growing my own business with you, and all the cool tools and resources I find along the way.

Today I’m sharing two of the resources I found this past week that I’m implementing in my own business that I think you’ll for sure want to check out.  Keep reading!

Effortless Content Ideas

Lucy Reyes over at Cheers to Life Blogging has put together a really awesome bite-sized course that’s going to help you uncover 10+ social media content ideas from a SINGLE blog post in just 5 minutes (or less).

It’s called Effortless Content Ideas, and you can check it out through my affiliate link here.

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

• Why blog posts are a goldmine of content ideas
• How to know which blog posts are ideal for sparking new ideas
• Real-life example walkthroughs in B2C and B2B niches
• The exact tools Lucy uses to make the process 10x easier

There’s also a BONUS: Content Ideas: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet – Discover 40+ ways to turn your SINGLE blog post into engaging content across multiple platforms.

I bought this a few days ago and am soooo excited to dig in and use it to generate social content from some of the recent blog posts I’ve been posting.

Hello Bar

Did you know that 98% of site visitors leave your website without converting?  Whoa – that’s a lot of leads that could be left on the table.  One of the things that I am doing to help increase conversions is to put an announcement bar on the top of my site, to draw my website visitors’ attention to the latest happenings in my business {such as my Products + Partnerships Workshop}.  I’m using a FREE tool called Hello Bar to do this. 

Take a look at what mine looks like:

I can remove the H logo if I upgrade to a paid option, but honestly the free option is perfect for what I am needing right now.  You can check it out here.

I hope you’ll find these resources helpful!  If there are any cool tools you’ve discovered recently, share them with me below!

Please note: This blog post contains affiliate links, but please note I only recommend tools and resources I personally love and use.

There are a million ways to market your business, and a big part of that is using social media sites like Instagram and Facebook.

But what if you could market your business using LESS social media?

The good news is, you can.  

While I am on both IG and FB and promote my business there, I want to give you a sneak peek of the three things I am doing to market my own business in 2023 that DO NOT involve Instagram or Facebook that also drive traffic to my business.

Curious what they are? Keep reading!

? Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic to Your Website

I love Pinterest for personal use: finding new recipes, looking up travel itineraries for my upcoming trips, and for home decorating ideas. But after 2 months of focusing on using it to grow my business and send more traffic to my website, I am also loving it because it’s the 4th biggest traffic driver to my website according to my analytics!  

If you’re looking to get your Pinterest foundations in place, check out this super low-cost Pinning Foundations course from Karrie Marie.

? Partner with Affiliates to Make More Sales

Okay, so this one probably isn’t a surprise.  But, when you partner with affiliates to promote your products and courses, you aren’t having to show up on Instagram – the affiliate is the one doing the promo to drive traffic to your free opt ins and offers. During my launches, and even in between launches, affiliates drove upwards of 22% of my sales last year, and so I am excited to expand upon that this year.

In March, I’ll be hosting a workshop called Products & Partnerships to show you how to do a 5-day Flash Sale working with affiliate partners if this is something that interests you.  You can check out the details and register early now; I’ll also be sharing more details with you next week and answering all of your Qs!

?Do a Freebie Swap

A freebie swap is when you have someone, who ideally has an audience you’d like to get in front of, email their list about your free opt in, and in exchange, you also email your list about their free opt in.  This is a great and low cost way to grow your email list and get people into your sales funnel. I’ve done this before with Dani Paige and a few other colleagues – it was a mutually beneficial freebie swap and I definitely plan to do more of these in 2023.  

To make it easy for you to find someone to do a freebie swap with, here’s a little swipe copy you can use:

“Hi everyone! I’m looking for someone who wants to do a “Freebie Swap” with our audiences during *[DATES HERE]*. The way this works is we each agree to email our lists with an email promoting the other person’s free offer/lead magnet. The purpose of this is that we each add new ideal audience members to our email list which can lead to more sales:). ?

My freebie is *[INSERT FREEBIE NAME HERE]*, and I’m looking to “swap freebies” with someone who has a similar audience as mine: *[INSERT A SHORT DESCRIPTION OF YOUR AUDIENCE]*, and who’s email list is *[DESIRED AUDIENCE SIZE HERE]* or bigger. (My audience size is a little over *X* people).

Let me know if you are interested by commenting below or emailing me at *youremail@youremail(.)com*.

—-

I hope you enjoyed this little behind-the-scenes sneak peek of how I’m marketing my own business this year, and that it has inspired you to to find some new ways to market your business using less social media in 2023.

This past week, I was in Las Vegas attending Affiliate Summit West 2023. It was a really great conference for learning all the latest and greatest about affiliate marketing, and I’ll be sharing more about it in the coming weeks on Instagram, here on my blog, and in my weekly newsletter.

Today I want to share with you an idea I learned about at ASW ‘23 that I thought was so genius and will be simple to implement.  I know my fellow online course creators and product sellers will want to implement this right away too if you haven’t already, so keep reading to find out what this simple idea is!

First though, I want to give credit to Eddie Maalouf, who was one of the speakers on Day 1, for this idea, because it’s a strategy he used when working with one of his clients {and I will probably butcher the summary of this idea in this blog post lol but it’s so good I just have to share it with you!}

In his session, Eddie shared a story of how he was working with a company that thought their buyers were buying their shakes {I think it was shakes?!} because they wanted to experience less bloating.  But when they began surveying their buyers immediately after purchasing, they actually found out they were buying the shakes for an entirely different reason {weight loss}.  What they thought was the reason {bloating} was actually NOT the number one reason {it was third, in fact}.

By understanding why their customers were actually buying their product, and not just assuming they knew, they were able to update how they marketed their shakes, which increased sales. They ended up selling way more products because they were talking about the benefits of the product that people actually wanted which made it easier for people to know the product was for them!

??So, how do you find out why your buyers bought so you can use that data to improve how you market?

You ask them via a short poll on the thank you page they are directed to immediately after purchase and in their post-purchase email.

This was such a simple strategy, and I honestly can’t believe I haven’t implemented this before or that nothing I have bought recently has implemented this simple marketing survey tactic, either. ?

So, this week I will be updating the thank you pages for my affiliate program templates and my Make More Together program so that I can start gathering that valuable information. I will also incorporate this into the post-purchase emails people receive when they sign up for my offers.

To make it easy for people to answer, my question will be in the form of a multiple choice question so that people can simply choose the option that works best for them!

I’ve already implemented this on my Ask the Expert: 30 Days of Affiliate Program Strategy + Support via Voxer thank you page… Here’s what it looks like:

I hope you find this simple but impactful marketing survey strategy helpful, my friends. Let me know in the comments if you plan to implement this idea!

If this is a strategy you have been doing for a while already, I’d love to hear from you how you use the data you collect, so chime in below, too.

Are you launching in Q3 or Q4 this year? If so, keep reading, because in today’s blog post, I thought it could be fun to share some behind-the-scenes info on the launch resources I use to make launching easy-peasy for myself, in case you too are looking for some awesome resources to use in your business.  

Keep reading to find out what my must-use templates and resources are:

For Writing my Sales Page: ? Sales Page in a Day Template

This is what I used to write my own sales page copy for Make More Together. It made it sooooo easy and I cannot recommend this template highly enough!

For Writing my Launch Copy: ? Effortless Content Ideas

Writing launch copy for my social media posts can be so time consuming, so I LOVE this mini-training that gave me an effortless way to find 10+ social media content ideas from a single blog post I’ve already written.

I have to confess: I’m excited to get back into a routine this week after taking time off over the holidays.  While I spent a lot of time the past few weeks resting and recovering from being sick, as well as enjoying the Christmas holidays, I also spent time getting clear on what my goals are for this year.  

One of those goals is to share more valuable content with you, and I’m excited to kick off with today’s post, and to share an invitation with you at the end to a free training I’m hosting this month! Let’s dive in!

3 Reasons You Need to Make Working with Affiliates a Priority in 2023

Reason #1:  It’s a SIMPLE and FAST Way to Grow Your Audience!

When it comes to selling your products or launching your course, what do you need?  An audience to sell to!  But trying to grow that audience on your own can be super daunting… Reels, IG posts, FB ads, daily pinning, trying to figure out TikTok.  It can start to feel like… a lot.

When you work with affiliate partners, it doesn’t have to be that complicated to grow your audience. You provide your affiliate partners with a link to your free or paid offer to promote, as well as the promo materials, and then they do the actual work of promoting you and your business and sending new leads and customers your way.  [More on this here.]

Reason #2: It’s Cost-Effective {Especially if You’re Just Getting Started!}

When you work with affiliate partners, you aren’t having to pay them until after they’ve made a sale for you.  So, you don’t need a big budget like you would need if you were running paid ads, and this is especially good if you are just getting started with selling your courses or products in the online space.

Here’s an example to show you what I mean: 

If you spend $500 on Facebook ads, and your course costs $500, you have to make at least 1 sale to just break even.

But say you offer your affiliates a 20% commission for promoting your $500 course. You only need to make 1 sale in order to make a profit.  1 sales = $400 in profit for you, and $100 paid to your affiliates. 

Not that long ago, I read on Shopify’s website that one in four shoppers who were new to brands bought through affiliate links. And while I am not surprised by this fact, I am surprised by how many product sellers I know who aren’t currently working with affiliates to sell more!

If you sell digital or physical products, this blog post is for you.  Below, I’m sharing 3 tips for product sellers to sell more products by working with affiliates!

Tip #1: Turn Your Existing Customers into Your Affiliates

Once you’ve set up your affiliate program, I encourage you to invite all of your existing customers/clients to become your affiliates.  

Why is this a good idea?  Because they are the people who can authentically share about your product with others who may need or want it!

Another way to think about it:

If you have 20 customers, and they each referred just 1 person to your product who purchased… BOOM! 20 new customers. Your sales essentially doubled! 🙂  

So, before you pitch others to be your affiliates, make sure you start with your existing customers!

Tip #2: Make It Personal When Choosing Others Affiliate Partners

In my upcoming workshop I mentioned above, I’ll be sharing in-depth about who else, besides your past customers, make the best affiliate partners {you’ll even leave knowing exactly who you want to pitch!}.  But here’s a little tip if you are thinking about who to partner with now:  Make it personal… and be choosy!

When you are researching who would make dream affiliate partners, choose people who you genuinely like, and who you support their business and would be proud to have promote your products.  

One of the questions I get asked the most in my work here at Create Your Affiliate Program is this:

What affiliate tracking software do you recommend?

My first response is always: Check the tools you are already using!

If you are a course creator or membership creator, you might be using a course platform (like Teachable, Kajabi or Membervault) that already has affiliate tracking capabilities.

You can also check your payment processors, such as ThriveCart or SendOwl, which also have affiliate tracking capabilities.

No need to spend additional money on an affiliate tracking software when you might already have access to one.

But, if you don’t have an affiliate tracking software and are looking for a recommendation, I’ve got one to share with you today:

Tapfiliate

Tapfiliate is a tool I’ve been using with clients more and more over the past year as part of my VIP Days, and I am really liking how seamless it is as a tracking platform.

Start your 14 day Free Trial Today!

Here’s what I love about it:

You can very easily onboard your affiliates, and give them everything they need to promote your business, by using their branded affiliate dashboard.

“How can I get more people to join my online membership?“

If you have a membership, you might have asked yourself this question… many times in facts.

As online business owners, I think a lot of us think we need to be running fb ads in order to be ‘successful’.

But running fb ads in 2019 is a lotttt different than running fb ads in 2022 – they aren’t as reliable as they used to be.

I want to share with you a very powerful example of why I recommend starting with Affiliates to promote your membership *before* you run facebook ads to it!

Scenario A: Promoting Your Membership with Facebook Ads 

Let’s say you have an ads budget of $500 that you want to use to grow your membership.

You create ads that send sign ups to your opt in, then send those people through your sales funnel to enroll them into your membership.

Let’s say your ads are converting at $2 per opt in. 

Based on this math, it’s likely you will get 250 people to sign up through your ad and go through your sales funnel.

Let’s be generous and say your sales funnel is converting 5% of the people who go through your sales funnel.

250 people x .05 conversion rate = 12.5 sign ups  

$1,212.50 in income

Facebook Ads Budget = $500.

Profit you are left with: $712.50

If your membership is $97 a month, you need roughly 5 sign ups to enroll in your membership just to break even on your ads budget.

The other 7 sign ups account for actual revenue.  #yay

Is this doable? Absolutely! 

But when you are first starting your membership, you might not have $500+ to invest in Facebook ads {or it might feel super risky to do that when the results aren’t guaranteed!}

Or you might have a membership that can’t be marketed with ads for whatever reason (such as weight loss memberships or s_x love and relationship coaching memberships) and so FB ads aren’t even something you can set up if you wanted to.

So I also want to show you what the data looks like if you work with affiliates to send people through your funnel instead of running Facebook ads.

Scenario B: Promoting Your Membership by Working with Affiliates

Let’s say you have 3 people who want to be affiliates for you, and you’ve offered them a 20% one-time commission as your affiliate.

Let’s also say those 3 affiliates send your funnel 250 new opt ins.

And if your sales funnel is converting at 5%, so 12.50 new people sign up for your $97 membership.