Want more members inside of your awesome membership program?

Of course you do!

One of the easiest ways to add new members into your membership is by having your current members become affiliates for you!  

In case you’re new to what an affiliate is, an affiliate is someone who shares your work (or in this case, your membership) with their community using a unique tracking link. They receive an affiliate commission for anyone who signs up for your offer/membership through their link. 

Working with affiliates has one of the highest ROIs because once you set up your affiliate program, you only pay your affiliates when they refer a “sale” aka new member to you.

Your current members make the best affiliates for your membership for two main reasons:

  1. They already know, like and trust you so would more than likely happily affiliate for you; receiving the commission would just be the cherry on top!
  2. They can share about your membership from personal experience – so their “marketing” of your membership comes from a really authentic and genuine place.

If you’re ready to work with affiliates to grow your membership, let’s walk through what you need to do to begin your affiliate program:

Set Up Your Tech

The first step to working with affiliates is to make sure that you have your affiliate tracking set up.

The good news is, if you have your membership set up already, chances are you already have the tech you need for your affiliate program!

Most of the major course platforms (Teachable, Kajabi, MemberVault, etc) offer affiliate capabilities.  You’ll want to check your account directly.

If your membership site platform doesn’t offer affiliate capabilities, not to worry. There are some great affiliate options out there, such as LeadDyno and WP Affiliate. (I cover more affiliate options inside of my free guide here.)

One of the most common Qs I see in the membership space is How much should I pay my affiliates?”

On a recurring membership, I recommend 20% – 25%.  Of course, there is no right or wrong answer here, but that commission rate is pretty standard for membership site owners.

What to Provide Your Affiliates

Once you’ve set up your affiliate program tech, you want to gather up the promo materials you want to provide your members who will sign up to be an affiliate for you.  

Things you’ll want to provide your affiliates:

  • Social Media Images  (sized perfectly for Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and LinkedIn)
  • Social Media Promo Posts
  • Newsletter copy that your affiliates can edit to fit their own style

They key here is that you want to make it as *easy as possible* for your affiliates to find everything that they need to affiliate for you all in one place.

I recommend creating an affiliate promo packet to make it easy for your affiliates to have all the information they need in one place.

How to Support Your Affiliates

If you want your members to be successful affiliates for you, you need to make sure they are 100% supported.  As I mentioned earlier in this post, the most important part of a successful and profitable affiliate program is making sure your affiliates have everything they need in order to affiliate for you.

I highly recommend creating an affiliate onboarding sequence for your affiliates where you send them a series of emails welcoming them as an affiliate, providing them everything they need, and checking in with them to make sure they feel fully supported.  You don’t want to bombard them with emails, but you do want to communicate with them enough so that they have everything to start promoting your membership with their people.

On-going Management

Once you’ve welcomed your affiliates and have provided them everything they need, you want to make sure you don’t just “ghost” them.  You definitely want to continue to nurture your relationship with your affiliates, because when they are successful, you are successful!

Each month, be sure to pay out your monthly commission payout on the date you said you would when you provided them the affiliate program details.

I recommend sending out a monthly newsletter that is exclusively for your affiliates. You can share upcoming launches that you might have for your membership, you can spotlight an affiliate from the group, or you can share new social media blurbs and images your affiliates can use.  You will also want to remind your affiliates where they can find their affiliate promo packet that has all of the information they need to affiliate for you.

By now, I hope this blog post has opened your eyes to the possibilities of working with affiliates to grow your membership.

And if setting up your Affiliate Program is something you’d like support with, I’m booking spots for my 1:on:1 Affiliate Program VIP Day.  

I’d love to show you what’s possible when you work with affiliates to grow your awesome membership!