Step 7: Use Affiliates to Attract Truckloads of New Buyers

Add a brief overview or the name of the lesson here.

You know that old saying, “Two heads are better than one”? We can alter that a bit to “Multiple people are better than one” when talking about selling your product.

You don’t have to sell your new course alone. Instead, utilize paid affiliates to promote for you–and make sure your course or product gets the most possible eyeballs on it. Affiliates act as your sales force. They receive a unique link to use in their emails, social media, or blog posts and every time they refer someone who buys your product, you pay them a commission. In general, commission for digital products are 50 percent whereas services are usually in the 10-20 percent range.

Where to Find Affiliates?

If you want your affiliate team to really work hard for you, it’s best if you recruit people who know you already and who are familiar with the quality of your work. Look among your business peers, social media followers, or influencers in your industry.

If you’re open to strangers promoting your products, create an application they can fill out and require manual approval before assigning them a unique affiliate link. At the very least, ask them their website URL, what type of audience they serve, and how they plan on promoting your products. Now you can do a quick investigation of the website and decide if this affiliate indeed serves the same audience as you or if they are doing anything shady that could reflect badly on you if they promote your products.

Keep Affiliates Motivated with a Contest

Many experienced affiliates will promote your products easily because it’s part of their business model and they know what offers their audience will jump at purchasing. But there’s nothing wrong with some friendly competition and running an affiliate contest will spur most affiliates into action.

Start with choosing the purpose of the contest: Do you want more leads or more sales? Do you have a total number of leads or sales in mind? Don’t hide those numbers; tell your affiliates what you’re aiming for.

Second, choose a bad ass contest prize that will appeal to your affiliates. It doesn’t have to compliment your product, but it should stand out as being impressive and worth winning. Professional affiliate marketers promote multiple products/brands, so make your prize worthwhile for them to spend their time promoting you. Consider a large cash prize, the newest electronic toy, or a free ticket to your next live event.

Next, choose the duration of the contest. Do you have the energy to run it a full 30 days or would 14 days work best for you? 

Lastly but most importantly, you’ll need an affiliate management software to track all the leads and commissions owed. Don’t be fooled into doing this manually; consider the price of an affiliate software program a worthy expense for your business.

Use this checklist of items to include on your contest page. - REWORD THIS AND THEN MAKE ADD MORE CONTENT BELOW TO HELP PEOPLE FIGURE OUT WHAT TO INCLUDE IN THE CONTEST -

• Overall contest details

• Start date

• End date

• Prizes

• How to win

• How winners will be contacted

• Suggestions for how to promote

• Your social links for easy engagement

• Easy access links to resources and assets for promotion (more on this in a minute!)

• Leaderboard

• FAQs and a way to get in touch with you for more information

Today's Action:  Find Affiliates

1. Make a list of people to personally ask to join your affiliate program.
2. Start with mentors or other business associates who know your quality of work and you as a person.
3. Map out a leads contest and sales contest to encourage affiliates to promote early and often.
4. Create your affiliate contest page. Some affiliate software will have something like this built-in or you can create a simple page on your WordPress site. 

Not sure what your next step is? (this headline will change each time based on the products you're offering)
 

In here you're going to add more product that go with the course.  This could be PLR that will help them or the next course they should look into.  You can also add affiliate offers, but look in your products first.

Also, you can create a buy button from Shopify or create a collection where it adds select products at the bottom here.

You could also add a product image in the columns below and then link to those specific products.  Lots of income potential here.  Don't forget to put the uri parimeters so you can record where the purchases came from.  You want to be able to track it.

In here you're going to add more product that go with the course.  This could be PLR that will help them or the next course they should look into.  You can also add affiliate offers, but look in your products first.

Also, you can create a buy button from Shopify or create a collection where it adds select products at the bottom here.

You could also add a product image in the columns below and then link to those specific products.  Lots of income potential here.  Don't forget to put the uri parimeters so you can record where the purchases came from.  You want to be able to track it.