As a digital entrepreneur, you know how important sales are. You can have the best digital product in the world but if it’s not selling, your business is in trouble.
What is affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is when you sell somebody else’s product online for a commission. For example, an entrepreneur or an established company may have a product or a catalog of products, either digital or physical. They let others promote and sell those products, paying them a commission every time they sell something.in his series on affiliate marketing: “Affiliate marketing is the process of earning a commission by promoting another person’s (or company’s) product.”
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Kajabi AI Creator Hub Examples of affiliate marketing For example, you want to get your feet wet as an online product creator. But instead of investing time creating a product that somebody might not buy, you try your hand selling somebody else’s product. Kajabi Partner Program . It could be any digital product that’s sold online that has an affiliate program.
What kind of products can be sold on an affiliate marketing basis? Whatever can be sold online can be turned into an affiliate product.
You can set yourself up as an Amazon affiliate and sell whatever Amazon sells, then gain a percentage of the sale. Make sure to check out programs such as the Amazon tax exemption to benefit from the platform as much as you can. You can sell internet software or other internet services, such as Kajabi, hosting services, marketing automation software, or any number of software products or technology services. You can sell dietary supplements and vitamins. You can sell physical products. You can even sell insurance if you choose! The list is endless. The idea is to find affiliate products that align with your business, so you can start generating income while you’re developing your own digital product.
The affiliate marketing players There are four parties involved in an affiliate marketing relationship: the merchant, the affiliate, the consumer, and the affiliate network.
The merchant The merchant is the person or company that has a product for sale. To increase sales of their products, they recruit affiliates to promote and sell them. The merchant then pays its affiliates a commission whenever somebody they refer buys their product.
The affiliate The affiliate is a person or entity that decides to sell a merchant’s product to their own audience for a commission. They sign up for the affiliate program and then sell the product to their audience.
The consumer The consumer is the person who ultimately purchases the product. They learn about the product through the affiliate. They click the affiliate’s link when they’re ready to buy. But ultimately the consumer buys the product from the merchant.
The network The affiliate network is a platform, like Clickbank or the Amazon Affiliates Program. It provides affiliates a catalog of products to sell.
When you sign up as an affiliate, the merchant asks you to sign up through their network. And if you’re looking for affiliate products to promote, you can join a network and browse their product listings. In either case, you’ll need to be approved by the merchant before you can begin selling.
Examples of affiliate marketing Let’s see a few examples of affiliate marketing in action.
Amy Porterfield Let’s go directly to the Kajabi family. Amy Porterfield is an online consultant, entrepreneur, and course provider. She’s built a massive following of 250,000 subscribers through her podcast and blog.
Amy teaches entrepreneurs how to leverage their knowledge to build online courses and earn money as a digital entrepreneur. But Amy doesn’t only teaches people how to create courses. As a Kajabi affiliate she sells the platform that enables entrepreneurs to host and deliver their courses.
Pat Flynn Flynn has built an empire of entrepreneurs that listen to his podcast. Not only do they buy his courses, they buy the tools he promotes on an affiliate basis.
Copyblogger Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger, built a multimillion-dollar business by attracting hundreds and thousands of subscribers and selling various digital products. This includes everything from courses to premium WordPress templates to SaaS software.
Most of what Copyblogger has sold are original products created in-house or through partnerships. But they’re also an affiliate for marketing tools that they use regularly. They promote these affiliate products with the same effort they promote their own products.
Michelle Lewis Michelle, another Kajabi affiliate , “helps CEOs become celebrities in their niche through Hollywood strategies.” Through her courses, videos and podcast she leverages her insider information of Hollywood (as a former actor) to teach what she knows. She also sells Kajabi, Asana, Social Bee, and other tools as an affiliate to help her clients carry out the strategies she teaches.
Graham Cochrane Graham, an audio-engineer turned audio-engineering teacher, has leveraged Kajabi to share his knowledge with other audio engineers. He is also a Kajabi affiliate and teaches others how to create courses, so they can teach what they know.
How to get started with affiliate marketing as the affiliate The first step is to identify companies that have affiliate marketing programs and sign up for them. Then, you start selling those products to your audience.
Cheesy, poorly designed websites. Lots of affiliate links but no valuable content. Online ads that take you to websites that look like phishing schemes. People promoting products they’ve never used before. Product-centric content that’s just one big pitch-fest. Check out this video with Kajabi Hero and affiliate Ant Hodges where he shares his tips for success with affiliate marketing:
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How to succeed with affiliate marketing The dream of online entrepreneurship has been stoked by successful online gurus like Gary V., Brendan Burchard, Amy Porterfield, Pat Flynn, Andrew Warner, Brian Clark, Joe Pulizzi, and others.
The cost of reaching a defined audience with content is near zero. You don’t need to do massive mailouts or print jobs. You only need to serve your audience by offering products you know and trust. As Joe Pulizzi says in an article for the Content Marketing Institute : “The new media business model and the new marketing business model are exactly the same.”
Build a minimum viable audience. Find out what your audience needs. Find products that fulfill those needs. Set up an affiliate relationship with the merchant. Use a soft-sell approach to promote those products to your audience. Build a minimum viable audience What is a minimum viable audience? You have this when:
You’re receiving enough feedback from comments, emails, social networks, and social media news sites to adapt and evolve your content to better serve the audience. You’re growing your audience organically thanks to word-of-mouth, email forwards, and social media sharing by existing audience members, and earned media. You’re gaining enough insight into what the audience needs to solve their problems or satisfy their desires beyond the free education you’re providing. How to build your minimum viable audience
Identifying a target audience you’d like to serve. Creating content that adds daily utility value to their lives (in their career, their hobbies, or in their family life). Encouraging them to subscribe to your content, either your email newsletter, podcast or YouTube channel. Or all of the above. The key to building a loyal audience is generating trust and authority. Then identify what your audience needs and give it to them.create YouTube videos to help up-and-coming software developers get freelance gigs? Give them as much information as they need to improve their career. Help them find sweet development gigs that pay a lot while helping them build their resumes.
Find out what your audience needs Once you build your minimum viable audience you’ve essentially built yourself a feedback loop. Through comments on your website or social media posts, responses to your email newsletter, statistics on which content gets the most clicks, and other types of feedback, you understand what your audience is likely to buy.Content Inc. , which is due for re-release in April with updated content.
Find products that fulfill those needs Once you know what problems, desires, frustrations, and dreams your audience has, you’re ready to find good affiliate products. You’re looking for products that can solve their problems, fulfill their desires, resolve their frustrations.
Set up affiliate relationships with merchants Many merchants offer affiliate programs on their website. Once you sign up and get approved as an authorized affiliate, they will provide you with special product links you can use that attribute sales to you. You can use these links to promote their products on your own website.
For example, through the Kajabi Partner Program you can sign up online using your Kajabi login. You’ll earn a 30 percent commission for any sale that can be tracked back to you through your affiliate link. Just make sure that your website and whatever website you're promoting use SSL encryption so all of your information stays safe online.
Use the soft sell to promote these products to your audience Pat Flynn uses the term, soft pitch pipeline to describe affiliate marketing. The pipeline starts with a solid relationship with your audience. The best affiliate products will fit your audience’s needs and solve the problems you discovered in Section 2 above.
Offer a bonus This is a good way to ensure they buy from your link instead of going directly to the merchant. Give your audience something extra they wouldn’t get if they bought from anyone else.
An hour of free consulting Access to a free course (hosted on Kajabi, of course) A unique resource that only you provide How to find products to sell Don’t look for products just to sell products. Focus on building your minimum viable audience. reviewed 11 affiliate networks . Let’s look at a few of them here:
Amazon Associates Amazon Associates is a great source of physical products. Since they sell just about anything in the world, as an affiliate, the world is your oyster.
CJ Affiliate (formerly known as Commission Junction) As of this writing, CJ has 3,000 affiliated merchants, making it one of the largest affiliate networks. You get access to physical as well as digital products from sources such as Lowes, Overstock, Office Depot, Priceline, GoPro, IHG (Hotels), and Grammarly, to name a few.
Clickbank ClickBank is another one of the better-known affiliate networks. It has both physical and digital products. However, it tends to aggregate smaller providers and favors digital over physical products. The good news is that commissions are pretty high for most merchants. The generous refund policy, however, means you might lose commissions after the fact.
Rakuten Marketing Rakuten Marketing is another source of physical products from big names such as Walmart, Best Buy, Macy’s, and Papa Johns. (Gotta love those pizza affiliates!)
Software products as affiliate marketing products Another source of affiliate products are the apps we use everyday as digital entrepreneurs. From course software (like Kajabi) to accounting apps, anything that is available to digital entrepreneurs is probably also available to sell as an affiliate product.successful and popular internet marketers sell Kajabi on an affiliate basis, including Amy Porterfield, Michelle Lewis, and Robert Thomas Jr. You can sign up for the Kajabi Partner Program here.
How to get started with affiliate marketing as a merchant We’ve explored how to make money as an affiliate marketer, selling other people’s products on a commission-basis. But what if you have your own digital products: courses, eBooks, consulting? How can you leverage affiliate marketing to expand your market and sell more?
You avoid paying up front for advertising . If you’re not happy paying Google and Facebook for ads before you get your first customer, then creating an affiliate program is great for you. You won’t have to fork out any money until an affiliate partner sells your product. That’s performance marketing in a nutshell.You expand into other niches . Suppose you sell your product to Christian moms, but you want to extend your market to Muslim moms and Buddhist moms. You could forge partnerships with Muslim or Buddhist mommy bloggers and have them sell your products to their audience.You can avoid the “big three.” You may not want to rely exclusively on Facebook, Google, or Amazon to promote your product. Working with affiliates enables you to sell into new markets through a network of small and medium businesses like yours.Low-cost way to sell more . Related to number 1 above, if your marketing budget is small or non-existent, signing up affiliates to sell your product is a great way to grow while keeping your marketing overhead low.Leverage larger audiences than your own . One of the ways Jeff Walker was able to supercharge his Product Launch Formula was to partner with affiliates with much larger audiences than his own. This is a smart strategy if you’re just starting out. In fact, when you’re fairly new to the market, you need the third-party validation of people who have already attracted a large audience.How much should you pay your affiliates? You can pay your affiliate a flat rate or a percentage of each sale they help you make. Most affiliates offer a percentage, because it’s the easiest way to ensure they stay profitable. But flat rate commissions work well too, if you know your numbers.
Your average customer lifetime value Your average cost of acquiring a customer. This would include your affiliate commissions. Your customer churn rate. What percentage of customers do you retain in a 12-month period? The the revenue each customer brings in. Well below your customer lifetime value Your affiliate commission should be well below your CLV. It’s only one of your acquisition costs. It’s likely you also have advertising costs, referral fees, and discounts.
High enough to attract affiliates If your affiliate commission is attractive, your affiliates will work harder to sell your products. When you profit, they do too.
Affiliates earn a flat $125 per sale, with a percent commission on upsells. The conversion rate is 11 percent, which means approximately one out of every ten referrals will buy. The seller even tells us what type of people convert the best.
This commission is 50 percent of the initial sale and 50 percent of each month’s membership fee for each sale the affiliate sends their way. Assuming the merchant retains each customer for three months, the affiliate gets $178 per sale.
Using affiliate marketing to sell your Kajabi products Kajabi makes it easy to have affiliates sell your online courses or digital products. This feature is included with the Pro and Growth plans .enable Affiliate commission for your Offers. You can generate Share Links to redirect to any URL, Landing Page or Checkout Page. Kajabi free today and see if affiliate marketing is the right tactic for your business.
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