Episode 3-40: Unintended Benefits Of Affiliate Marketing

Hey, what’s going on podcast family? Alex Branning here.

I want to talk about the unintended benefits of affiliate marketing. I want to talk about five things that are going to start happening to you when you get into affiliate marketing. Now, quick overview, if you have no idea what the heck I’m talking about when I mention affiliate marketing, that is when you get paid to introduce people to products or services.

For example, I’m an affiliate with Amazon, so if I post a link and it leads to an Amazon product tagged with my affiliate ID, I get a teeny, tiny, small percentage of the revenue that Amazon made from that product. I’m also an affiliate for Click Funnels. So if you sign up for Click Funnels through my link, Click Funnels sends me a thank you for as long as you stay a customer with Click Funnels. That’s what affiliate marketing is.

Benefit number one of affiliate marketing is that it teaches you what your audience wants to buy. Affiliate marketing teaches you what your audience wants to buy. When you first start building an audience, start speaking out your truth, your message, you’re out there going, okay, I’m going to start building my business online. Here we go. When you first get started, sometimes you don’t really know what the people that are … who the people that are following you, what they want from you. Affiliate marketing helps you figure out what they want without you having to create things.

For example, when I first got started with affiliate marketing, I would be promoting different products that I found from partners of mine, people that I met at events. I’d find cool books. I was just like, hey, I got this, is anybody interested in it? I just see what people were reaching out to.

Now, I’ve found a huge number of people that are in my audience that we’re very excited to talk to me about marketing software, which is where I started to get really excited about Click Funnels. You’ll start to discover different things. Like, product topics, like, what specific topics that you’re interested in. But they may give you some hints, but there’s a lot of subcategories within those types of broad topics.

For example, if you talk about marketing, yes, I’m going to learn marketing. But what exactly do they want to learn about marketing? Affiliate products help you determine what they’re going to actually spend money on.

Also, when you start working on affiliate marketing, you’re going to discover what price points your audience is open to spending. Because, if you start promoting things that are $200, $500, $1,000, you can track, okay, how much is my audience spending? It helps you determine what people are going to actually buy.

Also, the product format. Are they interested in books? Are they interested in membership courses? Are they interested in software? Are they interested in something else? It helps you determine what your audience is actually looking for when they’re going to buy.

It also helps you segment your list. What I mean by that is, as you talk to different … as you speak out to your audience and you share different things that you know and different products or services that you’re affiliated with, you can start to create smaller groups, either within your email list. What I highly recommend that you do. And also within your audience, like, if you create Facebook groups around specific things.

For example, I have, within my email list I have, at the time that I’m making this, I have almost 14,000 people in my email list and out of those a small segment of them I know are interested in Click Funnels because they’ve gone through a Click Funnels related funnel or they’ve bought a Click Funnels product through my link. I know that they’re interested in Click Funnels, at least on a surface level. So, when Click Funnels comes out with something new, fun, then I know, okay, I’m going to hit up this list. I don’t hit up all 14,000 because I know that some of them are not going to be interested or I don’t want to wear out my welcome. So, I come at them with things that I think they’re going to be interested in. It helps me to segment my list. It helps you actually create products that actually sell too. Once you’re figuring this stuff out, then it helps you determine, okay, this is working really well.

I’ll give you an example.

The One Funnel Away Challenge that Click Funnels did, phenomenal, great seller for me. It has been so profitable. And now I’m looking at this and going, how can I create my own challenge type program? My own challenge type product. I’ve done challenges before, but not nearly to the level that Click Funnels did. It was just really dialed in. For me, I’m looking at this going, okay, I learned something here from Click Funnels in the One Funnel Away Challenge. I learned that my audience likes that, they’ll do it, and afterwards, assuming they get really good value, they’re going to want to keep buying stuff. Really, really cool.

The second benefit is that affiliate marketing teaches you how to sell. When you have to put together an offer for an affiliate marketing product, you’re really going from start to finish on the whole sales process, without having to deliver the product, which is awesome. Affiliate marketing is a great way to get your feet wet in the sales game, on the online marketing game, Facebook ads, et cetera. It helps you figure out, okay, what actually works? What am I good at? What do I need help with?

I’ve done, when it comes to affiliate marketing stuff, I’ve written sales letters just for affiliate marketing products. I’ve done webinars. Why? Yes, I do get paid, but also it helps me to iron out, what are people looking for? What am I good at? What do I need to learn a little bit more about? What could I hone in on?

One of the most eye opening experiences for me was when I was involved in a launch and my offer, I had a teeny tiny itty bitty little list and I was crushing it in this launch that I was doing, and the reason was the email that I had written out, the Facebook ad that … or, I wrote out an email and I turned it into a Facebook, and it was working really good. I was surprised. People that I was supporting were surprised. And I learned, hey, I’m pretty good at this copywriting thing, this sales letter game. It helped me to get better.

On the flip side, I realized that my videos were not good and I needed to get better. It was good. It was eye opening. It was a great way for me to practice and make money at the same time.

Third benefit. Benefit number three. Affiliate marketing helps you get noticed by influencers and other affiliates. When you start playing around in the affiliate marketing game, when you start promoting products, you’re going to get noticed by other people who are also promoting those products. The louder you are, the more you publish, you’re going to be seen by people who are at a “higher level” than you and it’s going to help you get noticed and grow in your own influence.

When I was in a Click Funnels competition, and I made it on the leaderboard above some of the biggest people in the game, that immediately elevated my status and I was able to leap frog, which was really cool and it helped me in a lot of different ways. But it would not have happened had I not gone, you know what, I’m going to write a sales letter here, I’m going to send out an email to my list, I’m going to make a short video and post it up, see how it goes. It worked really good for me. It got me noticed. And now, my Click Funnels affiliate game and the people that I’m connected to are elevated, and I was a huge part of it.

Benefit number four.

Talking about affiliate marketing, the unintended benefits of affiliate marketing.

Benefit number four is, you make a lot of money doing this. There’s no limit because … what I mean by that is, if your bonuses are digital in nature, or it’s video training, or you have group coaching, because you’re not doing the delivery, you have absolutely no limit on the amount of money or sales that you could make, which is really exciting. That’s a great place to be in business, to not have that be a limit for you. You’re generating a ton of cash when you do it right.

That leads me to my fifth and final benefit, which is, affiliate marketing generates leads at zero cost to you. If you do it right, if it’s even a marginally profitable campaign, you’re getting people into your funnel, into your database, so that you can email in the future and you’re doing it at break even or even making a profit. That’s a game changer for so many of us.

I remember, for me, I generated 115 coaching client leads, and I was actually paid to do it, because of the way that I packaged my affiliate offer. There’s some really cool unintended benefits, some hidden benefits, of affiliate marketing. The moneymaker one, not really hidden, we all know about that one. But, we got to be reminded that it actually is a money making opportunity for you with zero ceiling. That’s just crazy.

Just a quick recap.

Affiliate marketing benefits. It teaches you what your audience wants to buy. When you start talking more about affiliate products, when you start pushing some stuff out there, your audience is going to raise their hand and say, yes, I’m interested in that.

Number two. Affiliate marketing teaches you how to sell. To put together a good offer, you got to flex your muscles. You got to learn how to write a good sales letter, how to put together a good webinar.

Number three. Affiliate marketing helps get you noticed by influencers and other affiliates in that same space. You’re gonna start to rub elbows with some big people in online marketing and internet marketing in the same peer group or not. But it’s going to help you get more noticed. Your profile will grow.

Number four. Affiliate marketing is a moneymaker with no ceiling because you’re not doing the delivery. I love that one. That’s probably my favorite one.

Last but definitely not least, affiliate marketing generates leads at absolutely zero cost.

If you’re going, man, how do I learn affiliate marketing? I got a great free resource for you, it’s called The Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp. It’s something free.

It’s actually put on by my good friend Russell Brunson over at Click Funnels. I love calling him my good friend. He actually has no idea who I am, but I love Russell Brunson. He’s awesome. If you go to AlexBranning.com/bootcamp. That’s AlexBranning.com/bootcamp, you’re going to get an invite to join The Affiliate Marketing Bootcamp. It’s free. He’s going to walk you step by step through breaking down how to do affiliate marketing. He’ll be using the Click Funnels product as his demonstration, you don’t have to, but you can learn from him and learn from the best people out there. You’re going to get a lot of really cool resources as well. He’s got some books for you, some E-books. Highly recommend it. Again, AlexBranning.com/bootcamp. Totally free. Go ahead and jump in on there.

You guys are amazing. I love all the feedback I get. Have a great rest of your day.

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Thanks guys.


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