Episode 518 – Ask Me An Affiliate Marketing Question
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:23] Hey everybody it's Tom here with episode five hundred and eighteen is Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're doing ask me an affiliate marketing question. Now this is going to be from the perspective of you promoting other people's products for a commission. I've made millions of dollars doing this and and even though it's not that complicated, there are specific things you need to know, and that's what I'm going to tell you in this episode. Now, if you want a total full, more in-depth episode about this, go to screwthecommute.com/52. That was a complete affiliate marketing perspective from both sides of the coin where other people are selling your products. So I did the whole thing on that. And then you're selling other people's products, the whole whole thing on that. So that was episode fifty two. Now, I hope you didn't miss the Pinterest series I did. That was episode 511, 514, and 517. And I got to tell you this was inspired by a webinar I hosted with John Kremer and Daniel Hall. And oh my goodness. You know, I've been ignoring Pinterest for years. You know, I had an account and I just had the social media person just throwing stuff up there once in a while.

[00:01:45] But now I'm really going gung ho and the payback is enormous. You got to listen to this webinar. The link to it will be in the show notes. All right. How'd you like me to send you big affiliate stuff? You must care about that if you're listening to this episode. Well, I got all kinds of stuff. I I mean, hundreds of products and services that pay up to five thousand bucks or more. And anything from, you know, small referrals can pay you 10, 20 bucks. But but you do enough of those that can be a lot of money. So we and I got everything in between. So if you're interested in that? Email me at Tom it. Screw the commute and I'll give you details. Now, make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book, and this is really important for affiliate stuff too, because you can reach more potential people faster and you know, it's just a something that I just can't believe it. If people don't implement some of these things because they're free and they're cheap and they knock your workload down, I mean, come on, you know, don't. Cry to me about, oh, it's too much work when you're not using these tools, I mean, if you took literally one, maybe three or four hours and set up this one tool, it could save you millions of keywords next year. Or excuse me, it could save you millions of keystrokes next year.

[00:03:20] Which means loads and loads of less time. Eye strain on the computer. You know your fingers, you know, carpal tunnel syndrome, all of that. So. Download a copy of that automation e-book and do the darn stuff. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. And listen, I really want your help. Come on, help me out here. You're going to be so proud of yourself if you do. You know, I started this program to help persons with disabilities get educated, get a distance learning, education and digital and internet marketing. And it's going beautifully. But we need your help financing the program. We have a Go Fund Me campaign ready to go. And it's doing good, but the more you contribute, the more people we can help so. So check that out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities. That's my school site. Of course, it's distance learning, so you can be anywhere and be in it and then forward slash disabilities and then click on the Go Fund Me campaign. You'll see videos of these people so inspiring. Two of the people are blind and they're making videos about that. All right. So check it out. Help us out something you can really be proud of. I'm really proud of it, that's for sure.

[00:04:53] All right, let's get to the main event. Ask me in affiliate marketing question. All right, here we go. Tom, I want to market affiliate products. How do I get started? Well, first I want to make sure everybody is clear on this, that there's two types of affiliate stuff going on. One is where you find products that you like and you promote them. And if somebody buys them, you get a commission, that's one side of the coin. That's what we're talking about today. The other side of the coin is you have products and services that you want other people to promote. And then if they if they send you a customer, you send them a commission. All right. So if you want more details on that, go to episode 52, screwthecommute.com/52. So we're talking about today, all the questions I get on you being an affiliate, see, and there's lots of benefits of you being an affiliate because you don't have to have any tracking software, you don't have to have any products, you know, you don't have to do customer service. You know, all of that's one of the big benefits. And you know, I've combined my own product, so I do both sides of the coin and made millions on both sides of this coin.

[00:06:13] But in this case, if you're especially if you're just starting, then you don't have to have a big investment in time or money to do this, to get started getting money coming in. What you do have to have is some influence over some kind of group. Ok, so I'm going to tell you how to market it if you're brand new at that too. Now, one thing I want to be clear about is this is not drop shipping, drop shipping is where people. Think that they're ordering something from you, but you don't really have the product. Someone else, some other company is going to ship the product. And so you get the money, you send a wholesale amount of money like it's a $100 product. You get paid one hundred bucks, but you send 50 to this other company. They ship the product to the customer, but you are still the person that sold the product. So anything goes wrong. They're coming back to you. I don't like drop shipping like that because I got to depend on some other company for my reputation. If the if they sense, if the quality goes down on the product and I don't know about it and they ship something crappy, well, I'm going to it's going to come back on me. So I don't really like drop shipping. But anyway, that's that's not what affiliate marketing is. C affiliate marketing is.

[00:07:44] You recommend the product, but people know that you are sending them somewhere else. To buy the product so you don't get the money up front, you get an affiliate commission. If they go to this other place and give them the money, if they give them the money that person ships the product and sends sends you your commission if something goes wrong. Well, yeah, you don't. You know, people might be mad at you for referring it, but you don't have to take care of the deal. Now, I want you to avoid that situation by only promoting really good products, by really good people, because nobody will trust you anymore. If you promote crap just to get some affiliate commission, say so. So that's that. Now. It's another great thing about this you can run it from anywhere, you can be on a cell phone or tablet anywhere in the world that you can get a Wi-Fi connection and promote your affiliate business. So that's a good thing. Now, a lot of people ask me about the Amazon Thing affiliate program. Yeah, you can be in it. But the commission's compared to regular other stuff in the in the marketing community and other products is very small. And, you know, but you know, you could do it. You know, I have, I'm signed up for it. Yeah, but I know Californians got screwed over. Their whole business was based on it, and then Amazon shut it down for some protest and and the commissions, like I said, are very small.

[00:09:24] So yes, you can do it. And yes, I'm in it. But do I get do I push it very much? No, because why would I want five percent of something if I can get 50 or seventy five or? And you'll hear later 100 percent of the the sales, so. So there you go. No, you've got to sign up for for this. If you find a product you like you, you know, if you're new, like if you're a super affiliate, which everybody knows, you can sell a lot, they'll sign you up themselves. All right. But but most of the time you're going to sign up for an affiliate program. And some of them may ask you some questions, because what they don't want is you spamming people and getting with their product name in it and then getting a bad reputation so they may ask you, like, how are you going to promote this program? Are you going to, you know, email social media? Are you going to, you know, YouTube? They're going to ask you and what you want to make sure you let them know, especially with the email, that you're not going to spam anybody because many and many of them in their terms of service, are going to say, if you spam anybody, you don't get paid for any of your sales and we kick you out, you know, so you don't want to get in that situation.

[00:10:48] Now, some people will find a product and there won't be an affiliate program, they're going to try to talk. The owner of the product in the starting an affiliate program. I'm telling you, don't waste your breath. Go find some other person that already has figured this out because it's, you know, you're trying to talk somebody into spending a bunch of money for affiliate tracking software and to develop a bunch of emails and graphics to help you promote the program, you're better off. Just go find another product or a similar product or totally different product where they already have an affiliate program. All right, so there's some things about getting started now. Tom next question How do you find products to market it in my affiliate program? Well, there's management companies that that have thousands of products. Two of the big kahunas are Clickbank and JV Zoo now. Lately, it's been some of the people that I've told to sign up with. Clickbank have been getting rejected. So I think they're getting a little more picky about who they will let in. So you may want to hold off on Clickbank, but JV Zoo is kind of the new kid on the block. See, Clickbank has tons of digital products in all kinds of topic areas. There have been around almost since the beginning, so of the internet.

[00:12:20] I mean, they've been around almost as long as I have. Now, JV Zoo is the new kid on the block, but they came out with a deal where if you qualify, in other words, if you're a good affiliate and don't have a lot of trouble and don't have a lot of refunds because you send a bunch of idiots to to them. There's loads of products there that you can get paid immediately, and I kind of like that because I hate waiting until at the end of refund periods, which is very typical. It's fine, you know, but getting paid instantly is extra fine. Put it that way. And there's a place called Share a Sale now, I haven't personally and I've used djvu and Clickbank, both of them for years, totally great places share a sale and never used but very highly regarded. I just never happen to use it. Share a sale. It's called so you can find products there. But what any product that you like that you run across? If you look on their website, you might see, you know, even if it's down in the bottom with one little tiny link, it might say affiliates or associate. Another word is used associates or it might say, make money with our site or make money referring our product or earn, you know, whatever something like that, you just click that and that's going to be their affiliate program. Now, if you don't see anything like that, they still may have one, but they don't want to advertise it to every everybody on Earth that doesn't have any influence.

[00:13:59] It's just going to bug them with dumb questions and never sell anything. So if there is, there is a product that you really like. You could just email there, help section and say, Do you have an affiliate program? Some of them will send. Yeah, here's the link to it. Some of them will say, No, we don't, you know, so. So that's also a way to find affiliate programs. But before you actually promote a program, the best way is like, I like to give best practices, the best way is to check out the product. I mean, if it's a physical product, order it from the the company as if you were a customer. They don't know you want to be an affiliate and see how they treat you. See, if it comes in a timely fashion, see if it's packaged nicely. See if they answer questions in a reasonable amount of time, you know, through their help section. All that stuff, because if you promote something that's terrible, takes forever to get there. Not packaged nice is not a good product. You're wasting your time because nobody's going to trust you anymore to promote products. So, so make sure it's a good product. Check it out. And the other side of that coin is if you have used the product and got good results, you can more enthusiastically promote it legitimately.

[00:15:26] Yeah, I've been using this product. I can't believe the results. Geez, it's wonderful, blah blah blah, that kind of stuff. Now there's another type of product called private labels, sometimes called a white label. That's what my shopping cart system is. Kick Start Cart is a private label of the company, one shopping cart. And you say, Well, what good is that? I mean, why can't they just go to one shopping cart? Well, one of the tricks of the trade to increase your sales is to add value to the original product. So, yes, the product is excellent kickstart. I mean, one shopping cart is excellent and, you know, relatively inexpensive and does 90 percent of what the ones the other shopping carts will do that costs three or four times as much and require a team of geeks to operate. You know, so it's awesome. That's why I've been doing it for 20 years myself using it and promoting it to others. But when you're adding value. So how I add value is that we give unlimited free one on one tutoring to help you use it and to take advantage of all the the the things it has that helps you sell more and to automate your business has autoresponders, email stuff, all of that. So we get free unlimited one on one tutoring. Well, you can't get that from any place else, especially from somebody like me.

[00:17:00] That's, you know, made millions and millions online. You know, a lot of these people would just send you on, you know, sell it to you and then good luck. Try to figure it out, you know, or they'll they'll give you a bunch of videos where you can't ask questions. We give you all that the videos and stuff, but the one on one tutoring lets people take advantage of it. So that's adding value. So you will sell way more if you get that attitude in your affiliate marketing business that I'm going to add value to the original product. So, so there you go. Also, you want to check that they have sales tools for you when you're, you know, when you find a product that you think you like, well, do they have sample emails for you to send out? Do they have sample graphics in different colors and stuff for your website and blogs and stuff? So these are things you want to do when you find a product you think you like. Ok, next question, how can I promote affiliate products well? There's lots of ways I'll tell you some of the ones I've really enjoyed. I really like screen capture VIDEO Screen capture video means that I could have a bad hair day or be here naked and nobody would know. Nobody would have to get sick over it because I'm just narrating what they see on my screen.

[00:18:25] This would be a video. And so let's say I like a piece of software and they have an affiliate program. So I show the piece of software and I show people all how great it is and what it'll do for them. And then they can't do all this great stuff unless they buy it and they buy it through my affiliate link, say. So that's one that I've used all kinds for for since the year two thousand. I got to turn my phone off here. Webinars do it all the time. We have webinars where I host a webinar, sell somebody else's product and get a commission for it. And then the replays make as much money or more money really than the actual original webinar. So you've seen me replaying the Pinterest webinar, the audio books webinar. These are other people that I hosted a webinar to my group of people and then I get a commission. If you buy their products, no, there's no no secret about it. But I mean, I'm obligated to tell you which we'll talk about in a minute. Youtube is another great place. So, so the screen capture videos. Not only do I have them on websites, I have them on YouTube. So if somebody just finds my channel and they look at a certain video, if they like what they see and they click the link in the description, then it's my affiliate link.

[00:19:50] No problem. Now. You've got Facebook and the other social media, you have audio like this podcast? Here's one the best practice for you is you want to use easy to remember links. And the reason is, is because an audio nobody's going to remember SheriffSale.com/?affiliate=72438/. Who's going to do that? So you want to make it easier to remember links. I'm going to address this in a future question, I think. Let me say here. Hold on. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to tell you more about that later. But you want easy to remember links if you're going to do it on a podcast or any kind of audio stuff like that. If all they have to do is click on, it can be a weirder look and link. All right. All right. So there's plenty of ways to promote, you know, your email, for sure is is a big one for me because I have such a big list. But these other ways bring in just as good money, that's for sure. All right. Let's see, Tom, I've heard you have to tell people you get a commission. Is that true? Yes, that's true. A few years back, that became a law that you have to let people know if you're getting a commission on stuff. Now, here's the thing, though, I don't make it all real legalese because that kind of hurts the sales process.

[00:21:28] So I either make it funny or I do it when I'm telling people how wonderful the product is. So, so for instance, for a funny one, I might say. Yes, I get an affiliate commission if you purchase this product or anything in this e-book, but you can be darn sure I'm not going to ruin my reputation for a small commission. Now for a big commission, well, maybe so. You know, so. So, you know, I buffer it there. So it's there, but it's, you know, it's funny. Then for one that's not funny, I might I might say I use the product. It was so great. I I decided to become an affiliate. So I tell them all this great things about the product. And I said, it's so great. I decided to become an affiliate, so click here and blah blah blah. Say so. Yeah, you have to tell them, but you don't have to tell them an illegal looking fashion that's scares them away. You can as long as you make the notice and it's clear, then you're cool. All right. Tom, how much can I get paid? Or what's a reasonable commissions to expect? Well, it's almost always given to you as a percentage of the business that you brought in for the other person. Now sometimes it's a flat fee. I see that a lot in hosting services like they'll say, OK, give us a customer and you get 15 dollars or seventy five dollars or some flat fee, and that's the end of it.

[00:23:06] But most of the time, it's a percentage and it can be up to two hundred percent and you're like, Are you crazy? Why would somebody give me twice the amount that was spent with them? That's crazy, Tom. Well, you know, I've been accused of being crazy lots of times, but but it can be any amount. And the reason being is that some companies just want to acquire a new customer. They will give you one hundred percent. They'll give you all the money on the first sale to get that customer because they know they're going to sell them a whole bunch of more stuff into the future. So giving you all the money from the first sale is nothing to them. However, typically it's going to be somewhere between 10 and 50 percent. Now here's an example from me I pay 20 percent on physical products or products that have enormous amounts of labor, like the the entry fee to my. Mentor program, you know, everybody here is gives unlimited one on ones consultations with our mentees. Well, that's a lot of labor. So so we paid 20 percent. It's still a large amount of money. It's like eighteen hundred dollars for your commission, you know, so it's still significant. But on digital products or seminar seats, things like that, I pay 50 percent.

[00:24:40] It's very common, you know, for digital stuff. And I, you know, some new people got I was talking to got mad at me because he said he is a new guy. All right. Didn't know what he was doing. Had a good, really nice product, though it was digital. And so he said, Tom, you you know, you really like the product. You want to be an affiliate. I said, Yeah, yeah, what's the deal? He says, Oh, we'll pay 10 percent of. I mean, I started laughing. I said, You, you're kidding, right? He says, What do you mean? Kidding? I said 10 percent. It's a digital product. Average is 50 percent. He said, Oh, we're not going to pay that, but I like it. Okay. Well, I'm not going to promote it. And nobody else is either that has half a brain, right? That's just ridiculous. He got all mad about it. Oh yeah. I'll show you. Yeah. You showed me nothing because nobody's going to promote your product when they have all these other things they can promote for 50 percent, seventy five percent, 100 percent of the sale and you want to pay 10 percent on a digital product that you're just crazy. He got all mad. Haven't spoken to him since. Well, OK. You know, just, you know, I've been doing this, what, twenty seven years now? You know, since nineteen, ninety four, almost twenty eight years.

[00:26:06] And then you're you're telling me that I don't know what I'm talking about. Ok. All right. So anyway, you can, you know, don't go with something that doesn't make sense like that. I mean, it can't be that unique of a product that somebody else is not going to knock it off and give you 50 percent or more. They know. Another thing to consider is when you're checking out different programs that you might want to join, you want to see if you get paid for future sales. See, some only pay you on the first sale. If that's the case, it better be a lot, a very high percentage because. People like me will pay you for up to three years. All right, for people that you referred, say on whatever else they spend, say whatever percentage. I mean, if they bought something to 20 percent commission a year later, you get the 20 percent. If they bought a 50 percent commission three times during the one of those years, you get 50 percent for all the things that they bought. All right. Now one thing you do have to understand and not get pissy and mad about it and cause trouble with with your vendors. Most vendors are honest and this the stuff is all tracked. So. There is a situation, though, where you may not get paid for a legitimate sale. All right, you have to understand this and try to work it out with the vendor.

[00:27:36] See, if somebody looked at clicked on the link and went there sitting on their desktop. At home in the morning, and they see your thing, they click on it and they go over, but they don't buy because they have to run to work, let's say. So they get it, they go to work and they get a break at work and they they go back to that page. From their cell phone. But they didn't click on a link again from you. It may not get back to you, and you may not get paid for it. However. A good vendor that believes in you and knows you're not a rip off. You know, if you've been very good with sending them customers and and not an idiot will say, OK, that's fair. I understand you. You know, you tell them, I referred my friend here and and you didn't even track and you dig in a little bit and you find out that all they went to work and did it on their cell phone. You say, OK, I'm going to send you the commission anyway. You know, so so that could happen sometimes. So just keep that in mind. Now, do you get paid instantly or have to wait till the end of the refund period? You'd like to know that I wouldn't not do an affiliate program because I had to wait to the end of the refund period if it was a really good product.

[00:29:03] I do it all the time. However, you know, I really do like it and paid instantly, too. So J.B. Zoo does that. There's some others that can do that also. So you want to check out what the deal is there. And, you know, other things like do they have affiliate contests? I mean, one time I won a motorcycle, I didn't even know there had a contest. It was just one of the things I was promoting and I won a motorcycle. I ended up taking the cash instead of the motorcycle. But do they have those kinds of things? Can you get a higher commission if you sell more? See, some of them have like sliding scale stuff. If you sell certain amount, the commission is this. But once you exceed selling that amount, your commission rate goes higher. You know, maybe you get 30 percent if you sell up to so much and then it goes to 40 percent if you sell so much and then if you sell even more than that, you go to the 50 percent or more, you know, so that kind of sliding scale stuff. And then if you can become a super affiliate and you know, there's no exact definition of that, but you know, I like to say a super affiliate is somebody that has enormous influence over a large group of people that buy a lot.

[00:30:16] You know, that's kind of what it is your super affiliate now. I'm a super affiliate for coaches and and speakers and, you know, consultants and stuff like that. But I'm not I wouldn't be one for parenting kind of stuff. Right? You know, it's not my field. They're not on my list because they're parents, right? So if you can become that status, a lot of times people will offer you. I mean, once you get to that status, people are going to be throwing products at you, begging you to promote them. You'll have your choice. And in a lot of them will say, Hey, we'll give you seventy five hundred percent right off the top because they know they're going to get loads of new customers from you say so. So that's that. All right, before I tell you about the the last item that can really throw you off, I just want to remind you about the the program we have for helping persons with disabilities. This is something you can really be proud to be involved in. I've raised lots of money for kids and animals and all kinds of stuff, but this is really my crowning glory here because I'm really changing somebody's life permanently, getting them a skill that they can be hired or start their own business or both. And just really excited about this. And we're going to use some of the Go Fund Me money to hire persons with disabilities to help run the program.

[00:31:41] So. And then I took a grant writing course. I don't know how much I spent on that, but once we proved the concept to get these people hired or in their own business or both. Then I'm going to roll it out to really big companies and foundations and help loads of people, so help me get to that point. So check it out at IMTCVA.org/disabilities that'll be in the show notes. And then if you can kick in anything that's great, every little bit helps. And hey, if you're really flush with cash, then you can maybe sponsor a person yourself. How about that? That's something you could really be proud of. Well, let's get back to the last question here is Tom, every time I try to put an affiliate link in Facebook, my post gets deleted. What's up with that? Well, this comes back to what I was saying, almost like we're saying a few questions ago with the audio files. It has to be an easy link. Well, affiliate links are usually long, weird looking things. And Facebook does not want you to promote affiliate stuff. So when they see that link, it looks like an affiliate link, they say, screw that, we're not going to let them. Same thing happens if you're making Kindle eBooks. Because if they see that affiliate link, you won't get your book approved.

[00:33:06] So what do you do about it? Well, the best practice always for selling affiliate stuff is to send people. Now you've got to have a website for this. You don't have to have a website to be an affiliate. But it's more profitable in the future if you do. For several reasons, one is you can send them to your site and maybe get them to opt in, and now you've got an email list of buyers. The other thing is is you won't get approved at certain places like Kindle and Facebook and the other social media. When many of the social media is by putting a weird look and affiliate link in. So what do you do? So if you have a website, you send people to a simple looking page and simple you URL page on your website. So in my case, it might be screwthecommute.com/viral, let's say. And so that looks like a normal link to Facebook, to a site that I own. And so they said, Oh yeah, cool. No problem. But if it was screwthecommute.com/Af equals like affiliate equals seven two four three eight slash x y z question mark. Or our question mark exclamation point, I don't know. Just weird looking stuff and an affiliate link. They're going to say no and the same thing with an e-book. So you send them to your site with a normal looking thing like screwthecommute.com/viral and then on the page on your site is where you put the long look and affiliate link underneath some what's called anchor text.

[00:34:54] So it might say click here to get standing ovations, or click here to learn how to make your content viral or whatever. So the long, goofy looking affiliate link is still buried under text, so they don't have to see this long, weird looking link. So that's one thing now. Another way to do this is to install a free WordPress plug in called pretty links, prettylinks.com. But anyway, it's a WordPress plugin, so just search for pretty links and you can put the long, weird affiliate link in there and it will. Generate for you or know, you'll pick what you want, the short, nice look and link to look like. And then it redirects to the long links so you you install pretty links. You paste in the weird looking affiliate link, you tell it. I want this short link and then you use the short link in your Facebook ads and your Kindle e-books or in any other place or on your podcast or any audio files that you that you put out. And that way, you can get people to the page without long, crazy links that they'd never remember. They only have to remember the little shortly.

[00:36:19] Now the other thing that this is why this is a good idea of sending people to your site first is because let's say the affiliate turns out to be a bum or they go out of business or whatever all the work you did to get people and put e-books out and everything with this affiliate link in, it is worthless now because the companies out of business. So if you send them to your website first. You can say, Hey, this company went out of business that I like this product, it's it's a real shame, but I found another really great product, just the same that'll do even more than the other one. So here's the new product sees that way. All the work you did to promote the old one is not thrown away that way. When they hit your site, you can update your your website to new stuff all the time and keep everything current and keep the money rolling. So that's some questions on ask me in affiliate marketing question. Like I said, episode fifty two goes in way more in-depth on this topic, and it also does the other side of the coin, which other people are selling your products and what you have to do. So check that out and also make sure you go over to IMTCVA.org/disabilities. Check out the Go Fund Me campaign, and I will see you on the next episode. Catch you later.