Affiliate marketing lets you earn money online by getting other people to sell your products f0r you. They earn a commission and you get money for jam. In theory. Copywrite Matters is a member of a few affiliate programs but I am extremely picky, only recommending products that I have used myself, or where I have a lot of trust in the creator.
One of those trustworthy bods is Danny Iny at Firepole Marketing and I interviewed him recently about the launch of his first affiliate program.
The top take-aways around setting up your own affiliate program are:
- Listen to your network and look for opportunities to bring them into your sales process.
- Make it easy for your affiliates to promote your products and services.
- Make yourself available for questions from your affiliates and encourage them to engage with you.
- Give your affiliates material they can use but give them the freedom to create their own.
- Structure your affiliate support so that you’re there for the people who will bring you the most returns.
Let’s get into it!
Belinda: What was the trigger to create an affiliate network?
Danny: The trigger was the people who were hearing about the [Firepole Marketing] program. They asked, “How can we help spread the word and is there a way for us to be compensated for doing so?” and we said “Of course”. If people want to sell your stuff for you, you don’t say no.
Belinda: One of the things I was really impressed with was how much help you actually provided to your affiliates. Could you talk us through the package you put together for the people who were interested in promoting the [Firepole Marketing] program?
Danny: Sure. At a fundamental level we’re available to our affiliates, if they have questions like: “How can I promote this? What is the strategy that’s likely to work?” etc. We’re always happy to advise them, to lend a hand.
Leading up to the launch we put on the table an offer to do a one-hour consultation, to get on the phone with affiliates and talk about their marketing plan in terms of promoting the program and in general – whatever they’ve got going on. Our affiliates are out there promoting our stuff, helping us to sell our training program, so why wouldn’t we get on the phone and help them to do a good job?
Belinda: Absolutely. One of the things I found most useful was you shared reviews of the program that had already been done, so you said: “Look, if you’re thinking of writing a review – which is a great way to talk about the program – here are some reviews already out there. Here are some tweets you could use, here are some updates and likes, and here are some email templates.” You didn’t say “You have to use this” but you gave me a lot of ideas about how to share the word so that I didn’t feel like I was starting from scratch.
Danny: We help people market things, so we do want to give our affiliates all the help that they need to do a good job and get good results for themselves and for us. I mean, that’s really what it comes down to.
Belinda: As this is your first affiliate marketing program, what were the big lessons you learnt?
Danny: That’s a good question. I guess expectations are important. Launching an affiliate program, you tend to think that you’re going to get this many results on average from each person. [In fact] most people don’t do much at all.
Let’s say you’ve got 1,000 affiliates. 900 of them aren’t going to do anything and another 50 of them are going to put your link somewhere on their site and do a few minimal things that won’t really turn into anything. But then you’re going to have a small group of people who really get behind it, really do a lot of work, and that’s where most of your results as an affiliate manager are going to come from.
And this informs how you’re going to work with them because let’s say again you’ve got those 1,000 affiliates. If you think they’re all equally engaged, you can’t say “I’ll get on the phone with you all for an hour” because you don’t have 1,000 hours. But if you recognise that most people aren’t going to take you up on it and the people who will take you up on it are going to do a lot of work then it makes complete sense to put that time at their disposal because you’re going to get huge returns on your investment.
So if you’re going to pursue this kind of model your mentality should be “I will do as much as you want me to do to help you, and I’m completely at your disposal” because the only people who are going to take advantage of that are the ones who are likely to actually bring you returns, which is fantastic.
Danny Iny is a prolific blogger and teacher in the Firepole Marketing training program. He enjoys working one-on-one with client businesses to improve their marketing and make more money. You can follow Danny on Twitter @DannyIny, or just send him an email and say hello!
Now I’d love to know … Do you do any affiliate marketing? Perhaps you have your own affiliate marketing program? What tips can you share?
Belinda
4 Responses
Great interview 🙂 I think affiliate marketing is one of the those things that’s quite straightforward to do, but quite difficult to do well.
The rewards can be great though, for both parties, but as with all marketing you do need to allocate time and effort for it.
Loved the interview. Affiliate marketing is great, there’s a lot of room for growth but it’s not as easy as most people would think. A lot of things could go wrong, but it’s a relatively easy thing to manage.