Inspired by some of the journals going on here, I thought I'd create one as well. The last time I did one on a previous forum, it was really great (so if you're reading this and not making one ... why aren't you?)
As an info-product creator and popular blogger/podcaster, I've had quite a bit of success. But so far, I haven't worked on a missing piece of the puzzle: ongoing traffic from affiliates.
I've done a lot of outbound affiliate marketing to other product creators, however. I've seen the rewards it brings and have fun doing it. But now my goal is to bring some of the traffic home.
At the same time, I have the general goal of learning affiliate marketing as such. So far, finding and joining this forum has been helpful. It's a much bigger, more intricate and more interesting world than I thought. Very exciting.
What I've done so far to grow my "affiliate army":
1. Participated as an affiliate to make relationships with other affiliate marketers dealing with information products.
2. Wrote a guest blog post for an excellent affiliate manager with a killer blog. Should be published early February.
3. Worked on my affiliate center. Checked out the stats of current affiliates and learned what they all mean. The best affiliate has an EPC of $3.45. That sounds good, but I don't know enough yet to be sure.
As part of this, I created an onboarding survey. There's no point in just having everyone and anyone create an affiliate account. I want to focus on serious people who are willing to create a survey so I can help ensure I have winners on the team.
4. Created a Facebook group for affiliates to help and hang out with them. One thing I think would be great is to not just onboard affiliates with a "sink or swim" affiliate program. Rather, I'd like to create a means of making every single affiliate as successful as I possibly can.
Obviously, that has to be realistic, but I can see posting leaderboards in a Facebook group as being useful based on my experiences as an affiliate.
5. Created an email list for my affiliates.
6. Started working on a new product for potential big-time hitters. This will need testing before doing outreach, but I think it's going to be a killer product. It's based on tons of survey data from my buyers and solves one of the key problems my product hasn't completely addressed.
7. Started reaching out to a few select product creators, YouTube personalities, etc. who I have a no-brainer connection with. This is slow going, but I'm learning a lot.
8. Tracking all my outreach with a spreadsheet. Slows things down, but it's great to look back and see what I've done.
9. Masterminded with friends on the topic.
10. Studied affiliate marketing daily.
Related to this, I've been buying ads for my Kindle books. This gives me a taste for what ad spend is like and learning more about ROI from ads. Luckily, all my books already sell without ads, so I've seen great results so far. Amazon ads are a bit tricky, but if I'm interpreting the data properly, I'm getting solid returns.
My only frustration with that is there's no real time tracking. That makes it difficult to know when to turn up the juice on a particular keyword. Anyhow, small stakes with a huge payoff given the backend offers these books contain and the general LTV of people who enter the universe I've created.
Now I just need more supportive affiliates in that world. It's been an interesting challenge so far, but an interesting one. The biggest challenge is mindset and the recurring voice that casts doubt on the entire operation. I've been very successful shutting it down so far, but I know from experience that some kind of victory will be necessary in the near future in order to keep enthusiasm high.
I'm sure that victory is right around the corner. And making a journal is one great way to help keep the gears oiled.
That's all for now. If you're reading this and also a product creator looking for affiliates, I'm interested in masterminding on the topic.
Or, if you're an affiliate who likes the memory/accelerated/language learning space, happy to hear from you.
Whoever you may be or wherever you are on your journey, warm wishes for a great 2017!
As an info-product creator and popular blogger/podcaster, I've had quite a bit of success. But so far, I haven't worked on a missing piece of the puzzle: ongoing traffic from affiliates.
I've done a lot of outbound affiliate marketing to other product creators, however. I've seen the rewards it brings and have fun doing it. But now my goal is to bring some of the traffic home.
At the same time, I have the general goal of learning affiliate marketing as such. So far, finding and joining this forum has been helpful. It's a much bigger, more intricate and more interesting world than I thought. Very exciting.
What I've done so far to grow my "affiliate army":
1. Participated as an affiliate to make relationships with other affiliate marketers dealing with information products.
2. Wrote a guest blog post for an excellent affiliate manager with a killer blog. Should be published early February.
3. Worked on my affiliate center. Checked out the stats of current affiliates and learned what they all mean. The best affiliate has an EPC of $3.45. That sounds good, but I don't know enough yet to be sure.
As part of this, I created an onboarding survey. There's no point in just having everyone and anyone create an affiliate account. I want to focus on serious people who are willing to create a survey so I can help ensure I have winners on the team.
4. Created a Facebook group for affiliates to help and hang out with them. One thing I think would be great is to not just onboard affiliates with a "sink or swim" affiliate program. Rather, I'd like to create a means of making every single affiliate as successful as I possibly can.
Obviously, that has to be realistic, but I can see posting leaderboards in a Facebook group as being useful based on my experiences as an affiliate.
5. Created an email list for my affiliates.
6. Started working on a new product for potential big-time hitters. This will need testing before doing outreach, but I think it's going to be a killer product. It's based on tons of survey data from my buyers and solves one of the key problems my product hasn't completely addressed.
7. Started reaching out to a few select product creators, YouTube personalities, etc. who I have a no-brainer connection with. This is slow going, but I'm learning a lot.
8. Tracking all my outreach with a spreadsheet. Slows things down, but it's great to look back and see what I've done.
9. Masterminded with friends on the topic.
10. Studied affiliate marketing daily.
Related to this, I've been buying ads for my Kindle books. This gives me a taste for what ad spend is like and learning more about ROI from ads. Luckily, all my books already sell without ads, so I've seen great results so far. Amazon ads are a bit tricky, but if I'm interpreting the data properly, I'm getting solid returns.
My only frustration with that is there's no real time tracking. That makes it difficult to know when to turn up the juice on a particular keyword. Anyhow, small stakes with a huge payoff given the backend offers these books contain and the general LTV of people who enter the universe I've created.
Now I just need more supportive affiliates in that world. It's been an interesting challenge so far, but an interesting one. The biggest challenge is mindset and the recurring voice that casts doubt on the entire operation. I've been very successful shutting it down so far, but I know from experience that some kind of victory will be necessary in the near future in order to keep enthusiasm high.
I'm sure that victory is right around the corner. And making a journal is one great way to help keep the gears oiled.
That's all for now. If you're reading this and also a product creator looking for affiliates, I'm interested in masterminding on the topic.
Or, if you're an affiliate who likes the memory/accelerated/language learning space, happy to hear from you.
Whoever you may be or wherever you are on your journey, warm wishes for a great 2017!
