Jul 6, 2017
One of the best and most exciting ways to make an income online is by launching your own products. Earlier this week Jason and I shared a big picture overview of how to launch a digital product.
Today we are going to share how to take that product launch to the next level by working with affiliates!
A big focus of ours in our won business in 2017-2018 is expanding our affiliate base. We have around 100 active affiliates right now but only a small portion of these make any significant sales.
A good rule of thumb when thinking about brining on affiliates, is to launch your product first without affiliates. Do a launch, get comfortable with it, make sure the product works, and then bring affiliates into the mix.
People who are interested in sharing your product can sign up for your affiliate program. Once approved they will get their own affiliate links to share your products.
If someone purchases through those links, that affiliate gets a percentage of the sale. Typical commissions on digital products are 30-50%.
Running an affiliate program takes a little bit of technology. I know it can be scary, but there are several different options that can make it easier.
The most common option are Wordpress plugins. Here are a few that we've used.
iDevAffiliate
This is my #1 recommendation if you are using wordpress. It's not actually a plugin, it's an addition you add to your site. It's a little wonky to get set up but once it's set up, it gives you SO many tools. This is an affiliate program you can grow with.
We started off using iDevaffiliate for our digital products and used it for a long time before we had to switch where we host our digital products. Now we use iDev for our product store. It's not the cheapest option out there because it does offer so many features. But it is very affordable compared to make other big programs. I think it's a great happy medium.
Find out more about iDevaffiliate here
What it costs:
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Woocommerce Integration
If you already use Woocommerce then there are a couple of plugins that are already integrated with woocommerce. It's not necessary to use one of these plugins if you use woocommerce. After all, we run Woocommerce in our product store and yet we use iDevaffiliate as our affiliate center.
I have not used either of these and do not know how easy/hard they are to get up and running. I do like the idea though that they integrate with woocommerce.
The two options they offer are Affiliate WP ($99 a year) or Affiliates Pro ($59 a year).
LeadDyno
The other robust affiliate program that I have been very impressed with in the past is LeadDyno. We used it for a short time last year when we were trying to figure out some fancy things. Ultimately, we ended up moving our affiliate program to Clickfunnels but for different reasons.
Overall I was very impressed with LeadDyno. It was easy to use and offered a TON of advanced features that you can easily grow with. I will need to wrangle Jason into doing a comparison video one day of LeadDyno verses iDev!
Find out more about LeadDyno here.
What it costs:
We moved our entire digital product database to New Kajabi in 2016 and we haven't looked back! Kajabi comes with an internal affiliate program which works great for simple products and simple funnels.
However we desperately needed some more advanced features to sell our online training academy and annual online conferences. So I did HOURS of research and found another website that would integrate sales into Kajabi: Clickfunnels.
Clickfunnels is expensive but it runs our entire affiliate program and all our sales pages and funnels. It's a HUGE and amazing program and we totally love it. If you want to try it out, you can get a 14 day free trial.
What it costs:
2 - 4 months before your launch:
This is your time to recruit your affiliates and let all existing affiliates know about your upcoming launch.
(Honestly - I'm not always the best at communicating this far in advance with our affiliates. I need to work on it.)
1 month before:
Now's the time to do some affiliate training if you want. A great idea is doing a Facebook live training, recording a YouTube video, publishing a quick start guide etc.
When in doubt when working with affiliates: Make the promotion VERY plain and very clear. People are busy! Even if you think you've already mentioned things several times, mention it again!
3 weeks before:
At least three weeks before is the best time to give your affiliates early access to the product or give them the opportunity to purchase it early.
The best way to have affiliates who sell, is to get them in LOVE with your product! So make sure they have access to it!
2 weeks before:
At least two weeks before, pass out all promotional material. Give your affiliates access to ads, banners, sample emails, Facebook posts, etc. Give them the tools they need to be successful!
Email the affiliates everyday with simple, easy action items. Email your affiliates and give them a sample email for the day. Or give them one simple action item they can act upon within 5 minutes.
Share your own promotional material with the group so they have some ideas to work off of.
Be in constant communication with the group, let them know what's working, what's not working, and any ideas you come across.
I know this was a brief introduction to working with affiliates. So please let us know what other questions you have about this process so we can make sure to address is in future episodes.
In episode #4 of the podcast we will be sharing how to create a free opt-in offer for launching your digital product. Episode #4 might be my favorite one yet - stay tuned!
Download our FREE Product Launch Checklist!
I know this is a TON of information! So I distilled it all down into a handy printable product launch checklist for you. All you have to do is fill it out for you next product launch and you are well on your way to a successful launch.
To download the FREE checklist, simply sign up here and download right away!