BBP 050 The 4 Parts of Being a Successful Affiliate With Dan Morris
Shownotes:
Becoming an affiliate marketer can be a great way to make passive income with your blog…but what does it take to actually make money with affiliate marketing? Find out in today’s episode, as we dive into affiliate marketing and break down the three things you need to do to succeed.
Guest Info
Rachel and I have 11 kids together and we’ve made our entire income online for the last 8 years. We run blogs, websites, live events, big products and podcasts.
Learn More: https://bloggingconcentrated.com/
Navigate the Episode
[01:01] – Authenticity
[04:31] – Honesty
[06:16] – Presell
Related Content
Transcript
[00:00:08].070] – Liz Stapleton
As bloggers, we hear the term affiliate marketing all the time. From many bloggers, affiliate marketing is a great way to create passive income. But what does it actually take to be a successful affiliate? Hi, I’m Liz Stapleton, host of the Blogger Breakthrough Summit, and welcome to the Blogger Breakthrough Podcast.
[00:00:24].000] – Liz Stapleton
In today’s episode, you’re going to hear from BC Stack creator and master affiliate marketer, Dan Morris, that he shared during the 2021 Blogger Breakthrough Summit. To hear more about affiliate marketing and other blogging tips, head over to BloggerBreakthrough.com/Podcastdeal today to find out how you can listen to all the 2021 Blogger Breakthrough Summit sessions, including Dan’s. Now let’s dive in.
[00:00:45].450] – Dan Morris
So there are four parts to being the affiliate, the person who’s actually selling the product. So you’re going to be doing this for your own product. You’re going to be your own affiliate. And then other people are going to be doing it for you, or you’re going to be doing for someone else. So you still need to know how this works.
[00:01:01].620] – Dan Morris
So the three things that I think are important are honesty, authenticity and presell. And these are totally different things. Even though honesty and authenticity sound the same. They’re totally different.
[00:01:16].440] – Dan Morris
Okay, so we’re going to start with authentic. I’m going to put it number one here so I can write this worksheet correctly. Okay, now being authentic, this doesn’t mean being yourself, or being honest, or being truthful. Those are not authentic.
[00:01:35].880] – Dan Morris
Being authentic is the practice of understanding who your audience is and then making sure that everything you do is to benefit that audience. But also, everything that you do is based on you benefiting your audience for your own benefit. I’m going to explain what that means.
[00:01:55].410] – Dan Morris
You’re in the runnings, right? Why running? I don’t know. It just came up twice. So you’re in the runnings and you’re going to do a big promotion. So you decide to give away $25 Amazon gift cards for anybody who will fill out the survey, right?
[00:02:12].740] – Dan Morris
Well, who shows up to get a $25 Amazon gift card? Everybody. I showed up. If you’re going to do a menopause survey for a $25 gift card, I’m going to take the menopause. Why? Because I want the $25 gift card.
[00:02:27].380] – Dan Morris
So the moment that you give away a $25 gift card to Amazon, you have blown your profit. It’s out. [inaudible [00:02:35]. All you have to do is you have to figure out. If you’re going to do a survey, you got to figure out what would entice only runners to take the survey, right?
[00:02:47].910] – Dan Morris
So maybe it’s a $25 gift card to a running store, to New Balance.com. Newbalance.com site is unning. So then, I don’t want a $25 gift card to menopauseresults.com. I’m not going to fall on that survey. That is [inaudible [00:03:10] to me.
[00:03:11].160] – Dan Morris
So you need to make sure that your prize for filling out a survey has directly related to your audience because that becomes your audience in your list. And those are the people that you’re going to be selling other people’s products.
[00:03:27].910] – Dan Morris
So once it’s not related to running, then all of a sudden your click-through rate goes down. Your unsubscribes go down. Nobody’s paying attention on Facebook because you weren’t authentic. You didn’t create an environment where only runners show up so they can talk about their questions and answers and feel safe in that environment. You haven’t built that. You’re no longer an authentic market.
[00:03:55].840] – Dan Morris
Okay, so now if you’re doing affiliate marketing and you have done this, you have been authentic, you’ve been only working in the running, that you’ve only done things that would benefit them, you’ve only built lists of people who are interested in that, then you want to find running products that you can talk to your list about as an affiliate.
[00:04:16].990] – Dan Morris
You want to find a running book. You want to find a running movie that you can talk about. Some of them will make you money and some of them won’t. You have to be to the point where, yes, I want my audience to see this movie. I don’t care if I make any money. I’m going to promote.
[00:04:31].000] – Dan Morris
And then you got to find other products that actually make you. Because the second part is honesty. You have to be at all times. I am the person that you want to go to to learn about running, or to learn about blogging, or to learn about finance.
[00:04:46].590] – Dan Morris
So I’m going to tell you which movies you don’t want, which movies you do need to watch, which books you do need to read, which books you don’t need to read. I’m going to be that person. I’m going to be honest with my audience.
[00:04:57].480] – Dan Morris
So with your affiliate marketing, you’ve got to find products that totally fit that path of honesty. So if you were in the blogging world, the blogging niche and you saw BC Stack, and BC Stack’s got 65 courses, classes, memberships, all about blogging, then I would think this would be perfect for your audience, because now they can learn about all these different topics for one tiny little price.
[00:05:27].630] – Dan Morris
This would help your audience immensely because 65 different things all have to do with building a better blog. And then at the same time, because your audience needs it and you can talk about it honestly, you also make money from it as the affiliate. So you have to be super honest.
[00:05:46].050] – Dan Morris
If you don’t think your audience needs that, then you should be able to say, I don’t think you guys need this. And hopefully that means the next thing that you tell them about that they do need, you’re even more believable or they understand.
[00:06:00].570] – Dan Morris
Hey, the last time you saved me some money, you told me not to get that because that was a waste of time, but now you’re saying I should get this. But it must not be a waste of time, because not only if it is a waste of time, you tell them not to get it. So you become that actual honest voice to your audience.
[00:06:16].380] – Dan Morris
And then when you’re actually decided, I built this great audience and now I’m going to sell a product. If you want to make money like you actually want to be a successful affiliate, you have to be like, this is called the presell, you have to send a message that sells the product before they get to the page.
[00:06:44].900] – Dan Morris
We tried to teach BC Stack over the years, some people have said, hey, I found this great deal. It’s 65 products for $39. I think you should check it out, click the link. Now, that means that you’ve basically taken your audience and you’ve given them something that you’re curious about and a link to go look at it.
[00:07:05].330] – Dan Morris
Now, my landing page is not designed to persuade you to buy it. It’s like, okay, here’s BC stack. Here’s all that’s in it and here’s the buy button. So if an affiliate doesn’t presell, like, tell me exactly what. I need it and all those things, then the page doesn’t work, you don’t make any money.
[00:07:24].620] – Dan Morris
So if you’re going to be an affiliate, you’ve got to go look at the page. You’ve got to go look at the page that you’re sending traffic to, you have to look at all the benefits you’ve got, and hopefully you bought it or you know it or you’ve got information on it. You’ve got to see what the page is missing.
[00:07:41].040] – Dan Morris
And then when you’re telling about the product to your audience, you have to tell them everything. Here is who it’s for. Here’s who it’s not for. Here’s how long it will take to do it. Here’s what you will learn. Here’s why I think you should get it. Here’s why I think you shouldn’t get it.
[00:07:58].290] – Dan Morris
If you’re X, Y, Z, I don’t think you need this, all those things. You should totally be able to sell the product because you get it. You know who it’s for. You know who it’s not for. You know the benefits. If it’s something that comes in the mail, you know how it arrives. You know how long it takes.
[00:08:18].060] – Dan Morris
If it’s a course, you know how long it will take them to get to the meat of the course, how long will take them to get the benefit of the course. You put that all in your message, and then you say, if this sounds like you, if this is exactly what you need, then click and go buy.
[00:08:31].970] – Dan Morris
Then they go to the landing page and they don’t have to. They’re already pretty sold. They don’t have to depend upon. You don’t have to depend upon somebody else’s landing page to make the sale. I hope that makes sense.
[00:08:44].230] – Liz Stapleton
Okay, hopefully this episode has given you a clearer picture of what you can do to succeed at affiliate marketing. Join me next time to learn how improving your bookkeeping system can impact your business. I’ll catch you then.
