I love podcasts. As I’ve written about before, I spend a LOT of time listening to podcasts. Podcasts have been responsible for a lot of my business growth over the years. If you have a podcast of your own, regardless of the niche, read below to learn how to monetize your podcast with affiliate marketing.
Here are eleven ways that podcasters can monetize their podcast using affiliate marketing.
1. Interview the Product Creator
This is probably the most common way of monetizing a podcast, whether through affiliate marketing or otherwise. Simply put, you reach out to someone who has a product or book launching.
One of the best ways to do this is to go to Amazon and look at what books are releasing soon. You can get great interviews by doing this, because authors are looking to do interviews to promote their upcoming book.
Invite the product creator on the show and when you interview them make sure that when you share or discuss links, that they are affiliate links.
This doesn’t have to be a long interview, if you have a small podcast, you might not be able to get Pete Vargas on your show to do a 30-40 minute interview, but you might be able to get him on for a quick 5-minute segment.
You could do a quick segment (2-10 minutes) with the creator that is part of a larger show, which can be extremely effective.
2. Interview someone who used the product
To be able to promote a product on your show in an interview format, you don’t necessarily have to interview the product creator. You can interview people who have used the product.
One of the best ways to do this is to think about a product you have used yourself. Then, connect with people in the Facebook Group who have a cool success story.
For instance, maybe you have used Danny Iny’s Course Builders Laboratory and you’ve seen someone in the Facebook Group that created their course and have had great success using Course Builders Laboratory.
Have them on your show and talk about their success. Then make sure to link to Course Builders Laboratory using your affiliate link.
This is a great way to get guests on your show, who maybe aren’t the big names, but have really cool stories.
AFFILIATE OPPORTUNITY: Click Here to sign up to promote Danny Iny’s Course Builders Laboratory Launch
3. Do a product review
Dedicate an entire episode to talking about a product.
Now, I wouldn’t recommend doing this every episode, or even more than once every 8 to 10 episodes.
But, dedicate an entire episode to talking about a specific product and how it can benefit your listeners business or life.
Maybe it’s a new gadget or course. Or maybe it has been around for a while.
Think about the products that you are using and love and dedicate an entire episode to talking about that product.
I’ve shared some general guidelines for product reviews in the past and the same rules apply whether you’re doing a blog post or podcast episode product review.
Here are some general guidelines.
- Share the good and the bad. Make sure you share what you don’t like about the product or any limitations that it has.
- Share who it is for and who it is not for. Be clear about who the target audience is for this and who should not purchase it.
- Focus on your results. Share YOUR story, your results and your testimonial about the product.
4. Share tips
In your podcast, share a tip or tool of the week or day.
Ray Edwards does a great job of this when he shares his “tip of the week”. He has a 1-3 minute segment in his podcast talking about a specific product. Most of the time, when he links to something like that, it is an affiliate link. Not always, but most of the time.
This can be a way of fitting in a mini product review into a segment.
This works great with gadgets, tech products and tools that are lower priced items ($99 and under).
RELATED POST: The Top 10 Podcasts Affiliate Marketers Should Be Listening To
5. Have a guest host
We have all heard of guest posting, but what about guest hosting?
This is where you invite someone else to come on and do your show for the day.
Like a guest post, you record a short intro at the beginning, but the rest of the show, they’re providing the content.
So you might say,
Hey, it’s Matt McWilliams, The Affiliate Guy here, and today, I’ve invited my friend, Ray Edwards to come on to talk to you about copywriting. Ray Edwards is a Communications Strategist, Copywriter, Author, Speaker, and host of one the top iTunes Business Podcasts. His clients include New York Times best-selling authors Michael Hyatt, Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen, Jeff Walker (author of Launch), and many more.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Ray Edwards…
And then, naturally, Ray is going to offer a free training or some other way to opt into his list. Then you just make sure that is an affiliate link.
6. Ads
One simple way of inserting affiliate marketing is to use your ad segments.
Whether or not you currently have ads in your podcast, it is really easy to make ads that are direct to affiliate links.
It could be a 30-second produced spot, using music and/or voice over that goes to your affiliate link.
Or it could be just you talking about it.
But basically, it’s just 30-60 seconds where you do an advertisement for the product and direct them to your link.
7. When you mention a product, use an affiliate link.
Anytime you talk about a product, share your affiliate link.
For instance, if I was to talk about Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula in my podcast, The Affiliate Guy Daily, I might say something like,
We just got back from Jeff Walker’s PLF Live, it was amazing. We talked a lot about some of the complimentary material to Product Launch Formula.
And, by the way, I’m a big fan of Product Launch Formula, and if you’re interested, you can join Jeff’s waiting list at mattmcwilliams.com/plf
And then I would continue to talk about my experience at Jeff Walker’s PLF Live.
This is a great way to monetize the conversation that you are just having.
So whether you are talking about a book, a product or an event, if you can, make sure to show in a little 5-10 second pitch for the product and include your affiliate link.
8. Promote your resources page
Anytime you talk about tools, resources or anything on your podcast, make sure you point people back to your resources page.
Here’s how it might sound on your podcast:
I had a conversation with a guy the other day. He was asking me what tools it takes to do an affiliate program.
So I shared with him some of my favorite tools for where he is at, like Infusionsoft and iDev. And you know, that reminds me, wherever you are at in your affiliate marketing journey, you can access all of my recommended tools at mattmcwilliams.com/toolbox – just go there and get all my recommended tools, toys and gadgets and all the stuff I use every day in my business.
Resources pages are a great source of passive income. It can take a lot of effort to set one up, but once you do, it can make you hundreds, thousands or even more every month with no effort.
RELATED POST: If you need help learning how to do a resources page, read my post, How To Create a Killer Resources Page (That’s Crazy Profitable
9. Promote free trainings
So this is a great way to get people into someone’s funnel as an affiliate.
Talk about their free training, upcoming webinar, video series or free ebook.
This can be done for a product launch or on an evergreen basis.
If someone has a free optin, make sure you ask for an affiliate link to that optin.
Here’s what this might sound like on your podcast:
So I was listening to Russell Brunson’s podcast the other day and he did an episode about how to sell everything for free. In that episode he talked about changing how you structure an offer to make it more appealing to a potential customer.
By the way, if you’re interested in Russell, I actually have a link to a totally killer training he does on how to set up your funnel at mattmcwilliams.com/funnels
This is a great way to offer value to your audience while also doing affiliate marketing.
10. Use your show notes
If you’re going to have show notes, make sure you use them effectively.
Be sure to list any and every product, book, free training and any other link that you mention in your show in the show notes and use the affiliate link.
11. Build your list
This is something that I see almost every podcast struggling with.
They fail to use their podcast to build an email list.
I know people who every single month are in the top 10 in the Management & Marketing category of iTunes with 50,000+ downloads per episode that have an email list of fewer than 5,000 people.
That’s ridiculous!
You have to use your podcast to continually drive people back to your email ist.
In my opinion, and I could be wrong about this, but every episode should have a list building opportunity.
And then, you use your list to promote affiliate offers, and with your own stuff, of course, if you have it.
So there you have it, 11 ways to use affiliate marketing on your podcast.
RELATED POST: How to Succeed at Affiliate Marketing with a Small List
Have a Clear CTA
My last tip is this: make sure you have a clear call to action (CTA).
Whatever your call to action is in your podcast, make sure that it is abundantly clear.
You can two calls to action, for instance, one in the podcast itself and one in the outro, and you can have an ad or two, just make sure that the calls to action are CLEAR.
Don’t overwhelm them with more than two (maybe three) calls to action or else they won’t take any of them. You want to always make them clear.
In other words, spell out the URL for them.
Tell them exactly what to do.
For instance, you might say,
To get Russells’s free training, go to mattmcwilliams.com/funnels, watch Russell’s video, enter your name and email, click the submit button and you’ll have instant access to Russell’s free training.
In other words, I’m clear about what the call to action is.
Now what tools do you need?
Tools of the Trade
I’m often asked what tools podcasters needs for affiliate marketing, so here are the three that I recommend.
1. Pretty Link
You’ll notice in the examples I use above, I have easy to remember (and type) links when I am recommending products. I use Pretty Link to make those. Pretty Link is a WordPress plugin that allows to convert long, ugly affiliate links into easy to say (and remember) links for your podcast, email list and website.
Click Here to get Pretty Link.
2. LeadPages
Leadpages is one of my favorite tools for building optin pages, but it’s also great for podcasts to use their Lead Digits. For instance, if you text TAGSCORE to 33444 you get my free Affiliate Program Scorecard.
3. ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is a tool that me and my team have just started using and it is making it SUPER easy to create optin and sales funnels that look amazing, are completely customizable and just flat out work.
Click Here to get a free 14-Day ClickFunnels Trial.
Affiliate marketing can be a great way to monetize your podcast.
I know a lot of people making an extra $1,000 a month (or tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars) just from affiliate marketing on their podcast, and you can too.
The Affiliate Guy Daily
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, listen to my podcast, The Affiliate Guy.
In every episode, I share affiliate marketing tips, strategies, news, and more in short, power-packed episodes.