One of the great things about affiliate marketing is the variety. The variety of offers, the variety of people, and the variety of benefits. Today, I’ll share the last five of twenty awesome benefits, all of which are reasons why you should get into affiliate marketing right away.
This is part four of a four-part series on why should you start affiliate marketing right now. Read part one here, part two here and part three here.
1. Affiliate Marketing Trains Your Audience to Buy
One of the toughest things about building a platform or email list is conditioning your audience to buy early on.
The number one reason for this is that most people don’t have a product to sell. As I mentioned yesterday, one benefit of promoting affiliate offers is that you learn what your list wants and doesn’t want. How they react to specific affiliate promotions says a lot about their wants and their buying habits.
So what do you do if you don’t have a product at the start?
Option One: Create a Product
You could create a product, but that’s usually not the best idea. After all, you are still learning who your audience is and what they want.
So you either end up with a crappy to mediocre product that no one wants or you don’t know how to market it.
Either way, you don’t sell many.
Option Two: Give Free Content Indefinitely
This is the option most people go with. They give away free content for months or even years before trying to sell a thing to their audience. I did the same thing for nearly ten months before I sold anything to my audience.
It seems like the altruistic thing to do. It seems like the long view way to do it. It seems like building up a lot of goodwill with your audience is smart.
But it’s not. It’s incredibly dumb.
Ouch, that was harsh, I know, but think about this for a minute.
In what other business model does anyone give away free stuff for months and months before selling something?
Wal-Mart? No.
The brand new trendy grocery store down the street? No.
The Mom-and-Pop furniture store…surely they give away stuff for months on end before “monetizing” their store, right?
NO!
Businesses monetize. Hobbies give away content indefinitely. Are you running a hobby or a business?
By definition, if you give away content for more than six months and never ask for a sale, your audience is conditioned to expect that.
It’s not their fault either. It’s yours.
And when you finally do try to sell something? Open revolution. Unsubscribes like crazy. Angry emails. Nasty tweets.
Affiliate marketing bridges the gap between having nothing to sell and selling nothing at all.
Affiliate marketing bridges the gap between having nothing to sell and selling nothing at all.
2. Affiliate Marketing Funds Your Business
As much as I love affiliate marketing (can’t you tell?), I do not believe it should make up 100% of your business.
We made more than $200,000 in affiliate commissions in the past two years (plus a lot of cool prizes), but those commissions made up less than 25% of our revenue.
I am a big believer in multiple revenue streams. And affiliate marketing should be one of those streams. But one of the biggest benefits to affiliate marketing, especially early on, is that it can fund your bigger business dreams.
If you are barely scraping by and want to create a course that costs $5,000 to produce, where will you get the money? Affiliate marketing is a great source. Just a few solid promotions and you can fund the production of your course!
When I was first starting out with my platform, my measly affiliate commissions paid for my hosting, some virtual assistant help, and even left a few bucks over for me to purchase things like LeadPages without dipping into our reserves.
Not only was that a financial win, but it was an early psychological win for me knowing that my business was paying for itself.
3. You Can Turn Competitors into Partners
I released a video recently entitled, Why You Should Promote Your Competitors as an Affiliate. In it, I share some of the benefits of promoting your competitors, how to do it, and why coopetition is so much better than competition.
I won’t repeat what I said in that video, so go watch it.
But know this…affiliate marketing is a community. This isn’t Coke vs. Pepsi or Ford vs. Chevy. Most people I know in this business are awesome people who’d rather work together than work against each other.
When you turn your competitors into partners, it creates massive momentum for both of you.
4. It’s Easy to Scale
Since affiliate marketing has such a low barrier to entry, it’s much easier to scale.
Want to make more money? Add a few more promotions. It really is that simple.
No need to add more staff or buy new tools. You just do a little more promoting.
If you double your course sales, you’ll likely need to hire a customer service person, perhaps a community manager, and more than likely a tech guru to manage everything. Along the way, you’ll need even more people to make it all work.
Unlike other parts of your business, affiliate marketing generally scales at the rate of your email list or blog traffic growth. The more people you have, the higher your commissions. You often increase your sales with no extra effort.
Gotta love that!
Looking for a few more affiliate promotions? Click here to get notified of the best upcoming promotions.
And the last reason you should start affiliate marketing right away…
5. It’s FUN!
I have to tell you…I LOVE what I do for a living!
I love working with affiliates (because I love working with people). I love being an affiliate. I love engaging with you.
I love promoting affiliate offers because it’s usually a lot of fun. Yes, the money is great and no, I wouldn’t do it for free, but it really is a lot of fun.
From friendly competition to cool prizes. From surprising myself with my performance to developing amazing relationships. From helping my tribe find awesome services to trash talking with other affiliates…it’s all fun.
And life needs a little more fun, doesn’t it?
Join the Fun
I encourage you to join the fun.
Start affiliate marketing today.
And if you have already started, ramp it up.
If you need some guidance along the way, I can help.
The Rest of the Series
Click here to go back and read reasons 1-5