How to Promote Evergreen Affiliate Offers

by Matt McWilliams | May 26, 2022 | Affiliate Marketing, Articles, Evergreen Promotions

Who DOESN’T love a big product launch? Let’s face it…they’re exciting! The great contests! Fantastic prizes! And, let’s not forget…a wonderful way to bring in a lot of money in a short time! But evergreen offers can be incredibly lucrative as well. And, in this post, I’m going to share a number of ways you can 10X your evergreen affiliate earnings.

Okay…so let’s circle back and take a look at the clear advantages of a time-bound launch.

They build buzz. When many people are promoting the ‘same old same old’…you sashay in with your exciting new opportunity and make waves. So, they’ve got THAT going for them.
They get your affiliates amped up. Let’s face it, affiliates LOVE the contests and prizes. After all, they’re competitive by nature.
They emit a “Launch Echo.” A “launch echo” is the natural positive impact launches have on your brand. And it can be long-lasting. Hats off to my friend Jeff Walker for coining this term.

Now, the downside of launches…

> All the money is confined to a 2-3 week window. Sure, it’s great to have the influx of cash but…it can also make the rest of the year income challenged.

> It’s hard to cut through all the noise if you’re an affiliate. EVERYBODY’S scrapping for attention. (by the way, a good bonus offer can be a real game-changer.)

> You can’t ride the “Launch Echo” wave for very long. Right? What good is an echo if huge amounts of time pass before people can buy again?

That’s where an EVERGREEN OFFER can help you plug revenue gaps!

You can use evergreen offers to eliminate cash flow peaks and valleys.

The only thing standing between you and a year-round revenue stream is a little planning and strategy.

Whether you’re an affiliate or a product owner/affiliate manager, you can use the following strategies to promote evergreen offers…all year round!

OK, let’s dive into the different ways you can 10X your evergreen affiliate earnings…

1. Product Reviews

A product review is a personal endorsement….on steroids!

It only works, of course, if you’ve actually used the product.

The formula for an effective product review is simple:

Share where you were before using the product.
Share where you are now.
Share how you got there.
A final reminder of where you were before the product and where you are now as a result of using it.

If you want the FULL guide to how to write a product review…and in my opinion, the best guide on planet earth for writing one…you can get it here.

It’s a COMPREHENSIVE guide but let me give you a few highlights:

A good product review will contain the following elements in the “how you got there part”.

An overview of the product.
Who the product is for.
Who the product is not for.
What’s inside.
A detailed look at the product.
Explanation of the various options (i.e. VIP version, etc.)

Do they work?

Well, I shared the information in this report with a client less than 60 days ago for a launch in April. The result? The review post for the product ranked #1 – ahead of the actual product – and did $43,257 in initial commissions!

…with more to come from recurring commissions!

Here’s what he had to say…

So…yeah…I’d say it worked!

2. Email Autoresponders

Somewhere in your email autoresponder sequence, introduce your audience to affiliate offers.

This strategy is beneficial for three reasons:

They can be scheduled and sent at a specific time in your sequence that is ideal for that product.
They warm your audience up for future launches.
They fill a gap in your product offerings or services.

As for how to set it up, you can choose to dedicate an entire email or series of emails to the affiliate offer or just mention the offers in the course of other messages.

Either way works great.

3. Banner Ads

While they aren’t as effective as they were ten years ago, sidebar banner ads still work.

The key is to keep them fresh.

My recommendation is to take time in the beginning to pick 5-10 banners and either, manually rotate them every 2-3 weeks or use a banner rotation plugin.

4. Link to Offers in Posts

If you are releasing new content twice a week or more, you have at least one opportunity every month to mention a product and link to it.

And during the natural course of writing your content, if you reference someone who has a product, make sure to use an affiliate link. If you quote them from a book, make sure to use an Amazon Associates link. If you mention a product, link to it (Hint: I do that in this post…see if you can spot it!).

NOTE: This works even if the products are not evergreen as they should have a waiting list people can sign-up for.

Although a little detective work might be needed, the rewards are worth it.

5. Podcast Interviews

If you have a podcast, your audience is always growing and new people are coming into your community every day. Often, these people will check out previous episodes.

If you’ve interviewed a product owner, make sure you set up an evergreen link that you can mention.

Make sure it’s redirecting to a functional page on their site and you can expect to make some nice passive income.

I did this recently when I interviewed my friend Eben Pagan for the launch of his new book, Opportunity. (see how easy it is?!)

I set up a link for his free book offer (mattmcwilliams.com/eben) which has since become an evergreen link. Now, anytime anyone hears that interview, I have an evergreen offer with a chance to earn income.

You can do the same when you interview people on your podcast!

And if you don’t think you can get good podcast guests, think again.

I had some amazing guests before I even had 300 downloads an episode.

I did an entire podcast series on my podcast that covered…

6. Resources Page

If you have a resources page, you know it is likely one of the top five most visited pages on your site.

For me, it’s number four behind my home page, my about page, and my “Work With Me” page.

That is a whole lot of people…AND potential sales!

When you have a platform, you can command trust and credibility. People listen to you and your recommendations.

Why not use this to your advantage by linking to affiliate offers on your Resources page as part of your recommendations.

This page has made us an average of $100,000+ a year since I created it 5 years ago.

As you know, I walk the talk.

What I teach is the by-product of what I do and what I test and my experiments.

Since this worked so well for us, I put together a free report sharing how to create a resources page. Many of you have it already but, if you don’t, make sure to grab a copy of our Ultimate Guide to Creating a Resources Page.

In the report, I show you how YOU can build a page like this, too.

I share:

What a resource page is (and what it isn’t)
Why this one page is the 4th most visited page on my site (and my most profitable by far)
How a resource page works (and what mistakes to avoid)
The 5 Keys to creating a great resources page

And it’s yours absolutely free of charge!

This report is the culmination of studying dozens of resources pages, creating my own, and learning from a LOT of mistakes…mistakes YOU won’t make after you grab the report

7. Social Media

You can’t email your list every week (or even every month) recommending the same product.

BUT…you CAN mention it every week or so on social media. Watch our FB Live from last week where we shared the top ways to promote affiliate offers on social media.

Periodically, work affiliate offers (particularly free opt-ins) into your social media calendar. I personally like to include one every 2-3 days, which amounts to about 1/50th of my social media posts.

Evergreen offers can, and SHOULD play a large part in your overall strategy, whether it’s as an affiliate or product owner…or both.

8. Create Urgency

As I mentioned earlier, one of the advantages to launches is that they create buzz. They create urgency and scarcity

So, how DO you create urgency with evergreen offers?

First – don’t lie.

We don’t want to be unethical. At least, I don’t. I want to be honest. That’s who I am.

I’m not judging anybody. I’m just saying…I believe you should be honest. That’s good, not only for me and my conscience, but it’s good for the industry as well.

(There’s always a few bad apples in the internet marketing and affiliate marketing community that mess things up for the rest of us.)

For example, with an evergreen offer, you can’t say ‘this offer ends tonight’ or ‘this product is no longer for sale tomorrow’. Obviously, by definition, it’s for sale 365 days a year.

But there ARE two ways that you can create urgency in evergreen offers:

#1 – Offer a discount code. I don’t like these. I think they cheapen digital products.

Here’s why: Say I have a course that has 23 hours of content. My customer is not paying for the 23 hours of content. Or the checklists. Or the templates and all the work we put in to put that together. No. My prospect is paying for the 13 years of experience that I have in this industry. And I’m simply not going to discount THAT.

So for me, no discounts. But that IS a way to create scarcity and urgency…you can say the discount ends at midnight, tonight. You buy tomorrow, you pay a hundred dollars more. That’s perfectly legit. It’s just not for me.

#2 – BONUSES. We touched on this earlier. Let’s say you’re year-round affiliate for a product on your resources page.

You could, for a one or two week period, run a heavy promo where you email 10 times in a week and you say, I’ve got this bonus package.

Here’s an example: Say one of the products on my resources page is affiliate management software.

As a bonus, I offer exclusive training where I show you how to get and work with affiliates…

I say, ‘We’re going to do an exclusive online training and it’s gonna last about two hours. We’re going to talk about how to get affiliates and how to work with them, etc..etc.’

‘I’m going to run a five-day launch and if you buy in that five day window, you get this two-hour training…at no additional cost. This special offer ends at midnight on Thursday night.’

Basically, you just create bonuses. You make them limited time. Nothing moves people like a deadline. That’s how you promote evergreen offers and create urgency.

So, that gives you a number of ways to promote evergreen affiliate offers. A good way to get started on creating a year-round income from evergreen affiliate offers might be to pick a couple of strategies and try them for a few months. See what works. What doesn’t. And adjust things accordingly.