How to Use a Challenge for Affiliate Marketing: How Entrepreneurs on Fire Made More than $250,000 in One Affiliate Launch

You may know of Entrepreneurs on Fire as the home of John Lee Dumas and his interviews with top entrepreneurs sharing the stories of their success. But did you know that there is so much more that you might not see, including some massive affiliate promotions? In this episode, I have a very special guest who is taking us behind the scenes to explore the lessons learned from EOFire’s biggest affiliate launch to date, which generated over $250,000 in revenue. From planning and preparation to execution and follow-up, we’ll dive into the strategies and tactics that made this promotion such a massive success. Whether you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer or just getting started, you’re sure to pick up some valuable insights and takeaways from EOFire’s experience.

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

10 Lessons I Learned Launching a Bestselling Book

Affiliate Profile: How Holly Homer Went from $0 to $3500 in Affiliate Commissions in Her 2nd Promotion

Listener Q&A: Finding Affiliates, What’s Working in Affiliate Recruiting, Email Templates, and More

How to Create Recurring Affiliate Revenue Promoting Membership Sites

Behind-the-Scenes on Our Affiliate Promotion for Product Launch Formula

How to Promote Virtual Summits as an Affiliate (If You Aren’t a Speaker)

Fix Your Funnel: How to Increase Sales and Make Your Affiliates More Money with John Ainsworth

You may know of Entrepreneurs on Fire as the home of John Lee Dumas and his interviews with top entrepreneurs sharing their stories of success.

But did you know that there is so much more that you might not see, including some massive affiliate promotions?

Well, in this episode, I have a very special guest who is taking us behind the scenes to explore the lessons learned from EO Fire’s biggest affiliate launch to date, which generated over $250,000 in revenue.

From planning and preparation to execution and follow up, we’ll dive into the strategies and tactics that made this promotion such a massive success.

So whether you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer or just getting started, you’re sure to pick up some valuable insights and takeaways from EO Fire’s experience.

So I am super excited about this affiliate profile today.

I’m joined by Kate Erickson from Entrepreneurs on Fire, and Kate and JLD, John Lee Dumas. They were super involved in the initial 2019 Knowledge Broker Blueprint launch.

This was with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi, so they not only knew the program well, but they had also built great relationships with the KBB team and other top affiliates.

And so this initial launch, hugely successful. It’s one of the biggest course launches in online history.

And then later, we helped them break that when we coached their affiliate team last year.

As a part of your affiliate launch, coach, which is our coaching program for affiliate programs, and we help them blow those away.

But this we’re actually going back a couple of years to John and Kate’s second promo of KBB.

And when Kate wrote me about this, she said it all started back in September 2019.

We were chatting with our friends Jill and Josh Stanton from Screw the nine to five.

We were brainstorming ideas, sharing some of our biggest lessons learned from the year, and we got on the topic of affiliate launches.

And then she said that they’ve been considering for a while, teaming up on a big launch, and they decided to do so. Like, we should partner as affiliates for the KBB launch.

And so they did and afterwards, I interviewed Kate all about the experience.

So this is a masterclass not only in promoting a big affiliate launch, but partnering with others, how to divide up those tasks so much more.

So let’s dive right in.

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Matt: Well, Kate, welcome and thank you so much for being with us today.

Kate: Yeah, thank you for inviting me, Matt.

Matt: I’m excited. So I’m really excited to actually talk about this because it’s one of the rare affiliate promotions that I actually watched closely but had no involvement in because we had another promotion going on, like, right at the exact same time.

Actually KBB, So Dean Graziosis and Tony Robbins big promo was sandwiched right between a big affiliate launch that we promoted and our big launch and so I was like, yeah, it just made no sense whatsoever to promote it.

So I got to watch from the sidelines, which I never get to do and that was really cool and you guys were like, rocking. It was so awesome. So kudos on that.

Today we’re going to kind of cover what you guys did.

So first, let’s just start with what it was and kind of maybe some of the back strategy.

I mean, take us back, like, probably a year ago, I’m guessing is about when you guys started planning this, take us back on all that.

Kate: Okay, for sure. So we’ve certainly done several affiliate launches in the past, but we consider this by far our biggest just in terms of the amount of time, energy, and effort put into it and how big we went with the strategies that we use.

So this is the first time we’ve ever partnered with another business that had never really crossed our mind before and we were chatting with our good friends Jill and Josh Stanton from Screw the Nine to Five about a year ago, and we were like, wait a second, both of our businesses play pretty big in affiliate launches in that whole world.

“What would happen if we teamed up together on one and we combined efforts?”

So we kind of toyed with the idea a lot. There was, like, a couple instances where it just wasn’t going to work out.

And then KBB came around and we’re like, well, we actually saw a couple of people partner up on the launch last year because we participated in the initial launch last year as well, john and I did.

And so we’re like, let’s go for it. Let’s see what we can do together as a team, pool our resources, pool the money that we’re putting into it to advertise it and everything, and let’s make this happen.

So from that perspective, how big we were able to go with the resources that we had didn’t even come close to touching any other affiliate launch that we’ve done in the past.

So the amount of Facebook ads we ran, the amount of time we spent on videos, and a pre series leading up to the launch, we hosted a five day challenge together, which actually turned out to be way longer than five days.

But it was such an incredible experience. It’s really opened our eyes to the power of challenges and what that can do not only for you and your own business, but in regards to leading into an affiliate launch, that was our most powerful, biggest lesson learned from the entire thing.

We had messenger bots, we had text messaging, we did physical postcards, we had like 15 or 16 different podcast episodes go live, I believe in the span of, like, a week and a half on our podcast and on Jill and Josh’s podcast.

So just the amount of things that we had going on to essentially try and have this be everywhere strategy for it was very next level.

Matt: You guys kind of followed like the first rule that we practice and we preach is like, treat it like it’s your own launch.

Kate: Sure.

Matt: So take us back to the challenge thing now. I’m seeing them all the time. In fact, the promo that I mentioned that was ours was a challenge. This is the second year we’ve done this challenge, but it’s our challenge.

Like, we’re selling our own product. I think this was the second time, maybe the first time, it’s hard to keep up because now everybody’s doing challenges with affiliate promotions.

What was the strategy behind that or the thinking behind that?

Kate: Essentially, just like your ability to build a very quick connection and provide massive value and a quick win for people that know, like and trust. As you know, Matt is so critical.

So it wasn’t only from a value upfront perspective, but we knew if we could also not just provide any random type of value, but the value was directly correlated as a first step that we knew people would need to take the next step, which we wanted to be joining KBB.

So the foundation of it, everything about the training inside of it, we actually were able to get Dean in as like a special guest to drop videos inside the challenge.

So from a strategy standpoint, not only the connection and the value first and the quick win that we were able to provide for people who joined the challenge, but then also all the training and all the strategy during those five days was directly correlated and related to, “Okay, now that you’ve accomplished this, this is your next step” which was KBB.

Matt: So it’s the good old PS path problem solution, and now the next problem and the solution, and eventually the S is KBB, of course.

What’s the challenge actually called? I’ve forgotten now, sorry.

Kate: No, no worries. It was called think like an expert.

Matt: Think like an expert. Okay, so now you’re getting them to think like an expert, which of course they have to feel, I would imagine.

I mean, the beauty of that I don’t remember some of the other challenge names either that I saw, but the beauty of that is in order to feel like you are worthy of even purchasing knowledge broker blueprint, you feel like you have to have a certain level of the K, the knowledge right?

And so you guys are it’s really about the mindset of thinking like an expert. So take me through individual days per se, but take us through actually, let’s go back.

We’re going to go forward then backwards. That’s how I’m making this up as I go, people.

Kate: It was such a beast. I don’t blame you. Sometimes I don’t even know where to start.

Matt: Once they sign up, we’ll come back to the marketing to get them into the challenge. Take us through. They sign up for the challenge.

What’s that experience like and how are you leading them eventually toward the next step?

Which, correct me if I’m wrong, but the next step isn’t necessarily by KbB.

The next step would be to go through Tony and Dean’s pre launch content, right or training?

Kate: Training right. Okay.Yeah. No, that’s exactly right. But their pre launch content was a live webinar. They didn’t really have a big set up on the front end like a lot of people do.

I mean, you look at James Wedmore, Stu McLaren, and they have a drawn out pre framing for and KBB didn’t really have that. It was just like, join this webinar with Dean and Tony, and then they pitched KBB.

So you joined the challenge and over those five days, we had very specific set up and timing for what was going to happen those five days. So it was very structured.

So people knew that at 07:00 A.m., they were going to have a challenge action video, and that video would go live in the group. At 02:00 P.m., we did live training.

So let us answer any questions that you have about the action that we have directed you or challenged you to take that morning and then in the evening at 07:00 p.m., was a Mindset video from Dean.

So people knew exactly what to expect from the challenge, which really helped with engagement, because then it wasn’t kind of like, “oh, maybe I’ll go into the group if I have time today, or like, maybe if this challenge fits into my schedule.” It was kind of like we were able to help people prepare for exactly what to expect, which our engagement in that group, the connections we were able to make, the breakthroughs that people were having over those five days were so fantastic.

So at the end of those five days, then it was all about starting to seed. By that time, people were like, what’s next? What can we buy from you? Because we want to continue this experience.

Like, you guys have provided so much value and your coaching and your support and everything in this group of people, people wanted to stay together.

And so at that point, we started talking about, we’re putting together a bonus experience for this program that we’re promoting with Tony and Dean.

It’s called Knowledge Broker Blueprint. And we had kind of been seeding that in our training all along.

Like this idea of if you run a knowledge business and basically laying out all the definitions of what all of this terminology means and pre framing, if you are this person, then this is the path that you should follow. So it beautifully led into the live stream with Tony and Dean.

Our bonus experience was certainly heightened because what we had just proven to people over those actually, like, 20 days that ended up being in the challenge, what we had proven to them and how we show up and how we deliver on our promise, that just made our bonus experience like 100x bonus experience right?

So then that also became, okay, this is how you can continue working with us.

Matt: Yeah, well, people have that mountaintop experience and they don’t want it to end. It’s like, okay, what’s the next thing? It makes total sense.

I don’t know if you guys intended this, maybe you did, but one of the things I noticed about it was the way that you brought them in mostly on John and you and Josh and Jill, because it’s your audience, you brought them in probably it was like 98%, the four of you, and like, 2% Dean.

And then progressively you began to sort of turn it over a little bit more and more. Not totally, but turn a little bit more over to Dean.

So by the time the challenge was not that it really ever ended leading into that webinar, they were already fully immersed in Dean.

And so one of the big mistakes that I see when people promote affiliate offers is it’s like, “Hey, I’m Matt, I’m going to send you to Stu and good luck. See you.” You guys actually were like a part of that, which was really cool.

So it became the four of you plus Dean, not just I’m going to hand you off to Dean and Tony good luck.

Kate: Absolutely, yeah. Thank you so much. That was a huge win for us.

The timing of everything matched up so perfectly that John and Jill actually got to go mastermind with Dean for a few days as we were preparing all these promos.

So it wasn’t even just Dean sending us videos. It was John, Dean and Jill together, like, filming this stuff. So, yeah, I agree with you. It makes a huge difference.

Matt: Yeah, that’s really cool. Okay, so now we’ve gone through the challenge, we’re going to come back to the bonus stuff because that was a huge part of this.

Let’s go back to the promotion of the challenge. I probably got an email, but I never read my email so terrible about that.

I saw it on Facebook and I think I saw it on Facebook about eleven times before I finally was like, I need to watch this. This is some serious stuff.

How far in advance of the challenge did you start and what was the strategy in terms of promoting the challenge to the two audiences?

Kate: So that was a huge challenge in this whole process is like teaming up sounded like all the good ideas, but the roadblocks and challenges that we met doing that is like, okay, so then do we each run ads separately to our audiences?

Like, who handles the sign ups? Like, what messenger bot are we going to use? How’s this going to work?

Looking for some good affiliate programs to promote? Check out our recommended affiliate programs here!

Matt: Let’s talk to that because I’m genuinely curious how the heck you guys solve those problems.

Kate: Yeah, I mean, honestly, when I think about it, I would do it differently. Should we try something like that in the future? But I’m not even sure how I would do it differently because it is such a conundrum.

I really don’t know if there is a one size fits all solution, but I wish I had like, okay, this is what we learned and this is what we would do next time.

But it got to a point where John and I would, for example, put an ad out on John’s Instagram for people to go sign up for the challenge.

And at first we had the challenge going straight to a messenger bot, and so we were giving a call to action for people to click a button to enter a messenger campaign so that we could get their email and everything.

So the issue was that we were using Jill and Josh’s messenger bot.

And so people go from us to Jill and Josh, and even though we were literally saying in the ad, we’re like, “we’re teaming up with our friends Jill and Josh, if you click this button, you’re going to go.” But people are distracted.

They’re doing ten different things at the same time. And so we had so many people reaching out to us saying like, hey, I think your link is broken. I just went to a messenger bot for screw the nine to five.

So that was definitely a challenge and a hiccup. I mean, what we did to address that directly is we started having all of our ads go to a sign up page versus a messenger bot.

It probably cost us leads that we could have retained, but it was the only way to prevent the confusion, which was definitely there.

So we started running ads probably like three weeks in advance because we had quite a video series that we had put together and spent a lot of time filming and editing and creating, it was definitely way more production heavy than I’ve ever gone with anything.

It was a ton of fun. Like, we had so much fun doing it. But I mean, lesson learned for that.

I would never run ads for three weeks leading up to something again, and I’d never invest that much time, energy, bandwidth, like everything into videos like that.

Do I think that they helped? Yeah, certainly.

Because to your point, somebody seeing something for eleven times, eventually they’re going to pay attention, even if it’s not the first or the fifth or the 10th time maybe it’s after that.

So I think we ran ads for too long. There wasn’t the urgency there that we would have liked.

I mean, the last week is probably when we saw the most sign ups, of course, because then you start getting to a real deadline that people are like, “oh, okay, I only have a week versus I’ve got three weeks.”

That’s all the time in the world. So the promotion was really heavy on ads. We had the idea actually pretty last minute to charge for the challenge, and the idea behind that was to basically just try and self liquidate our ad cost.

We got pretty close to that. We didn’t achieve that 100%, but it was cool to test that out because we’d never done a challenge period and Jill and Josh had only done free challenges.

Matt: How much did you charge?

Kate: $37.

Matt: Because I got in.

Kate: I think we did I think we did like a $27 early bird.

Matt: Yeah, I feel like I don’t remember I did it PayPal or something, so who knows how much it was. But yeah, our price point on our challenges is typically 25. I mean, certainly you end up with less people, no doubt about it.

But the quality and you mentioned earlier that community and people like, there’s something about a community of free people that get together and you know how it is.

Like, 5% or 10% of them are just like and then you end up with these weird conversations, and it’s no good when everybody’s, like, in the same boat they paid whatever, 25, 37, $27, they’re all in.

And like you said, if you can self liquidate your ad costs, you can technically spend infinite amounts of money, which makes it a lot easier when Zuckerberg is sending you, like, a $10,000 bill every week. It’s a lot easier when you’re like, I made 10,000 in one.

Kate: Yeah, exactly.

Matt: So that’s cool. So, yeah, I mean, you kind of addressed some of the challenges. Were there any other challenges to it, maybe, that you want to share?

Kate: Certainly trying to figure out everyone’s role, and John and I are very good in our business. We kind of have our lanes, and that’s where we’re best, and we just rock and roll in those lanes.

Introducing not only another business and couple, but also we hired a copywriter and we hired a messenger bot guy. So we’re suddenly a team of two who we kind of just, like, do our thing and we know what that is to then I was, like, project manager for this.

So introducing that many more people into it, I mean, that was certainly a challenge for me, and I think everybody felt it to a certain extent just because that’s a lot different when you’re getting other people’s input and trying to be very inclusive of the ideas and what you’re going to move forward with.

But it was a great challenge. It wasn’t like a challenge where I’m like, “oh, my gosh, that was so hard and miserable.” It was like, that really pushed me to be a better project manager. It pushed me to work and collaborate and communicate better.

So it was a challenge in a good way.

Matt: That’s awesome. Okay, so now let’s fast forward. We’re going to go back to people have gone through the challenge. KBB is open for registration, let’s take them to that bonus experience. Actually, let’s start with what was the bonus experience, what were some of the highlights of that and what you guys were hearing about that bonus experience?

Kate: So, highlights of the bonus experience were we did calls with John. So there are short calls, but very structured strategy calls.

An in person event which has since turned virtual calls with Jill and Josh as well, interviews with Jill or John.

We did KBB, Cliff Notes. So we went through the program last year, and then they’ve added so much content this year and a lot of new modules.

So I went through it again this year, and we created Cliff Notes, which ended up like, 80 pages of notes on the entire program, which was a huge I mean, that’s a huge benefit, right, when you’re joining a new program be super overwhelming.

So we had those cliff Notes. We actually just rocked a live virtual profit plan workshop was a part of it. So that was a two hour workshop training with Jill and Josh.

We just did that this week, and we did a four week Mastermind, virtual Mastermind.

So that was inside a private Facebook group five days a week. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Every weekday, a 1 hour call with either myself, John, Jill or Josh.

That was huge.

So that four weeks has passed already. Some of the coolest four week periods I can remember in my business. Just so many of those people are from our challenge, we’re already very familiar with them and with our business and what they had going on.

Then to take that to the next level and start doing, like, implementation, and we call them office hours or implementation calls, and those are really awesome. I mean, the level of support we were able to provide over those four weeks is really high.

So you did those in the Facebook group, though? Like Facebook lives, basically.

Kate: You got it.

Matt: Okay, so super easy. You press a button. So what you said so far. This is the beauty of it. There is nothing you’ve said so far is, like, overly complicated.

I know it felt like that probably when you were in it, but it’s not like you had any like, yeah, you heard a copywriter, you did messenger bot. But all these things are things you can DIY.

Kate: Absolutely.

Matt: Like, virtually no budget except for the ads. It’s free to do a Facebook group. It’s free to go live. You can do all these things, and people love it. So offer that in your bonus. Like, just copy what Kate just said for your bonus.

I’m not speaking to you of course, Kate.

Kate: I would copy it again. I’ll copy myself next time.

Matt: Anything else in the bonus experience that particularly stood out?

Kate: Not that I can remember off the top of my head. I think I hit every point.

Matt: Yeah, it was an awesome bonus package.

Kate: Thank you.

Matt: Yeah. One of the cool things about it is exactly what we teach is very little that I could tell, if I remember correctly, and based on what you just said, almost none of the bonus package did you pre create.

That’s one of the things I hear. Well, I don’t have all these courses that these gurus have. No, I mean, you did the office hours after the fact. You didn’t have to create any of this in advance, which makes it a lot easier.

Kate: 100% and I always find that those are the most valuable bonuses your time.

And of course we talk about scaling and automation and all of this stuff all the time, but what we gained in education level from that experience is in so many ways just as high as those who are a part of it.

I mean, every day we’re hearing the exact struggles and pain points and roadblocks and excuses that people are coming up against, and that only helps us better serve our communities, too.

Matt: And it certainly helps you market KBB even better next year.

Kate: Exactly.

Matt: So as we wrap up here, I want to respect your time. Kate, first of all, thank you. This has been awesome.

Just to get a little peek behind the scenes of an amazing affiliate promotion, the last question I would ask is, I know we sort of touched on some of these, but if there was any big thing that you could do differently from this, what would you do differently in the future?

Kate: Focus on 80 20 like way more. I mean, we tried to go in way too many different directions.

All of us went into this saying all hands on deck, all in full focus. Like, let’s just go all out, let’s try everything, let’s learn a ton of lessons, let’s provide the most value we possibly can and we accomplished all of that and so we have so many lessons learned from it.

But one of the biggest lessons is to never try and go in so many different directions again, because I really do think that that stunted our ability.

We could have made a bigger impact in fewer areas if we weren’t trying to do so many different strategies simultaneously.

Matt: Is it maybe just because you didn’t know what the 80 20 was? Is that part of it?

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. And now we know.

Matt: Exactly. That’s awesome. Yeah, that right there. I actually did have one more question, but you just answered it.

What’s the thing that you’re going to keep that you did this time, that you’re going to do next time? And I think it’s the 20%.

So you experimented. You guys went out on a limb. There’s no guarantee this was going to work by any stretch, certainly no guarantee it was going to be profitable. It was. There are a lot of side benefits as well.

What place did you guys end up finishing? Was it 6th?

Kate: Fifth

Matt: Oh Sorry.

Kate: No worries. No I’m sorry. We were 6th. You’re right. Because it was kind of like we were six last year and we were six again this year. So you’re right.

Matt: Yeah. So you guys are going to be Tony and Dean and doing all kinds of cool stuff.

There are a lot of down the line benefits from doing this, even like, little things like exposure today to all of our insiders.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely and I super appreciate it Matt, thanks so much for inviting me on and having me.

Matt: Yeah, well, I’m going to link there’s a blog post you wrote that actually has a lot of the details that we didn’t get into today just in terms of numbers. We’ll link to that below the video. And Kate, thank you so much. Make sure to tell JLD I said thank you as well.

Kate: Yeah, I will. Thanks so much.

Matt: Awesome.

To get started with affiliate marketing the right way, download my free quickstart guide to affiliate marketing. Grab your copy here!

So I hope you got a ton out of that chat with Kate.

Real quick:

We’ve got links to everything that we talked about. The quickstart guide for affiliate marketing. I mentioned your affiliate launch coach. That’s the program that we helped Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi with.

We’ve worked with Jeff Walker and a bunch of others and if you’re like, well, those guys are super experienced. This is not for me. No, we’ve worked with a ton of smaller entrepreneurs as well.

In fact, that’s originally who we designed it for. So check that out. Youraffiliatelaunchcoach.com. We’ve got links to that in the Show Notes.

I also got a link in the Show Notes. If you’re looking for a great affiliate program or a launch to promote, you need one.

Go to mattmcwilliams.com/whatsup I’ve got that in the Show Notes as well. You can check out our recommended affiliate programs and launches coming up.

I would love also to hear your biggest takeaway for my chat with Kate today. Text me 260-217-4619. I’d love to hear from you and make sure last thing that you hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

Our next one coming up, a day in the life of an affiliate manager.

We’re going to answer the question, like, what the heck does an affiliate manager do all day long?

I get asked that so much and it’s kind of like a mystery to some people.

They just like, what does an affiliate manager actually do?

So what we’re going to do is we’re going to take you behind the scenes on what a typical day in the life of an affiliate manager really looks like.

So look forward to that. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss it.

See you then.