My Best Affiliate Marketing Advice for the Holidays

We’re officially in full holiday season prep mode now. For many, the next six weeks could make or break their entire year. Quotas can be crushed, goals met, and the holiday parties seem a lot more fun. Or budgets will be busted, goals missed, and you’re left wishing the ball would drop a little slower on New Year’s Eve. So, how can you make this holiday season your best ever with affiliate marketing? Listen up, because today I’m sharing my best affiliate marketing advice for the holiday season.

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Links Mentioned in this Episode

Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Promotions

ConvertKit

ClickFunnels

iDev Affiliate

How to Stand Out and Capture Attention in a Crowded Marketplace

Warm-Up Guide

Affiliate Bonus Packages

How to Write Review Posts that Rank and Convert

FREE DOWNLOAD – Bridge Page Template

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

Affiliate Managers: 10 Things You MUST Do During Holiday Affiliate Promotions

Holiday Affiliate Promotions: 7 Things Every Affiliate Manager Needs to Know

How to Crush Your Black Friday and Cyber Monday Affiliate Promos

Affiliate Profile: How a First-time Affiliate Finished in 2nd Place with Tosha Schore

How to Use Affiliate Webinars to Grow Your Business

What The Top Affiliates Are Doing in 2022 According to Award-Winning Affiliate Manager Jamie Birch

My Best Affiliate Marketing Advice for the Holidays

We’re officially in full holiday season prep mode now.

For many, the next six weeks could make or break their entire year.

Quotas can be crushed, goals met, and the holiday party seems a lot more fun.

Or budgets will be busted, or missed, and you’re left wishing the ball would drop a little slower on New Year’s Eve.

So how can you make this holiday season your best ever with affiliate marketing?

Listen up, because today I’m sharing my best affiliate marketing advice for the holiday season.

Hey, welcome back. This is the final episode in our holiday series.

Every year, I look forward to this because it’s an opportunity for me to kind of up my game. We’ve done this for five years now.

This holiday series at the end of the year, I mentioned in the first episode, every year we do it like a little bit sooner, a few days sooner, and a few days sooner.

And this year we’re wrapping up in early November so you have everything you need to make the upcoming holiday season amazing for your affiliate promos.

But it’s an opportunity for me to up my game because I can’t just say the same thing year after year.

But that said, today I’m going to share some of my best tips over the years for holiday affiliate promos.

If you listen four episodes ago, we talked about Black Friday and Cyber Monday and the same principles that we talked about then apply to the whole holiday season we talked about.

Get what you need now. Get the assets you need now. Ask for them right?

Review what worked in the past and what didn’t. Reuse old content.

Study what others have done and are doing.

Pay attention to those merchant deals and announcements.

Start teasing those promos now.

Building your own interest now.

Not overlooking your small communities like your tech communities or a small social media network that you have or profile that you have.

Reviewing those SEO fundamentals.

Writing product reviews.

Creating video reviews.

Giving them a reason to use your affiliate link.

Putting all your promos on one page that you constantly refer back to.

Using social media big time.

Using the holidays to drive Opt, Ins, Likes, and other subscriptions.

Retargeting your interest list and treating it like a big launch.

That’s what we’ve talked about throughout this series, going all the way back to the first episode.

Today, I’m going to share four, actually, when you really get down to it, it’s dozens of my best tips and strategies over the years.

So again, just a reminder, all of these strategies and a ton more if you go to the Ultimate Guide to Holidayaffiliate Promotions there, make sure you go check it out.

There’s so much good stuff on there.

All right, the first strategy, it’s a single strategy that if you do it right, you’re more than double your affiliate sales over the holidays.

It’s so simple that I just want to warn you, this so simple you might be tempted to brush it off, but it absolutely works.

So listen up to our first strategy here.

Today’s tip is to find a variety of offers.

Find a variety of offers. Let me give you an example.

My audience is broken down into basically four different segments or groups.

Convertgate, which is the email service that we use and love.

They’re called tags. Okay?

It doesn’t really matter what they are called, but basically, they’re segmented.

And these four groups are the four tags I really want to learn about affiliate marketing.

And they’re brand new, so they’re beginners, we really want to learn affiliate marketing.

The second group is, I really want to focus on affiliate marketing and I’ve made some money.

I’ve made 5000 plus online, so they’re not new, and then the third group is, I want to learn how to run an affiliate program.

I’m ready to have my own affiliate program and then the fourth group is, I want to do all of these I want to learn how to do affiliate marketing and run an affiliate program.

Those are the four, segments, the groups, and the tags that make up my audience.

And the thing is, it’s pretty even amongst those.

In fact, none of those four groups make up more than 32%, none are less than 20, and none are greater than 32. They’re very even.

By promoting a variety of offers, one of the first benefits here is that you’re able to promote offers that are targeted to each segment or group within your audience.

So in my case, you know what the breakdown is now, right?

If they’re brand new and I’m doing the holiday affiliate promotion, I’m doing things like how to set up an email list.

So I’ll promote ConvertKit, which again, we highly recommend, mattmcwilliams.com/convertkit or how to set up funnels mattmcwilliams.com/convertkit will show you.

Those are the offers that we promote to beginners.

Those are my affiliate links, of course, right?

And if they’re into affiliate marketing and maybe they made some money.

I might be promoting things that teach them how to do more advanced things, like how to set up and run good Facebook ads, like some more advanced software, tracking, and some tools.

You can find all of our recommendations, by the way, mattmcwilliams.com/toolbox and we have recommendations there.

And I would promote offers that would be a little bit more advanced.

If you want to learn how to run an affiliate program.

In that case, even that kind of it’s broken out into two levels, right?

I don’t have an affiliate program.

Like, I need to start one, and I don’t have one at all right now, or I’ve got one.

It’s established, maybe doing a couple of $10,000 a year. Right?

Well, if that’s you, what do I recommend?

If you’re just starting out and you’re on a budget, you need some basic tracking.

I recommend Idev.

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

Again, all these are on my toolbox page.

I recommend IDEV affiliate, which is literally under $200.

It’s the cheapest, but they’re still really good.

It’s well above average in terms of affiliate tracking.

It’s not the fanciest, it doesn’t have all the reporting, but it’s thousands upon thousands of dollars less than the alternative.

So I tell people, go to MattMcwilliams.com/idev.

And I would recommend that now if they’re on the other end, it’s like, you know, they have an established affiliate program, it’s doing well.

Maybe they’re doing a couple of thousand dollars in disposable income with their business.

We recommend Infusionsoft and so those are some examples that we would recommend.

A variety of offers, right?

So find a variety of offers.

You’re able to target each group within your audience that way.

And because we talked about this in the last episode, holiday affiliate promotions are typically really short.

Like a Black Friday promotion is typically good for one to three days.

Sometimes you might have a flash sale that’s only good for a few hours or half a day.

Other times you might have a week long sale, but it’s still shorter than the typical product launch sequence, 15 to 20 days.

And because these sales are very short, it’s easier to promote different offers to different groups.

Because in my case, if you’re in that group that maybe only represents 25%.

I’m not promoting something to only 25% of my audience.

That’s only relevant to 25% for two and a half weeks.

I’m promoting it for two days.

So look for products for different segments, okay?

Look for products of different types.

So what do I mean by that?

Different segments, different types.

You might promote two different products that are basically teaching the same thing, but one of them is for advanced users, one of them is for beginner users.

You might recommend different price points, right?

So let’s say it’s a physical product.

For instance, microphones for recording podcasts.

Again, these are both on, I think they’re both on my toolbox page.

You’ve got the $500 mic and the 70 $80 mic the ATR $2,100.

I have two recommendations for video cameras.

One is a couple of $100 is like $50.

Promote things that are one dollars.

You don’t even make an affiliate commission on them, really, but they’re valuable for your audience.

They will love you and know that you’re looking out for them.

Promote things that are thousands of dollars, if that’s relevant to your audience.

In my opinion, especially this time of year, finding low priced offers that have a lifetime cookie or have a one year cookie.

It’s actually a really good idea because the entry offer is so low that you get the click they buy right away and if they purchase later, purchase something else.

You get credit.

This time of year is a great time to link to products on Amazon.

It’s only a session cookie, so they have to buy during that session.

But if you recommend something, they click through your link.

They go by the like, the video camera that you recommend.

I know we’ve got some Amazon offers on our Black Friday page mattMcwilliams.com/deals.

You recommend that thing, and then they go off and buy a television, a grill, eight books, and some gardening equipment.

They spend $2,000. You make $80 off of promoting a single thing.

So this is the perfect time of year to test some stuff out. Okay?

Test some stuff out.

Really nail down what are possibly some areas that you’re not exploring, some areas that you can explore in terms of promotions because there’s a deep discount, because there’s some urgency.

Maybe you’re not promoting something.

Maybe you teach organic farming.

Let’s go organic gardening. Okay?

And you haven’t really dug in.

I didn’t realize that was a pun. Sorry.

It reminds me I got to stop here and just tell this quick story.

I totally buy this. This is funny.

We’re driving through Phoenix at launchcon.

We’ve got our team in the car, part of our team, at least.

Me, my wife, Tara, Mark and Robby.

And there’s this sign, a billboard that says, our chicken sandwich has weed.

That’s all it says and I saw it. I’m like, I just started busting out laughing.

Sandwich all it is is a picture of a chicken sandwich.

The name of the restaurant. I can’t even tell you what it is.

And it says, Our chicken sandwich has weed and we’re laughing like, wow.

And Robby goes, and they’re so blunt about it and then we all start busting.

I laugh and he had no idea he was making a pun.

Anyway, organic gardening.

So if you haven’t really dug into teaching some of the aspects I don’t know certain products, right?

Maybe like pest control. You want to teach organic pest control.

You haven’t done anything in that area, but there’s a product out there that you want to test out.

You’re like, I’m not so sure about that.

You do a one day flash sale.

Nobody buys it even though it’s at a deep discount and you’ve learned something, they’re not really interested in that aspect. Right?

But if it goes crazy and you made I don’t know why, my gosh, I made $5,000.00

That tells you something, too.

So find those low priced offers that have a lifetime cookie so that you can promote it now, but because the entry level is so low, you get a high conversion rate if they purchase later.

You get credit if they find some higher price stuff.

So find stuff like that all over the place.

Different price points, different if we’re talking about courses, different instructors.

Are they male?

Are they female?

Different levels.

Advanced beginner, intermediate.

I always go back to the productivity niche.

Promote something on time management.

Promote something on delegation.

Promote something on leadership.

Promote something on health and fitness, and test these things out.

Just go all over the place, because this is the time of year to do that.

It can be completely all over the place with your offers, testing things that have those short windows.

So test and try different things.

Promote a variety of offers.

So it’s hard to stand out in your affiliate promotions.

You can use that strategy that is a share.

You can double or triple your sales, but it’s hard to stand out.

We talked about this before.

There’s so many deals, discounts, deadlines, standing out is a challenge.

So how do you cut through the clutter?

We talked about this from the affiliate manager’s perspective in the last episode of the episode before.

But how do you do it as an affiliate?

How do you stand out?

How do you cut through the noise?

How do you differentiate yourself this holiday season?

Well, that’s what this next part is all about.

So how do you stand out?

I’ve done lessons on standing out before.

One was called how to stand out and capture attention in a crowded marketplace.

I did a live lesson on that.

That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’ll link to that, by the way, if you want to know how to stand out in general.

I’m not talking about in general here.

This is about standing out right now during the holidays.

And I want to share ten strategies to help you stand out with your affiliate promotions here in this crazy month or so.

The first thing you got to do, number one is you got to know that the early bird gets the worm.

The key to any successful promotion is to have a plan.

Not a perfect plan, just a plan.

And you need to create that plan now.

So what are you going to mail about?

What days and times are you going to mail?

You’re going to send two emails on a certain day, three on a certain day?

Are you going to email early in the morning for something or late in the evening for other things?

Are you going to do blog posts?

Are you going to record podcast episodes?

Do live?

What graphics are you going to use?

Like, you got to ask yourself these questions.

You got to ask them well before the promotion and make a plan.

Doing so is going to have a dramatic impact on how well you’re going to do during holiday affiliate promotions.

You got to do these well in advance because you got to see how they all work together.

You can’t tease your cyber monday deal on Sunday.

If on Sunday you’re promoting a big deal, some sort of a thing that has a deadline that night, you can’t really do both.

You need to focus on one or the other.

So then you need to think, okay, when do I need to tease the Cyber Monday deal?

I need to tease maybe on Tuesday.

I need to tease the Black Friday and the Cyber Monday deals and things like that, right?

So you got to ask those in advance.

Speaking of teasing, you got to start teasing days or weeks in advance, right?

You got to start revealing deals and offers weeks in advance if possible, at least a week and a half, two weeks in advance.

Like make them into an event.

Look at what the major retailers are doing.

I’m recording this at the end of October.

They’re already talking about their Black Friday deals.

If I was going to have a Black Friday offer, I am by the way.

So be watching for our crazy Black Friday deals.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday deals are coming up November 26th to 29th.

See what I just did there, right?

I’m going to tell you about what’s coming up now.

Actually, truth is, as I’m recording this, we’re not entirely sure what one of those is going to be yet.

We know we’ve got three deals, we got three offers.

We know what two of them are.

We’re not sure what one of them is going to be, and I’ll be talking about those soon and let you guys know.

Now, you’re not necessarily going to send in dedicated email about each of these things, but maybe you start mentioning it in blog posts.

Maybe you’ll start mentioning it on a podcast episode in a newsletter.

I’ll start talking about it in our weekly recap emails.

I’ll post it on social media.

I’ll mention it here and there.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll start building a little bit of buzz and excitement, right?

And so that’s the key.

We want to start building that buzz and excitement as early as possible because the early bird gets warm.

So if you want to learn how to warm up your audience now, right now for those upcoming holiday promotions I mentioned in the last few episodes, make sure to grab our guide mattmcwilliams.com/warmlist.

Go get our warm up guide.

Number two.You need to treat holiday promos like a big launch.

What do you mean you go big?

You only have a 48 hours window for some of this stuff 24 hours window.

So plan on sending 2345 emails in that time frame.

Plan on doing social media posts like if you’re doing Twitter every 90 minutes throughout the day on those days.

Lots of emails, lots of social media post lots of everything.

Go live, you know, pull out all the stops like you would in a big launch.

Focus on that deadline.

We know from experience in big product launches the last days

when most of the sales happened, right?

The same is true in a 48 hours sale.

Most of the sales happened in the last 4 hours.

In a 48 hours sale, you’ll typically see a big spike at the very beginning and then a drop.

And then the last 4 hours can account for anywhere from 25% to 35% of sales, sometimes upwards of 50%.

Guess when most of the sales are made in a 17 day promotion, the last 4 hours.

That’s the way it is. Nothing moves people like a deadline.

So you’re going to stand out by treating it like a big launch.

We’ll talk more about scarcity here in a little bit.

Third, create a quiz that a perspective shopper can fill out, right?

So do something like a find the perfect gift in a minute 60 seconds is actually better.

If you say 60 seconds in 1 minute, I forget why.

I learned that years ago.

But find the perfect gift in 60 seconds and then it shows them.

They answer a few questions and it tells them what kind of gifts to look at.

And gives them some suggestions that you can link to as an affiliate.

The fourth way you can stand out is by being a one stop shop.

A lot of people are going to be out there and they’re going to promote 5710 things, right?

And they’re going to promote it here and there.

They are going to send an email here, blah blah blah.

And there’s going to be different links flying around.

What if you just created page that serves as a hub?

One page. So you create like a gift guide.

Gift guides are your best friend over the holidays.

But instead of writing broad ones, try to niche down as much as you can.

So think of like instead of Ten Best Christmas Gifts for Moms, try something like Ten Gifts for Soccer Moms, try to niche down a little bit.

Or Cozy Gifts for the mom who loves to land. Right?

The ultimate gift guide for a foodie. You know, things like that.

The best places you want to know how to do this, like you want to get ideas, just research how people are searching for gifts to buy and you’ll figure out all kinds of gifts.

And then the thing is, it doesn’t have to be gifts.

It could be deals. It could be things that are deals.

I’m just using that gift guide as an example.

But it could be a page where it’s just got like all of your deals for this time of year.

So we’ve got all of our Black Friday deals on this page and then we’re going to update it.

We’re going to remove the expired ones and we’re going to put the Cyber Monday deals on here.

Then we’re going to put the Small Business Saturday ones on and we’re going to put the Free Shipping day ones on there.

It’s just going to be one page. One page, very simple. It’s like mattmcwilliams.com/deals.

Depending upon when you listen to this.

It’s not updated just for the record, but that’ll be our page.

And then you just update it constantly. You can add new things.

The cool thing about this is you can use this page when they go there for the Black Friday deals.

You can tease your Cyber Monday deals on that page, but you can list multiple things and then they come there and they end up buying multiple things.

You can gain followers by telling them on social media to follow you for the latest updates.

So we got this one page, follow us on social media so you get updates throughout this whole month.

Over the next few days, we’re going to be updating this page constantly.

So you want to follow us on social media because some of these deals only last for 4 hours.

So make sure you follow us and now you pick up social media followers.

It’s also really good if you get an affiliate program.

Just as a side note, have a single page that you update that your affiliates can use and they can just use one page.

That way it’s always updated.

They don’t have to worry about ten different links.

The fifth way to stand out as an affiliate is to offer bonuses.

Now I’ve shared the basics about bonus packages before and I’m not going to go into those.

If you go to Mattmcwilliams Comaffbonuses, you can check out my guide on how to create bonus packages.

I’m not going to go into the details of just the basics, right?

Things like don’t create anything.

If at all possible, try to offer something that’s 100% to 200% of the price, the product, right?

So if the product is $100, try to offer a bonus that’s 100, $200, things like that.

Use what you have. Those are all in that guide.

That’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about specifically with holiday offers.

It feels like there’s like a special thing done for a special reason.

It’s a very special holiday occasion and so you can put a little bit of an extra spin on them.

You can put a festive spirit on the whole thing, right?

You can frame your bonus packages being generous and wanting to give back this holiday season.

So you can feed it around the holidays, around Christmas, around Hanukkah, whatever it is. You can theme it around New Year.

It’s like, this is the goal setting package.

This is the make 2022, your best year yet package, things like that.

And so, again, if you want to know how to create the bonus packages, go to that link image at mattmcwilliams.com/affbonuses.

I’ll link to that in the show notes.

So you can just click on that and grab that and walk you through how to create these packages.

But think about what are some extra things you could do to sweeten the pie?

Sweeten the pie or sweeten the pie or the pie?

I think the pie is already sweet.

I don’t know if pie needs to be sweetened anymore.

Last time I had pie was really sugary and I ended up with like the shakes afterwards and I don’t eat sugar anymore anyway.

Okay, way off track there but here’s the point though.

Sweeten the pot, right?

We’re going to sweeten the pot and so we’re going to offer these bonuses as a way to incentivize people to buy.

These bonuses can be for 24 hours only or half a day only, 4 hours only, things like that.

The 6th way that you can stand out is pull the plug early on non performing offers.

What does that mean?

How does this help you stand out?

This kind of sounds weird, Matt.

The thing is, you don’t have time to ride out non performing offers when you’ve got the middle of July and the launch is two weeks long and it’s not going great at the beginning.

You got time, but things are moving too fast this time of year.

They’re moving so quickly during this time.

You don’t have time to have something not performing if something isn’t working and you promoted it heavily for a day or two.

Just consider not finishing that promo.

Let’s just say it’s five days long.

Just consider pulling out and finding something else.

Remember what I just said about the deadline though, and maybe it’s not going quite as you thought it would, but things could pick up something’s not performing quite up to speed.

Maybe the deadline is going to move things.

Maybe just people need a little bit of scarcity.

So you might want to stay with it.

But if something’s totally bombing, you just got to scrap it and learn why.

Later do a debrief layer Figure out why it didn’t work. But right now, just pull the plug. It ain’t working. Move on.

The 7th way you can stand out is do videos, do video reviews, do unboxings do explainers where you walk through products and how you use them.

Do lifestyle videos using the product, things like that.

Video is a great way to stand out.

Most people, they’re doing written product reviews, which are great.

If you want to know, by the way, how to do a product review, just go to MattMcWilliams.Com/reviewposts and you can download the guide.

It works for written product reviews and video product reviews Okay.

So when I do a video product review, it’s basically I use the written product review as a script and then kind of go off and share a few extra things so that it’s not just I’m not just reading from a script, but effectively it’s the same concept.

It’s the same concept as a written product review.

So if you want to learn how to do this, we’ll put that link in the show notes and you can download the ultimate guide to creating a product review that actually ranks that’s important and converts.

You can’t have one without the other. Oh, my product review converts really well.

Yeah, because you’ve had five visitors in the last year and two of them bought.

Okay, that’s not as good as if you had 5000 visitors. That’s 40%.

I’d rather have 5% of 5000 visitors buy and you also can’t wow, we’ve got the number two ranking on Google.

We’ve had 5000 visitors to my review.

And how many of them bought?

Two.

Well, that sucks.

That’s not very good.

So you got to rank and convert.

That applies to written reviews and to video reviews. All right?

Number eight is to use scarcity.

And I mean really use it because you probably got a deadline for the Black Friday deals.

Possibly a weekend deal between Black Friday and Cyber Monday Or a Small Business Saturday deal.

You’ve got Cyber Monday, you’ve got the end of Hanukkah, you’ve got Free Shipping Day.

You’ve got the last day to ship guaranteed shipping, maybe like where it’s the cheap shipping or free shipping.

Then you’ve got the last day for expedited shipping.

I mean, just off the top of my head, that’s seven deadlines in a three-and-a-half-week span.

Ready to turn your passions into a profitable business? Check out my new book here!

So use that scarcity to really drive sales.

Use countdowns to create a sense of urgency leading up to promotion.

So it’s the countdown to the Black Friday deal.

It goes live at 07:00 A.m. On Friday and we’re counting down to it.

Use countdowns in your emails.

Countdown timers.

We recommend motion mail or out of timer.

Use those to create countdown timers in your email copy where you’re mailing out about certain promotions that are ending tonight.

At midnight on social media.

Post a four hour warning and a two hour warning and use that to really create that sense of urgency.

So that was number eight.

Number nine is create your own graphics.

Now, I’m going to talk about this in an upcoming episode where I talk about what do affiliate programs need to give you as an affiliate?

And yes, they need to give you some great graphics.

They need to especially give you holiday themed graphics because as I’ll share in that episode more in depth, we found that that increases sales about 14% this time of year.

But here’s the thing.

Everyone is using the same stuff, everyone is using the exact same graphics to promote that affiliate offer.

So make your own.

Make them a holiday theme.

But try something different.

Most are going to go red and green.

That’s pretty common.

So try something different, like a darker blue and gold, a lighter blue and silver and white kind of has a snowy feel, right?

Try some different colors, different themes, instead of just everything being Santa Claus.

Try snow and maybe some, I don’t know, stars, things like that.

Just try to stand out a little bit.

Look at what the company is providing and what other companies are providing in the niche and try to ziggy, they’re zagging and just try to mix it up a little bit.

If it’s all red and green, I guess they go with those different colors.

Maybe their focus is their graphics are more focused on just the product.

Well then focus on how they’re being used, things like that.

Try something a little bit different by creating your own graphics.

And 10th, get an exclusive code.

Now, if you have an exclusive discount code, naturally it’s different and unique.

Now, not all companies are going to give out exclusive codes, but I’m going to tell you now, an exclusive code, something like Matt or Matt 20 is going to convert better than some random save 20 mat 20 is going to convert better than save 20.

I’ve even seen where it’s like Save 20 W 27 AP and I’m like, what does that even mean?

What kind of a code is that?

But one of the biggest things I see with new affiliates, they’re just afraid to ask for things like this.

So regardless of how small you are, maybe this might even be your first affiliate promotion ever.

You’re just getting started.

Asked for an exclusive code, you might just get it.

I see this a lot with affiliate programs.

They’re like, well, please apply here for an exclusive code and tell us how big is your audience?

How many Twitter followers do you have and Facebook followers do you have and what’s your email list size?

It’s easier for me just to give you a code regardless of your audience size, and it is to take the time to ask those questions and then look through it and then tell you no.

So don’t be afraid to ask.

The people who get them are the people who ask for them.

And again, we’ve seen with exclusive codes, we’ve seen close to a 20% increase in sales from having an exclusive code.

So there’s no reason not to ask for one.

And that is one thing that will allow you to stand on.

Instead of just having a regular boring code, you’ve got one that is unique.

There’s only going to be one that has Matt 20 and that’s going to be me.

So remember, number one, the early bird gets the worm.

Number two, treat your holiday promo is like a big launch.

Third, try a quiz, some sort of like a holiday shopping quiz, right?

Fourth, be that one stop shop.

Create that one page that serves as a hub that you update frequently with new offers.

Fifth, offer bonuses.

That’s huge.

That’s a great way to stand out.

Six, pull the plug early on non performing offers so you can just get rid of them.

7th, leverage video in the form of reviews and unboxings and things like that.

8th, use scarcity and Countdowns to create that sense of urgency.

9th, create your own graphics.

And ten, get an exclusive code.

So this next one here is one of my favorite affiliate marketing tricks. All right?

How to grow your list and your commissions at the same time.

Most affiliates thing, especially in the holiday season, because it’s all about driving them to the deals page, all about driving them to the merchant.

They have to choose, do they grow their list or do they make more affiliate commissions?

What if it didn’t have to be that way?

This is not a holiday specific strategy, but I think it takes on more meaning this time of year because you’re so focused on the sales.

And this is a rarely used secret weapon that I want to share with you about how to grow your email list and your affiliate sales at the same time.

When you’re running ads, a lot of times you have to kind of choose, like, do I want to make more sales?

Do I want to be able to get leads?

Like, where am I going to spend my money?

But what if you could do both?

It kind of sucks when you go spend maybe a couple thousand dollars on ads and, yeah, you make money, you don’t get any leads for it.

You don’t have anything to show for it at the end of just money.

And I had this conversation with an affiliate the other day, and he asked me his exact question was, do I get access to the emails for my paid ads?

Well, the short answer is no.

Legally, we can’t just give you all those email addresses.

If you think about this, yeah, you paid for the traffic.

You sent them to my page, and they agreed to my terms and conditions.

They agreed to my privacy policy.

And actually, my privacy policy states that when you sign up for my list, I’m not going to share your email address with anybody.

Now, I can promote an offer to you as an affiliate.

Clearly a lot of people get that messed up by the way.

They think, oh, I’m not going to share your email means I can never send anything.

That’s not exactly about my brand.

Well, that’s not true.

I never said that in my privacy policy.

I just said I’m never going to share your email address.

I’m never going to give your email address to anybody else.

You didn’t sign up for their list, you signed up for mine.

I cannot legally, and I’m pretty sure I know this is the case in the United States.

I think this is definitely the case in the EU.

You can’t do that.

And you say, well, I’m not in the EU or the United States.

Yes, but some of your potential customers are.

Somebody on your list is in those areas.

It’s almost impossible.

I have a friend of mine, her entire platform is in Polish or Romanian, and she has people from the United States on the platform. Why?

Because there are Polish or Romanian speakers in the United States.

There are Polish and Romanian speakers in Australia, in Japan, everywhere around the world, there’s somebody that speaks Polish or Romanian.

I can promise you legally, we can’t just give you those email addresses.

So I’m going to walk you through what to do so that you can capture the leads and make the affiliate sales.

You get to have the best of both worlds.

This is like having your cake and eating it, too, whatever the heck that really means.

Like, I have the cake.

What else am I supposed to do with the cake?

I’m going to eat it anyway.

That’s a whole other ball of wax here.

So before we do, we’re going to release our very first edition of the Mindset Minute with Mary Mitchell.

I’m so excited about this.

We teased this a few months ago and then we went out and rather than just having Mary be somebody that we wanted to feature, she’s in our start mastermind.

We love Mary. She’s an amazing person and she has a lot to share about mindset and confidence with you.

Rather than just have that, we went out and hired Mary.

That’s why it took a little bit longer to release this first edition.

But I’m excited about this because you’re going to get to hear an upcoming episode.

Not every episode, but probably a third of them, half of them.

We’re going to have a little segment one to two minutes called the Mindset Minute with Mary Mitchell.

We’re going to share with you little quick tip about mindset, because mindset is so important, confidence is so important for entrepreneurs.

So with no further ado, here is the first edition of the Mindset Minute with Mary Mitchell.

Welcome to the Mindset Minute with Mary Mitchell, your selfimage master coach, where I help you slay the inner critic that keeps you stuck where you are today’s.

Mindset in it is about living in the moment.

Too often we put enormous expectations on ourselves.

We’re always rushing to do this or finish that or hurry up to do something else.

We never actually enjoy the process.

We’re just rushing and we don’t even know why.

Most of the time we don’t stop and think about where we are.

So we miss the point of being there.

Instead with the power of living in the now, we learn to appreciate each moment and gather the lessons from each moment.

This means that we are now living consciously, purposefully and responsibly.

Want to learn more about reframing your mindset or living in the moment?

Follow me on all social media platforms at coach.

Maryden, until next time, change your perspective, change your future. All right?

How do you grow your list and your affiliate commissions at the same time?

I’m going to teach you a little strategy, a little technique that I call the bridge page technique.

And if you want a visual of this, just go to Mattmcwilliams.Com/bridgepage.

And you can download a PDF of this where I actually map it out for you and explain what should be on these.

There’s actually two pages, and you’ll see why in a moment, and you’ll see what should be on there.

This is how you grow your list and your affiliate commissions at the exact same time.

So go to that URL, it’ll be in the show notes as well, and you can get a visual for this.

So the problem is, again, that we can’t share those email addresses with you.

So when you send them to us, you don’t grow your list.

Let’s just say you spent $2,000 on ads and you sent 1000 clicks to us and you converted 500 of them into email subscribers for me.

Yay, me. Not only did I get the sales that I’m going to make from those 500 people, but I get to keep the 500 people.

And so let’s just run with those stats.

Easy to go, right?

Easy to figure out.

You spent $2,000 thousand clicks.

Five and let’s just say we converted we’ll go 25 of them into about accurate about 5%.

Let’s go 20. We’ll go 4%.

A little bit more reasonable 20 of them into a $500 sale.

So there’s $10,000 you get at 40% commission.

So you made $4,000 on a $2,000 spend.

That’s great ROI, but you didn’t get any of the emails. That’s the problem.

So the solution is to create this bridge page.

So what this bridge page looks like, and again, you can get the PDF at mattmcwilliams.com/bridgepage is you’re going to create a very simple page that your ad goes to that allows you to capture their email address.

So you’ll have the opt in page.

You’ll have a headline at the top.

So that headline would say something like, do you want to we’ll just use Pedro Adele’s promotion going on right now, which, by the way, if you go to mattmcwilliams.com/WhatsApp

You can actually see all the upcoming promotions that we recommend and you can sign up for those.

You can sign up for those. Pedro is one of them.

It’s literally starting right now.

So you want to make sure you get in on that.

The URL for that will be in the show notes as well.

So you’re promoting Pedro, and it’s like, do you want to learn how to create a movement using challenges?

Not the greatest headline, but again, just thinking out loud here, right?

I might put something that talks about how to create a massive movement, and that probably might even be just it, right?

Using challenges or something and then I would talk about in the sub headline, Pedro’s work.

He’s run the challenges for Tony Robbins and Russell Brunson, dean Graziosi, Grant Cardone, Damon John and people like that.

You’re going to learn from the challenge guy.

And then the key is that you want to offer a bonus just for registering for this free training.

So on the left hand side of the page, you’ll have a video or a graphic that explains the opportunity and the bonus that you offer.

You also describe the bonus in that sub headline that could be like a couple of sentences.

And so, for instance, I might say, hey, if you register for Pedro’s free workshop coming up at the end of his Movement Maker challenge, I’m going to give you a PDF with my key takeaways from that day’s content.

Or I’m going to host a 30 minutes live Q and A to answer questions that you might have about that.

Or I’m going to do a free Facebook group where you can participate with other people from my audience who are in this challenge together.

Or I’m going to give you a free video training, or I’m going to give you a free ebook or something.

It doesn’t have to be like $5,000 value.

This is just bonus for registering for free.

This is how you capture their email address.

On submit, and this is key.

A lot of people do this.

Not very many people do this, but the few who do when they submit, they go directly to the opt in page, then.

So they go to the affiliate link that doesn’t work, and I’ll explain why in a second, but I want to back up to that page.

And again, you can see this on that PDF that I mentioned.

You got the graphic art, the video on the left side explaining the bonus.

On the right hand side, you have the email opt in form and the button. Okay?

Do not send them directly to the affiliate link, though.

They won’t opt in because they think they already have.

If I enter my email address for something and then I go to a page asking for my email address, I just assume it’s an error. Okay, what happened?

Instead, you want to send them to a thank you page, a confirmation page.

Again, that confirmation page will have a headline and a sub headline, and it’ll say something like, you’re registered to get my bonuses, but watch this 1 minute video first.

This is a 1 minute video.

In this video, you want to explain that they’ll get the bonus. They’re all set up.

Acknowledge that they signed up for your bonus, but that they still need to join whatever it is you’re promoting.

The workshop, the challenge, the webinar. Right?

Tell them what to do now.

So this script would say something like, if I’m promoting Pedro, I would say something online like, hey, congratulations.

You’re all set up to get my bonus.

And I’m telling you right now, you are going to love Pedro’s movement Maker Challenge.

I’m telling you this.

He is the guy, right?

He has trained Dean Graziosi and Tony Robbins and Grant Cardone and Russell Brunson.

There is no greater expert that I trust more than Pedro Deo to run challenges.

There’s one more thing you need to do.

You need to click the button below.

That’s my affiliate link so that I know you’re registered for Pedro’s challenge.

Click the button below to register for his.

I know it means you got to enter your email address again.

All right, I’m sorry about that.

We can’t send your email over to him.

It doesn’t work like that.

But just click the button below.

Go register for Pedro’s challenge directly.

I’ve already got your email saved for your bonuses, so you’re in.

Look for an email from me.

I’ll send you a link to and then whatever, the Facebook group, the thing to download your PDF, whatever it might be, right?

So you say, Click the button below to join a register, and I’ll see you in the challenge.

It’s a 1 minute video. Super simple.

So that right there is the secret weapon for growing your list and growing your affiliate commissions at the same time.

What I found is 96% of people will opt into the second thing you’ll lose about 4%.

I don’t know why they don’t do it, what the deal is, but it is what it is, right?

So you’ll get to keep those email addresses.

You can now market other things to them over time.

Plus you can follow up with them about the challenge, or about the workshop, or about the paid course, whatever it might be.

That’s how you do it.

Again, go grab the visual of this.

Go grab the Pdf mattmcwilliams.com/bridgepage or click the link in the show notes.

So for our last tip here, I want to talk about content.

There are so many opportunities to bring the holidays into your affiliate marketing efforts to generate excitement for your affiliate promotions.

And in this strategy I’m actually going to share seven ideas.

So seven different strategies and tips for holiday specific content that lead to affiliate sales.

These are things you can do this time of year to really drive affiliate sales.

The first thing is gift guides.

Gift guides are huge this time of year because buying the perfect gift, giving the perfect gift is an art form.

So if you’re an affiliate and you put together a gift guide, especially if it’s really niche focused, it’s a very effective way to attract eyeballs and drive people to buy specific products.

I know, I just looked at a gift guide.

I’m trying to figure out what to get for some of the people in my life.

I don’t know them as well, but I know enough about them, like what they do and a few things that they like.

And I’m like, what do I want to get for them?

And so I’m consulting gift guides for this.

One of them is a gift guide for an entrepreneur, a fellow entrepreneur.

And I’m thinking, I know what I would want, but I want to see what are some of the suggestions out there?

Another one, he’s really big into, I won’t mention the show, but he’s really big into a specific show on television.

And I’m looking up like gift guides for fans of that show.

And so these are great for almost any channel, any platform, anything, right?

They can be just for holiday, but you could also do these for things like anniversary gifts and Mother’s Day gifts and Fathers Day gifts.

Obviously you can drive traffic with these, with social media posts and all kinds of things like that.

You can even do like dedicated Facebook image albums where you feature each thing or that dedicated pinterest board, things like that.

They’re especially great video content.

So doing a video where you explain why each product makes for the perfect gift, that’s really cool.

Where you actually just do kind of almost like a video review really quick.

It can be curated content where you are taking and kind of like putting reviews and things of the gifts on there, like what other people are saying now.

Speaking of curated, they need to be curated and they need to be tailored to the niche.

So when I say curated, they need to be organized, manageable.

They need to be put in lists based on specific factors like age and gender, interest, budget.

So if you’re going to a pretty broad category, make sure you narrow it down by things like maybe it’s Christmas gifts for entrepreneurs.

If you have it separated by gender, maybe you have it separated by age.

Again, gifts under in these specific ones.

I’m looking for a gift that will wow.

But I’m not looking to spend $1,000.

So I’m looking for Christmas gifts that are in the range of $200 to $500.

And there’s one particular site that I found that literally had.

It was, like, $500 to $1,000. Hundred to $500.

There was, like, 100 to 200 and under $100.

I think they even had, like, an under $50 category.

I’m like, this is perfect because I want this to be something that blows the people away.

But I’m getting like 30 of these.

I don’t want to spend $30,000 on these Christmas gifts.

So I was pretty pleased to find this particular website for a large chunk of the people that I’m buying for this Christmas.

You might have it all be about affordable gift.

You might have it be about all of them under $50.

Maybe they’re all for men or they’re all for women or for

boyfriends or for girlfriends or husbands or wives or stocking stuffers that are under $1015.

Things like on a budget, things like that, right?

Best tech gifts, best gifts for travelers, food lovers, entrepreneurs, photographers, right?

Tech geeks, eco friendly. Best gifts, again for soccer players or for golfers, things like that.

Now, when you do these gift guides, again, get as specific as you can.

Make sure you include a bunch of high quality images along with the text.

Tell them why you recommend it or why someone else recommends it.

Make it easily accessible and navigate all navigable, whatever the word is, right?

They should be able to instantly click through to make the image a link, put a text link in the description and have a button, right?

Number two. Number two is the wishlist.

Now, these are kind of self-explanatory, right?

They’re self-explanatory because you are creating a list.

You say what you want for the holidays, and that’s going to inspire others.

It’s going to give them inspiration to, you know what, I want that too.

And that’s going to impact the buying decisions.

So you create a list of these things, different products, different stores, again tailored to your niche.

These are a lot like gift guides, really, but they’re for you.

You’re the niche, right?

You’re the person that’s representing the niche.

And so these are the things that you want.

You want to make it specific to you.

You want to make it an experience for the people who are going to be reading this.

So again, the pictures, you want to have those pictures, you want to have text that describes, again, this is why you want it, why you’re so excited about it.

Easy to buy, you want the button, things like that.

So you want to make this page and experience.

If you’re using Instagram, then you can post images filled with the wish list items and then each with the number that corresponds to the product name.

And when you do the post, you basically kind of outline what like number one.

Here’s what I love about that, number two, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Since there’s no links on the image, you want to make sure the product names are in the caption and things like that.

And then include info for how they can purchase in the captions, tag the brands, Instagram page, things like that.

And then you can put your affiliate link in your bio with YouTube, create videos that kind of feature a rundown of each product on the wish list.

Share why you want the product, why it’s a must-have.

This season You can create a wishlist on YouTube and then include your video links.

Make pretty links.

So if you’re talking about a product, make a pretty link for each product.

Put it up on the screen and make sure you put it down below each video. Pinterest.

You can do a holiday-specific Pinboard and your Pinterest is a freaking wish list, so make sure that you make it easy.

Make sure you make your affiliate links on there that directly lead to the specific products where they can easily make a purchase.

Again, just like the gift guides, they need to be curated in specific.

So if the affiliate program is not necessarily making products clear and maybe they’re not creating a wish list, create your own and make sure that you’re using search terms so they show up in searches.

So use the search terms that your people are looking for.

Fitness, travel, tech, entrepreneur, things like that, right?

The third thing you can do for holiday content is how to guides create a lengthy post.

Longer is better because it’s going to rank higher.

It’s targeting your target audience, the things that they need during the holidays.

For example, how to plan an office holiday party, how to protect your cyber information during holiday vacations, things like that.

How to buy the perfect gift for a picky husband.

It kind of turns into a little bit of a gift guide.

Want to learn how to make passive affiliate income from product review posts? Get my free guide on how to write a review post that ranks and converts and learn how we bring in more than $10,000 every single month in passive affiliate income! Get it here!

But think about the how-to articles, on how to decorate your Christmas tree.

Trying to think of an example there.

How to decorate your house for the holidays for under $500 or something like that.

Try to think of what are the things that people are wanting to know how to do.

You know, how to make sure you don’t blow a fuse with your lights like I did last year.

I learned that lesson the hard way.

We literally had to have an electrician come out and put in more.

When you call the things where you plug stuff in, I can’t even think of outlets.

We had to put in more outlets outside because I was blowing so many fuses.

Like I ruined literally hundreds of dollars worth of Christmas lights. Right?

So how to articles think about what do people want to know this time of year?

How to put together the perfect Christmas Day brunch.

That might be something that people are searching for.

I know we host Christmas Day and so we do brunch.

I’m kind of curious how that is.

So maybe looking for that you want to get me on to buy something from you, that might be the way to do it. All right?

Number four, a holiday deals page.

This time of year, deals sales are synonymous with the holiday season, and it’s likely that your merchants are going to be having special discounts that affiliates can promote.

So start a holiday sale page this is a general way to convey everything related to your holiday sales.

And then when you promote this page, you keep promoting this page.

It’s a single page that updates one page with all the deals you recommend.

And so you might send an email.

Here’s a cool thing.

It’s like a toolbox page.

It has so many things on it.

And when somebody says, hey, what podcast, Mike, do you recommend?

They say, everything that I recommend matt@mattmcwilliams.com/Toolbox, right?

Then you go there, you get the podcast mike, but you also get the other stuff that I have on that page and maybe even buy another product that has nothing to do with podcasting and you spent $300.

So we do the same thing with this page. It’s one page.

All of my recommended deals are at MattMcwilliams.com/2021Deal. Now, just clarity.

That’s actually not this kind of page.

The 2021 deal is one specific thing.

By the way, what I was going to tell you about it.

We actually are doing a really special deal for Black Friday through Cyber Monday on our ultimate affiliate swipe file.

And so this is a physical book, so you can keep it right on your desk where you write.

And it has all of our best emails from an entire year.

We got 128 emails in there.

I think it’s 190 something pages, almost 200 pages.

That was responsible for over $200,000 in affiliate commissions.

So every type of affiliate email you could imagine we’ve got in this swipe file.

So it’s a physical book and we’ll send it to you.

And we’re doing it at basically 66% off.

I mean, it’s like a crazy deal for Black Friday. Cyber Monday. It’s available now.

It’s actually going to be available through Cyber Monday.

So if you’re listening now, I’ll put a link in the show notes. Just go grab that.

You don’t want to miss out on that and it’s live now.

And again, it’s MattMcwilliams.com/2021deal but we didn’t do it this year.

But in the past we’ve done that where we put up a bunch of deals and they were all on one page.

And as deals expired, we pulled them off.

So how we would do that as we’d actually put a countdown timer on there for each deal, when that deal expired, it just deleted that off the page.

And then periodically we would go in and move stuff around so it didn’t look weird.

But yeah, I mean, these kind of things work.

And it’s a lot less work for you because you just keep pushing people to the same page.

And affiliates can basically post an overview of all the sales featuring different discounts, different promotions, bundles, whatever.

And it will have, when the sale is active, how much they can save.

And it just makes it really easy for you because you keep pushing people back to one page.

And if you’re going on going on a Facebook live, for example, or doing a podcast, and you got six deals, ten deals you’re promoting.

You have to remember six or ten different links and people are confused.

You just keep saying, hey, all of them are at blah, blah, blah.Comdeals, right? All right?

The fifth type of content is product reviews.

Now, I have talked about product reviews to death.

I’m going to point you to a guide at MattMcwilliams.com//reviewpost.

You can get my ultimate guide that will show you how to create a review post.

That ranks and convert.

You need it to rank, and you need it to convert.

You can’t have one without the other. Oh, yeah.

I’m number one on Google, and nobody ever clicked through the affiliate product. Well, that sucks.

Yes, half the people are clicking through to of the affiliate products.

Yeah, one out of two, because you’re on the 9th page of Google.

This is the time of year when searches go up because people are buying gifts for others, and they don’t know about that topic as well.

So they’re looking up and they’re looking up a product review on this thing and that thing like, I heard you once, but is it really that good?

And product reviews can easily be tied in with gift guides during the holiday season.

So you can do this as a post.

You can do this as a video on YouTube, for example.

The product reviews tend to rank really high.

They tend to be more in depth.

They show the product in action.

And you can do video reviews or written reviews, but consider doing those.

Go grab the guide. It’s MattMcwilliams.com/reviewpost. Learn how to do those. Okay?

And then you just kind of holiday ties it.

Is that a word?

Holidays?

It whatever you make it holidayishesque or other, something like that.

So you talk about the gift side of that.

All right, the 6th thing you can do, it’s a great time of year for contests, for giveaways, right?

Do some sort of a giveaway.

It’s a great way to create some buzz and grow your list.

There’s tons of ways to do this.

We use a plugin called king Sumo.

I don’t necessarily recommend it or not recommend it.

It’s just what we use. I personally have never actually used it. Our team uses it.

Do a giveaway where it’s like, hey, it’s around that time of year when people are thinking about giving.

So do a giveaway, put together a bundle and give away $200 worth of something.

And when people come and subscribe to get that bundle, they get an entry.

Then it incentivizes them to share the contest, to get, like, everybody they refer, earns them, like, ten entries or five entries or three or whatever, and it incentivizes them to share.

So it goes viral and we’ve done this in the past and added thousands of people to our list, and great, only four to 800 of them will stick around for more than a year.

That’s for 800 people. For $200 as a one, I did my top five marketing books.

I don’t know what they call $15 on Amazon cost me 70.

I think it cost me, like, $92 to buy the books and ship them.

I mean, I literally think on three of them, we actually went with the hardcover.

Just to be nice. There were two that didn’t even have a hardcover, but we bought the most expensive version of the book on one of them.

I actually had it signed because it was by a friend of mine and I had two of them signed. That’s right.

We had two of them signed and so they got two signed books and then the other three books and then we shipped them off.

I think it cost me like $92. I shipped them off like the more expensive shipping. It was still only like $92.

And I gained like five or 600 long term subscribers, people who have made me well over $10,000 for $92. Pretty good deal.

So it’s a great time of year to do that.

It’s just kind of built into the season, right?

And then 7th, there are lots of deadlines this time of year, so create content around deadlines.

I talked about this a little bit in the first episode of the series, but you can use social media posts to convey short messages and posts.

Use stories, use graphics on Facebook, especially in like Instagram stories and Facebook stories and Twitter where things are a little bit more timely.

And you can create countdowns. You can do a post only 6 hours left, 3 hours left, 1 hour left, 15 minutes left to get this right.

Focus on those dates, those important deadlines. Time is running out.

There’s last minute deals sale in today, last chance to say flash sale, things like that.

So focus on those times, on those days and hours when things are a little bit on the kind of crazy side.

This is the time of year where you can get away with that more and you can do it five to ten times in a week and it doesn’t seem out of place.

If you did that in the middle of August, it would seem weird.

So it’s that time of year to do that.

So use it for your advantage.

So there you have it.

Seven ideas for content this holiday season.

Go and do it right.

Create something, sell something, make some magic and have some fun with it.

So I hope you got value out of all of those different tips and strategies today to make your holiday affiliate promotions amazing.

All the links that I mentioned in the different clips are in the Show Notes, the Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Promotions at MattMcwilliams.com/holidayguide.

We’ve got the link to convert kit and ClickFunnels Idaho Affiliate.

The post that I did on how to stand out and capture attention in a crowded marketplace.

The warm up guide. How to warm your audience up.

We got the guide on affiliate bonus packages, how to write review posts that rank and convert, and the free download for that bridge page template that we talked about, like, how do you grow your email list and your sales?

That’s the bridge page template.

So there’s like ten links in the show notes, so whatever ones you want, go grab. Go grab them all.

Go check out every single one of them because they’re all awesome.

So they’re all there in the show notes for you.

And if you’ve got questions about this or anything else, you can text me anytime at 260-217-4619.

And make sure as always, if you haven’t yet, make sure you hit subscribe and come back for the next episode.

You don’t want to miss this and I’ve got a very special interview with my dear friend, Richie Norton.

The topic is called Time Management Is Dead how to Reclaim Your Time and Revolutionize Your Results with Richie Norton.

I’m going to tell you, Richie is an amazing storyteller.

Not only he got some great stories, but he’s got some amazing advice.

He shared it with me and it completely revolutionized everything about my business and my life.

So you do not want to miss this episode come back for that.