Overcoming 5 Myths About Holiday Affiliate Promotions

by Matt McWilliams | Nov 25, 2021 | Affiliate Management, Affiliate Marketing, Podcast

It’s the holiday season and that means a lot of myths and misconceptions around holiday affiliate promotions. Today, I’ll bust five of the biggest misconceptions that people have when it comes to holiday affiliate promotions and show you how to truly take advantage of this critical time of year for affiliate promotions.

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Links Mentioned in this Episode

Affiliate Insider Monthly Trial

The Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Marketing Promotions

Warm Up Your Audience Guide

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

7 Holiday Content Ideas for Affiliate Marketers

7 Things Your Affiliates Need During Holiday Promotions

How to Stand Out as an Affiliate During the Holiday Season

Holiday Affiliate Guide Pt. 1: There’s More than Just Black Friday & Christmas

3 Lessons from a Hater

Affiliate Marketing Sales Secrets: How To Sell Without Being Salesy, Scammy or Sleazy

Overcoming 5 Myths About Holiday Affiliate Promotions

Today we’re talking about how to overcome the five myths that people tend to have about holiday affiliate promotions. There’s just a lot of misconceptions out there. There are always truths in every lie, I think it’s the saying. And while there are some truths in some of the things that we’ll talk about today, most of these are just myths, they’re lies. And so what I want to do is bust those because I think it’s good to get in the right mindset as we kind of close out this series and as we really, really hate.

This will go live, I believe on Black Friday. So this is what we’re going to be at the beginning of the holiday season and we’ve done five episodes prior to this to prepare you.

Now we’re kind of crossing the finish line in this series, and really it’s time to bust those myths. Now, all of the myths I’m sharing today, they’re actually from this month’s Affiliate Insider Monthly, that’s our membership site. Every month we release what we call an ATM report and affiliate trends, monthly report. Now we have a ton of other content.

We do a monthly backstage pass where I take you behind the scenes of one of our affiliate promos. We do an insider profile every month where we interview somebody who had a successful affiliate promotion, and we share what they did. We also do a monthly fireside chat where I take all of your questions, but this is what we call the ATM report.

It’s typically a pretty good size, 15 to 25-page document. It’s a PDF. So it’s the one written thing that we have inside of aim, but it really takes a deep dive into a specific topic each month, some sort of a trend. This one is all about how to find the right niches for the holidays? What are the top affiliate niches for 2021, my top picks for the best niches? and also shared 7 keys to maxing out your affiliate commissions.

Ultimately, it’s just everything you would need to know to really bust it this holiday season as an affiliate. So all of this is inside of there. You can get the full report and all of the other content for just a dollar, by the way, if you join right now, we have a trial going on. If you just go to Mattmcwilliams.com/aimtrial, you can get in on that.

So what are those five misconceptions? The five myths about holiday affiliate promotions?

1) Holiday Promotions are only for Holiday or Retail Sales.

Well, myth number one is that holiday promotions are only for the holiday or retail sales. And this is when I hear a lot. This only applies to retail products or things in the holiday niche, “Matt, I’m in the productivity niche. And I promote courses” and this is true, whether you have an affiliate program or you’re promoting things as an affiliate. “Matt, we sell coaching services, Matt, we teach people some sort of self-improvement or marketing.” Like we know we can’t do anything. It doesn’t fit the holiday stuff. Right? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Now it’s true. Retailers are out in full force during holiday time. They’re dominating the market. You’ve probably have seen an increase. I know I studied my mail. I actually kind of liked junk mail because I like to study it. I love some of the car dealerships. I mean, some of their stuff is hysterical and so pathetic, I think, but some of it’s really good and I’m like, Ooh, I shouldn’t learn from that. So don’t ever just throw stuff away, study it just as a little side note there, that stuff.

I mean, the stuff that we get promoting deals and retail products is up probably two and a half to four times in the past week and a half alone. But the fact is this time of year, people are more in a buying mode than at any other point in the year for a majority of the products. Now, this doesn’t apply. If you’re in the weight loss niche, people are not buying between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Generally speaking, do some, yes. We’ll talk about that a little bit. Do sales skyrocket the first couple of weeks of January, of course. If you’re in the back-to-school niche, not very popular in the first week of December because most people go back to school.

Well, nowadays they’re going back in late July. Like, what is wrong with you people, but mid-August, late August, sometimes right after labor day, as God intended. But anyway, it’s that period of time. You’re typically not doing back to school in late November, early December, but outside of a few niches like that, people are more in a buying mode.

They are programmed to spend money on things that they want or need their guard is down a little bit that filter that says, Nah, I’m not going to buy. It goes down. Especially when there are deals. And that’s key. That’s key. Their guard, their filter is down some percentage and they are more likely to buy. But here’s the thing though. They can’t buy your products. They can’t buy your services if they can’t see them. So holiday time is a great chance to jump in with your affiliate promotions, grab your share of holiday cash. Let your followers, let your customers decide what they want. Any affiliate marketer can jump on board during the holiday season.

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Any affiliate program can take advantage of it. It doesn’t matter what you do. You can be a blogger. You can be a podcast. You can do videos. You can be an author. You could be even in the weight loss, self-improvement niche, personal growth, leadership, marketing, entrepreneurship, you name it, parenting health, and fitness gardening. Most people aren’t planting gardens, this time of year, at least north of the Mason Dixon, even really north of Florida and Southern Texas and Southern California. They’re not planting gardens, but you can still buy stuff about that and take advantage of the fact that people’s guards are down. All you gotta do is jump on the action. That’s the key. You gotta like, you actually gotta do something.

2) I’m too busy to promote.

I hear this all the time. I hear this all the time. It’s just, I’m too busy. There’s like us, my anniversary is right around now. In fact, I’m recording this the day before I leave for an extended vacation, I’ve got a book deadline. My book manuscript is due in 29 days. Not that I’m counting people think, oh, it’s the winter. It’s after the season for soccer. Because we’re a soccer family. No, winter’s actually our busiest season because the training is longer and they have more of them and none of our kids’ training is on the same days.

Actually, Tuesday’s the one day they have this Tuesday training. Whereas in the past, they actually had a couple of days a week where they overlapped. So we have soccer Monday, Tuesday, well, Futsal and indoor training, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and occasionally Sunday, it can be five or six days a week. I’m busy. And then we have holiday parties to get ready for it. We got a host, we’ve got Thanksgiving, we’ve got to go to this.

We got all these holiday parties that we need to go to. And then we got to host Christmas and we got to do Christmas shopping. And I finished my anniversary shopping weeks in advance this year, which is nothing short of a miracle, but I haven’t done anything for Christmas. And I got to do that. It’s busy. I get it. Let me give you a reason to make some time right now.

As I said, throughout the series, many affiliate marketers make 30 to 50% of their annual income at this time of year 30 to 50%. So let’s just go with 30. Are you really genuinely too busy to make almost a third of your annual income in just a few weeks? No, like there’s just too much on the line. I get it. You probably are busy, but here’s the thing. You can do it. A lot of the prep work in advance.

Now it’s a little bit too late for that as you’re listening to this, but next year, doing an advanced. Now you’re going to be a little rushed. You may have to work a little bit extra, but it’s worth them. You could knock in 30%, one-third. You could increase your income by one-third in just a few weeks. And here’s the little insider secret. These are some of the easiest promotions to run.

The average promo sequence, if you’re promoting a big product launch can involve sending out 10, 15, 20 emails. You’ve got to build interest and excitement. We’ve talked about this so many times you got to warm up your audience weeks or months in advance for this big thing. And it can be a huge time suck before a quick holiday promo. You can get away with sending one or two emails. You’ve got the ability to leverage the buzz and excitement that is built into this time of year. It’s inherent this time of year and you get to take advantage of it. So you get to leverage that buzz and the excitement that everyone else is generating.

So you send a couple of emails maybe more total over the course of a few weeks, but you send a handful of emails. You make 20, 30, 40% of your annual income where I come from that’s time, well spent so being too busy, not an excuse, not an excuse. First thing, they’re not just for holidays in the retail niches and the second thing is you are not too busy.

3) It is not too noisy in the marketplace to get a piece of the pie.

Well, people say it’s just too noisy in the marketplace to get a piece of the pie. Now I just said, what did I just say? You leverage the buzz and excitement that everyone else is generating. It’s not too noisy. Yes. You have to stand out, go listen to the previous episodes about that, or that you have an affiliate program or you’re an affiliate. You need to stand out. That’s important, but you get to also leverage the general buzz that’s going on.

You get to leverage the fact that people’s guards are down a little bit like I said earlier. Listen, no one likes pie more than me, especially around the holidays. I’m going to eat some pie for the next couple of months, my goal between now and at the end of the year is to lose one pound, not to lose five or 10 between now and January 1st to lose one pound, and actual truth. Be told, I’ll be happy if I stay where I’m at and the same goes for getting a piece of the affiliate marketing pie right now, the best thing is you’re already well-positioned to do it.

If you’ve done what you’re supposed to do throughout the year, you’ve worked hard to build and nurture your audience. Then you don’t need to struggle to be heard because you’ve already earned their attention. You should be in a place. And if you’re not, then think of this as a goal for 2022, you should be at a place where your audience will always come to you first for a recommendation because they trust you.

I mentioned affiliate insider monthly, and last month we interviewed Dave Gambrell. And that’s exactly what we talked about, actually, that was this month. So if you join right now, you’ll get access to this and I interviewed him and we talked about how does he position himself? Where people just come to him for recommendations? How does he position himself? Where people buy everything he promotes, how does he position himself where nobody returns things. And so his commissions are higher. And we talked about that this month, it’s called the insider profile.

So again, you can join that. I’ll put the link in the show notes, go join. It’s a whole dollar and you’ll get access like that interview alone’s worth 10 times, a hundred times really. If you actually get some good stuff out of it could be worth it, what could you make from that interview? Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. No, I’m not exaggerating. There’s no doubt about that for a dollar. So you go pay a buck, you get access to AIM. You’ll get all the stuff that I’m talking about today and more plus Dave, stuff’s a good guide to that.

You want to be in that position like Dave, where they come to you first for a recommendation because they trust you. And they’re happy to let you do the work from them, right? Yes. They can go to Amazon. I can go to Amazon, but why would I do that? When I know somebody who’ll do all the work for me and put all those great holiday deals that are relevant to me in one convenient spot, all they have to do is show up. All they have to do is say, “Hey, what are the holiday deals you recommend this month? What are good holiday deals for an entrepreneur? What are good holiday deals for parents? What are good holiday deals for such and such?” That’s all they just go to the page that you put together.

I mean, you think about that, like going to Amazon, I did this recently, I was searching for some stuff, trying to find something. I mean, it’s Amazon’s amazing. It still took me half an hour. It’s boring. I don’t want to do that. And if you’re looking for deals, it’s work, it’s challenging me. You can take a half-hour. And even if you have a small audience, there’s a strategy you can use to serve them in a way that they will appreciate you look for niches and you become known to your audiences as the go-to guy or gal. The go-to affiliate for special offers.

All right, try this say, you decide to focus on holiday deals for gardeners. And then you create and optimize a page in advance. We talked about this in the last episode with the content, right? So if you miss that, go back and listen to it and you create a deal page and you add more value by including an offer on this page of a free mini-course on how to get great gardening results.

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

All they have to do to get the mini-courses, give you their email address, which you can then use to make money and build more loyal customers. All they have to do to get the mini-course is to give you their email address, which you can use to make money and build more loyal customers. So now you’re going to stand out next year and even immediately as the go-to person. So yes, it’s noisy, but you can get a piece of the pie and you can use that noise to your advantage, especially if you apply what we talked about a couple of episodes ago with standing out again, that applies to both affiliates and do affiliate programs.

4) Holiday Promos Only Applied to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Well, we busted that one in the first episode of the series. That’s the kickoff, right? I don’t know how this myth got any traction. Maybe it’s from marketers who didn’t they don’t want you competing for business year-round. I don’t know. The fact is there are many like hundreds of selling opportunities for affiliates from January to December.

So we’re going to not just talk about this time of year, think about other holidays. You use a little bit of imagination. Valentine’s day, Memorial day, Mother’s day, Father’s day, Summer is almost here day, the first day of summer, July 4th, back to school. I think I said Memorial day, Labor day, St. Patrick’s day, Martin Luther King Day. So-and-so’s birthday day, all these things right around here, we call these ETPs, which has excuses to promote and guess what? You can use all the strategies you use for black Friday and cyber Monday to generate more income anytime throughout the year.

I’ve heard some affiliates say the challenge with the single-day holiday promo is making sure emails don’t expire before people have a chance to open them. No biggie, just use this strategy. So you’re going to generate buzz. We also get to engage your audience at the same time for an extended period of time.

So let’s use, we’ll just use Valentine’s day. As an example. The first thing you do is, you set up a waitlist page, a very simple weightless page. You present your product along with all the reasons you like it. You sell it as you normally would. You give everything, they need to make a purchase with one exception on the page. You informed them that the deal is not live yet, but it’ll go live on February 14th and expire the following day. At midnight, if they’re interested in getting it, then they click on the link that takes them to the first to know waitlist page.

So then you create an additional offer to piggyback on the original, say 50% discount. Let’s just say that was the original discount, whatever offer you’re doing. Once they join the early bird notification list, they’ll be eligible to get a free bonus if they send in their receipt. So this applies to your own products. You can use this for affiliates, but you can use this as an affiliate too.

So let’s just say, I take my microphone here. They don’t take this anymore, but whatever microphone would we recommend when I forget what replaced it, but it’s made by Audio-Technica and let’s just say, you’re promoting this. Then your bonus offer would be like free training on how to set up this microphone for best results. You’ve created an offer that gives you an opportunity to continue marketing to that person. When the offer goes live, anyone who registered for the waitlist page is automatically directed to the live deal page. And then after the deal is ended, you keep up interest level, maybe even make a sale by saying something like will the deal on this microphone ended. But if you do decide to buy at any point throughout the year, send me your receipt and I’ll send you a video on how to make the best use. Think of things like that.

It could be some sort of a bonus. If it’s a course, how to get the best of the course, most out of the course, things like that. That’s how you do this. Then once you create your weightless page, you just clone it and use it for another promotion. I mean, it takes five minutes to update these pages going forward because you’ve created the formula. It’s pretty cool. Huh?

5) There’s nothing you can do to move the needle as an affiliate.

I think you know how I feel like nothing I can do this time of year to move the needle. I’m going to make what I make. I’m going to give you a few strategies. Some of which I’ve shared throughout this series or touched on, I’ve shared them in the ultimate guide to holiday affiliate promotions, which we’ll link to that in the show notes. I’ve mentioned that throughout the series, but I’m just going to share a couple of quick strategies.

a) This will get you about a 14 to 18% sales bump. We did a test a few years ago. Around this time of year, we created three sets of holiday-themed creatives. And at the time the company I worked with, had a dark red color.

So we simply use that or like what kind of is Christmas Eve, but not really by itself. So it was basically a regular brand, our regular branding, In the second test, we did some, we added some green and a little bit lighter. Red sales increased 14%. Then we added some Christmasy holiday theme, things like we added like a Santa hat, some Reindeer, some snowflakes, that kind of stuff. 18% jump. We’ve used this strategy ever since.

If you’re working with an affiliate manager, like I said before, ask him or her, you need to ask for those holidays specific promotional materials and then use them in your Facebook ad, use them in your blog posts, use them in banner ads on social media. See what happens.

b) Another needle, moving tip, very stealthier tease things in advance. This could be as simple as just sending out an email with all of your holiday promotions listed. You can get an additional 10% of sales just by sending out an email. “Hey, here are the 10 things I’m going to promote over the holidays. Here’s our black Friday offer, Cyber Monday, here are our such and such. These are the 10 things I’m going to pro or 12 things or whatever.” And then you promote them as normal. Get an additional 10 to 30% just from doing something simple like that.

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Now, if you can also tease it on social media, create those waitlists that tie in together. Again, an additional 20%. It’s a little bit of extra work in 2021, but you can pretty much clone this stuff in 2022 and beyond pretty powerful, pretty powerful stuff.

So here’s what we’ve discussed so far:

1) This is not just for holiday and retail products.

2) You are not too busy to promote. That’s just an excuse. Don’t make it.

3) It is not too noisy in the marketplace to get a piece of the pie. There are things you can do to move the needle. As we just talked about.

4) It is a lot more than Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And like I just said, there are plenty of things.

I gave you two examples here. You can get more inside of Affiliate Insider Monthly, I gave you two things you can do to move the needle pretty dramatically here. I mentioned this report in this report. I also share how to find the hottest niches for 2021. My top picks are my personal top pigs for holiday season niches in 2021. Got some good stuff in there for that and seven keys to maxing out your affiliate commissions.

Now, if you want to get that report, plus like I said, that interview with Dave Gambrill and so I’m so, so, so much more there’s so much stuff inside of AIM. It’s going to blow you away. Not enough, not going to overwhelm you. We just released one new thing each week. You’re going to love it. Just go to Mattmcwilliams.com/AIMtrial. We’ll put that link in the show notes as well.

5) There’s nothing you can do to move the needle as an affiliate.

If you want more holiday affiliate tips, I want you to do three things:

a) Make sure you subscribe. So you don’t miss the next two episodes. The next two episodes are going to absolutely be awesome. I’m going to share what top affiliates are doing this holiday season and what top affiliate programs. Top affiliate managers are going to reveal some of their holiday strategies. So you don’t want to miss those. So make sure you subscribe. So you don’t miss those or any of our episodes.

b) Check out the past additions of The Ultimate Affiliate Guide or The Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Promotions. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

c) Get your audience warmed up for some of those later holiday promotions. Maybe you’ve got promotions coming up in January. Hey, if you’re in that fitness niche, now’s the time to get your audience warmed up for January. So grab that warm-up guide at Mattmcwilliams.com/warmlist and come back for the next episode, I’ve got some special guests sharing. What top affiliates are doing this holiday season. I’ll see you then.