Story time:
10 years ago, my friend Sam and I naively decided to become Internet marketing millionaires.
Somehow we found Andre Chaperon’s Tiny Little Businesses course.
We rubbed our hands together, and envisioned that in six months’ time, we’d be sitting at the beach, drinking margaritas, occasionally leaning over to our laptops to see how many more thousands of dollars had rolled in over the past 15 minutes.
Andre’s TLB told us to pick a niche, find a product we could promote as an affiliate, then build a list using that affiliate product as the offer.
Sam and I followed this recipe to a T and beyond.
We spent weeks picking out the perfect niche (hard gainers, skinny guys who want to put on muscle but can’t).
We did market research to find out the pain points, motivations, and language used by our target market (it helped that both Sam and I were both in our target market, tall and hopelessly skinny).
We found the perfect affiliate offer to promote, a quality program, fairly expensive, with a good sales page. It would make it easy to pay for ads with even a few sales.
I had seen that the owners of this offer had previously worked with affiliates.
But when the time came to promote them, I couldn’t find the form on their site to sign up as an affiliate.
I wrote to the owners to ask about it. A reply came back:
“Thanks for the interest. But we’ve actually paused taking on new affiliates at the moment. It doesn’t really work for our business.”
First, there was a moment of shock. Then my blood pressure shot up.
I may or may not have fired back an email, explaining to this guy that he doesn’t know how business is done online… that this is free money that he’s saying no to… that a new customer is the most valuable thing a business could ever get, and that’s what I’m offering to bring him.
Very rightly and very wisely, the offer owner did not respond to my stupid email.
Those were the early days of my marketing career. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that a businesses would not want to sell offers (particularly info products, with no marginal cost) to somebody new, with no effort involved.
“What’s wrong with affiliates?” I asked myself. My newbie brain simply couldn’t handle it.
As you can guess, Sam and I never recovered from this setback. Our dreams of a drunken 4-hour workweek on the beach vanished like receding waves in the sand.
But that was a long time ago. I’ve learned a lot about marketing and online businesses since then. I’ve heard and seen many other successful marketers say they do not work with affiliates. And today, I can tell you…
I still don’t really get it.
I mean, what could possibly be wrong with affiliates? Why would anybody ever say no?
Over the past few months, I have had two affiliates promote my stuff.
Daniel Throssell promoted my Copy Riddles course back in September.
Right now, Kieran Drew is promoting Simple Money Emails.
During both promos, I rolled out of bed each morning to find thousands of dollars worth of new sales, dozens or hundreds of new subscribers, and somebody with standing in the industry going out of his way to say nice things about me and my products. Here’s a few bits from Kieran’s email yesterday:
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SUBJECT: The best email writing course I’ve ever taken
B – E -J – A – K – O – V – I – C
The reason I’m shouting letters over Zoom like a Croatian spelling bee is because my friend asked for my favourite newsletters.
I always recommend this guy. People always sound skeptical. It’s not quite the standard Ben Settle or Justin Welsh you hear chucked around in our space.
But out of the hundreds of lists I’m lurking on, John Bejakovic’s emails glue me to the screen the most, and keep me coming back for more.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s the best email copywriter you’ve probably never heard of.
[… Kieran goes on to explain the offer, course plus two free bonuses, and then he says:]
Yes, this is an affiliate link.
But I’ve taken his course 5 times in 5 months. It’s an hour read yet every time I come out noticeably better at copy. Few courses have that effect – which is why I’m promoting it.
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Who would not want endorsements like this?
Aren’t affiliates just the greatest thing in the world?
But maybe you are wiser and more perceptive than I am.
“Kinda cherrypicking there, ain’t you John? Both Kieran and Daniel are pretty atypical cases.”
Maybe.
They do both have a list that they email regularly. They have both built a bond with that list, and authority and trust. And more.
They both cultivate discipline in their readers, rather than preaching the gospel of the 4-hour workweek. They both, explicitly or implicitly, repel people who aren’t down with their message.
In short, both Kieran and Daniel have spent time building up a quality list and emailing themselves into a healthy, respect-filled relationship with that list. And now I get to benefit from it.
I’m not sure what my point is, except:
1) Great affiliates are great, and
2) If you want to be a great affiliate, start a list today. And if you already have one, email it more often, starting today.
And if you don’t want to be anybody’s affiliate, but you simply want to have the opportunity to sell any reasonable and helpful offer you decide to create, start a list today. And if you already have one… well, you know where I’m going with this.
In fact, you probably knew all this before. But if hasn’t clicked yet, or if something is still holding you back, here’s a course that has helped others before you: